Ep #128: The Joy of Being Organized with Tracy Hoth

So hi there, and welcome back. So today I have a guest. Her name is Tracy Hoth, and she is the host of the Organized Coach podcast. With 17 years of experience, turning chaos into order, and the last five years focused on helping coaches and online business owners. She specializes in tackling digital clutter, time management, and streamlined processes in your home and in your business. And I'm having her on here today because I love all things organization. And I feel like I can never learn enough. So with that, I wanna welcome Tracy Hoth. - Hey, Jackie, thanks so much for having me on here and for having this conversation. - I love this. So I am actually, I think I told you, I am winding down my podcast for a short hiatus. I don't know how long yet, and you are going to be my last guest for now, and I'm super excited to have you. And it was because I am so interested, there's so many things I'm interested in, but organization is like one of my, I don't know, it's just one of the things that I just love so much. And I hadn't even thought of it until I read your resume, that organization is not just closets and drawers, and your house, and your office, that I think about all the time. But digital organization, decluttering your computer, your iPhone, you're all the things. So just talk to me about how you got into what you do, and what you do, and all the things. Yes, I have been helping people get organized for 17 years, and I used to go into their homes, hundreds of people's homes, and organize them, all areas, homes, offices, garages, everything. And I knew I didn't want to do that forever. So in 2017, I got life coach certified because I could see myself coaching these people, but then learning all about the mindset helped so much in helping people let go and helping people understand why they were getting stuck in this project. And then I turned my business all online. I started working with people online, and it actually worked, combining the practical steps of organizing with the mindset approach. It actually worked. And as I kept helping people, organizing my business online, I'd never done a lot online. And so now there's this whole new pile of things to organize. And I created content and how do I organize that and keep everything going and putting in processes in a new business. So I use my own steps. I practice things, found things, simplified things in my own business. And I thought, gosh, if people struggle with organizing space, what are they doing and how are they organizing their businesses? So I started helping people organize their business, their digital stuff, their systems, their mindset in how they've always felt about themselves and their identity is not being organized, and then how do you run a business in an organized way? So that's kind of how I landed where I'm at. I very much understand going into somebody's home and organizing their closet, their garage, their house, their kitchen, all the things, and love that so much. But how did you transition to doing that online? How do you see somebody's closet? How do you tell them what boxes to get and files and hangers and all the things? How do you do it? I know, I know. And I thought if I'm not there in person, they're not going to be able to get organized. Right. And then I realized that the mindset plays so much into it and what's keeping them stuck. If they wanted to do it themselves, I can work with them online. We create a plan. We decide decide what they're gonna do. They do it, they can message me, send pictures, send photos, I give them product ideas if they need products, that kind of thing. But it was more if you ask someone, how would you tell your friend to get organized? If they know the steps I teach, they would be able to tell their friend. But what's keeping them, so it's not necessarily the steps, it's more like what's keeping them, their identity. Their mom told them they were messy when they were a kid and that stuck with them this whole time. So it really turned into be this beautiful coaching their mind, but also then giving them a plan. And now they have a plan. I remember one of my clients, that was her main thought. She's like, I have a plan. And that helped her get organized. It was sorting paper. She could sort five pieces of paper every day. Someday she sorted for a whole hour and she got all the paper in her whole house organized. But it was that she just was stuck. She didn't know what to do first. And so by having a plan, now she could do it. - Oh, that's so interesting. So I'd love to talk about the psychology underneath this. When you were doing it prior to doing it online, or do you have clients on Zoom? Or You were like, "Watch them." Yeah. Okay. So, but presumably before 2019, you probably weren't even on Zoom yet. You were just, yeah, it was just phone calls. So it was Zoom or phone. But when you went into people's homes, did you find that the biggest problem was with clutter was overconsumption, meaning over purchasing or not letting go of things? Or did it run the gamut? It's interesting. I have, I can think of specific clients who were great