Getting Past Overwhelmed: Cultivating Decluttering Habits

hi welcome to the October 2018 Houston clutter coaching meetup group I'm Gale Goddard professional organizer and my business is the clutter fairy say hi you have a little audience here today we're back for a live in-person meetup group and today we're going to talk about overwhelm and how to deal with it get past it hopefully have a little bit of conversation about ways to get around overwhelm so you're not stuck all the time how's everybody good it's a good day today I get phone calls all the time when people want to call and ask me to come and look at their projects and talk about what they need to get done and usually somewhere in that conversation somebody says to me I'm totally overwhelmed whether it's the daughter that's calling about the mom or because they she wants help she wants me to help the mom downsize someplace or whether it is the couple that's lived in the house for thirty years and they want to dig their house out and try to move into a new location after all their kids are gone except that they have 30 years of stuff doesn't matter who calls me somewhere in their conversation they're gonna say I'm totally overwhelmed and when we face that overwhelmed feeling it's always about I see the project I can't imagine what to do about the project it's so big it's so huge and I can't see my way through the process I don't know how to carve a path to the end I can't visualize it and so some of us are very adept at ok I don't see what the end is but I'm gonna dive in and so you try to dive in anyway and you go in without much of a plan and without much of a thought and you think you're going to get it all done in a hurry and you go in for the weekend and you've heard me tell the story before you want for the weekend and by the end of the weekend you put in 16 hours of time but you have made it worse instead of better and then you feel super defeated by the end of the project and it's not complete and what are you gonna do if you have that experience that I've tried to do it in a and get it done in a weekend and I'm unsuccessful then you feel defeated and you're still overwhelmed the project is still there and you still haven't made any headway you just sort of stirred the pot a little bit I think the problem is generally something that Eddy talked to me about a long time ago which is we overestimate what we can get done in the short term you know when you're making your daily to-do list it always has 35 things on it even though there's only six hours but you can do something and you have to have lunch in there we always overestimate how much we can get done in the short term we think we can get a whole lot crammed into a really short period of time because we have to do it it will fit into those few hours and that's a fallacy we tell ourselves but the other fallacy that we tell ourselves is we underestimate what we can get done over the long term so we undervalue the 30 minutes a day strung together for six months that we can use to accomplish a goal over a long period of time and we don't multiply that those 30 minutes by every day you don't multiply that in your head and realize how many hours and hours and hours that is and so we don't believe that the long term short chipping away is going to accomplish anything we don't feel like we're gonna make any headway and usually you start out doing that little 30 minute process and you clear a little bitty space that's you know here's a little corner of a shelf and you clear up a little shelf and you get to the end of you look at this and you compare it to the rest of the house this is the first thing that people do right they think I've only cleared this and I have all that to go and then they feel like I'm not accomplishing enough I'm not I'm not making enough headway that means that this work was invalid or not useful and the truth is that 30 minutes plus the next day and the next day and the next day and the next day will end up to many many hours of work and so it's a matter of deciding that you're willing to stick with repeat repeat repeat until you can accomplish something right if we are always looking to cram it in in the short period and most of us focus on what do I have to accomplish today except that if you've got to be you know thirty years of backlog in your house there's no way you can unravel it in a day or a week or a month when I go and work with clients like the couple that were retired and I move them into assisted living they moved into the vitamin or tower we spent 16 months with me going over there for three hours every three weeks for that whole all those many months to get all the way around the house to dig them out and you know the first few trips I went over there didn't look like we've got much done my car was full when I left I had an entire stuff stuff in my car to take to Goodwill but I had to do that 20 times that's 20 car loads in my car plus two trips of Salvation Army truck come and take books away plus the guy that they hired separately to empty the garage and haul all that stuff away so any kind of a project that is more than a day's worth it's going to require some repeated focus over and over and over again so instead of planning for it as a project you really have to think of it as a habit that you tackle with consistent repeated willingness over and over and over and over right nobody likes organizing as much as I do this is my this is my happy place I go and do this with people