Julie Clarke is a wife and mother and former owner of Organized at Last. With a passion for organization and people, Julie has spent the last few decades helping families organize their homes to create a peaceful respite and a sense of calm in the home by eliminating clutter. As a person living with Type 1 Diabetes she recognizes what a gift each day is and strives to make meaningful connections with people, through hosting regular family dinners, daily walks with her husband of 37 years and finding intentional ways to bless others. In this episode, we talk with Julie about all things clutter, chaos, organization, peace, family and intentions.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. We're a growing community of everyday chicks colliding with Jesus in our mess, our pain, our joy, and our stories.

We value showing up as we truly are, so that's what you'll find here, walls and masks being torn down so that we can allow Jesus to meet us where we truly are and hear about other women doing the same. We can't wait to collide with you.

Such a fan also of just overall functionality. To me, function comes before form.

A beautiful house is important, but if that home isn't functioning well for you, that home will never be a beautiful home.

Welcome to the Collide Podcast. I'm Willow Weston, the founder and director of Collide, and I am so excited to have Julie Clarke on the podcast today.

Julie Clarke is someone that I admire and respect very much. She's a wife and a mom and a grandma and the former owner of an amazing business called Organized at Last that she ran for several decades.

She has a passion for organization and people, and she has spent so many, so many years helping families organize their homes to create a peaceful respite and a sense of calm by eliminating clutter. She's been married to her husband Steve, who is an amazing man for 37 years.

They have adult kids and grandkids, and they love finding intentional ways to bless others. So today I can't wait to talk to Julie about all things clutter, chaos, mess, organization, peace, family and intentions, and retirement life.

Julie, thanks for hanging out with us today.

Thank you so much for having me today. I'm excited to be here.

Well, Julie, when I first met you, I attended one of your organization workshops and I remember being blown away by your simple ideas that promise to bring peace into people's chaos. And they certainly did. Your business had a tagline mine that was creating emptier, fuller lives.

Can you tell us why you're so passionate about that mission?

So I think that in order to fully understand my tagline and even my former business name, Organized at Last, you would have to understand a little bit of my own personal story, which goes back to my my childhood home. I was born the youngest of four girls into a family with loving parents, but a mom who became severely disabled in my life at the age of two.

And she passed away when I was just 17. So our life, while my parents were incredible, loving people, there was a huge amount of chaos in our life.

And maybe, maybe I felt it even more because since I was the youngest, our house became more and more chaotic as my mom's disease progressed we had dirty clothes mixed in with clean clothes all the time. We never ate meals at the table. In fact, I have very few childhood memories of ever eating a meal at any table. I don't know what I ate, honestly.

I think I ate apples and Ding Dongs and an occasional can of soup. We didn't have regular meals. We didn't have much of a schedule. We were on our own a lot to figure out.

I think from a really early age, I had to figure out what I was going to wear to school and where my hairbrush might be and where a toothbrush might be in our house. And it always felt very challenging to me. But early on, I became best friends with a little gal that lived down the street.

I was seven years old, I think, when we met. And I used to just treasure going into her home after school and on the weekends because her home felt calm and peaceful and organized.

Her mom was healthy, physically healthy, so she had five girls in her family. And just, you know, there. There was always a cleared off table and there were snacks available when you got there after school.

And she always knew where her clothes were. She had limited amounts of everything, which is something that I found very fascinating because we seem to have so much in our lives.

And she had not very much, just like one little section of a closet and one little part of a dresser. And I remember she wasn't allowed to put things on the top of her dresser.

And she had one twin bed that when I would spend the night, we would share her little twin bed because her mom, I think, didn't want the chaos of throwing sleeping bags and blankets and stuff all over.

So anyway, it was such a funny early memory, but it hit me hard because the way I felt in her house was very different than how I felt in my own house. So I just started to learn. I started to.

When I would go to use their bathroom, I'd open up the cupboards and I'd look and I'd look underneath the sink. Where do people put things? Because in my house, nothing made sense. We had food stored above our refrigerator.

You know, who stores food above the refrigerator. We had, you know, dirty dishes on the table at all, you know, times of the day and night. It just. Again, it wasn't. It wasn't any.

I don't feel anger or disappointment towards my parents at all. It was just the nature of the state we were in.

And that's what I think developed my love and passion for organizing because I realized we weren't the only families going through this.