at making decisions. So they were really fast at doing it. So their main issue was they just didn't have time. They were professionals, they had families. And so by scheduling the appointment, I could do things like sort and get everything ready. And they could come in and make decisions. Love that. And they were good at making decisions. Yeah. And I have other people who are, they would call themselves really sentimental. And so they have attachment to things and they wanna keep things or they feel bad for getting rid of things. So making the decision part is really hard. And then you do see some people that over buy. So what is it there that we really wanna dig in? And before I got coach certified, I didn't really address any of the mindset stuff. I just got in there and we got the work done. - So that's interesting. So let's talk about that first because that's a very different thing being an organizing coach versus an organizer. And I have a lot of friends who are professional organizers. I almost went into that industry 'cause I just love it so much. I love helping people get clear and clean and have systems and all the things. My guess is, and you tell me if I'm wrong, my guess is if you organize somebody's house who's never had systems before and you don't get to the root stuff, then probably within three months, six months a year, it's disorganized again. Is that true? Yes. And I think there's two parts of that. One of them is that maybe the problem wasn't addressed. They were over consuming to avoid emotions. - Correct. - The other one is just the habits weren't put in place. Like they loved the space. It didn't necessarily fill up with more stuff from overconsumption, but it just, there was no habits practiced and put in place. 'Cause I think a lot of times when you go into someone's home, they get you to get the transformation, but you don't work on the habit building after that to maintain the space. Right. And so maybe there's not some deep psychological issue. It's just the habits not there, which to me is fine. If they know in a year, I'm just going to have you come back. I have clients like that. They just would have me come back and refresh their closet because the clothes have built up on the chair and there's piles. And that was fine because they didn't want to spend the time doing it, they like to pay someone to do it. Just like, I want to pay someone to clean my house. I know how and I could, but I don't want to. I hire someone. So there is a distinction between kind of the two ways that it might build back up. The reason I ask that is because I do a lot in my business, although it's not my main business, but I do a lot of weight loss coaching. It's just part of people being stressed and anxious and let people come to me for stress and anxiety and management and then they're like, oh yeah, I need to lose 30, 50, 80 pounds. And what I've found is the reason typically diets don't work and I don't use the word diet in my program because I'm not a diet coach. I teach people how to eat differently, but to also understand the emotions behind the why. Are they eating something like, why do they have chocolate chip cookies at night or Oreos or potato chips, it's emotional as well as habitual. Right. And I think that we were talking about this recently, like, I'm sorry to go on a tangent, but like with, what is it? The GLP drugs, you know, ozempic and. Yes. Manjaro and all that. It's saving people's lives from diabetes, but for those who take it for weight loss, it's great because they get thin, but they're not learning anything about how to eat, because they have this magic drug that, you know, automatically takes either way their appetite or the need to have, you know, extra food. And so we're talking about how if you go off that drug, if you don't learn the underlying habits and or the emotional component, you'll put the weight back on without the drug. And I think it's sort of like organization, right? You can clean their house, set it all up. but if you don't either, again, teach them the habit or figure out what's going on underneath if they're over buyers or over consumers, it's just gonna be there again. - Yeah, and if you're not willing to put the work into creating the habit of staying organized or getting rid of enough stuff, that it just becomes easy. - Yeah. - Because you don't have that much stuff to manage and to put away. So there is, there's so many different aspects of it. That's why it's so fun and interesting. - I love that after 17 years, you're still loving what you do. Not only that, but you've reinvented yourself for eight years because now you're doing it from your home to their home. That's kind of incredible. Yes. - I've had many clients who are totally overwhelmed by their inbox, their digital inbox because they've never learned to create files. It's no different than homes, right? You have tons of paper because you don't have any files or you're not willing to throw something away. How do you get people started when they have like 10 ,000 emails in an inbox? - So I like to think about first, is it a problem? Because you can search your email and you can find emails