and I think it's a lot of fun so I'm having a great time but I know that you're not so part of my job is to try to make it more fun with you while we're working together but I know that the person that caused me is the person that hates the chore a whole lot so you know you're fighting your own dislike of having to do something that you don't really want to do you're spending your own personal free time to basically clean the house do something that isn't fun for you but it's about your quality of life so it's one of those things that you have to adapt a habit for over the long term and if you think about it as I know in your head the house has become a project that needs to be done and it seems like it's finite like the house has walls right and this stuff kind of stops at the walls in theory sometimes it spreads out into the yard but eventually you get to the edge of your property and you have to stop right like at the end of your property but if you have filled up that piece of property in some way it feels like it's finite because there's you know parameters around which you can't stretch and the truth is it's a finite amount of things but you will continue to live you will continue to shop you will continue to go to the grocery store you will continue to have friends over receive things in the mail have life you know happen and more things are going to be coming into your life so there is a backlog portion of the project but the ultimate project is you have to develop this habit of how you go about managing clutter in your life day to day and so adding that mindset in changing your mind about it so that you're thinking about how can I build this habit instead of how can I finish this project and then the trick is to do enough work in your Abbot whatever your habit is we'll talk but whatever your habit is you need to be doing enough work so that you're defeating today's clutter and chipping away yesterday's clutter and you'll have to do that for a while until you get all the backlog cut up you made your circle around the house a few times and dialed it back and then you keep doing the habit and maybe you don't it doesn't take as much time maybe you can do it less time every day here every week or whatever because now you're not trying to also do the backlog and the regular stuff at the same time you're just trying to keep up current you're trying to keep your maintenance routine going and so thinking about it in terms of let's build a habit so the perfect habit example that I have in my head is Edie walking so I've known Edie for a long time million years but you started walking when in nineteen so 2004 you started walking every day and he walks every day so he even had corneal replacement surgery where he had to like they put gas in his eye and he had to lay on the couch and a certain way so that it's you know healed correctly thank you and even on those days when he was allowed to stand up every hour or whatever he would walk down the block and back as his win for the day as his walk for the day so his habit was I'm walking every day and anything counts so when he had surgery he only had to walk this far but it counted and you know there's been times when he's walked six miles or ten miles or whatever you know huge times but every day it's been his habit so that was his game to play and he made it something consistent and I've known it for a long time and he's been doing that without fail for forever and now he just watched with the dog it's himself but the point is he goes out every day walks I have not developed his disciplined wish I could but it worked it's a habit that works for him so that's not my habit right and it won't be your habit everybody gets to pick their own and the thing is how much are you willing to focus on it in your regular life when can you carve out some time to do it now you make time to brush your teeth every night before you go to bed generally we hope and you know you shower a few times a week generally we hope I'm sure the people that work with you hope that that's true you scrub the toilet right like there are things that you do in order to maintain your environment so they can't write that's a perfect one you got to do the cleaner box so that's very important so there are things that you do that are fun that are for the maintenance of your comfort and well-being in the house and maintaining the clutter is one of those habits that you get to develop right so let's talk about some of the ways that you can serve step past overwhelm and see if you can then develop a habit about working on the clutter I want to make sure I do these little pieces here talked about that one so the next thing is to do something to get started so most of the people when I talk to them about I show up and I'm going to do an assessment appointment we walk around and I can tell the slump of the shoulder and this you know this sort of sinking defeating feeling that the person is mirroring to me as they walk around the house and show me the house because they've been yelling at themselves about it for a long time and they're embarrassed and ashamed for me to see it and they're walking around the house and they're thinking this is such a wreck I just know it's such a wreck and I can't face it and I'm a failure as human so scratch all that let's just call that we know that's where you're starting from we know that's what you believe and I'm gonna say to you you don't have to believe that you don't have to believe that you're not