And Even though I didn't realize it at 7, I think I started to realize it at about age 12, that there were probably a lot of people in tough situations because of, you know, illness, disability, death, loneliness, sadness. I mean, it could be any number of things, right? And.

And I saw that from a really early age and thought that I wanted to do something with organization in my life and make our own, starting with my own parents home and making it better.

You know, you're describing this powerful experience that you had where you realized a different life was possible. And I think that's a really interesting thing to bring up because I think when we have that moment in our lives.

I grew up in a home where alcoholism was this heavy presence all the time. And when I realized there was a different life possible for me, that just opened up, that opened up my future for me.

What did it look like when you began to realize a different life is possible? I mean, there was that moment and, you know, fast forward, years later, you're helping other people realize a different life is possible for them.

But how. How did you go from realizing I could live differently, I could live more peacefully, more organized, not in chaos, not un overwhelmed by grief.

How did you begin to realize that for yourself before you could help realize it for other people?

You know, I think for me it was a. It was a long and slow journey because I was just a child. While I was experiencing all of this, I think one thing I did is I kept my eyes wide open.

I was watching what went on in the homes of my friends. And I still actually am super good friends with a few of the gals that I went to sixth grade with.

And in fact, we're getting together in a couple weeks in Hawaii together to meet up. We all turned 60 this year, so we're gathering for a big, big Girls Week.

And I still love to share with them and with their mothers the influences that they had over me.

And it wasn't so much that they were telling me any specific life lessons, but I was observing what was going on in their homes because I was curious. When my mom passed away, I was 17 and I had just come to know the Lord through the ministry of Young Life just prior to her death.

So I think I was probably, maybe not just prior, but I think I was about 15 when I first met the Lord at a Young Life camp.

And my mom was by then completely bedridden, so she was really ill. And the situation in our home, by then, it was a little bit better because I was, you know, a young Adult then I could do a lot in our home. I could manage, I could, I could help organize, I could help clean, I could help do meals.

But soon after my mom's death, I became super ill. And so again, this was all part of my story. I thought, and the doctors thought at the time that I was just suffering from depression and you know, just the sadness of the loss of my mother.

And I felt that to some degree. But I felt like there was something much worse.

In fact, in my own little head at 17, since I was going to these doctor appointments by myself, I suspected that I probably had cancer because I was losing weight. And I felt terrible. You know, 99% of the time I felt very, very sick.

And I thought that doesn't seem normal for a 17 year old who had been healthy up to that point, or 18 at this point, anyway.

So soon after I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and I felt a huge sense of relief that I finally had an answer to my probably six months worth of pretty serious illness that I'd been experiencing after the death of my mom.

But I think that diagnosis was a game changer for me in some ways because I can remember sitting in the doctor's office all alone when the doctor came in to give me my diagnosis.

And one thing he told me, well, he's told me several things, was one was that I would have a compromised life, that I probably would never have children. I mean, he's telling this to a young 8. I just had turned 18 and I had never ever, I mean, I had no idea what was ahead of me with this disease.

And these are the things he's telling me. So I felt for a moment like I just wanted to pass out. Like I thought that was maybe going to be the end of my life.

He stepped out of the room and in that moment I felt this. And this is so true. And it's the only time I've ever had this kind of life changing experience.

But I felt that the Lord just entered the room in that moment and just embraced me and just told me that he was going to walk this road with me and he was never going to leave me, that I wasn't going to die from this and that he was going to take care of me throughout this ordeal. And I think at this point I knew just a sliver of what was ahead for me.

But that comfort that I got from the Lord in that moment gave me an overwhelming sense of peace, that somehow, some way, I was going to be okay. And that maybe a lot of my dreams would come true. Because I'd always dreamt of. Like most young girls, I wanted to get married.

I wanted to have a family, I wanted to have a career. At some point, I wanted to be the best version of myself. And I didn't know what that was.

But in that moment, I thought, well, if I'm sick all the time, how will I ever be the best version of myself? But I don't think that that's how it played out for me. And I think. I don't think I know it was because I had a collision with the Lord that day.

And he carried me through my darkest days and through my hospitalization and learning to take insulin injections and learning crazy amounts of information about diet and how to live well. And. And then soon after I met.

