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236: 3 Steps to Declutter Your Space Without Regret · JOY LOVING HOME - SAHM, Productivity, Home Organization, Declutter, ADHD Mom, ADHD SAHM, ADHD Brain

• 0:00
  Let's face it, decluttering is not for the faint of heart, but that doesn't
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  mean that we have to avoid it out of fear of it being some sort of horribly painful situation.
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  Today, I want to chat about three sort of baby steps you could take to ease
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  you into what you're most afraid of about decluttering, which is that you're
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  going to give up something that you later wish you hadn't.
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  So let's talk about ways to make that a little easier.
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  A wise person once said, everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish by its
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  ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it's stupid.
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  Well, fish, quit trying to climb trees while getting advice from well-intentioned monkeys.
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  It's time to jump in the water and learn how to swim with the current of your
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  life. I'm Joy, a professional organizer, mom of four, and fellow Fishbrain.
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  If you're looking for a place to get understanding, encouragement,
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  and ideas for your home that actually fit how your brain thinks,
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  then I'm glad you're here.
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  Let's ditch the type A advice and embrace what makes our brains and our homes unique.
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  Together, we could have a joy-loving home.
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  If you have been a listener for a while, you may know that I recently completed Dana K.
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  White's Decluttering Coach Certification.
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  And, well, I guess if you're new here, welcome.
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  Dana K. White is from A Slob Comes Clean,
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  and she has created sort of the gold standard for steps to do some no-mess decluttering
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  that you can do at the speed of life, as she says, and it truly works.
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  It's why I wanted to go through the certification, and I completely believe in her system.
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  I do know if you follow her steps, you will be successful.
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  And if you can't figure out how to follow her steps by yourself,
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  although she's got endless resources between her podcasts and her YouTube videos
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  and her books, and they're on audiobook if you want to put them in your ears while you're working.
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  She does now have these certified decluttering coaches that you can find from
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  her website that have all been trained in her steps and can help coach you through, you know,
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  one hour better each time you would meet with them. And it's a great resource.
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  If you can't find any in your area, they also will do it virtually,
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  many of them anyway. So just sort of plug there for her.
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  I am not on that website yet because I haven't gone through the final steps
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  once I had completed my certification because I was honestly waiting for summer
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  to be over and to get back into sort of full swing with my business.
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  But I always take a little semi-hiatus during the summer.
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  So anyway, I've now digressed. But what I'm trying to say is she has a method that works and she's,
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  it's really worth investigating and doing.
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  That is a really great way to go through decluttering in which she sort of holds your hands.
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  She has all kinds of explanations for every excuse you can come up with.
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  She's really, she's been at this for years and she's really made it foolproof at this point.
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  But every now and then we feel like going rogue, right?
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  And we feel a little rebellious and we don't want to
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  follow the five steps and we want to just sort of plow in whether
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  it's because we're rage decluttering or
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  we're just full of energy one morning
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  and we feel so hopeful that we want to
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  dive in and finally get after something like it's
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  we know we hold these little hopes in our hearts all the
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  time that we can make our homes better and
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  every now and then you just you want to dive in headfirst and
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  go for it and you might make
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  a lot of quick progress and then
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  you'll stumble into something that makes
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  you pause and heartbeats a
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  little faster and you're like oh oh I know I should I should get rid of this
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  we all know what we say about shoulds but you you can't bring yourself to know
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  what to do next so that's where I'm offering three steps that are outside of
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  her program just to help you sort of ease into this.
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  If you are not ready to learn about her whole program, I think it would be great
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  if you know sort of the basics of I'm trying to have less stuff.
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  But I keep hitting stumbling blocks.
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  Is there a way to ease myself into this difficult situation?
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  Because either A, you find everything to be useful, you worry about what ifs,
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  or you're incredibly sentimental about the littlest, silliest little things
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  and you can't manage to figure all that out.
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  So three steps I'm going to introduce that are very actionable if you find yourself
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  conflicted when you're going through your decluttering process.
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  So step one is if you have something that makes you freeze, it's okay to slide right past it.
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  I give you permission to say, I just can't, and then go look for easier things.
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  Just do the things that are easy first, which is actually one of Dana's steps,
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  so that you can feel good about seeing progress,
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  so that you can warm up that muscle of being willing to get rid of stuff,
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  so that you don't freeze and get
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  stuck and slow down and ruin this sort of burst of energy that you have.
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  So permission to just move it aside and keep going.
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  All right, step two, which is a step further, is to gather those things that
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  are to you maybes or just,
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  I don't know that I can get rid of it, but I don't know that I need it in this
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  space, those types of items.
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  And what you can do is create a little container of those items and store them
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  nearby so that they're easy access.
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  And where I see this working best, and I just had this experience,
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  I overhauled our whole bathroom and I was doing it by myself,
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  although my husband and I share it.
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  So this happens a lot sometimes when you're working around somebody else's stuff.
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  First rule of thumb is you never declutter for another person,
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  but let's face it, sometimes they're not going to be around.