you want and you can just decide, I don't care how many emails I have, if it's not a problem. - I love that. - That's a good thing to think about. First, you don't need to organize a space either 'cause organizing means you know what you have and you can find it when you need it. So you don't need to organize a physical space either if it's not a problem just so it looks like what someone else tells you or shows a picture of you that it could look like. - That's very interesting. - If you decide, Yes, I'm missing emails. Yes, every time I look at this, it overwhelms me. I'm thinking about it and worried about it. Then 100%, let's deal with it. Just like with stuff, the first step is to sort. So I think about your inbox and I think sort. And so the way you sort is an easy way is to just search a sender that you get an email from. Let's say, I don't know, the first word that came to mind is Nordstrom. Let's say you have those emails coming to your inbox. You select them all, you delete yourself, unsubscribe, and then delete all those. You could do five of that a day, and you're all of a sudden decreasing the amount of emails you're getting in your inbox, and you're also unsubscribing so you're not gonna get more, and you're clearing out all of those kinds. So you've sorted, you sort into a category, decide if you want it, you purge it, and then you unsubscribe so you don't longer get them. That's what I would start doing just because. That's a great hack. That's easy. Yeah. That's a great hack. I love that. So I cannot literally walk out the door or go to sleep if I see red emails or unread texts like can't happen. My husband on the other hand will have 682 unread texts. And when I see the number like lit up on the corner of his phone, I'm like, how do you function knowing that you have 682 unread texts? And he says, well, most of them are group change. They're from like tennis leagues or, you know, and people like, good job, you know, congratulations on the wind. He goes, so I see it and then I just don't read every part of the chain. I said, yeah, but you might be missing something important. And he's like, then somebody will send me a text and say, you haven't responded to this. So that's an interesting philosophy, but that would make me insane. And he doesn't delete junk out of his inbox. So he just has, you know, 5 ,000 unread emails, he's glanced at them. And he's ignored, you know, oh, there's a shoe sale today at, you know, like he said, Nordstrom's he just, but he wouldn't bother to delete it and then unsubscribe wouldn't even hurt him. But again, none of it's a problem for him. Yes. So that kind of talks about our clutter tolerance. So you have a very low clutter tolerance - Zero on a scale of one to 10, yes. - And so your husband might have a very high one and that a lot of times in relationships that might cause problems, especially if it's happening in your home and he's building up a lot of stuff or one of the partners is. So then that becomes a problem. But the other part of it's like, yeah, I can just let him do him, let him do his life and handle his email and all of that the way that's working for him, it's not causing a problem. You know, you may see it is he doesn't think it is. So then well, it explains why often he doesn't respond to my texts because he's not in any particular hurry to look at anything. But no, it's not a problem in our house clutter wise. I think because I'm too militant to be like, oh, my God, get on the counter, you know, or something like that. So there's no clutter in the house. But yeah, you're right. It's his digital imprint, footprint, whatever. He can do whatever he wants with his phone and computer. - Yeah. - Or office or garage, 'cause I don't go in those areas. So you're right. That's so good. Like, does it impact you? Does it impact, and what your tolerance is? It's just, it's such a great distinction. Yes. Yes. And if it's not a problem for you, don't worry about it. Like, I don't want to have everything in my house. I don't want to spend the time making sure everything's perfect and everything's color -coded and decantered. Even though I like those pictures on Instagram, I don't want to spend my time decantering everything. And so for me, I'm just like down to earth. I want I wanna know what I have, I wanna be able to find it, but I want it to be minimal effort. - Yeah, mine was not. - Which one else might love that and they might just make 'em so happy and they wanna spend their time doing it. So it's you deciding kind of in your future, what do you wanna do, how much time do you wanna spend on it and then let's go for those goals, not what someone else thinks you should. But then again, when it comes to the family, it is thinking through like, okay, The way I am is affecting other people and it's causing stress in our relationship. So then I want to tackle this problem or change the way I'm handling it and get more organized because I know that's going to help. That's so great. Okay. So in 2025, where people now have physical clutter, business clutter, like I've got too many papers or too many bills to pay. I don't know where to start or I'm not organized