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272: Starting Out — How to Prevent Clutter - Part 1 · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Today is going to be part one of a two-part series.
• 0:05
  I'm going to call them starting out versus starting over.
• 0:10
  And what I'm dealing with is the thought of clutter and from the starting out perspective,
• 0:20
  things to really evaluate when it comes to what you bring into your house as
• 0:26
  you're setting yourself up to avoid poor decisions from the beginning.
• 0:31
  Those things we wish we knew when we got started.
• 0:35
  And then the next episode is on the starting over. Okay, we rarely,
• 0:41
  rarely get to start from the beginning.
• 0:43
  So this is, we're already in the midst of our existence and our clutter?
• 0:50
  And how are we starting over if we just feel like something's got to give? So tune in for both.
• 0:57
  And you might be like, well, why would I listen to this one if I'm already down my journey?
• 1:02
  Couple reasons. One, if you are in a position where you know you're going to
• 1:08
  be starting a kid off, like I did.
• 1:12
  And you want to be able to evaluate and help them think things through because
• 1:16
  you have wisdom and you have this lovely podcast to go on, it will be valuable.
• 1:21
  But it's also valuable if you are one of those people who is evaluating even
• 1:28
  for yourself and you're like, oh, I'm going to save this for the kid when they're
• 1:31
  ready to get their apartments.
• 1:32
  I'm going to save this for the grandkids because they're going to be starting
• 1:35
  apartments soon. If you are saving things for other people's futures,
• 1:40
  this one's going to be worth listening too because it's going to help you evaluate
• 1:43
  whether you actually do save it for those days or not.
• 1:47
  And then you also might glean something that I am seeing as a starting out tip.
• 1:54
  And you might go, oh, wait, this is actually useful for me now as well.
• 1:57
  So I'm saying, you know, don't give up on this episode if you're not starting out.
• 2:04
  It really could be full of wonderful, valuable information.
• 2:09
  A wise person once said, everybody is a genius.
• 2:12
  But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole
• 2:16
  life believing that it's stupid.
• 2:18
  Well, Fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
• 2:24
  It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life.
• 2:28
  I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow Fishbrain.
• 2:33
  If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement,
• 2:37
  and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks,
• 2:42
  then I'm glad you're here.
• 2:43
  Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique.
• 2:49
  Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
• 2:54
  Today's topic is super relevant for me, and I'm trying to do it right on the
• 2:59
  heels while the memory is fresh, but I am recording this on a Thursday, and I just,
• 3:05
  flew down to Florida on Sunday to help get my number two son started in his
• 3:16
  first, what I'll call real-life apartment.
• 3:20
  New city for him new job for him new existence for him and we had half a day
• 3:28
  sunday all day monday while he was at the first day of his brand new job and,
• 3:35
  most of tuesday to work well all of tuesday i guess technically to work but
• 3:40
  we had to be kind of stuck in the apartment waiting for a,
• 3:44
  And then we flew out very early Wednesday morning to get back and get my husband back to his job.
• 3:50
  And so because all of this is fresh on the mind, I wanted to capture sort of
• 3:56
  the lessons learned in this journey.
• 3:59
  He had graduated college in May of 25. He spent this last year in the Disney
• 4:04
  College program living in their dorm situation.
• 4:06
  So his living arrangements had been where he got to be in furnished dorms and furnished apartments.
• 4:15
  So he didn't have really anything to get going on.
• 4:19
  And if I think most people do this, you have situations where grandparents are
• 4:25
  downsizing or you're getting a new thing of furniture.
• 4:30
  And so you squirrel away all of those things that you're like,
• 4:33
  oh, you know, we've got kids. They're going to be of age soon.
• 4:36
  We're going to need to have some of this stuff saved so that we can get them
• 4:40
  started off on the right foot.
• 4:42
  These would be great things to have. So we did all of that holding on to things.
• 4:47
  We didn't get to use them when we got our first son set up in his life because
• 4:53
  he did this all in that COVID era and things were very strange and very weird and,
• 5:01
  that is not a template for anyone.
