Latest / JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain / 273: Starting Over - Declutter for the Life You’re Living - Part 2

Transcript

273: Starting Over - Declutter for the Life You’re Living - Part 2 · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Last week, I did a part one on how to guard against clutter coming into your home.
• 0:08
  If you're starting out or if you're thinking about what to save for someone
• 0:13
  else in your life and their future and wanting to sort of gift other people
• 0:17
  things that you're done with.
• 0:19
  If you missed that, that's episode 272 and you can go listen to that.
• 0:23
  But today we're going to tackle what probably most of us face,
• 0:26
  and that is getting rid of the clutter that is already here. So let's jump in.
• 0:32
  A wise person once said, Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its
• 0:37
  ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.
• 0:41
  Well, Fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
• 0:47
  It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your life.
• 0:52
  I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow Fishbrain.
• 0:57
  If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement,
• 1:00
  and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks,
• 1:05
  then I'm glad you're here.
• 1:07
  Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique.
• 1:12
  Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
• 1:17
  Okay, in order to really evaluate clutter fairly, I need us to reevaluate a
• 1:23
  bit about how we view clutter in the first place.
• 1:28
  So the wrong approach is to assume we are going to find junk and get rid of the junk.
• 1:38
  And I think going in with that attitude is what derails us a lot.
• 1:44
  I want us to rethink the fact that clutter is actually a whole lot of useful,
• 1:54
  valuable stuff that we pay good money for, loved in the moment,
• 1:59
  were gifted from people we adore, served us very well at various points in our life.
• 2:07
  All of it actually has value.
• 2:11
  So if we are picking up an object and deciding, is this useful,
• 2:18
  we will find a use for it. There is very little actual junk in our homes.
• 2:27
  Rather, we need to have a different starting point.
• 2:32
  And this needs to be a whole separate podcast, but we also need to reevaluate
• 2:37
  what we think organizing means in our life.
• 2:39
  Because the approach most people take to organizing is looking at the things
• 2:46
  and finding the things homes.
• 2:50
  Instead and I see them as sort of two parts of the same task is we need a clear
• 2:59
  idea of how our current life works,
• 3:03
  what do we actually want our current life to be.
• 3:08
  Not our future life not reminiscence about the past moments,
• 3:15
  but how is it that we want to live right now?
• 3:20
  And then when we pick up an item,
• 3:22
  we are trying to evaluate its worth against the life we wish to have.
• 3:30
  Not its value and how much we paid for it.
• 3:33
  Not in, oh, it was a gift and, you know, I love the person who gave it to me, not in, is it,
• 3:42
  you know, could I repurpose this somehow so as I'm, you know,
• 3:47
  not wasting something that cost good money.
• 3:52
  Its only measure of worth should be, is it worthy of taking up the space,
• 3:59
  the time, and the maintenance it would require to live the life I'm wishing to live?
• 4:06
  Can this item pull its own weight?
• 4:12
  Just sort of to give you a visual, if it helps to,
• 4:17
  I don't know, it's not personified, but if it helps put you into a mind frame
• 4:21
  when you're going through your items, is I've been watching old reruns,
• 4:27
  The Little House on the Prairie, and I've seen two episodes of the new one.
• 4:31
  And so I'm in this whole wagon train existence of thoughts in my head.
• 4:38
  And when you're watching the struggles, particularly in the new one,
• 4:42
  it's a little more serious than the old one.
• 4:46
  The items that they could afford to take with them, and I'm not talking about
• 4:53
  how much money they did or didn't have.
• 4:55
  Afford to take with them in terms of it's weight on the wagon, it's space on the wagon,
• 5:03
  it's we do have a finite amount of money and the things that we can afford to
• 5:09
  buy have to actually serve,
• 5:13
  our current journey.
• 5:15
  And if we could honestly evaluate the things in our life now in that same kind
• 5:20
  of I'm about to jump on the wagon for this part of my journey in life,
• 5:24
  because all of our lives are journeys.
• 5:27
  And if you think about just the window of time you're currently in,
• 5:31
  whether you've got little bitties, or they've just had, they're about to head
• 5:36
  off to school, and you're going to have
• 5:37
  a different window of time than you've had in the past, or if you're about to
• 5:41
  be an empty nester when they all head off to college, or you're in your full-on
• 5:46
  retirement years, and your life is different.
• 5:49
  Picture that portion of your journey in this home you're living in is your current wagon.
• 5:56
  And how do you want that wagon, that moment in your life to feel?
• 6:01
  Do you want it to be calm and peaceful and have space for some breathing room?
• 6:07
  Do you want it to feel nurturing?
• 6:10
  Your home should be a place that is not a chore to take care of. It is.
• 6:18
  Something that you, if you could put yourself into the mind of this home takes
• 6:23
  good care of us, I'd like to take good care of this home.
• 6:26
  It is our safe haven from the rest of the world. It is our place where we come
• 6:30
  home and recharge and reset to face all the stuff that's out there.