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  Maybe they've given you permission Maybe they're a monkey brain like my husband
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  is and would be excited if you went through and did it all without consulting him.
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  So if you're in that kind of a scenario and you have this box of maybes that
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  you can, for my case, I was able to just sort of set it into,
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  we have one of those big soaker tubs that nobody ever uses.
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  So I could set this box open, lidded box open.
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  Over onto, I don't have like a standalone tub. I have one of those surrounded
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  ones. So there's lots of ledges.
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  I was able to balance it over on a ledge and anything that I really wasn't 100% positive about,
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  that I wasn't sure I didn't really need, that I didn't really think he even
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  remembered we had, but what if he actually knew it and he had it cataloged in
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  his head and he liked knowing he had it, those kind of things,
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  it gives you a chance to say, I'm going to be ruthless with our space.
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  I am going to take out everything that is not essential and everything that is,
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  you know, didn't pass muster is just sitting right over there in an open lidded box,
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  ready to grab if I had forgotten why I use it, if I had forgotten how often
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  I use it, if I had, you know, disturbed somebody else's thing and they're like, where is my,
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  why, why did you move that?
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  I use it every day, items. I don't know.
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  I'm not paying that close attention when he's getting ready.
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  So that is a nice little buffer where you get to experience what it's like to
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  live in your newly decluttered space.
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  Which sometimes is a little, there's always an adjustment period.
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  You can be so excited that it's finally what you've wanted, but we have this
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  muscle memory and it's really kind of hard to get used to a new space.
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  And when we're trying to get used to it, that's when those feelings of regret,
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  or maybe I overdid it, or maybe I simplified too much, or Maybe I should have
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  used this up before I started using the other.
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  Whatever excuse you have created in your head, this sort of side...
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  Area where all those items exist allows you to relax into, okay,
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  I can give this two weeks.
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  I can see what it's like to live with space, what it's like to open a drawer
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  and have just what I need inside of it, what it's like to have gotten ready
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  for a regular day or gotten ready for a special day or gotten ready for a date night or whatever.
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  And then you're like, ah, I forgot I only use that on the occasional date night
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  and that's why that's in there.
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  Whatever the case may be, it gives you this sort of safety net to operate from.
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  So that's a second choice.
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  And then our final choice, step three, is to close these things up in a box
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  and take them somewhere else, the basement, the garage, the car.
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  And what I encourage you to do is to do it in a donatable box,
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  and with a big Sharpie, write the date.
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  Not the date you want to get rid of it by because somehow we then feel like
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  we have some deadline we're going to miss. Write the date you stuck it in your car.
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  Because then, if you open your trunk and you're like, oh, it's only been two
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  weeks. No, no, no, no. It's not long enough.
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  Oh, it's been two months. Maybe two months is, maybe two months is,
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  I haven't needed this in two months. Maybe I could, wait, wait,
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  wait, I'm going to wait till a season has gone by. Whatever.
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  You get to choose the timeline of this unopened box that you've never grabbed anything out of.
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  My encouragement to you is when you have seen that box enough times and you
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  feel like that date, whatever date you're comfortable with, has enough time
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  has lapsed, donate it without thinking about it.
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  Don't open it back up. Don't look back in it.
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  You will have your brain convincing you that even though you've lived with it
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  in your trunk for six months, that somehow now you actually need something from it.
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  Don't do it. Just leave it closed and it's already in your car and deliver it one day.
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  You get to choose that timeline of whatever level of time lapse you need to have happen.
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  And then just as a bit of encouragement, I just want to say the reason these
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  sort of baby steps for the faint of heart work is because you do get to experience
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  that stripped down space and get over the clunky newness,
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  get over your body's reaction to space.
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  If you are not used to space, your body may convince you that you need to fill up space to feel cozy.
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  It's sort of just a mind trap we use to excuse things for ourselves.
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  So this gives you the chance to breathe into that space and realize that airiness and airiness,
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  just airiness is the best word I can come up with, is a good thing.
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  You have convinced your brain that it's not. This gives you time to live with it.
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  And that's great because then you don't have to feel any of the panic of,
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  oh my gosh, I just got rid of something and now I regret it.
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  The second reason is you can now
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  also donate with confidence that you didn't forget anything was important because
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  you gave yourself enough time or confidence that you didn't get rid of something
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  that your spouse remembered or was looking for because you guys had enough time.
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  There was enough time to figure it out. And if somebody still challenges you
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  at the end of six months or the end of nine months or the end of a year, you can say, really?
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  Really? In a year, you never used that. I think we're okay.
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  Or you can go, you know what? We didn't use it for a whole year,
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  but if you actually need one now, let's go buy it.
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  Obviously, you don't want to do that was super huge expensive things,
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  but a lot of what we're decluttering, that's sort of an excuse we build in.
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  Most of what we're decluttering is not crazy expensive.
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  And 99.9% of it will be forgotten about once it's gone.
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  And this allows us to have that nice little safety net to get rid of things with confidence.
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  I hope that's helpful. And I hope that you continue to choose joy.