incapable of doing this it's just the emotional mountain that you have to climb over about it right and any step counts just like in Ed's walking example any step counts so right now you're overwhelmed and the curtain has dropped and you're frozen in place but if you can allow yourself to do anything you're getting yourself in motion and be emotion it's just like walking right like when you finally pryor yourself off the couch and go walk around for a little bit you know when the Fitbit says do you want to take 36 steps before the hour is over in other words get your room off the couch and go do something for a minute if you can get yourself up and do something you are starting the ball rolling and it doesn't matter how small so you have to be willing to be your own cheerleader about this which is contrary to what you've been your own critic all this time right like I'm sure you can write me an entire article about all the ways that I disparage myself because I don't accomplish this task but we're you know okay I got it you're expert at that so let's work on being your own cheerleader about it instead if you can go and do something take any step it doesn't matter how hard I mean how easy or how quick you're at least in forward motion so maybe your game to start with this I'm going to spend five minutes I'm gonna spend ten minutes I'm gonna empty the top of this little table I'm gonna reorganize this one drawer I'm gonna go through today's mail everyday maybe that's your game you can start slowly and build your way up to a better habit at whatever speed works for you and the idea is to do a little bit every day do a little bit or every week or whenever you know everybody has their own calendar and their own schedule and their own workload right and maybe you're too tired when you come home from work morning people come home at the end of the day and they're wiped out so maybe you have to take your 15 minutes out in the morning when you're awake right you have to work it into your schedule about when it's gonna work for you and take those 5 minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes and see if you can't do something and then go to Gail's happy dance so you have your dance about it and try to be pleased with yourself that you are chipping away because this is this is the ultimate chip away project I'm telling you a story about myself which is really kind of embarrassing I am not exactly you know the home-repair chick and the toilet seat broke my toilet and I had to replace it and one of the things came off easily like it was supposed to and the other one was like oh hell no I'm not coming off and so I was in there with tools and I had blood blisters and bruises and I spent two hours trying to get this thing off and there was some point where I was like okay I'm not being defeated by this it's just a toilet okay I'm not calling a plumber to take the toilet seat off my toilet and so eventually I like I was with the scissors and the pliers and the screwdriver and eventually I peeled the piece of plastic off and we were able to saw off the you know it was this whole thing but it took me forever and it should have taken five minutes and it was so annoying at the end it was very rewarding to be able to go I hung with it I hung with it I hung with it and now I can sit on a toilet seat that isn't broken isn't that exciting this is the same process for you like you're gonna be down there sawing sawing sawing sawing sawing on this piece of plastic and you're gonna be chipping little pieces off and going oh my god I'm fourteen and thousand hours away from being done but you don't want to focus on that you want to focus on the little chips of plastic you're getting bigger and bigger as you go that's my point I know you can always look up and say the room is full I'm never going to get through this it's always going to be terrible or you can be celebrating the fact that you say focus for 15 minutes on working towards the end okay start with the area that's easiest for you start with the floors in the pathway start with the floors look cause it start with one little linen closet I mean it can be any area of the house it really doesn't matter find something that isn't intimidating because I know there's areas that are intimidating I know there's places where you come and start and you look at it and you think this is all my mother's China and it's all gonna make me cry or this is all the clothes that I can't wear because I'm not that size anymore and I'm super embarrassed and you know this is all gonna make me cry you don't start there don't start with this stuff that's going to be super hard for you because you want to make headway so start someplace that's easy go into the one area that doesn't bother you that you don't have an issue with that you don't have a lot of investment in for me it's the kitchen like I all we've talked about this as many times I don't care about the kitchen kitchen annoys me and I'd like to be in the kitchen so that super eats me to do everybody can do a linen closet the linen closet super easy it's stuffed full of big pieces of fabric half of it's four beds you don't own anymore half of it sense that you would never put out for anyone to see in person because it would be embarrassing and it's always when you pull it all out and it's really it's a whole closet but it's really only 20 things because they're all so big right it's 14 pillows and two sheets and you pull it all out and you're done so it's an easy