I'm Michaela:

routine enthusiast, organization fanatic, and certified perfectionist

(but working on it).

It's so nice to meet you.

If we were meeting at my front door, I’d invite you inside.

There would be a simmer pot bubbling on the stove to fill the air with the smell of cinnamon… and we’d take a seat.

I'd tell you a story...

“What would it look like to do this every other week?” my husband gently nudged me.

I scoffed. Deep-cleaning the kitchen sink less than once a week? Preposterous.

I had my routine down:

1. Wipe sink down with old sponge

2. Sanitize faucet

3. Clean dish drying rack

4. Clean garbage disposal

5. Set out new sponge

6. Refill soap dispenser if needed

I put on my calendar to do this once a week, and that’s what I did.

In fact, I stuck to everything I put on my calendar with this kind of rigidity. That’s what routine meant… right?

But, at the end of the day, my rigid routines left me feeling depleted. Exhausted. Trapped.

They weren’t serving me. I was serving them.

So, I considered what he said.

Every other week? It was crazy enough that it just might work.

I didn’t even have a reason for deciding to deep-clean the sink once a week in the first place… and that routine wasn’t fitting my life.

So, I changed the routine.

Though the change was small, it relieved enough pressure to make a noticeable difference.

And our kitchen sink?

It didn’t explode.

It didn’t ooze out green goo.

It didn’t even get smelly.

What would it look like to clean the kitchen sink every other week?

Fine. It looked just fine.

I’m the oldest child in my family.

I have the usual traits of the stereotype: responsibility, independence, perfectionism.

I’m good at making routines and I’m good at sticking to them — even when they don’t fit me.

I will bend over backwards to fulfill duty and uphold tradition — even at the cost of my own well-being.

It took a spiritually abusive job to show me the truth about this way of living: If I keep living like this, it will literally kill me.

My health drastically declined throughout my time at said job. I walked out of it with an autoimmune disease and a heart murmur.

I’ve found that it is nearly impossible to put the mental and emotional toll it took into words, but the physical descriptors of my time at the job (and even after) seem to get the point across:

I had frequent panic attacks. My hair turned uncharacteristically flat and thin. I started many days by vomiting.

My face broke out. Bursts of intense pain often struck my heart. My mind was always spinning.

I forgot it wasn’t normal to cry every day. My confidence vanished. God felt far away.

I couldn’t connect to my friends anymore. Brain fog made conversations choppy. I could never express what I really felt.

Sleep was never enough to alleviate the kind of exhaustion I felt. Weekends and vacations didn’t help, either. There was no escape.

My ambitions for the future were replaced with the insurmountable weight of daily survival.

I watched the spark in my eyes fade away until I no longer recognized who I was.

When I left, my boss asked if I felt guilty about leaving — about walking away from my responsibilities.

The old me would have said yes.

The new me recognized that staying meant a subtle and slow kind of death…

even if it felt like the responsible thing to do.

Leaving that job began a new era.

I had to revamp my entire life: my boundaries, my priorities, my goals, my perspective.

These four principles began to shape the way I lived:

1. TO ADMIT MY LIMITS IS TO FOCUS MY EFFORTS:

As it turns out, I have limits.

My time. My energy.

To succeed in anything, I need to be honest about these and account for them.

2. PRIORITIZING IS STEWARDSHIP:

To make the best use of the time and energy I do have, I need to prioritize.

I have to intentionally place my focus on what matters most.

Otherwise, what I spend my time and energy on will automatically be chosen for me.

3. PERFECTION IS NOT A REAL GOAL:

At first glance, making perfection my goal seems like setting the highest possible standard.

Look a little closer, though, and this is kind of like setting no goal at all — because it’s unattainable.

It keeps goals vague.

Setting realistic, tangible goals is another way to steward my time and energy.

4. GRACE IS NECESSARY BECAUSE FAILURE IS INEVITABLE:

Without grace, failure is the end. There is no trying again. Case closed.

With grace, failure becomes a lesson and marks a fresh start.