The way that I met Steve was I wore a medical alert bracelet on my wrist that stated, you know, that I had type 1 diabetes and I was insulin dependent and all that. And he said, why do you wear that bracelet? And I said, well, I'm a type 1 diabetic. And he said, well, what does that mean?

And I said, well, it means that I have a disease that's not curable. I didn't do anything to cause it. You know, I just. My pancreas just stopped working one day. And so now I have to be my pancreas.

I have to take multiple injections, and I have to test my blood sugar all day long, and I have to eat right and I have to exercise. And he kind of looked at me and he said, well, that doesn't seem that bad. That was really his attitude.

And I felt like saying, well, you should try it. But soon after, we started dating, and he really.

He was one of the only guys that I ever dated that I would say fully embraced my disease almost as a challenge. Like, this is something we're going to overcome and we're going to battle together. We're not going to. We're not going to let this disease win.

And that was. That was how he's been. I've been with him for 30. I mean, well, 38 years we've been together. 38, 39, 37 Years we've been married.

And that's how he still approaches my disease. He just. Every day he makes me go for a walk, Even if it's pouring down rain and stormy and windy and cold. He's like, nope, we gotta go. So.

But the gift has been a life of, you know, I say, I'm For a diabetic, I'm extremely healthy. I would Say, for a type 1, type 2 is a whole different ballgame, so I'm not even going to talk about that.

But Steve has helped me so much in that just he journeys with me. We eat low carb together. That's how we've always eaten. And it's the only diet that works for a lifetime.

I mean, there's never been a diet in our lives. It's just we've always. I mean, he eats his sweets occasionally, but he's disciplined about that.

I just pretty much stay away from sweets and eat vegetables and protein and, you know, I eat sweets when my blood sugar is low and that's it. And, and it works. And he has been my, my number one cheerleader throughout this disease, so I'm grateful.

Julie, it's so interesting to listen to you tell your story. You experienced so much hardship early on, from losing your mom at 17 to getting a diagnosis at 18.

And it really strikes me that that was 42 years ago around that you're sitting in a doctor's office and the doctor's giving you dismal news.

And 42 years later, when you're telling the story to us today, you're tearing up and you're feeling emotional because you, it sounds like, felt like you experienced almost like a divine supernatural, some sort of experience where God came in that room and covered you in hope.

When it, when you were being given hopeless news to the point that it sticks with you 40 years later, how important that moment was for you does it was.

It was transformational. And I say all the time, I don't know how I would have dealt with that diagnosis sitting in that doctor's office alone, like truly alone.

Nobody was with me. I didn't have any of my siblings with me. I didn't have my dad with me at the time.

He was grieving himself and overwhelmed with life at the moment and couldn't deal, I think, couldn't deal with one more thing. So the diagnosis really became my own. And we didn't have a big community. I mean, when you grow up with a sick mom, people run.

They don't surround you. It wasn't a Christian home. I wasn't raised in a Christian home. My mom met the Lord before she died, as did my dad. And so it became a Christian home.

Thanks so much to my sister, my older sister, who met Christ early and really is the reason I met Christ because she got involved in young life and then I did as well.

But I just think that I wonder all the time what would have been the outcome for me, had I not met the Lord when I was 15, you know, how would my story have been different?

Because when you're given such a grim diagnosis, which I have no idea what that doctor was thinking in the moment when he said those things to me, but how. How horrific that would have been if I hadn't known the Lord right then, to be able to say, wait a minute, this doesn't.

This my story doesn't have to become what you just told me.

And I think I wasn't alone in that, because as I've led support groups and been involved in support groups with other type 1 diabetics over the years, I think many people have been given really grim diagnoses and hopelessness, like, don't ever try and have a family because it's so bad, it's so much work, it's so dangerous, you know, you won't do well. It's different probably a little bit today, but I know 40 years ago it was. It was bad.

And I know other type 1 diabetics who are my age who never had children because it was too scary for them to even think about trying. And thankfully, the other thing is I met a great doctor. She gave me a different diagnosis in that she said, go for it.

You want to have a kid, have a kid. You want to have three kids, have three kids, Just, you know, here's what you have to do. And she.

She stuck by me and was, you know, again, helped me stay focused. That's what you have to do with it.

Where other people go through their pregnancy and they complain about, you know, weight gain or feeling terrible or backaches, a diabetic has to. I had to think about my blood sugar 24 hours a day, seven days a week, which is what I still do. Only the technology is better now.