win this is what I mean by starting with something that's easy just find the area that's a place that you feel safe taking the first step and spending a little bit of time one thing you can do to help yourself is keep a log of the stuff that you do because like I said we underestimate the cumulative effect of long term focus right so if you're riding on a piece of paper I took five bags to Goodwill I cleared out that drawer I emptied the closet rod on the left side I took out a whole bunch of kitchenware and donated it to see how do you got it if you can keep yourself a-list when you start to flag when you start to feel like you're getting no worries you come back and read your list and go oh well five bags plus four bags plus six bags plus two bags plus oh my gosh look at all those bags like they want faded in your memory buddy but if you need a little remembrance that it's okay and you're gonna get somewhere and you makes headway you go back and look at your log and it doesn't have to be super elaborate you just want to say I worked on the desk drawer I worked in the kitchen pantry I you know I'm saying just a little reminder so you have some idea of how much work you've done and six weeks from now it's a long list and six months from now it's a really long list and you have a lot to look at and remember that you've accomplished something you've gotten somewhere you'll be working on the backlog for awhile if you are gonna spend 15 minutes 20 minutes a day 30 minutes a day if you're really rocking it you're going to be chipping away in little pieces you're chipping little chips out of iceberg right eventually you'll start to see a difference but it's a long haul when I was working with a family that we moved out there's three adults working on it for three hours at a time we put hundreds of hours into this job by the time we were done between all the people that came and did something at that house so it's gonna take you a while to get to the place where you've got a hundred hours behind you you've got a hundred hours of work into it but this is where the concept of a habit comes in you're not trying to get to the end in a hurry you're just trying to practice the habit of doing something all the time and doing it faster than you're adding to the house so that you really do have a net loss of contents of some amount so that eventually over time you've gotten through the backlog if you have a burst of energy and you want to spend a little bit of time and jump in on okay I'm going to do on it's Saturday and I have free day and it's raining outside and what and so I'm gonna spend two hours on this and I'm gonna bump my habit up for that day and make it a little bit longer then you can make you know sort of a bigger chip on the back log right or maybe you're gonna call somebody and say come and help me call somebody like me and say come and help me and then there's two bodies chipping away at it but in the meantime you get to develop your own habit about I'm going to keep going I'm going to keep going tu-tu-tu-tu-tu-tu to judge its attention and that's the goal to just add a new habit into your life however small it is and when you get better at it and it feels less stressful and it feels like you can stand it for more than fifteen minutes then maybe you can do it for twenty minutes it's not something that you have to do in a punishing way or a distressing disturbing way try to make it be something that you're willing to do over and over over the long-term and when you're sick you know maybe you have to stay home and sleep you don't have to work and so then you can sit there for 15 minutes in your bed while you're feeling cranky and you're on drugs and maybe you'll forget that you did it and you won't notice you will throw away more because you're sick do you understand the idea what I'm saying here the idea is to aim for a small habit that will build huge results over time we never get to the place there is no there's no intersection of I have plenty of free time and I'm willing and I can get the project done in this sweet spot right here on my calendar where I'm super enthusiastic about it and I have no other commitments like that spot doesn't exist right if you're waiting for the moment where you go okay I'm ready I'm ready and I'm happy and I'm gonna work on it and it's gonna all be great yeah like that's not happening right so wedging in a little piece clearly she doesn't have a lot of excess time so maybe she's got to put ten minutes in because her professional work is calling her name but even ten minutes a day it's still taking the chisel and you know chipping away at the iceberg right maybe she can pull up a stack of mail and sort through a bunch of old mail in ten minutes and then go back to work and not be worried about it or maybe when you need a little mental break you can sort of okay I can't think about that project for a minute I'm going to sit over here for 10 minutes the sort old mail and then you know turn back and come back to it it's just one of those things where you have to decide where you can give your time based on what's going on in your life and still make headway still repeat the process over and over again and it may be that on Tuesdays and Thursdays you can't do anything and on Monday Wednesday and Friday you can do 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour doesn't matter how you do it just build it and keep trying and if you miss it a day it's just like you know it's just like weight loss right