at my office. That's been since the beginning of time. Now digital, what do you see mostly in your business? What do you end up mostly being hired to do? Would you say, or is there a mostly or is it just all over the place? - I think for me right now, I'm working with coaches and online business owners. So they all have things online that they're trying to manage and the three areas that I see the most highest return on investment if they invest in those areas is just the layout of their browser. So their bookmarks bar helping them get that organized so they can find everything they need instead of having 150 tabs open because they're scared they're going to lose something. We work it so they have a way to find everything that they need. Okay. Then they're digital files. I teach five simple files to organize your business. And that's it. And you train your brain. It's either business or personal. And when it comes into business, there's five files and then your brain now it's just relieving all the decisions of a hundred places it could go. Now we have five places it could go, so it helps us. And I use those same five in email. So your email reflects that in Canva. If you use Canva, so your Canva reflects that. So now your brain is only thinking, this is simple, I can do this, I can filter into those five. And then the other area is I run my business through what I call dashboards. And so it's a way to find everything in your business, it's just a Google sheet, but the tabs represent different categories of your business and you keep things linked in there and quick to find in there so you have everything in there that you need. So now your brain again, your dashboards linked on your bookmarks part, you click into it, you find exactly what you need in seconds versus, "Oh my gosh, what file is that in? I don't know, is it on my computer, is it in my Google Drive, I got to find that to get to someone and now they're stressed because they can't find it and they struggle with that over and over. So now their brain just knows like, oh, it lives there. That's the one place that lives. Were you techie to start? No, I would say I'm not techie. And that's why I think I keep it so simple as much as all the temptations of the cool software and different things out there. I just use Google. Google workspace is all I use. Even though I think, oh, I should upgrade to this. I'm like, no, it works fine. Keep it simple. I use Google Sheets and Google Docs and that's it. Like if they are using Word, Microsoft Word, that's different, but some people use OneDrive. Like on PC, they might use OneDrive, which is the same. It's cloud storage. And so we just get organized in the one place they choose. You can choose your computer, you could choose OneDrive or Google Drive or Dropbox, but it's just the one place now your brain knows is the hub of your business. That's interesting that you transition to coaches and small business owners mostly. So less individuals. I have organized Coach Academy, which teaches you how to organize your business. And then I have organized Life Academy, which is in its fifth year of helping kind of midlife and older women. It's a community, it's a year -long program that I have. And I still have that, I love it. I'm kind of revamping that this year and I'm gonna keep it going. I just love it so much. And then I do one -on -one with both business owners or homeowners have you had to do a state work like a parent or grandparent dies? There is just a ton of stuff in the house. It might be complete junk or it might be wildly valuable, but hard to even know because the kids or grandkids don't know and have to sort of sift through that and figure out how to organize it for either selling or decluttering or putting things up for auction. Have you had to organize something that large? - I do not specifically do that. I've helped people back when I did it in person with different things like that. But it's interesting you asked because just a month ago, one of my clients dad passed and she, I was asking her, what can I do to help. And she's like, Tracy, just keep spreading the message for you to get your stuff decluttered yourself. I teach a life and death binder. So we create a binder with everything that your loved one would need if something were to happen. We do that inside organized life academy. And so she's like, please just keep telling people, take care of it now declutter your home now, get your stuff together. So it's so hard when someone passes. And then if you're having to do all that because they left you a mess, it just adds on top of how much you're dealing with. So don't do that to the people that you love. - Right, yeah, yeah. And for the planet probably too, just like less carbon footprint, right? - Yes. - I'm not as much of a minimalist. I pride myself on not having a lot of clutter, but I'm not as much as a minimalist as I actually would like to be. I'd like to have less stuff. I know. I know. Same here. I mean, I am organized, but yeah, I always could get rid of stuff. We have a room that we just stick some stuff in. We have transition still. And I'm like, well, when they leave, we'll