Latest / Overwhelmed Working Woman: Boost Productivity, Master Time Management, Overcome Overwhelm & Stop People Pleasing / #77| The Power of Decluttering to Reduce Overwhelm and Increase Productivity
Transcript
- 0:00Michelle Gauthier: Imagine walking into your home after a day of work, whether you're walking from your office in the other room or coming in from the garage and your entire kitchen and the whole landing area where you set your stuff down is completely clean and decluttered.
- 0:16Michelle Gauthier: You're listening to Overwhelmed Working Woman, the podcast that helps you be more calm and more productive by doing less.
- 0:28Michelle Gauthier: I'm your host, michelle Gothier, a former Overwhelmed Working Woman and current life coach.
- 0:33Michelle Gauthier: On this show, we unpack the stress and pressure that today's working woman experiences, and in each episode you'll get a strategy to bring more calm, ease and relaxation to your life.
- 0:44Michelle Gauthier: Hey friend, thanks for joining me today.
- 0:48Michelle Gauthier: Today we are talking about one of my favorite topics, which is clutter, or rather decluttering and the effect that it has on our brain.
- 0:57Michelle Gauthier: Per science - I'm not just making this stuff up! A nd what to do about it for you, specifically.
- 1:04Michelle Gauthier: So sometimes studies have shown that women will feel shame and overwhelm about their clutter, which just makes it harder to attack that and try to solve the problem.
- 1:15Michelle Gauthier: So we're going to talk about what to do about it specifically for you and then I'm going to give you some quick tips where you can just start making progress towards your goal of having a decluttered home and life.
- 1:28Michelle Gauthier: One thing to do for sure this week is to join my email list.
- 1:31Michelle Gauthier: This challenge is going to be so fun.
- 1:33Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to be sending out an email every morning.
- 1:35Michelle Gauthier: I will give you some instructions and some thoughts on decluttering, and then I'm going to ask you a specific question.
- 1:41Michelle Gauthier: And when you reply to my email with your answer to that question, you will get entered in the drawing.
- 1:46Michelle Gauthier: And at the end of the week I'm going to draw for three prizes.
- 1:49Michelle Gauthier: Two of them are gift cards to the container store, which is the coolest store of all time.
- 1:55Michelle Gauthier: I would spend all of the money that I have in that store.
- 1:57Michelle Gauthier: My dad always teases me that I have containers for my containers, and he's not wrong.
- 2:02Michelle Gauthier: It's the best store ever if you're trying to get decluttered and organized.
- 2:06Michelle Gauthier: And then the grand prize is a coaching session with me, which normally is $250.
- 2:12Michelle Gauthier: And so we can talk about decluttering your space, we can talk about the effect that has on your mind, or we can talk about anything else that you want to talk to me about.
- 2:20Michelle Gauthier: So be sure and join my email list so that you can be part of this quick and simple declutter challenge this week.
- 2:27Michelle Gauthier: Okay, I want you to visualize a room.
- 2:30Michelle Gauthier: Just close your eyes, unless you're driving, and visualize a room that makes you feel calm when you're in it.
- 2:38Michelle Gauthier: It could be at your house or someone else's house - the first thing that comes to my mind is this beautiful hotel that I love - and just take a second to bring to mind a space that makes you feel calm.
- 2:51Michelle Gauthier: Okay, got it.
- 2:52Michelle Gauthier: Got that picture in your mind.
- 2:54Michelle Gauthier: Now visualize a room that makes you feel stressed out just from being in there.
- 3:00Michelle Gauthier: And again, this could be at your home, your office, your parents' house, anywhere.
- 3:05Michelle Gauthier: Got that one?
- 3:08Michelle Gauthier: What's the difference between these two rooms?
- 3:10Michelle Gauthier: How much stuff does the calm room have in it?
- 3:14Michelle Gauthier: Is it cluttered?
- 3:15Michelle Gauthier: And what about the room that makes you feel stressed?