So I get to wear a little device in my arm that helps read my blood sugar, keeps track of my blood sugar to my phone. But back in the day, I had to just test it over and over and over again. So I always had big, calloused bloodied hands from testing so often.

But thankfully, I don't have to do that anymore. But I do have to still be aware of what it is at all hours of the day and night.

So I wake up during the night, check it, and I. I act accordingly based on what my blood sugar is doing.

So I think, Julie, what's really fascinating to me is that not only did the Lord give you this great sense of hope, but he gave you a partner to battle with. And then he also used you to begin to be that person in other people's lives.

And you started, he kind of called you into this work with Organize the last and you started entering women's lives who were going through grief and death and chaos and clutter and you were helping them win the battle and bringing them hope. It's such a beautiful story.

I kind of want to change gears a little bit and talk specifically about that work you did with women because I think about our listeners, I think about all the women who are listening who feel like their life is a bit out of control and chaotic and messy and they need a partner to bring them hope and do battle with that today. So first of all, what, what leads us to this place where we wake up one day and we have mess and chaos and glitter in our lives?

What are some of the things that cause that?

Well, I think for so many of us it can be so many things. It can be, you know, that the death of a family member, it can be a divorce, it can be just multiple kids. Sometimes it's just one baby.

It was enough to put certain women over the edge. I mean, it just. Their life changed drastically so quickly.

And then they had, you know, one thing I used to see is people with baby shower, multiple baby showers and then all these gifts. And then you'd step into their home and there'd be baby walkers and high chairs and strollers and what I call just massive amounts of baby clutter.

And baby clutter would put people into that over the edge overwhelm. Like I, all I have is this tiny little newborn and I have all this stuff and I have no idea what to do with and it, any of this. So.

And also just, just life, I mean, life can just throw things at. You can throw, you know, you can get a curveball on any given day, we're all thrown curveballs. Some. It could be even a short term illness.

It could be something that happens with one of our kids. It could be a sports injury. It could be that we're suffering from, you know, arthritis or anxiety or depression or what. It just, it doesn't matter.

The list just goes on and on. But the, the underlying thing that I saw in every home where, where there was overwhelm was excessive amounts of the excessive amounts of stuff. So.

And that stuff could be kitchen stuff, you know, stuff all over the kitchen counter. It could be things piled all over an entryway. Could be, you know, corners of the home just overflowing with things. It could be too many pillows.

It could be too Many gifts, candles and things, just stuff everywhere. And each time I would walk into a new situation. One thing I loved about my job is every situation was different, right?

There were no two days that were exactly the same. But my job wasn't to go in and judge whatever was going on.

But I felt like a big part of my job was to go in and find a little bit of the story and understand the story a little bit. And I didn't walk in and just start saying, okay, tell me what's going on. It depended on who the person was.

Sometimes if it was like a friend or something, I might say that, okay, what do we got going on right now? But most of the time it was, you know, a calm gentleness, like, just tell me what you're feeling right now. What's driving you crazy?

Why, what, what's led to your feeling of overwhelm in your space today? So, and often it was just, you know, it wasn't just one room. Sometimes they may have called me just for one room. Can you help me organize my kitchen?

But the reality was there was a lot more to deal with than just the kitchen or just the pile of incoming Amazon purchases. I think today more than ever.

That's why I tell young girls, if you want a really great career, choose professional organizing because it's not going anywhere. With the ease of purchasing nowadays, I would say it's five times worse than when I started.

And the Internet shows us a lot and we see all these pictures of beautiful, you know, perfectly decorated homes. But, you know, my guess is the story in most of those homes isn't the picture that they're showing.

There's probably a whole lot more going on behind the scenes than you ever get to see in the picture. That's why I'm so such a fan also of just overall functionality. To me, function comes before form. A beautiful house is important.

But if that home isn't functioning well for you, that home will never be a beautiful home.

We live in what some are calling the anxiety culture. We worry as friends, daughters, mothers and grandmothers. We're getting gray hairs because we're nervous Nellies.

We're taking chill pills because we're worried sick. For some of us, one second we can be doing okay, and the next, a Facebook post sends us into anxious fill.

As you engage scripture, read personal stories and Reflect on questions that invite you to new places. You will be challenged, encouraged, and inspired by this study.