you miss it today you screw up a day you're like okay I'll start over again you just have to be willing just to come back to it and make a little chip all the time who else anybody else yes ma'am yes I made a lot of progress in my house yeah in some areas like on the first floor where I have people over and they see the area that upstairs and I guess the things downstairs there wasn't as much of an emotional connection and that was easier for me and that was a more presentable part of that house because that's like the public space right and your private space is upstairs right so the personal private that pieces overwhelmed so I see some physical evidence of making some progress but I'm still overwhelmed with certain areas that are more difficult for a variety of reasons right and when I like I have a friend coming over this weekend so I found sometimes my mom won't come over sometimes a friend will come over and they're not judgmental they're positive they're helpful and that helps to motivate me so I'm trying to take advantage of that more than I can how many a helpful partner is great right because then you're not doing it by yourself that's a that's a really good point and I found like certain resources like where I can take certain things to either donated or need to sell like at a consignment sorted I'm kind of gaining some momentum and that but certain things I'm a little hesitant maybe to I don't I don't know I don't want to just throw it away I'm a little hesitant to dispose of it because there's emotion or there's time where there's money invested in it so sometimes that holds me back a little bit so I think that money invested in your stuff has has that's sort of a recurring theme for you like that really hangs you up so what allows you for the things that you've been willing to let go what allows you to let go of them what has been what has made those things okay I'm taking things to a number of different consignment shops so I'm getting some money back to help recouped the cost okay and I'm like putting it back into my house and like right okay or like I'll donate things if I no longer like it or it's just not my style anymore right sometimes it's easier to dispose of there certain things but certain things are harder for me to write so I still got like it but I know I love it but I still see some so one of the things that I like to do particularly because a lot of my clients are women and so I end up processing a lot of women's clothing I take a lot of women's clothing through Mike goes in and out of my car and we've actually taken huge quantities of stuff to the women's shelter in Montrose because it's they're servicing a clientele of people that are running with the clothes on their back and their kids and nothing else and so it feels good to me when I get good clothes out of people's closets that I can turn around and put them into a shelter environment where I know people are in desperate need and that helps it it helps my clients I think feel better about like they're taking their money and it's sort of their way of investing in the women's shelter without actually putting cash out there putting their clothing cash into the women's shelter and that makes them feel better about it the money that you spent on music clothing uses example just going to know that that's one of the places where you collect stuff and so the money that's in the clothes is sort of a sunk cost at this point right right is this them cost and so you you can you can get some money back but you don't get a huge amount per piece I'm sure that if you keep the churning into the consignment stores you get at least some cash flow flowing even though it's not it's a fraction of what you originally spent on it but you wore them and they're your stuff and whatever given that that closet is one of the places where stuff backs up I'm guessing that you have a whole lot of things that you really really love and then the things that are a step down from there which are the what you're just describing that I like it but I don't love it kind of places maybe you can try to shift that category in your head too this is no longer a category I'm willing to wear so who can benefit from my clothing cash do I want to consign it or do I want to send it on somewhere and find the the service receiver that makes you feel like you've spent that money well there's so many places that women's clothing is in support of people and hooking up with that window I mean even if you go and donate to resale stores and you don't try to if it's stores that you don't want to do to consignment with and you can just go donate to them it's a way to spend the you know spend the sunk cost just try to think of it as you you know passing your your cost on to somebody as a charity to someone else and find a recipient that makes you feel good about that movement and see if that helps we keep working on that when I keep chipping away with you on this and I keep like my closet but they take it they use either for women's shelter or the proceeds going to support their work their stuff that they're providing right yeah see that's something I've heard the term pity wise the people in my clients in Sugarland talk about it I've never been I should make a trip out there and see it but it's one of those things where the nature of advertising is that they convince us if we have to spend a whole lot of money in order to own that and then you know we drive the car off the lot and the price drops twenty-five