Get rid of these 3 things to feel BETTER about yourself today!!

well i got this email the other day and it totally stopped me in my tracks i never would buy new clothes figured i didn't deserve it and was going to reward myself with new clothes when i lost weight which never happened i decided to get rid of anything that didn't fit perfectly and that i didn't love i bought three new shirts to rotate on sundays my husband even gave me a compliment and i've been feeling so great and it's so freeing to know i love any and all things that are in my wardrobe feels so good to not punish myself for not losing weight but i needed permission to do this and you gave this to me oh it's just like oh it's so good and so today i think there's three areas that maybe you need permission maybe you need to stop punishing yourself so i'm gonna talk about three things that i think it is time to get rid of once and for all and a new spin on sentimental items too well hi i'm don from the minimal mom i just love seeing your emails and your comments and i know so often you're thanking me for some of the ideas i've shared but i am just so grateful for you and it just it really feels like a privilege that we can go on this journey together and learn some of this stuff that we've just never been taught they didn't teach us this in high school right like how to deal with all your junk in your house right so that we can just kind of work our way through this together and also share some of these things that really are transformational and ways that we need to let ourselves off the hook and stop beating ourselves up when diane and i worked in radio we had this therapist this family therapist who would come on the air with us on tuesday mornings and he'd answer parenting and relationship questions it was so good but one of the things he always said was you need to be more gentle on yourself you need to be gentle with yourself and i just remember thinking like jim that sounds kind of corny right like you would say it all the time you need to be more gentle on yourself and i sure mean like it's corny right we're tough especially for women watching this like we're tough we're capable we're able but i've been thinking about his words a lot more lately and like you know what we need to be more gentle on ourselves i also know a lot of us are just there's a loss we're dealing with there's just there's so much we're dealing with right now and we need to be gentle on ourselves and so today let's talk about how we can be gentle with ourselves in regards to these three areas be kind to ourselves give ourselves a break but also get this stuff out of our house that is making us feel junky about ourselves because none of us need that none of us need that so there's three areas i want to talk about today that i think we punish ourselves we beat ourselves up we hold ourselves captive i guess in a way i don't want to exaggerate but i really think this is true one is clothes that we want to fit into again the second is with hobby stuff because sometimes we spent a lot of money on it and the third thing is with sentimental items so let's start with clothes so this email from joanna it just resonated with me so much because i totally remember that thinking that if somehow i kept the clothes that were too small for me that it was gonna motivate me and so let's set this record straight once and for all keeping clothes that don't fit it does not motivate us it does not motivate us i i mean if it does motivate you then you've already gotten back down to that size and you're wearing them again so if you're the person that's motivated by that great for you but you're probably already there then right so you don't need those clothes anymore to motivate you for the majority of us it does not motivate us but what it does do is cause us to feel junky about ourselves and again none of us need that and so i am so proud of joanna that she finally said enough is enough i'm worth it so by getting rid of this stuff that does not fit what we're saying is i'm worth it i deserve to have things that fit me the other thing that that keeping those clothes does is it does not put money back in our pocket we don't get the money back that we spent on them so we're not in any way financially gaining from it and sometimes that's the argument right i spent money on it we're not gaining any money back but what we are doing is cluttering up our closets and our dressers and our bedrooms and so today i want to encourage you that the i know the hope like i know i understand the faulty logic behind why we keep this stuff but today i hope to give you permission just like joanna did to get rid of that stuff you don't have to fully remove it from your house if you want to put it in a storage bin because maybe you are hopeful that once this virus crap lifts or you know some normalcy returns that you might be able to get back down to weight that's totally fine but do not keep it in your closet put it in a bin put it in storage and don't look at it every single day now do go ahead and buy one or two or three pieces that fit i'm not talking a whole wardrobe because when you buy clothes that fit what you're not doing is you're not saying i am committing that this is the size i'm gonna be now for the rest of my life because i bought two shirts that size you're not saying i'm doomed now for the rest of my life to be this size because i bought two shirts that is not what's happening right you're just saying hey if i do get the opportunity to go out in public i deserve to feel good about myself and i want the people i'm with i want to feel like they're thinking good things about me too it's not all about clothes but we know like we know how the clothes make us feel and so we all deserve to have at least a few things that we feel good in now that's talking about stuff when we're going out of the house i would also encourage you to have stuff to wear around the house that you feel good in as well this one was probably even the bigger hurdle for me you know being a stay-at-home mom little kids we all make that excuse well it's just going to get spit up on anyways right but have stuff that you even just feel good in wearing around the house i think that's equally as important as having nice stuff to wear when we go out all right the second thing is hobby stuff craft supplies yarn my mom's into rubber stamping here let me show you one of the cards that she's made isn't that pretty so she's into rubber stamping and so um she makes awesome cards but even what she's realized lately is that when she just acquired all this inventory around like stamps and stamp sets and papers and if you're into like scrapbooking crocheting sewing quilting i mean you know right how you just like you get more stuff and more stuff and you follow people on youtube and facebook and then they're always promoting other products that you should buy and so she had a whole room like that was her dream right to have a little room where she could set it all up and then she realized she doesn't like the room and she didn't want to go upstairs to the room and she enjoyed it more when it was a small manageable amount and so now she has significantly simplified all of her craft supplies and she's making more cards than ever it's been it's been super fun and so i know when we spend money on this stuff we beat ourselves up that i can't get rid of it do you know how much money i spent on that right this stuff is generally not cheap either right do you know how much money i spent on that and it often feels that the only way to make it right is to use the stuff but unfortunately many of us we when we bought the stuff we couldn't see into the future that we were gonna have energy limitations that we were gonna have physical stuff come up that doesn't allow us to have so much time to spend on it or we were gonna end up being a caregiver or other things that have taken large chunks of our time or that our taste would change that maybe we wouldn't be into it so much anymore we didn't know the future right and so by keeping this stuff it