We can't wait for you to dive in, so go to Wecollide.net store to get your copy of the Birds and the Lilies. Now,.

It's interesting because you're running a business, but really what you're describing to me is this was a ministry. When you.

When you walk into someone's space and you get underneath the story that led them to that chaos, I'm imagining you heard stories from people who are afraid to let go of things and there's a reason why.

Or stories of people who inherited a bunch because they lost someone they love and the death overwhelmed them, and now they're surrounded by this person's stuff that they don't know how to get rid of. Or someone who got a divorce or someone who had to go back to work and they're, you know, juggling mom life and work life, sports life and all that.

I'm imagining you're stepping into people's spaces and truly having a moment to minister to them. I'm curious. What does it do to a person? Because you've seen so many different stories.

What does it do to a person to just sort of surrender to living in the chaos and clutter over time? What does it do to us?

Well, I think, again, going back to my childhood story, what I would say is that ultimately it robs you of your life.

And that might seem like a hard statement, but if I could tell you one thing that I really felt in my childhood home was that I never had music lessons, I never had dance lessons, I never did an organized sport. I would have loved any of those things.

But that was just not possible in a home filled with chaos and with a mom who most of the years didn't even drive a car. So that meant my dad would have had to get me to things.

I was a cheerleader for a while, and I did do some student government things that I could do while I was at school and after school. But there were a lot of things I couldn't do because of just the overwhelming chaos in our home.

So I think that excessive amounts of clutter and dysfunction and lack of routine. I'm a huge advocate of routine. And sometimes I say, let's start with the worst area of your house. Let's get that under control.

And then let's talk about some habits, some things that we can start to do to make changes, because you can completely organize somebody's home and come back a week later. And it might be in total chaos again. Right. So it's relearning some bad habits.

And I could go in and completely organize someone's home and it might go bad if I don't give them some good teaching along the way. Or I can educate them along the way on what these systems are and why they work so much and how to really make a difference in your life.

And I think that's what I started as a young person.

That's why I was so curious in other people's homes why I wanted to snoop and peek in cupboards and look under the sink and see where do people store things and how does it work and how does it look and what is the system for? You know, my one friend didn't have a dishwasher in her house. And I remember we had a dishwasher, but it was in an odd place.

So I remember loving watching her mom. Every time there were dirty dishes, she immediately did them and put them in this little rack and that stuck out in my mind.

It was a little system, but it worked really very efficiently. So systems are always good thing. And there are so many things with their excess stuff.

No matter if you live in 800 square feet or 8,000 square feet, too much is too much and your life will be chaotic. So the number one thing is learning to declutter and simplify and really being satisfied with. With less stuff. Because overall, you know, the.

The best quality of life is.

I used to tell a story in my classes of a woman that I knew that was always dressed very beautifully, but she had one of the smallest closets I had ever seen that small. And just, she was very intentional about the items that hung in that closet.

So it was way before the capsule wardrobe phase, but I think she was, you know, ahead of her time. But that's sort of what she had. She had like, I don't know, 15 items of clothing, I think. But she always looked like a million bucks.

So that I remember that stuck out in my mind like, huh, that's maybe not a bad thing to just have less. And then you're not overwhelmed by your choices.

You're not overwhelmed by, you know, your dirty laundry and what to wear and where is it and do I have to press it? Just simple wash and wear clothes that you look good in, that you feel good in, and just fewer choices. It's true for everything.

Whether we're cooking in our kitchen or whether we're organizing in our setting up spaces in our kids rooms. The simpler it is, the more likely they are to be able to manage it themselves. And the happier you'll be as a parent.

And then the more time you have to do the things you want to do, because that's ultimately our goal, right?

We all have to work and we all have to, you know, raise our families and we all have to do laundry and we all have to do these feet, you know, exercise. We have to do these things every day.

But the simpler we keep our routines and the more functional our homes are, the easier it is to freely do all of those things and the more time we have for all of those things. I can say that easily now because I'm retired, but I felt that way when I was raising my kids too. I was very anti chaotic anything.

I loved simple meals. I loved cooking in cast iron. I loved, you know, I just tried to keep most of my life pretty basic. Steve and I have never been a part of a gym.

We walk 365 days a year. That's all we've ever done for exercise. And Steve is the fittest guy I know. He's 60.

He just went to Costco in the early entrance and they said, I'm sorry, sir, but you can't get in right now. It's for 60 and over. And he said, I'm 60.