- 3:17Michelle Gauthier: Don't tell my son, but I'm picturing his room for the stressed room.
- 3:22Michelle Gauthier: He loves to work on and build things and take things apart, so there are always like tools and pieces and then his clothes and cups and plates, and I try not even to walk in there.
- 3:33Michelle Gauthier: Even when I wake him up in the morning, I kind of stand at the doorframe and just yell his name until he wakes up.
- 3:38Michelle Gauthier: If I ever had to like, do a work meeting in that room, or record a podcast or something in that room, I seriously don't think I could do it if my life depended on it.
- 3:46Michelle Gauthier: I have to close my eyes.
- 3:47Michelle Gauthier: So today we're going to talk a little bit more about this phenomenon.
- 3:52Michelle Gauthier: And when I'm picturing the room that makes me feel calm, for me, and this is going to be different for everyone, but for me none of the vertical - no, not vertical - horizontal spaces have stuff on them.
- 4:05Michelle Gauthier: It's very decluttered and very peaceful feeling.
- 4:10Michelle Gauthier: For me, the hotel that I love has rooms that are done by color, so you can request, like a green room or a blue room or a red room, and I love the green room and it even has green ceilings, green walls, so it's very colorful, like the color is very intense, which also makes me feel calm.
- 4:28Michelle Gauthier: So you might have a totally different opinion, but I think it's important to recognize that normally, a space that makes us feel calm is not a space with a lot of crap in it.
- 4:41Michelle Gauthier: I felt the urge to focus on clutter and to do this Declutter Week challenge because I feel so passionate about the impact that it can have on your life and sometimes it's not even that hard.
- 4:50Michelle Gauthier: And I myself, when I got back from vacation at the end of July and I was feeling that post-vacation, I don't know what you'd call it, slight depression maybe, like just kind of unmotivated, hard time getting back into regular life.
- 5:07Michelle Gauthier: Everything in my house was annoying me, and I realized it's the stuff.
- 5:11Michelle Gauthier: I can like feel the stuff in the closets.
- 5:13Michelle Gauthier: And so I gave myself this challenge.
- 5:16Michelle Gauthier: You know those blue Ikea bags, like the huge Ikea bags that you can get, and they sell them where you can get them with a zipper on them and you can actually use them for moving and everything.
- 5:26Michelle Gauthier: So I challenged myself over the month of August to get 12 of those bags filled and donated.
- 5:35Michelle Gauthier: I mean, I definitely threw some stuff away too, but donated.
- 5:38Michelle Gauthier: I didn't donate the bags because I love them and I want to keep them, but over the course of the month I just went from room to room and there are a couple nights a week during the week where I don't have stuff with my kids, and so I would just take like an hour or whatever and go through - like my bedroom took me several.
- 5:56Michelle Gauthier: Like one night I did one of my closets, one night I did the other, I did my bathroom, you know, those kinds of things, but just slowly but surely I went through room to room and I'm up to four bags of stuff now and I've probably done about a third of my house.
- 6:12Michelle Gauthier: So for me to set the goal of doing 12 bags in August was too optimistic and I'm unwilling to make myself feel overwhelmed or stressed out about it.
- 6:21Michelle Gauthier: So I'm just going to keep going.
- 6:23Michelle Gauthier: But the reason why I'm doing a podcast in the middle of my own personal challenge that I'm working on is because it has had a tremendous impact on my mental health.
- 6:32Michelle Gauthier: I can't tell you how differently I feel when I walk into my bedroom and when I open my closet door or I pull open my - I have a drawer where all of my jewelry is - and when I pull that open and it's only the jewelry that I really like that I actually wear.
- 6:48Michelle Gauthier: I love buying jewelry from Express or whatever, just $10, $20 jewelry, and I buy it all the time.
- 6:56Michelle Gauthier: But then you end up with this huge pile of stuff and I just I didn't want it anymore.