It takes humility to receive grace, but it is necessary to keep moving forward.

I found that many of these abstract changes played out in changing my small, daily routines.

For example, take my decision to change my sink cleaning routine:

1. I ADMITTED I HAD LIMITS:

My current cleaning routine was costing me energy I didn’t have or want to give to that area of my life.

2. I REALIZED MY CURRENT PRIORITY WASN'T STEWARDING MY RESOURCES WELL:

It wasn’t the best use of my time and energy to deep-clean the kitchen sink as often as I was.

3. I SAW THAT MY GOAL WAS VAGUE — BASED IN PERFECTIONISM:

Like I said earlier, I didn’t even have a reason for deciding to do this cleaning once a week.

My “goal” was to keep the kitchen sink perfectly clean.

I hadn’t yet taken the time to figure out my actual goals, like keeping the sink from smelling or preventing hard water build-up.

4. I REPLACED PRESSURE WITH GRACE:

Even if I discovered that changing the frequency to every other week did have a negative impact on the cleanliness of my kitchen, I acknowledged that it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I could always adjust the frequency as needed.

There was room for letting the ball drop.

I began to see my life more like a mosaic than a rigid sculpture.

Some pieces had been handed to me and others I had gone after. Regardless, they were all mine to place. I could rearrange one at a time until they fit.

If I had continued viewing it as a sculpture that couldn't change, things were more likely to break — like they did while I was at the spiritually abusive job.

The flexibility of a mosaic, broken down into pieces that can be shifted around, allows things to bend... and last.

If you’ve been shoving yourself into routines that don’t fit...

whether they’re small ones you set up yourself (like a kitchen sink cleaning routine) or big ones you didn’t entirely choose for yourself (like a job that turned out to be different than you thought)…

I want to help you start to view your life as a mosaic and arrange the pieces in a way that:

1. ACKNOWLEDGES AND HONORS YOUR LIMITS

2. ALIGNS WITH WHAT MATTERS MOST TO YOU

3. RECOGNIZES WHERE YOU'VE SET UP PERFECTION AS A STAND-IN GOAL AND REPLACES IT WITH A SPECIFIC GOAL

4. ACCEPTS GRACE AND REFRAMES HOW YOU VIEW FAILURE

The pieces of that mosaic?

I call them micro routines.

My Favorite Routines

1. My Morning Routine

I start each day with breakfast (Siggi’s yogurt and caramelized bananas at the moment). Then, I pray and read my Bible over a cup of tea. This always starts the day off peacefully.

2. Dessert Night

My husband and I go out for dessert every Friday night. Ironically, we started this routine to get ourselves to eat dessert less often. I think it’s working but I don’t want to stop if it’s not.

3. Yearly Traditions

I always look forward to changes in the season because of these. Lake trips, blueberry farm visits, scenic fall drives, and Christmas light excursions help me stay present in the season at hand.

My Favorite Verse

“… I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” — JOHN 10:10

I believe that true life doesn’t exist apart from Jesus. The fullest life — the most free, most peaceful, most purposeful — can only be found in following Him, as revealed in the Bible.

Anything else that promises life like this is a mere shadow that will never be able deliver.

I share this because my relationship with the Lord is the lens through which I see everything else — so it influences everything I write about.

CURRENT INFLUENCES ON
HOW I ORGANIZE & PLAN:

1. I married my best friend in 2023. My husband and I don’t have any kids or pets (yet) — so I’m aware it’s easier to implement routines right now than it likely will be in the future.

2. Right now, we live in an early 2000s rental, so I am always looking for super easy ways to elevate our home without remodeling.

3. About a year after I left the job I talked about in the story above, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease called Hashimoto’s. This causes deep, chronic fatigue, among many other issues, and has prompted me to completely transform my lifestyle.

4. I graduated with a journalism degree in 2020 and currently do freelance and contract writing work.

Let's Get in Touch

FOR COLLABORATIONS:

organizedoverthinking@gmail.com