Hashtag goals right there.

I love your advice and I wish that people could spend so much time with you sitting in their house and sitting in their story and, and learning from you some of these systems and these habits. I'm wondering, though, it takes so much bravery to let someone come into that mess. There's so much shame around our mess.

I mean, I just had this where I bid on an organizational service at an auction. Well, my husband did and. Which says a lot when your husband's like, yeah, we need help. And he won.

And so the woman just recently to my house and it's really exposing to open up all your drawers and your cabinets and your linen closets and stuff's falling out. And there's, you know, at one point, we're in my bedroom, I don't know this lady, and I pull out, like we have this end table next to our bed.

And I open a drawer and I haven't opened it in 10 years. And it has, like, my kids aren't from elementary school, but I just dropped my knob in college.

And it has pictures and, you know,.

And it's embarrassing and I'm wondering what you think is going on there that keeps us stuck in the mess because we don't want to let others in to help us with systems or develop habits. I mean, I know not everyone can afford, you know, a financial organization person. I mean, in fact, I got it because we won at an auction.

But I'm just saying, that mess, we're very ashamed of it, where a lot of people are so ashamed of their mess, they don't have people over for dinner, they don't. They don't host, they don't open their front door, they don't let their kids over.

So what is it that keeps us stuck in that shame where we can't let other people into our life?

Well, again, I feel like I can completely relate to that because as a little girl, my. My least favorite days were holidays because a holiday meant people might come to our home. And I don't know.

Well, I can totally remember Halloween meant people would knock on our door and we'd open the door, and then they'd see our mess. So I was very protective of keeping all of our shades closed. I like to be the door opener because I only wanted to open it just.

Just wide enough to drop a piece of candy. I didn't want anyone to see that mess. And I was a kid at that point, so you know how many kids feel that way about their home. So I totally.

I totally get that. The thing I used to remind people, because every.

Everywhere you go, like even now that I've been retired two years, if I tell people what I did for a living, everybody says the same thing. Oh, I need you. Oh, I need you in my life. Oh, you would die if you ever saw my house. Was I the messiest house you were ever at?

Have you ever seen a house worse than this one? People would say the funniest things always. And. And I loved it. And I always just made light of it.

And I always reminded people that, you know, I grew up in a totally mess, so nothing really made me uncomfortable. Hoarded houses were a little challenging because a lot of times they're infested with animals and rats and.

And mice and so, you know, human waste and animal waste, that's a whole nother story. But that was. I only dealt with that a handful of times in.

In my business, that that's a whole nother level of organization that I wasn't really super keen on taking on.

But the average home, I mean, most of us live with some mess in our lives, and some people live with a little more, and some people live with a little less. But I always say, just as you would go to a doctor for your annual gynecological, exam or whatever. The same is true for organizing.

When an organizer comes into your space, it's not their job to judge you. Or. And if, and if they are doing that, then they're probably not the right organizer for you to have in your space.

They are there as a professional to help you. And if it's not, if you are never in a place where you could hire a professional, then I always say, call a friend.

I mean, there are a lot of people, people like me, who are retired from the profession. There's people who are just good at it because you've been in their home. I mean, that's how I learned to organize.

I was in the homes of people who lived in organized spaces, and I asked a whole ton of questions. And that's what you have to do. You have to find out.

And I always say, you know, this is true, and this is sort of an interesting analogy, but when people say, for example, want to lose a lot of weight, they go to the person who has had a big life transformation, right?

So they, they maybe were 150 pounds overweight, and then boom, all of a sudden they see a picture of them on Facebook or on TV and they've lost 150 pounds. And everybody runs to that person and says, oh, my gosh, how did you do it? How did you do it? I so want to lose weight, too. Can you help me?

Can you help me? I mean, I say do this. And the moral of the story here is I say, don't go to the person who has just lost all the weight.

Go to the person who never gained the weight in the first place, right? They're the ones with all the knowledge. Go to the person who's lived a certain way their whole life and find out what's the secret.

Like some people, it doesn't matter what it is. With a messy house, I mean, it wasn't. My own house was a mess. So I went to the people with more organized houses and I said, how do you do it?

When I wanted to learn more about design, I picked my friend who I thought had the most beautiful designed house. Not the biggest house, not the fanciest house. But I loved the way she hung her art and did her plants and laid things out. And I said, help me.