- 7:01Michelle Gauthier: So, anyway, it's had such a great effect on me.
- 7:04Michelle Gauthier: Every time I do a room, I keep finding myself going into that room because it feels so good in there.
- 7:10Michelle Gauthier: So I just wanted to take the time to do a podcast about it and challenge you to do something similar.
- 7:16Michelle Gauthier: I'm not challenging you to do 12 bags in a month because, as I just told you, that's way too much.
- 7:20Michelle Gauthier: It's going to be smaller than that, but it's still going to have a great impact on you.
- 7:24Michelle Gauthier: But first let's talk about the science behind this, because people tell me all the time that clutter really affects their mindset, and I believe that it's true.
- 7:34Michelle Gauthier: But when I researched this, I found lots of studies, many, many studies, but the one that really stuck out in my mind was a study where they went into the homes of families, 32 families, and they did cortisol tests - so that's the stress hormone tests - on the moms.
- 7:51Michelle Gauthier: I'm sure they did other studies on other people in the house, but this one was specifically on the moms, and studied the effect of clutter on their stress hormones and, to no surprise of probably anyone here listening, the moms felt much more stressed in a cluttered room, and the thing that I found really interesting about it is that it said there were times where the mom didn't identify that she was feeling stressed about it, but her stress hormones showed that she was feeling stressed about it.
- 8:19Michelle Gauthier: So I thought that that was really interesting, and especially after they said that they had specifically looked into this for moms, I started looking for women specifically, and studies observed that clutter was particularly stressful for women, leading to feelings of exhaustion and being overwhelmed.
- 8:38Michelle Gauthier: I don't know exactly why that is.
- 8:40Michelle Gauthier: I would imagine that there's some social conditioning in there and that women have a pressure or a responsibility - air quotes responsibility - to make sure that the home is neat and tidy.
- 8:52Michelle Gauthier: If you're a woman and this doesn't stress you out, okay, good for you, good for you.
- 8:56Michelle Gauthier: But most of the women I know tell me that it definitely does.
- 8:59Michelle Gauthier: So what to do about it?
- 9:02Michelle Gauthier: If everything I'm saying right now is resonating with you and you're thinking, yeah, it definitely does stress me out and yeah, my home does have either a little, some, or lots of clutter in it, here's what to do specifically.
- 9:15Michelle Gauthier: I'm first going to tell you what I recommend that you not do, and this is true for any situation where you feel stressed, embarrassed, overwhelmed.
- 9:24Michelle Gauthier: If you have a space in your house that you would never want company to see, or really anyone to see, a lot of times that can cause shame and overwhelm.
- 9:33Michelle Gauthier: And so what I always want to encourage you to do, and this is, again, I'm going back to the work of Brene Brown, which we have talked about on this podcast lots of times, but anytime women start to feel shame about something and they're trying to hide their vulnerability or something that they feel shame or embarrassment about, what happens is they isolate.
- 9:53Michelle Gauthier: And when you isolate, you feel more alone, and it reinforces those thoughts of I'm different than everybody else, I can't keep it together like everybody else does, etc.
- 10:03Michelle Gauthier: So the thing that I recommend that you not do is that - is that you tell yourself, I'm the only one who has this problem, this is such a big deal, I can't talk about it, I'm mortified, I have so much clutter.
- 10:15Michelle Gauthier: And I would challenge you this week to talk to somebody else about it.
- 10:19Michelle Gauthier: Talk to a friend at work, talk to your sister, or anybody who you trust or know, and just say, hey, I feel like I'm really affected by clutter.
- 10:31Michelle Gauthier: Well, how about you?
- 10:32Michelle Gauthier: Do you want to join me in doing this challenge?
- 10:34Michelle Gauthier: And just start talking about it.
- 10:36Michelle Gauthier: Because I've yet to meet someone who's like, my house is amazing, I have no clutter whatsoever, and this just doesn't - this is not a problem for me.
