Kanoa's motherhood project 'MY DREAMS FOR BABY NIKAU'

The besotted TV presenter has sorted her life out to focus on bringing up her girl

- Wendyl Nissen

Broadcaster Kanoa B Lloyd finished filming her new show Sort Your Life Out NZ a few weeks ago. If she's looking relaxed, it may be because the show helped her sort her own life out.

It needed some sorting: in the past 12 months, Kanoa gave birth to her now 10-month-old daughter Nikau Iris, coped with being a new parent during Covid lockdowns, returned to work on The Project and filmed her new show.

"It feels sort of small and familiar and friendly when you see the show on screen," says Kanoa, "but it was very big and very fast. It was a real rollercoaster ride." Kanoa, 35, filmed the series four days a week while also working at Three's popular 7pm news programme The Project two nights a week.

"Like any new parent, you just do what you have to do to get through it," she says. "It wasn't until later that I realised it was quite hectic and hard not seeing my baby in the morning or the night some days."

The premise of Sort Your Life Out NZ is to take stressed out families and change them one household at a time. The first series features eight families who let the TV crew lay the entire contents of their home out in a warehouse, then Kanoa, organisational expert Natalie Jane and carpenter Sean Brown help them shed some of their belongings, and return to a home which works much better for them.

Kanoa says she learned a lot about her own home and how it is organised. “Our staff is representative of our headspace and very often our spaces aren’t working for us,” admits Kanoa. “We’re not finding flow and that can lead to anxiety and stress.”

Kanoa confesses the morning of our interview has been very stressful for her.