• 5:03
  So this is really kind of my first experience in normal life template of what this could be like.
• 5:10
  We had some constraints this time because we were in a very, very tight time window.
• 5:17
  One, because we had to spend the Saturday moving our daughter into her college apartment.
• 5:24
  It was assigned on that Saturday. We couldn't move it. We couldn't change it.
• 5:28
  And we needed to focus on her. So his change, well, plus he was working his
• 5:34
  old job at Disney right up against this weekend. So he literally had this weekend to move.
• 5:43
  He was actively working, you know, the odd Disney hours. And so I had to help
• 5:49
  search for the apartment. I had, again, all online, all over the phone.
• 5:55
  I never flew to where he would live and have time to scout things out.
• 6:00
  None of that got to happen.
• 6:01
  So this was over FaceTime with lovely apartment rental people and furniture
• 6:06
  people and all the things.
• 6:09
  Arranged sight unseen for some basics to get delivered to his apartment.
• 6:14
  One of the reasons we did not rent a truck and drive down is time.
• 6:21
  We really wanted him starting this new career off on the right foot.
• 6:27
  And we didn't want him sleeping on an empty floor.
• 6:31
  We could have gotten him a hotel room, I guess. but it just,
• 6:35
  at some point you're like, we're spending money that feels like you're throwing
• 6:39
  it away for the wrong reasons.
• 6:41
  I did look into having someone else drive all the stuff down.
• 6:46
  The price of that was so prohibitive for basically tossing him a bunch of not
• 6:54
  well thought through hand-me-downs because all of this happened on a dime.
• 7:00
  And if you have more time, you don't have the constraints, all of that would be different.
• 7:06
  What I think surprised me is I didn't use nearly as many things as we have been
• 7:13
  saving over the years to help get him set up as I thought I would.
• 7:18
  There were pros and cons to that, and I am going to dig into that.
• 7:21
  I'm going to give you a three-part sort of question to ask yourself as you're doing these things.
• 7:26
  But what I basically boiled down to is I could pack our biggest suitcase with up to 50 pounds.
• 7:35
  Worth of things and get it down there for free because we could we could check it back for free
• 7:40
  so I was like all right I've got this one suitcase what is the most valuable most productive
• 7:46
  amount of stuff that weighs less than 50 pounds that I could cram into this
• 7:51
  suitcase and at least get that stuff there for free,
• 7:56
  and then we would just sort of deal with the rest of it he also had all of like
• 7:59
  his clothes and his stuff shoes like all the bathroom product like stuff that
• 8:03
  he had that he moved in with his car so he loaded his car up drove
• 8:09
  you know down to where his apartment was and unloaded all of that.
• 8:14
  So that was kind of our blank slate. That was what we were dealing with to start
• 8:17
  somebody out from scratch.
• 8:19
  And it was interesting to really
• 8:23
  step back and think things through from a very practical standpoint.
• 8:28
  And that's the part that I think can be useful to anybody, particularly if you're
• 8:32
  choosing to save things.
• 8:34
  Because when I was digging through our storage area to see what I could fit
• 8:37
  in the suitcase, I was running into all of these things that I was like, oh, that could be great.
• 8:43
  Oh, that could be great. Oh, that's really useful. Oh, that's super,
• 8:47
  you know, grandma's spent a lot of money on that.
• 8:49
  Like we should save that for one of these grandkids. And then when I'm seeing it,
• 8:55
  as something that has to earn its keep in the space that I had and in the weight
• 9:00
  limit I had and in the practicality of what was actually needed,
• 9:06
  so much of it was not important. Just not.
• 9:09
  Now, like, I didn't get rid of it, he'll at some point drive up and visit us,
• 9:12
  and we'll send stuff home in a car, but it allowed me to evaluate everything
• 9:17
  based on what I consider the economy of need, okay? So this is what I'm terming the economy of need.