- 10:45Michelle Gauthier: I feel like we all do.
- 10:46Michelle Gauthier: So the first thing that I recommend that you do is just take an assessment of how you're feeling about it and if you're carrying any kind of shame or worry or overwhelm about it, and just sharing that with somebody else.
- 10:58Michelle Gauthier: With anybody.
- 10:59Michelle Gauthier: If you don't have a person who you feel like sharing that with, send me an email.
- 11:02Michelle Gauthier: I would love to hear that.
- 11:03Michelle Gauthier: michelle@ michellegauthier.
- 11:04Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 11:06Michelle Gauthier: And to get you started today, let's pick a super small area and I'm going to tell you exactly how to declutter it.
- 11:13Michelle Gauthier: I also want you to know that I have another podcast episode, episode eight, which we'll link in the show notes, that talks a lot about decluttering and some of the questions that you can ask yourself in order to decide what to keep.
- 11:26Michelle Gauthier: But for today, I want the goal to be for you to feel like you have made progress on decluttering something today.
- 11:34Michelle Gauthier: So that means don't choose your kitchen.
- 11:37Michelle Gauthier: Instead, choose, like, your sock drawer.
- 11:41Michelle Gauthier: I'm going to give you a list here of 10 things that you can think about decluttering that will take you 20 minutes or less, start to finish, and that way you will get a newly organized space and you will also start getting those benefits, the clarity of mind that comes with decluttering even one little thing.
- 12:01Michelle Gauthier: Okay, so I made a joke about the kitchen.
- 12:03Michelle Gauthier: Definitely don't do that.
- 12:04Michelle Gauthier: But you could absolutely do the junk drawer.
- 12:07Michelle Gauthier: You could do your purse or your bag, if you have like a gym bag or something that you carry around with you all the time.
- 12:15Michelle Gauthier: You could do your nightstand, just your nightstand.
- 12:18Michelle Gauthier: You could do your bathroom, but just your countertop.
- 12:21Michelle Gauthier: You could do one shelf in your pantry.
- 12:24Michelle Gauthier: You could do a shoe rack like not all of your shoes, but like a section of shoes, maybe tennis shoes or something like that.
- 12:32Michelle Gauthier: You could do the console in your car or the glove compartment.
- 12:38Michelle Gauthier: You could do the fridge, but just the door.
- 12:41Michelle Gauthier: I bet you money, if you spent a little time, you could find some expired condiments in there.
- 12:46Michelle Gauthier: You could sort through your mail pile, that would be one area you could declutter.
- 12:52Michelle Gauthier: And the last one is you could declutter is like your entertainment center, if you have remotes or cords or things like that, or if that tends to be an area where people set things down.
- 13:05Michelle Gauthier: So here's how you do it.
- 13:06Michelle Gauthier: Number one: pick your area.
- 13:07Michelle Gauthier: So I'm going to pick a purse.
- 13:09Michelle Gauthier: One of my favorite times to declutter my purse is when I have to stand in line somewhere or when I'm getting gas.
- 13:15Michelle Gauthier: I also always empty out my car of all trash, which there constantly seems to be in my car.
- 13:20Michelle Gauthier: Okay, here are the steps to actually decluttering it.
- 13:23Michelle Gauthier: So we're just going to focus on the purse for this example.
- 13:25Michelle Gauthier: Number one, just for fun, take a before pic.
- 13:28Michelle Gauthier: Just open up your purse and take a picture of it.
- 13:31Michelle Gauthier: Then take everything out.
- 13:32Michelle Gauthier: Just take absolutely everything out from the space you're decluttering.
- 13:36Michelle Gauthier: Don't skip this step.
- 13:37Michelle Gauthier: It doesn't take as long as you think.
- 13:39Michelle Gauthier: And then sort each item.
- 13:41Michelle Gauthier: So definitely, when you're cleaning out a purse, if your purse is like mine, you'll have throwaway or recycle items.