go through that. I we go through it, it probably every year. Yeah. I have like a cabinet full of like old, not Tupperware, but like Rubbermaid stuff and what have you. And it's not the stuff I use every day for leftovers. Like I have that I have a drawer for that and that gets used and used and used and used. But like when somebody comes over and I'll have had a dinner party and they're like, Oh, I want some pie left or I want that salad you made or whatever. And I'm so happy that I have having it full of stuff that I can put stuff in. - Yeah. - Send it home with them and I don't care if it comes back because it's just for here, take this home. - Yeah. - And you're organized and you know where it is. - I do, but then the rest of the year, you know, like when I'm not doing it, I'm like, that's just sitting there wasting space. I don't know. But yeah, or when you save like gift bags or whatever and you're like, oh, I have the perfect gift bag to to wrap that gifting because I didn't have time to go to the store and buy wrapping paper or whatever. And you're like, "Yay, I saved it." And I guess to your point, I do know where it is. It's easy to find and it is being reused. - Right. - But it's messy in the process 'cause it's taking up space. - Yes, a purposeful space, intentional. - Yeah. How did you get into this line of work initially? - Back when we had magazines, I would rip out pictures. And back then, which was what, like 2000? Well, I had my first son in 1998. So it was before that. I would rip out pictures of closets 'cause that's all they had in organized space. It was before it was popular. But I ripped out pictures of closets and I put them in a file, a hanging file. And then when my youngest daughter, I stayed home with my four kids. And then when my youngest was starting school, I said, well, I wanna do something. And so I knew because I would talk to friends who would say to me, oh, I gotta stay home and clean. I need to organize my stuff. And they wouldn't go on play dates to the park or whatever. And I was like, come on, how much could you possibly have to organize? And so I knew I could help them do that. And I had a close friend who it was really affecting her life and her family's life. And so I started doing that. I started saying I was a professional organizer. I started helping people and going into homes and started speaking on the topic and started doing a few things like teleconferences and you know just different things like that. Building an email list back in 2010 or whenever it was. Mm -hmm. Wow. And did you love it? Oh, I did love it. And it's such a rewarding job because people love that you help them take care of it. They're so overwhelmed by it. Even now, like someone just emailed that listens to my podcast and says, "You give such valuable information. You need to write a book because I want 'cause I wanna refer a book from you to a friend that needs this. And I'm like, who gets told that what they share is affecting people's lives? I mean, I think coaches in general, it's rewarding immediately. They see the reward for someone, but it's been really good. - That's so great. You've been a professional organizer for 17 years. How old is your podcast? I - Started in 2022? - Oh, so a couple years. Yeah. - Yeah. - Okay. Oh, I gotta listen to it. 'Cause I just love all the tips. I love learning new hacks of how to simplify and make things easier. And people ask me all the time. - Oh, yeah. - Always have a client who's like, I don't know where to start with this room or this is this and you know, I can help them to some degree, but it's not my, it's not my calling. It's not my overall profession and it's not my expertise. So I can guide them on small projects. It's easy to get stuck if you're not there like doing it for them. Yes. And my last four podcasts, I just did a little series of just the deeper mindset part of it and what's happening in there. but my podcast is a mix of business and then some home stuff scattered into, because we're all homeowners. And, you know, there's a lot of theories that, and to your point, everybody has a different tolerance, so I don't want to generalize, but there are a lot of theories that when you are organized, when you know where everything is, and visually, especially for women, if things are decluttered, the brain calms down because, you know, messy environment, messy brain. Yeah. And there's that study that shows even when women think about if their home is disorganized, it raises their cortisol levels. So it's just thinking about it, the declutter that makes them feel that stress. Yeah. Yeah, I've had friends for years and years and years who I see regularly and I've never been to their homes because they're like, it's too messy. I don't want to clean it up. Yes. And I'm like, I don't care. And they're like, I do. And I'm like, okay, so they'll come over to my house and that's fine. I love it. But it does. It weighs heavily on you. It does. And I just want to encourage if there's someone out there listening like that, like that thinks, no, I have way too much, I'm too far, like there's no way, I have, whatever, ADHD, I just can't be organized, I