I want to learn from you. I want to see. I want to learn about texture and color and space and arrangement. I want to learn to think outside of outside the box. Teach me.

And from just asking a million questions, I learned and a lot of my business in the later years became just redesign and staging and all kinds of other things that I think just made the organizing even better. Because again, a well organized home should also be a well laid out home. And it's all about, like I said before, it's about function over form.

The form is important and it's great to have a beautiful home, but it's more important to have a highly functional home.

And then later you can worry more about the form if you really want the pretty, pretty glass tabletop or whatever, you know, there might be a little window of life where you can have that and then you got to get rid of it again. When you have grandbabies,.

We're not going to be able to glean all your wisdom around what we should do.

But for women who are sitting in mess and chaos right now, what's your just like simplest top three next steps of how to see change from this moment forward? What are three things that a woman can do to begin that process?

Oh gosh, that's kind of a hard question. So I, I like acronyms and so can I give a little acronym? It's actually four things real quick.

So I developed this probably in the first year of my business. And the acronym is do it. Because ultimately you have to, you have to take the action, right? You have to take the steps.

Just like Nike's little acronym, do it D O I T. The D stands for determine what's the space going to be used for? Because that's really critical. From the get go, you got to know, what do I want from this space and how is it going to serve us?

The second one is the O and that's organizing the space. And I don't mean like buying all the bins and bringing in all the stuff. What I mean is edit the space, get rid of, organize it first by editing.

Just feel the freedom to really let go. And nowadays easier than ever. We've got Marketplace. If you've got cool stuff, sell some stuff, invite friends over.

When we made our big move just this past summer, I invited people over to just shop my stuff. Just take whatever you want. I don't need this stuff anymore. I want it gone for my life. Stuff doesn't cost that much.

I'm the world's, you know, I love thrifting and I know how easy you can re get stuff and how inexpensive you can. I mean, I've decorated whole places for $5,000 for a, from the top to the bottom, everything, all the furnishings, everything.

So it doesn't have to cost very much. So keep that in mind as you edit your space. And so the organizing includes getting some supplies binned up, but not until you do the thinning first.

The I is for investing and that's investing in the right containers. So if you do want to put some containers in your kids rooms to corral toys, then invest in some good ones. And if you're not sure, email me.

Email a friend that you know is good at it. Look, you know, look for ideas on the Internet, but stick with clear, simple, plastic, washable.

Because ultimately they're kids and kids do best with things they can see into. So even if you have great labels on it, they need to be able to see it. And the last one is the tea, and that stands for teach.

Teach people, Teach your family, your system, learn the system yourself, Teach it to everyone who lives with you in your space. And then everybody's going to be so much happier if you show.

Like, my kids grew up in a labeled home and they thought it was a little weird because their friends didn't really grow up in labeled homes.

But every babysitter we ever had in our life said they loved babysitting in our house because they knew exactly where the Lincoln Logs went and where the race cars went and where the blocks went and what was in the refrigerator, where the leftover shelf was and where the condiments were and where the, you know, the desserts were or whatever. Because I just put simple labels on things. I wasn't overly obsessed with it, but it just made life simpler for all of us.

All the people using the space just made it easier. So that little acronym, if you can get that in your head, determine, organize, invest, and teach.

That should be a good launching ground for, for beginning to change and, and seeing life maybe in a little different light.

Julie, thank you for sharing that with us.

I think back to your story, all that you've been through, seeing that a different life is possible, God giving you that hope, giving you a partner, different life, and you investing in all these people over the years. And now you find yourself in a season where you're investing in your kids and your grandkids. You and Steve are retired.

And one thing that stands out to me that's so interesting is that you've lived into your intentions over the years. You saw a life you wanted and you saw the health you wanted and the family you wanted and the home you wanted.

And you really, a lot of us have intentions, but we don't lean into them and make them a reality. You've done that in so many ways. You Talk about walking 365 days a year for years and family dinners and all of these things that you do.

What's the key to not just having intentions, but actually turning your intentions into a reality?

Honestly, being intentional about organizing. It's the truth. I think I was able to live really differently. I hated the way that we lived in my childhood home.

And I thought again, I never blamed my mother for it or my father for it, but I thought over and over, I want my life to be different. I want to do things. I want to travel. I want to experience life. I want to be. I want to do fun activities. I want to try new things.