• 9:25
  And for us, when you are setting someone up from scratch, these are what we
• 9:29
  considered basic needs.
• 9:31
  Wanted him to be able to get a good night's sleep. When you are well rested,
• 9:37
  all of the rest of the stressors of life are better.
• 9:40
  So for me, I prioritized, we wanted a nice mattress. We wanted him up off the floor if possible.
• 9:48
  We wanted, you know, sheets and bedding. We wanted it to feel comfortable.
• 9:52
  So good night's rest was top of list.
• 9:56
  We also wanted him to have some basic food function.
• 10:00
  Every kid is different. He is going to be on a tight budget.
• 10:04
  He's going to have to cook for himself.
• 10:07
  So we wanted the basics of just functioning kitchen.
• 10:13
  That doesn't mean the bells and whistles. So when I had all of this kitchenware
• 10:17
  saved from two grandmas who both cook beautifully,
• 10:21
  I had to evaluate each item I stuck in that suitcase as, yes,
• 10:25
  this is a basic need for food function versus this is just an extra.
• 10:31
  And that I had to really think through because kitchen stuff's heavy.
• 10:34
  And then I wanted it, you know, our other...
• 10:40
  Basic need was we wanted him to feel comfortable in his space,
• 10:45
  meaning does it feel like home to him?
• 10:48
  And that was actually packing some things that were home to him,
• 10:53
  his trinkets of decor or whatever that would bring a smile to his face and comfort
• 11:01
  to somebody living in a brand new city.
• 11:03
  And that may not be a function, but man, that's important.
• 11:09
  We want him to be ready to long haul it where he's moving.
• 11:14
  It doesn't mean he has to make this decision and it's his career for the next
• 11:17
  30 years, but it does mean that we wanted him set up for such a success that,
• 11:23
  he could concentrate on the new job, knowing that home was home.
• 11:28
  I hope that made sense. and then we just wanted him set up for success as much
• 11:33
  as possible which is he is a minimalist at heart he is,
• 11:38
  more of a monkey brain for certain so he likes order and I wanted to make sure
• 11:44
  it was organized and set up well for the way his brain worked so that he could feel immediately like,
• 11:52
  it wasn't chaos I just I wanted to be able to walk away Tuesday night and know that I as his mom.
• 12:00
  And and his dad is his dad could feel like you know what he's he's it's it's
• 12:04
  him now you know you give your kids roots and wings and and we went in to make
• 12:09
  sure the roots were planted deep and now the wings are up to him and,
• 12:13
  and I feel like we did that which is great so basically prioritizing myself
• 12:18
  on those are what we saw as basic needs I asked myself these questions and this
• 12:23
  is how you're going to evaluate your economy of need,
• 12:26
  What timeline are you on? If you are graced with way more time than we had,
• 12:30
  you might be able to, you know, haul more things down, which can be good or bad.
• 12:36
  You might be able to stretch the dollar further because you could wait on certain things.
• 12:41
  It allowed me when I was evaluating, though, to ask myself, is this an ASAP
• 12:47
  item or is this, oh, he's got time for that. Like, that's not even important.
• 12:51
  That's a down the line worry.
• 12:53
  And so it allowed me to make quicker decisions when I'm packing the one suitcase
• 12:58
  of, is this an immediate need or is this a down the road? He's going to be fine
• 13:02
  until we can evaluate this better.
• 13:04
  Money, obviously, is part of your evaluation.
• 13:08
  We were blessed enough to have a certain amount of money set aside that we got to decide,
• 13:15
  what was the most important thing to spend it on like for us we wanted a good
• 13:19
  mattress for us we wanted the the basic furniture,
• 13:24
  to be found in decent quality shape so that he would have it for the long run
• 13:30
  that that investing where he wouldn't have to stress his budget because he's
• 13:35
  not making a lot in this new role.
• 13:37
  So we wanted his budget to go towards his actual needs and not towards worrying
• 13:43
  that the hand-me-down couch was going to break in the next month or two and
• 13:48
  he doesn't have the budget built up yet to be able to replace that kind of thing.