doesn't again it doesn't put the money back in our account it doesn't magically free up time in our schedule to be able to do it or to give us more energy to be able to do it and so i really want to encourage you uh my mom she found a lot of places to donate her stuff to um different retirement centers or other places you know where adults can go to spend time and just hang out so she donated a lot of stuff to places like that or you can go on marketplace and sell it but i just want to encourage you that keeping it it doesn't make it right it i mean you know this now because how long has that stuff been sitting there no one's using it or appreciating it we might as well at least pass it on to someone that's gonna make use of it and enjoy it even like grandkids kids even you know my mom's giving tons of paper to the girls which they love and especially when she sends it in little bits you know not like don't like unload boxes on your grandchildren but when you send little bits with at a time or make up little bags of stuff to send that's super fun and christmas is coming up maybe you can make some craft kits so you've heard me say this like term before but it's like use it or lose it like if you don't have a plan to use it in the next few months let's lose it and not have to keep maintaining it and storing it and being reminded of the money that we spent on it and then the last thing i think you need to be a little easier on yourself with is sentimental items this is a tough one because it's such a it's so complex because we all have different relationships with the people that left the stuff i know there are many of you that have stuff from your parents uh children other loved ones that you were very close with and in and you know you know logically right you know that the stuff isn't the person right that by keeping the stuff you can't bring the person back that the memories aren't physically tied to the stuff but yet it is still very difficult to part with and so what i want to encourage you is that unfortunately we often think that if we keep the stuff then at least we don't have to deal with the guilt of getting rid of it or thinking that they wanted us to keep it and we don't but unfortunately a lot of times we're just exchanging one kind of guilt for another like when you find out it's in storage but something happened to it it's decayed or gotten damaged or rodents or bugs or water have gotten into it or you're already thinking ahead to your own estate plans and knowing that your adult kids don't want it and so now it's going to be a burden to them and so what i want to encourage you with is that i know as a millennial and i still don't like that i still don't like to call myself that but we're all been accused of not being sentimental or not caring about things for the past but what i want to encourage you is that the reason we don't is often because we don't know why we're supposed to care about it we don't actually know why those things were special and so even right now our own parents are going through their estate planning which has just caused us now to have some of these conversations about their stuff and who gets what you know all those fun conversations right but diana and i were talking about it because we're like okay our parents and our grandparents have an incredible legacy that they have left us of hard work and oh my goodness so i was talking with my mom and she was like we should call it by the grace of god and hard work and so i was talking today and i was like how do we memorialize this because there's not a single thing in their house that would necessarily represent that i mean their farm of course is a huge legacy but there's not any like particular thing that we would pass on to the grandkids or even for her and i that we would have in our home that would commemorate that right and so we're like oh my goodness we should make a video about it like we should sit my parents down and talk with them about it like right and and to also to hear the stories of our grandparents like diana and i were very fortunate that on my dad's side we got to know those grandparents and we loved them and but even to hear some but now it's been 15 years since they've been gone so even to hear some of those stories again from my dad's perspective we never got to know my mom's parents so to have her sit down and to record stories about them and to tell us about them to talk about when my dad bought his farm and how they had nothing and how far they've come with that that would mean so much to us and so is there a way that you could take this stuff that you've acquired and that you could make it meaningful to your kids not by keeping the physical item but by attaching the stories to it we love the stories millennials they love the stories we want to hear the story behind it we might not want the physical item but we want to hear about where it came from and who was tied to it and so are there physical things that you've been keeping that you could turn into a story could you take pictures of it and then upload them to shutterfly and make a book like write out you know why it was significant could you even just take your smartphone and start recording some videos about it while you're holding up the stuff and then would it maybe feel okay to part with that stuff because you've told the story you're archiving it in a way that your kids and your grandkids can really care about it and again i'm i'm a little i'm i want to be careful with this one because it might not be possible to do that for every single item that was passed on could you really just pick the most important pieces or the most special pieces or the ones that have the best stories that go with it and that we wouldn't try to like overwhelm ourselves with telling the story of every single item but knowing that a few special stories would be so cool and that truly would be something that your kids and your grandchildren would cherish for a very long time and that could just be passed on and passed on and so that would be my encouragement around that that i know i know the intention behind keeping the physical stuff to honor these people that were so important to us but i just think it doesn't always accomplish the goal that we're hoping to with it and sometimes those physical items become a burden and that is not the intention right like that is just not the goal so how can we take it and turn it into something that truly is a treasure and an asset and something that we can pass on and so i'd love to know if you have any ideas around this or if you've done anything like this would you share that down below because i know that would be helpful to others as well um or any like uh if there's any resources that would make this easier or anything like that will you please share that down below because that would be super helpful and so in the words of our friend jim you need to be gentle unto yourself you deserve that and we would all want that for you to not beat ourselves up that we're not the size we want to be that we've spent money on stuff that we've hoarded things from a loved one that's passed on because we couldn't just we just couldn't bear it to part with it it's okay it's like all of i think all of us can relate to at least one of these categories it's okay but you do deserve to be free from that guilt and that shame and any of those other yucky feelings you've been feeling around it so i know i know you can do this it's not easy take it step by step but i think i think there could be some really good stories that come out of this as well so i hope this helps i love you any ideas that you have we are all ears so please share that down below i hope you subscribe if you haven't done so already but we'll definitely look forward to visiting with you again soon

Channel: The Minimal Mom

Views: 470,588

Rating: 4.9530101 out of 5

Keywords: minimalism, family minimalism, minimalist, the minimal mom, the minimalist mom, minimalist home

Id: 9pQuc_6LvM0

Length: 14min 30sec (870 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 20 2020