• 6:35
  If we could nurture this little cottage of ours, this little homestead,
• 6:40
  this little wagon, then every item we allow into it has got to pull its worth.
• 6:48
  And that's how I want you to look at the items.
• 6:52
  I want you to pick an item up and see it with new eyes of, is this useful to me right now?
• 7:01
  Right now, not is this useful? We can find use for anything.
• 7:06
  Is it valuable to the life I'm currently living, or is it weighing this wagon down?
• 7:14
  If we give something up,
• 7:17
  It is for the benefit of the rest of the journey. It is not to our detriment.
• 7:24
  And that's that shift you have to have. If your current wagon weighs too much
• 7:30
  to pull you into this next stage of life or to sustain you in the current life you're in,
• 7:38
  then it is, it's weight you don't need to be hauling.
• 7:42
  It's time. It's maintenance. It's pressure.
• 7:47
  It's it's aggravation for you and for the others that have to climb into this
• 7:52
  wagon and live in it with you,
• 7:54
  i know i'm really stretching this analogy but i know you're with me it gives
• 7:58
  you new eyes to see an item in your hand instead of saying where does this belong
• 8:03
  does it have at home does it you know did,
• 8:06
  did i pay a lot for it is it worth something to someone in the future will i
• 8:11
  eventually get to a point in my life where I'm going to want this.
• 8:15
  All of that is weight you can't afford to carry for your peace of mind and your happiness.
• 8:21
  So let's start small.
• 8:23
  Select a space. For me, that's going to be my mudroom. We've had a long,
• 8:28
  busy summer, and I'm about to hit a new season, and I'm going to look at every item in there.
• 8:35
  Things that I've squirreled away, I have, I know, underneath in the cabinets,
• 8:41
  extra lunchboxes in case one had been left at school, book bags that were in
• 8:46
  decent enough shape that if, you know, somebody's zipper ripped one night,
• 8:50
  I could whip this one out and have them reset until we could figure out a better new one.
• 8:55
  I have, you know, old slime supplies. Nobody is making slime in my house anymore.
• 9:02
  I have the, you know, assorted.
• 9:06
  Who knows? I don't even know because I'm not down there, but I know I'm going to find it.
• 9:11
  And it's going to be very interesting to me to see the things I've held on to
• 9:16
  for a life that doesn't exist anymore. The wagons move past that point.
• 9:21
  Or for things I think could be useful for the future.
• 9:26
  But honestly, tune into last week's story.
• 9:30
  When I see how expensive it is to move things now.
• 9:36
  It would have to have the value if I'm going to downsize in the future,
• 9:40
  I'm not paying for the volume of things that I would be saving for a what if.
• 9:47
  That would be, I would much rather save the money than to haul something that might be used one day.
• 9:55
  And that's the eyes I want you to see things through.
• 9:59
  Instead of saying, I have the stuff, let me make it fit.
• 10:06
  I want you to not just get rid of it for the sake of, I was told to declutter,
• 10:11
  so let me look for junky things that I know I'm not going to use.
• 10:15
  Make every item you pick up, stand up against the life you really, really want to lead.
• 10:23
  You can do this. And if you give this a try, I would love to hear your thoughts.
• 10:28
  So I want to know if there's a specific item you struggled with,
• 10:32
  if there's a specific item you're like, I actually saw this with new eyes for the first time.
• 10:37
  I'd love to hear from you guys. I have new ways to do that now.
• 10:42
  On my website, which is joylovinghome.com, if you click into the blog tab,
• 10:48
  there will be a blog post labeled episode 273.
• 10:52
  You can make a comment at the bottom of that and let others join in on the conversation.
• 10:58
  Love for you to be there. You can always DM me on Instagram.
• 11:01
  I don't do a lot on Instagram, but I am there and I do get the DMs at joylovinghome.
• 11:06
  You can always email me joy at joylovinghome. If you're part of my free group,
• 11:11
  which is bit.ly slash joylovinghomecommunity.
• 11:16
  You can feel free to post a photo there. You can make comments there.
• 11:20
  You can start a conversation there. It would be awesome.
• 11:23
  And oh, as we're talking about groups, as a heads up, I shut down the membership
• 11:29
  for the summer, and I am getting to relaunch it this September under a new name.
• 11:35
  I'm calling it Fish School.
• 11:37
  If you don't know what that means, you didn't listen to the intro,
• 11:41
  but we fish brains are going to be in fish school together and it will open in September.
• 11:46
  So if you want to be one of the first ones to listen on the chance to be part
• 11:49
  of the membership, which is an encouraging place to have some accountability
• 11:53
  to really work on the things in your home, if that sounds lovely,
• 11:57
  you just go to joylovinghome.com slash membership, jump on the wait list.
• 12:01
  And the first email I send out about its opening will go to anybody on that
• 12:06
  membership wait list, and I would love to have you on there.
• 12:09
  So that'll be it for me for today, but until next time, really think about what
• 12:15
  you're hauling around in your wagon and continue to choose joy.