• 13:51
  So again, we are blessed to be able to do that kind of thing,
• 13:55
  but it was also an evaluation where we're like, do we want to send,
• 14:00
  the 30-year-old couch and pay the kind of money it's going to cost us to have
• 14:06
  somebody else drive it down there?
• 14:08
  Or do we want to buy the couch at an outlet there and start him off right?
• 14:13
  So those were the kind of things that we were weighing how far our dollar would
• 14:17
  stretch of what we set aside to set him up.
• 14:20
  And then finally, space. And.
• 14:23
  Just because you have the space doesn't mean you utilize all of it.
• 14:27
  And for him, you know, we had the tiniest apartment.
• 14:32
  He needed the most, you know, bang for his buck for his budget.
• 14:36
  And so everything had to earn its keep in his space.
• 14:40
  So that's useful in any circumstance. No matter how you picture your kid's future,
• 14:46
  you are going to ask the time, money, and space question.
• 14:50
  And you're going to ask what's important immediately and what's not as important
• 14:54
  as we always thought it would be when we saved these things for,
• 14:58
  and you get to evaluate what your basic needs are, but for us,
• 15:01
  you know, that good night's sleep, that basic food function and making it feel like home.
• 15:06
  It was, it was really eye-opening. I have probably eight bins in my basement
• 15:13
  storage that I thought would.
• 15:18
  I honestly thought my bigger challenge
• 15:20
  would be how do I divvy this up appropriately across the four kids.
• 15:26
  But I was like, you know, first come first serve a little bit of who was needing
• 15:31
  these things we've been saving.
• 15:32
  But man, new eyes on seeing that,
• 15:37
  how we value things that we're already holding on to as more important than
• 15:42
  they really are, versus if you were starting from scratch and evaluating something
• 15:48
  in the store with the money still in your pocket.
• 15:51
  It was very eye-opening. And that's why I wanted to do this kind of as two parts,
• 15:55
  this sort of starting out, how do you evaluate your needs to prevent the clutter in the first place?
• 16:02
  Because if I was driving everything down and we had a truck that had space in
• 16:07
  it, then I would be like, oh, well, yeah, I wasn't going to send the waffle maker, but, you know,
• 16:16
  he can learn how to make waffles.
• 16:18
  That's going to be useful. I wasn't going to send.
• 16:23
  The weird lamps that, you know, I don't know.
• 16:27
  I mean, I put three lamps in already, but maybe he needs a fourth lamp.
• 16:31
  Let's throw that extra one in there. Like, when we have space to chuck something
• 16:36
  into, we will tend to do that.
• 16:38
  It's almost, I tell people all the time, space is not your problem in organizing.
• 16:43
  And I know people who live in tiny places are like, are you kidding me?
• 16:46
  Like if I just had a bigger place with more space, I could, I could store things
• 16:50
  better and I could organize better.
• 16:51
  And I could, honestly, it makes you, I don't really love this word,
• 16:56
  but I'm going to use the word lazy. It makes you, it makes you lazy about your
• 17:01
  decisions. You have to be sharper when you have less space to consider.
• 17:07
  It makes each item fight for its value. And when you have space,
• 17:13
  you elevate the value of things.
• 17:16
  That's the key word here. When you have space, you elevate the value of whether
• 17:23
  something's worthy of saving or not.
• 17:27
  And I wish we could value blank space and breathing room over.
• 17:35
  The things that we shove in because there's space there that we could fill up.
• 17:41
  We elevate the value of the third white t-shirt when really it's a piece of
• 17:46
  junk and as long as one of the first two were clean, we would always gravitate
• 17:51
  towards one of those two first and the third one would just be taking up space.
• 17:55
  I hope that's making sense. I have had just one call up this morning.