never have been. It is a skill that you can learn. I teach those five simple steps to organize anything, and that's different than the five folders that I teach with digital, but the five steps, You can learn those steps and you just practice them little area by little area and you you can do it. It's totally possible. I've seen every kind of person organize and declutter their life. Yeah. And I think about overthinking. You use the five steps on your brain the same way. Yeah. You sort the thoughts. You sort what's you get it out. Go through each of the categories in purge, you assign homes to things, you contain them. And then you are energized and you maintain it. And if you think about space, the S and the P are the declutter sort and purge. And then the A and the C assign homes and contain that's the organized part. And then the last step is the maintaining part. So having raised for children and that's unbelievable. That's super commendable. Did they inherit that skill set from you? - It's interesting. I think all of them are fairly organized. And it's not that I ever made anybody, like I never made my kids make their bed. I didn't go in their room and make them keep their room clean. So yeah, I look at their homes now and there's a couple of them that are very super like they will not their clutter tolerance is low. And then other the other two are a little maybe more have a little more mess but they can clean it up quickly. What are their ages? 21, 23 are girls and then 25 and 26 are boys and the boys are both married now now too. So nice. And are their wives neat nicks like you? They are. And I used to tease because my second son is the one who is like, he would purge regular. He's actually been on my podcast. I had him on just for fun. He was in town once. And so I'm like, come on here and just talk about how do you stay organized? How do you do it? Cause you heard right? Even now just gets rid of stuff all the time. I'm like, are you sure you want to get rid of your dresser? They're just moving and he's like, we're going to sell the dresser. I'm like, what? Why do you sell a dresser? I used to joke with him and tell him, you're going to marry a slob. Like just be ready. You're not going to be able to keep it this neat. But nope. She's like, yeah, he was a little more, you know, neat than I am. He'll like walk around and straighten things up, but they have a most, yeah, they're both very organized. Love that. So this is for my audience also. I was always kind of a neat -nick and I had three daughters, all super crazy messy, not within the house. They were sort of like my husband was too strict for them to leave anything around the other rooms, but in their rooms, It was like clothes on the floor, wet towels on the floor, unmade beds, you know, disorganized drawers, just chaos, contained. And when they grew up, they're 31, 28, 21, every one of them super neat in their own homes and super organized. Yeah. - It might take a while, but it does does rub off. - Yeah. Well, Anne, think too, like our kids are busy. And even when we're busy, we come into the house and drop stuff and keep going because we're so like on the go, possibly, as long as the stuff has a home, even with the kids, like they could put it away quickly because it has a home, but their life might at the moment just be super busy. That's something that happens too. But having worked with so many people, I see people come from organized homes, and they're not organized from cluttered homes, and they're super organized. So it's just so different. But I would tell people moms, especially if you can learn the skill, it's going to rub off in some way on your kids, you can practice it with them. Yeah, you know, in different ways. And So for yourself, just learn the skills for yourself and then teach it, practice it, be an example of it when you can. Exactly. Oh, so great. I have loved this conversation. For those listeners who are thinking to themselves, I need somebody to help me organize my home. I need somebody to help me organize my digital life or I need somebody to help me organize my business. I want to talk to Tracy, how can they get in touch with you? Or how can they listen to your podcast? Tell them all the things. - Yes, so my podcast is the organized coach. Go on any podcast platform and find that. My website is simply squared away dot com and you can find everything on there. Sign up for a free call with me. We'll talk through kind of where you're at and where you wanna go. And if I can help you get there, what that looks like, and I would love to meet you and talk through it with you. That's awesome. I could have used you many times in my life when I was starting up my business, when I didn't know how what a Google doc was, right? It's just, it's so great that I have somebody I can refer out to people when they say my house is a mess or my business is a mess and I need, I need help organizing it. It's just so great. So Thank you for coming on today and for all that you do because you're making the world a more organized place. Aw, thanks Jackie for having me. I love this conversation. It's really good. Me too. Thanks Tracy.