- 13:47Michelle Gauthier: So that's number one.
- 13:48Michelle Gauthier: Always receipts and crap in there or pens that don't work, whatever.
- 13:53Michelle Gauthier: The second pile is giveaway.
- 13:54Michelle Gauthier: I'm unlikely to probably find something in my purse that I'm going to give away.
- 13:57Michelle Gauthier: It's pretty much gonna be throw away or it's in the wrong place.
- 14:01Michelle Gauthier: So if it doesn't belong in there and either it needs to be given away or - I'll find some random stuff in my purse, like a tape measure or something I threw in there for a specific purpose - and it needs to go back to its home.
- 14:12Michelle Gauthier: And then the things that you wanna keep and keep in your purse.
- 14:15Michelle Gauthier: Then you just process the item, so throw away the throwaway, put back the things that don't belong in there or give them away, and then just neatly organize and put the keep items back into the area.
- 14:28Michelle Gauthier: If you're doing something like your fridge door, you could also - hopefully there's not a lot of giveaways in there - but it's pretty much like throw away or recycle or keep and then, before you put them back in, you could wipe it down.
- 14:41Michelle Gauthier: Or if it's your purse, if your purse is like mine, I know it gets like random I'm just picturing like crumbs from a granola bar or something in there you can quick clean it out too, put everything back in and then take an after pick and then just bask in the glory of your beautiful new space.
- 14:54Michelle Gauthier: And what this will do is first, first of all, you'll find yourself looking in your purse all the time, in this example, or looking in your center console, if you clean that out, or opening your fridge and looking at the door.
- 15:05Michelle Gauthier: And what this will do is it will give you clarity of mind on things that are unrelated to your purse or your fridge or whatever, and it will also encourage you.
- 15:14Michelle Gauthier: It gives you that positive feedback to say, hey, maybe tomorrow night I can do like one shelf in the fridge, or now that I've done my purse, maybe I can do my gym bag, or now that I've done my purse, maybe I can do my bathroom counter, whatever it is.
- 15:27Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes it just gets you going on a roll.
- 15:30Michelle Gauthier: So I would love to challenge you to do that today.
- 15:33Michelle Gauthier: Take those steps, get on my email list so that you can do this challenge with us and you will be eligible for those prizes when you reply back to me and let me know what you decluttered.
- 15:45Michelle Gauthier: Okay, good luck, and hang around for Michelle's Do Less for More Success tip, which is up next.
- 16:07Michelle Gauthier: Here's my Do Less for More Success tip for this week.
- 16:09Michelle Gauthier: It is when you're driving in your car by yourself.
- 16:11Michelle Gauthier: Maybe that's rare for you, but when you're driving in the car by yourself, try not listening to anything.
- 16:14Michelle Gauthier: Try to just drive in complete silence and see what that does for the overwhelm that you're feeling.
- 16:20Michelle Gauthier: Sometimes people are afraid to do this because they always want to have something else to think about, but I've just noticed, if I drive in complete silence, that after a few minutes I can feel my whole body relax.
- 16:31Michelle Gauthier: It's like the one place in life where you can really be by yourself and be quiet.
- 16:36Michelle Gauthier: Give it a try and let me know what you think.
- 16:38Michelle Gauthier: Thanks so much for listening today.
- 16:40Michelle Gauthier: Get on my email list so you can participate with us all week on this decluttering challenge.
- 16:45Michelle Gauthier: It's going to be so much fun and by the end of the week, hopefully, you'll have a clearer mind and a clearer space.
- 16:51Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.
- 16:52Michelle Gauthier: Thank you for listening to the Overwhelmed Working Woman podcast.
- 17:00Michelle Gauthier: If you want to learn more about my work, head over to my website at michellegauthier.
- 17:04Michelle Gauthier: com.
- 17:06Michelle Gauthier: See you next week.