• 18:00
  I'm definitely still on some lag and I feel like I almost didn't record this
• 18:05
  because I was afraid it was going to be fuzzy but hopefully there's some value in here I just I think,
• 18:13
  taking the time which I did have once we were down there
• 18:18
  to really evaluate each piece for its worth and not because we already had it so
• 18:25
  oh we have this let's make it useful oh we have this this this could work for
• 18:29
  something it wasn't intended to work because we already own this.
• 18:32
  We don't have to spend any money on this.
• 18:33
  Shouldn't we make this work because we don't have to spend any money on it?
• 18:39
  It's probably a bad way to evaluate. It is better to say what is actually needed
• 18:45
  and let's only allow those things into this space.
• 18:49
  Let's really gatekeep at the door so that we're not dragging our clutter into
• 18:55
  somebody else's space because it makes us feel less guilty, because it makes
• 19:00
  us feel less wasteful, because it makes us feel,
• 19:04
  useful because we shared our stuff and look how we helped you get things settled
• 19:10
  even though what we were giving away was stuff we couldn't,
• 19:15
  be brave enough to part with.
• 19:17
  That's what I want you thinking about when you're saving yourself for future
• 19:21
  grandkids. It's not all as useful as you think it is.
• 19:25
  For future kid spaces.
• 19:30
  It's not the same as evaluating it in the store.
• 19:33
  So take away, for those of you that are saving something for the future,
• 19:39
  ask yourself if I had a finite amount of money in a budget that I was going to say, guess what?
• 19:45
  I managed to save my grandkid $500 and I'm going to help him buy the most important
• 19:54
  things at the store for this $500, would you buy any of the stuff that's in that bin for them?
• 20:00
  Or are you just gifting it because you couldn't bear to get rid of it?
• 20:04
  Or would they have more value out of the $500 being put towards the actual basic needs that they need?
• 20:12
  Okay, I got to stop because I feel like I'm definitely rambling.
• 20:16
  I do want to share one thing. On my website, I got some help over the summer,
• 20:23
  and all of my old podcasts, all 300 plus podcasts, are now blog posts.
• 20:30
  And each blog post has a button where you can click to hear the story as a podcast. And.
• 20:38
  I am still figuring out a little bit about the searchability of it.
• 20:42
  I tried to tag each podcast as does this cover decluttering or organizing or
• 20:49
  mindset, that kind of thing.
• 20:51
  So if you type a search for like, I want to see other ones about decluttering,
• 20:56
  those things should pop up and then you can pick and choose what you want to listen to.
• 21:00
  But what's really cool is on those blog posts at the bottom,
• 21:05
  there's a place where you can make comments.
• 21:07
  And you can make comment based on that you read it you don't have to read it,
• 21:11
  or you can make the comment based on having listened to that particular episode
• 21:17
  if you want a place where we can comment back and forth with each other I had
• 21:22
  someone comment on the last podcast slash,
• 21:25
  blog post and I was able to reply to their comment,
• 21:29
  it's funny podcasting I've mentioned this before is like the least interactive of all of the mediums.
• 21:35
  So I don't always get to have your feedback. But if you're wanting to put feedback
• 21:39
  down about a podcast you're listening to, pop over my website, joylovinghome.com,
• 21:45
  click on that blog button across the top, and find the episode. They're all numbered.
• 21:51
  So you can then scroll down and make a comment. And I do get them.
• 21:56
  They get emailed to me as comments, and I get to read them and reply to them
• 21:59
  on the website. So just a new feature. It's just something fun out there.
• 22:03
  So what I'm going to do when I quit recording is I've got to edit and post this and it's already 1120.
• 22:09
  And then I've got to turn it into the blog post and then it will be there.
• 22:12
  But I'm trying to do that all in a single day. So this is sort of a new thing
• 22:16
  I'm doing after I got the help this summer.
• 22:19
  So anyway, I hope that'll be a new feature we can all enjoy.
• 22:23
  And until next time for part two, which is starting over and we're going to
• 22:28
  evaluate now that the clutter is all here, how do I start taking back my home?
• 22:33
  I hope you'll tune into that next week. Until next time, continue to choose joy.