percent you know once we cross the curb like it's the same with the clothes right well but you know if you think of it as they okay if you put in fifty pieces then you're allowed to take on one right like make it a huge exchange number like you can't go and shop until you've got fifty pieces to take and then you can come you're not gonna come home with 50 you might come home with three that's a great ratio if that's a net 47 out right so that's great that's a good solution okay who else has questions it's so hard to when I'm talking to people and working in the first time that I go in somebody's house and I'm like okay what are we gonna work on today you show me where we're gonna go okay we're gonna work on the same okay and I just walk up to the counter start pulling stuff po po po and you can see the look on the clients face they're like what are you doing like this is what you paid me to do let's get over there I can go over to it because I don't have in the emotional wall that's in between me and this stuff and so part of what I'm doing is just reminding you that there is no actual wall between you and accomplishing this task it's just a task that you are not comfortable doing but it's not impossible and you can't walk over to it and start messing with the mail right sometimes you have to do it in little bitty increments sometimes you have to go over to the mound of stuff on the counter and you have to take a handful out and you have to walk away and not be staring at this while you're looking at working on it because that's - that's also shutting you down so you take a handful and go over there and sit for your 15 minutes and recycle and shred and trash and you find one piece of paper do you want to go file and you go file it and you call it a win right like if you just decide that I'm only going to work on this countertop until it's clear and I'm going to spend my 15 minutes every day working on that countertop and then when you get to the bottom of that countertop you're just gonna feel like you have hung the moon because oh look I spent my 15 minutes and it's three weeks later and now it's empty how exciting will that be it's soup it's totally possible for you to get there and getting from zero to any step is really just a mental challenge with yourself about saying I am willing to try I'm willing to make the attempt I'm willing to do ten minutes five minutes and set the timer we've talked about this before not the kitchen or the tics get the timer on the iPhone and let it ring once 15 minutes is up and consider yourself released making any step and repeating that step as often as possible will get you there just as fast as you know an army of people are going to get it done in a weekend like unless you have an army showing up you're gonna have to tackle it 15 minutes a day 30 minutes a day until you get there and there I don't have the Raygun that evaporates it for you and also evaluates it according to what how you would decide we have any been at that yet so I don't have that capability but you have the capacity to evaluate and you can judge this stuff and decide what can go and if you can just ask yourself when you're willing and when you're in the best physical mental shape to do it we've talked about this before too you want to be well rested you want to be well fed you want to be alert I'm a night person I do that I do better in the afternoon he's a morning person he does it at the crack of dawn right I'm asleep and like stop waking me up and nobody's out there making mad things happen I'm like oh you got to pick the time that works for you and consider it you know you know this is a mental challenge already so you don't want to come to it with low resources you want to come at the best part of your day and you know knock your 15 minutes out then okay so you may have any questions okay how do you keep the motivation that's my issue yeah yeah everything you knew is great when you get started but have you keep it going long enough to be on my habit like you don't usually be bored with it after one week and so boredom is a problem because it's a chore right so how do you get the happy dance from brushing your teeth you know when your teeth feel better after you brush them every night right so part of it is what do you think it how do we answer that question I mean keeping it going is being glad every day that you make the streak longer what motivates you now I worked with a life and business coach at one point you said you know your thing is you'd like to win so turn it anything that you turn into a game you can accomplish and so so my thing that's that's how we do it is there's a game you know I keep a log I keep track of the hours I walk or run or how many laps I swim in the pool it all goes into the spreadsheet and tallies it up so I can see how many days how long my streak is and all that sort of stuff and but you know if you're if your thing is something there's something you've been saving towards something new you want to give yourself some reward at a certain point you know when you've wrecked it we just you know decide that when you racked up three weeks of doing it everyday you get to do the do this thing and you probably shouldn't be by something maybe it's you know we go to the movie yes because you can't you can't not be happy until it's a hundred percent done because 100 percent done is a long way off right so you have to be able to cheer this is why I talk about cheerleading yourself you have to be able