I just recently ordered. Well, I'm getting a new ukulele because I want to. I always wanted to do music, and now I have the time, so I'm going to learn to play the ukulele.

We'll see. So I think that the key is, honestly, for our lives, is organization and, you know, starting with faith in God. But God's.

My collision with Jesus allowed my health crisis to not be.

At times it was overwhelming, but to be doable and manageable because I felt like I had both God's embrace and the support of my husband throughout my life in that whole ordeal. But organization has just allowed us some freedoms that other people never get to.

You know, when you have too many things and there's too much chaos, it's really like even having people over. To me, that was a childhood dream of mine that never happened in our house. So I, as an adult, decided I want to have people into my home.

I want to have people over on a regular basis and share dinners, share meals. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. Sometimes we just, you know, make a big salad and some meat and put meat on top of the salad. It doesn't matter.

It doesn't have to be a big ordeal. Sometimes I always say, just make a tuna fish sandwich for somebody else and they'll be grateful because food just tastes better.

You don't have to prepare it yourself, right? But when your home is chaotic, you don't want to have people into your home. So when your home is simple, it doesn't matter.

You can invite people over. Even if your home is chaotic, you can still invite people over. That shouldn't ever stop you from having people over.

But I would say you are much more likely to do it when home feels a little more calmer, a little at peace. I got a phone call the other day from a friend who just happened to be driving through Mount Vernon, which is where I live now.

And she said, oh, Julie, you're not going to believe this. She said, I'm with my mom, who I hadn't seen since we were probably. I probably saw her last when I was 25.

She said, we're driving through Mount Vernon. We came up to do such and such and I just wondered if you're home. I said, said, I'm home, come on over.

And we just sat together, had a wonderful time. But because my home wasn't totally chaotic, I could do that in a moment's notice.

Even if it would have been messy, I probably still would have said, come on over. Because that's what we need to do in building community.

We have to be open to letting anyone in our space and trusting that will be always feel safe in our space. But organizing just allows you to get or not even so much organize. You don't even have to know how to organize, just living life differently.

I'd say if being on the Internet all the time is overwhelming, then step away and just ask questions of those people in your life or in your circle or even if they're not in your life. But you know somebody who maybe has some wisdom that you don't have. Ask for help, ask for support, tell your story and learn from them.

That's why older adults are amazing. I still love having older adults. I'm the old adult now.

We have got some young people in our life, but I still love having older people in my life that I learn from. The whole family dinner idea came from my daughter in law's grandmother who hosted family dinners for, I don't know, 50 years or something.

And I thought if she can do that, I can do that. So she's in her 80s, so.

Well, Julie, thank you for being someone who's still coming alongside others who came alongside us today. And I just feel like you're continuing to inspire people to live into their intentions and make them a reality.

And we've seen that story come true in your own life. So thank you for reminding us that it's possible for our lives today.

You mentioned a little while back that people could email you if they had some questions. Do you want to share your email and. And people who want to reach you can reach out.

Yeah, that's totally fine. It's gogo Julie Go. That's my grandma name. Go go.

Julie Clarke clar k e gmail.com so and I'd be happy to respond to things and we need to continue to be just in community and learning from each other.

And that's Willow, why I love what you do so much, because you continue to build that for women and continue to encourage women to be there for one another. And I think ultimately the way we get better is by learning from those who have done things better, maybe better than us.

Because there's always going to be somebody who knows a little more than we do. You. And those are the people we should be learning from. So,.

So many gems of wisdom. Julie, thank you for hanging out with us today.

Thank you for having me. It was really fun to be here.

Yeah.

And for those of you listening, I hope that you will be inspired to say yes to more peace and less chaos in your life. I know. I'm feeling that way too. And I hope that the Lord who met Julie and covered her with hope covers you today in hope.

Keep colliding and we'll catch you next week.

Thanks for tuning in to keep up with us.

You can find us on Instagram at We Collide on Facebook as Collide Women, and you can also also visit our website at wecollide.net to find our blog, resources, event information, and more. One last thing. If you enjoyed this episode, would you take a few seconds and leave us a review?

It seems like such a small act, but reviews help us to keep producing this content and help other women find it too. Thanks so much for tuning in to today's episode and letting us watch walk with you as you seek and collide with Jesus.