Member Article

‘Get Life Organised’ - Productivity and Lifestyle Expert shares ten tips for getting life organised for home and business

An ambitious mum to many, with four kids still at home and a wider blended family, who experienced burnout at 45 with a heart attack, is spreading the word on how you can manage business and life after hitting number one on the Amazon charts with her new book ‘Get Life Organised,- a work-from-home household management guide for business owners’.

Nic Davies, 49 from Preston shares some of her tricks, processes and routines that help her run her home and businesses productively, despite the wide and varied demands on her time.

People always ask Nic; “How do you manage to do it all?”- navigating self-employment, running two businesses, whilst dealing with the fact her household expanded from 3 to 8 overnight. Her reply - “In amongst all the chaos, I realised that we needed to become extremely organised, very quickly - so, I put plans in place for us to continue working, whilst keeping things running at home.”

Sharing her 3 mantras to live by in the book Nic explains why:-

1. Boundaries are vital, with others and yourself
   

2. Doing the thinking in advance saves time and sanity
   

3. Everything else can wait, whilst you take care of yourself.
   

She said: “I’m mum in a large blended family that has dealt with chaos for the last nine years. I’ve been on the school run now for 25 years (and still five to go!), I’m a Nana to three grandchildren with another on the way, and I’ve dealt with a range of different parenting experiences. Good and bad.”

“I deal with chronic pain on a daily basis, and it’s how I manage with that as well that gives me a different perspective to just being able to declutter an entire garage over a weekend. I REALLY don’t like housework! I don’t thrive on cleaning – but, I do have a rota and routines that I try and stick to, to make life as easy as possible. Any rotas I create are totally flexible and take into account the days when we just can’t do anything. And that’s okay.”

In her business Nic has combined home and business organisation together - something she couldn’t find out there, when she was looking for support and the book is an extension of the support she offers, in a bid to help others put boundaries in place, whilst working for themselves.

Having struggled herself to navigate boundaries when moving from employment to self-employment, Nic was also hearing continually from peers in her business networks that people were struggling to juggle all their roles in life. She reached burnout at age 45 with a minor heart attack, and this was down to not switching off from work, taking on too much, not wanting to delegate and having little regard for her own wellbeing - and open to sharing this, she does so as a warning to others.

The book covers a range of topics that will help anyone running a business from home. From managing your time to creating a housework rota that’s flexible. There’s a chapter on efficiency from a business owner’s perspective, which focuses on creating goals and having accountability, whereas other chapters cover practical self care, delegating for home and business tasks, the perks and pitfalls of working from home, decluttering and meal planning.

Nic’s goal for the book is for it to be a practical guide for the reader to work from home more effectively, and putting the missing boundaries in place that would naturally be there within an employment environment. She wants to help people put rotas, routines and systems in place to make running the home easier, and ensuring all business activities are done as efficiently as possible.

Ultimately Nic is trying to protect others from burnout, by encouraging them from not doing too much, to get people to understand that it’s not healthy to be trying to “do it all”, but what’s key is that we find ways to “manage it better”, and know when to put the plates down, and when/if to pick them back up again.

She said: “I’ve always resonated with the plate spinning analogy. I’ve always felt busy in life. As a lifelong learner, I’ve always wanted to dive into different creative projects, but this has always resulted in me taking on too much. I would still like to honour my personality, motivation and drive, but do this in a structured way in order to build a successful business. I know there are others out there with similar issues, and I feel I’m in a position to help them achieve their goals.”

“My business model had to change due to a fibromyalgia diagnosis in 2018. I was self employed but had a very physically demanding job that I knew couldn’t continue. As I was making plans to transition into helping other business owners, I had a heart attack in January 2020, which meant I needed to stop the physical work straight away, and had to focus on recovery and then planning to create Platespinning Academy. It wasn’t how I had planned the transition, but I didn’t have any choice.

“We’ve had to deal with a lot of different problems over the last few years, and the book is my way of making something positive out of our situation, which is useful for others too. My mission is to make sure that everyone has an equal opportunity to create a business they love, without feeling held back by household obligations or adversity.

“I’m an advocate for gender equality in all aspects of life, particularly where it comes to domestic chores, household responsibilities and caregiving roles. Having been held back in the past from building a business because it was “my job” to run the home, I’m all too aware of caregivers efforts being devalued, or the role of running a home to be considered less important than that of the “breadwinner”.

“With my book I am here to support others dealing with overwhelm, or lack of boundaries, those who have too much to do and don’t know where to start, those struggling to manage their time so life at home is starting to be impacted, those trying to do it all themselves, who are neglecting their own wellness/health/basic needs. I’ve been all of these people and it isn’t a good place to be. I’m seeing many business owners expecting too much of themselves and I want to help.”

1. Run your home like you’d run a business. Put rotas into place for housework, and look at where you can create systems that make life easier
2. Be mindful of how and where you spend your time. Create your own timetable for the week, similar to what you had in school. Use colour coding and make it as bright and interesting as possible. Give yourself a good balance between work, family and other commitments, and self-care time. Put self-care time into your diary as a priority, and work around that for everything else
3. Create a morning and evening routine. Regardless of what time you get up or go to bed, if you have a set routine at both ends of the day, you will create better time boundaries for yourself. A good morning routine will set you up for the day, and a good evening routine will help you close it off
4. Have a dedicated area of your home to work in. It doesn’t have to be a standalone office, it can be a corner of a room. Find a way to close this space off when you are finished work for the day. If you don’t have a dedicated office you can close the door on, put a physical barrier in place so you can’t sit back at your work desk, like a blanket over the chair as a reminder that you’ve finished work and you need to switch off. Be the best boss to yourself, not the worst
5. Make sure you get everyone involved in the housework who is able to. Reinforce teamwork, and focus on helping your children to learn. Don’t focus on having tasks done perfectly, just focus on having them done. You are helping your children learn skills for life, so they can grow into independent adults
6. If you find decluttering overwhelming, just start with clearing one small bag of rubbish a day. Take 5-10 minutes each day to get rid of items that are easy to dispose of. Make it part of your daily routine rather than a full weekend job that takes over your space and energy
7. Think of all your roles in life as wearing different hats. The main rule is you can only wear one hat at a time. Don’t try and multi-task, just focus on one thing at a time. If you schedule in all the other tasks you need to do, you don’t need to worry about them as they will get done at the allotted time
8. Prioritise your self-care above and beyond EVERYTHING else. I don’t mean fancy self-care like spa days or drinking champagne with friends. I mean (the boring but necessary) basic self-care needs – 1) stay hydrated and make sure you are drinking enough water. 2) eat the right foods, in the right portion sizes, at the right times. 3) get enough sleep. If you don’t fulfil these three basic physiological needs as a human being, it becomes a lot more difficult to deal with all the other stuff that gets thrown our way
9. Make an emergency plan in advance for if life throws you a curveball. It can just be an A4 sheet of paper, but a more detailed one is better. Write down instructions on what to do in case of an emergency/life curveball. How would you deal with day-to-day living? Will you have enough money to pay bills? How will you get the kids to school? If we can think about these beforehand, it’s a lot easier than trying to think about it when we are in panic mode
10. Put a meal plan into place. Whether it’s for a week, month, or the whole year. It makes life so much easier when you know in advance what you need to be buying and cooking. Combined with online grocery shopping (where possible), this removes a lot of the mental load, and frees up some headspace and time

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