to be happy with I accomplished a week I accomplished two weeks I accomplished three weeks I cleared the counter looking to do and reward yourself in some way I also think that your you know the idea of a log or diary could be as simple as you know take a piece of graph paper and line out the weeks and check off the days but you know the idea of putting down specific things you did three bags to Goodwill you know two bags of trash we have there's a real natural tendency to kind of devalue the past and to devalue our past accomplishments and you know when that stuff was in front of you it was insurmountable obstacles so don't don't devalue it keep track of it reflect on it you know be proud of it and I think writing it all down in some way that you can return to occasionally it's good yeah I think the log is very important and I think that people really need to actually do that I did that when I was doing running I used jianming mileage because we had it I ran around Houston ran across West Texas across New Mexico Arizona and I was in California and I was running up the Pacific coastal highway met somebody people added miles near a when you open your only oh I only ran five miles today or something like that it doesn't seem like a lot but keeping the log like that just was like wow I really am doing something I'm going someplace [Laughter] everybody has their own judge right you like for me five miles of like hospitalization right but that's great and it's a perfect example um when I call a woman right right that's a lot when I go work with people in their offices when we're working with paperwork that's like the worst right it takes so long and every piece of paper is a decision that somebody has to make and it's just the worst and you get to the end and we've like cleared off i sat with somebody this week and we cleared off the desk the top of the desk and the file cabinet that was there and a little thing a box that was on the other side of her and at the end of three hours it was like oh well we can finally see the desk and she was sort of like oh you know now we can see the desk I'm just like yeah but like here's three bags of shredding and here's two bags of trash recycling slash recycling like that's great I think that's a lot of decisions that you did all as one big pile so don't be judgy about what you didn't accomplish you want to be looking at what you did accomplish and be valuing of that like this is really great that I am taking this stupid bag of recycling so I will never have to touch this piece of paper again and I'm going to go throw it in the recycle bin and how awesome is that right so this is all this is the game that were playing right is that we give ourselves credit for what we were able to accomplish and however small it seems in comparison to the big project we need to be celebrating those milestones and celebrating the accumulative effect okay I'm sorry yes that's a very good point if you take it before and after photo that you'll remember how bad the desk looked before you did the three hours of work anything you can look at the other in and go oh yeah it was like two feet on top of my desk before we started right that's the awesome thing to do when I work in people's offices I usually spend several appointments because it's been really really bad and every piece of papers potentially identity theft and we have to be really careful and touch everything right and so digging around an office has been long neglected will take 15 hours 20 hours but um we're done and there's two of us so then it's really 30 man hours 40 man hours so we're putting it to reclaiming the paper and getting it all out of the way and the result is negative space right it's like clear negative space which isn't usually a win it's not as you know oh yeah it looks pretty again awesome but you forget how much you had to weigh through to get there and so keeping track of how many times you know when I'm dragging on we took a picture one time I had a client whose husband was balking at having help and so we took a picture of all the bags that I was putting in the car and the bags we eat like I lied all the trash bags all the recycle bags all the donation bags and I took a big picture of it and so that she can to have the picture and say see this all left the house so don't give me BS about it that's what I'm saying you guys have to value what you accomplish and let other people help you be excited about it like create a partner where you say hey I did my fifty minutes a day you want to see what I cleared off and text to the picture so you can show them that you did something yes ma'am I have somebody one time we were talking about verbal booze and us and she would verbal we need to hear more verbal feedback and she she jokingly talked about in her family for July 4th they practiced mooing and vying for the fireworks show you right get your friends to go that is awesome look at that this is 50% of my job to go we cleared the best today it's really something that I get a lot of it it makes me happy to clear it off but I want to reflect to my clients that being excited about that and being proud of yourself about that seems like the silliest thing but it's all part of motivating you to come back and do it again right if you just go yeah I only cleared the desk the whole rest of the house is still a wreck like that's just you're just beating yourself with a stick after you did a bunch of work like why do you want to do that so don't give yourself a hard time I'm sure you spent hours and hours of giving yourself a hard time let's try to do a different right part of the habit is being happy that you did it and taking pictures and keeping track and reward yourself and being enthusiastic and when you're having trouble to call somebody to do it for you I'm having trouble remembering that I'm working hard and I'm staying with it and I need you to tell me that I did great today like ask for some help and being enthusiastic about what you're doing and don't call your mother-in-law and don't call somebody that's mean to you about it if anybody in your life ever complains to you or makes fun of you because you're you know your house is not perfect they are off the list you cannot call them you have to call your nice friends you're gonna go woo the girls that go shopping with you and convince you to buy more clothes you need to call them and let them tell you that you did a great job that's what I'm saying yes one wife three sons but one of them yeah no I can't do that and here's that's it yeah like I actually cleared off my desk right so the person that can take the drawer and do this is the person that didn't spend any money or have any investment in the contents and it is disrespectful to do that it's not their stuff and throwing it out is not the solution it is a path but it is not a path that is going to reinforce your relationship with it [Music] you know she's allowing me to be super this cheap well and then she was defensive and difficult in you so this is that this is what happens when someone else takes over your your clutter when it becomes someone else's responsibility because you can't manage it yourself anymore then you lose control of the stuff and someone else makes decisions without your processing and through it and you end up losing a bunch of stuff that you'd rather not lose better for you to do it now while you have the capacity I've said this a million times if you want the judgment and control over what stays and what goes you have to do while you have the capacity which is now the people that can come to this meeting have the capacity to do it when they go home and what you can do now will be something that someone else doesn't have to take over for you and do later because they're going to have no investment like your son no investment in your bathroom drawer yeah you don't want to do that and so better to do it now and better to be in the habit and I have to say I've said this before too that when my mother passed away she had been listening to me and I had been working with our house for a long time and she moved at 63 to North Carolina and so that move process filtered a bunch of stuff out she's got a bunch of stuff go there and then she had the house decorated and that got a whole bunch of more stuff out and then we worked on stuff everywhere and so that when I went to the house the week weekend that she died my brother-in-law came over and he was walking around opening and closing doors in the kitchen I'm like what are you doing and my engineer brother-in-law said I'm assessing the project he was looking in the cabinets to see where the squirrels nests were where was going to be really jammed up and be a lot of work and the truth was we had been through the house so much and she had done so much work that there weren't any there were you know they're all there was stuff there that she was using and she loved but nothing was overstuffed or scrambled and so I spent eleven days later with my sister undoing her house but it wasn't horrible it wasn't that clean out the snarls nest after 20 years of no attention it was dismantling a house that was in good shape and that was much less of a burden for my sister and me then it would have been if she'd done nothing and so anything that you do now is something that someone else doesn't have to come behind and do for you later right all of which to say part of it is that you're doing it for people that comes behind but part of it is you're doing it for yourself and how you live right now you want to be in in enjoying the place that you're in and you want to be comfortable in it and you want to feel like you're serving yourself well and taking care of yourself and so you want to build this habit to help yourself that's what we're aiming for and so I hope that you make an attempt and then you you know call me and say I need you to tell me I did great because if you send me text I will tell you you're awesome every single time okay I have no problem with that you don't have to be my client you just send me a text and say look what I did and I will say that Rox you guys wrong I promise right now I will say that to anybody it sends me a text I get text from around I mean I get messages or from around the country people saying oh you've been watching the videos and so I clean out the closet and here's the picture awesome look at that's great it makes me happy to declutter my remote controls I'm happy for you guys that showed me your progress and I will tell you you are fabulous because you are right okay we're gonna stop and I will see you guys the next and the next meetup is gonna be live online so watch for those that data later see you later thanks [Music]

Channel: The Clutter Fairy

Views: 43,560

Keywords: Gayle Goddard, The Clutter Fairy, professional organizer, Houston, overwhelm, organizing tips, organizing goals

Id: t184Vz4DjkU

Length: 51min 16sec (3076 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 20 2018