I Decluttered 30 Years of Stuff...Here's What Happened.

minimalism didn't just change my life it saved my life and I know that it might sound a little bit cliche or over the top for me to say that but that doesn't make it any less true not only did it make my home so much easier to manage but it also helped me heal and let go of the past as well as saved my motherhood and probably my marriage as well and I think that a lot of people are probably like me and have been living in a constant state of stress and mess for so long that we either don't notice how much all of our stuff is weighing us down or we know but we feel too drained overwhelmed or scared to do anything about it so I grew up in one of those middle class homes where everything looked normal and good from the outside but on the inside it was a mess now that I'm older I'm more able to look back and notice things that I wasn't able to understand when I was a child and I think when you grow up surrounded by things like addictions and mental illness your entire life you lose all sense of norm normal and those things become The New Normal instead my mom died of cancer when I was nine and then my father lost his battle with alcoholism when he was 53 which was the year I turned 23 and then that same year that he died I lost a total of eight people it felt like every month I was getting a phone call to let me know if someone else had passed away and that year was one of the darkest times in my life one of the hardest days was probably the day my grandma on my dad's side passed away which was around a year after he had died and then on the day of her funeral I saw a Miss call from my best friend and she told me that her father had passed away suddenly and he was like a second dad to me so it felt like losing a dad all over again on the same day that I was Burying my grandmother and after that I just blacked out like I wasn't drinking or anything but it's like someone pulled a curtain down over my memories and I don't remember anything after that not who I talked to what I said or how I got home nothing I'm not telling you this to earn pity points or anything but I get a lot of questions about how I ended up having so much clutter at such a young age and that's just because in my early 20s I was going through a lot of things that most people don't have to worry about until their 40s or 50s or later and during that time I also struggled with anxiety binge eating disorder and depression so bad that if I wasn't working all I could do was lay in bed and sleep it felt like every day I would get up and I would put on a mask to be able to go to work in my college classes and try to pretend like everything was normal at a time when my entire life was just falling apart around me and I think all of that loss is what made me afraid to let go and I just wanted to grab and hold on to as many pieces of my old life as I could so like I said I was only 23 when I lost my dad my home and a bunch of my loved ones at the same time and I was going to college col full-time as well as working full-time at a grocery store and my aunts and uncles who were left in charge of the Estates would call me up and ask me if I wanted to come and pick up this or that thing because otherwise they were going to have to get rid of it and I tried to take as much as I could even if I didn't want or need it because it just felt like I couldn't handle losing anything else I took their decorations I took their dolls I took their Collectibles and their jewelry and as many Furniture items as I could and I actually had a mental breakdown and was sobbing on the floor of my one-bedroom apartment that I was renting at the time because I didn't have space to take the solid oak dining room table chair and China cabinet set that had that we had been eating on in my home since I was a child and the pain from that moment was burned so deeply into my mind that it made it hard to let go of anything else going forward as a side note have you ever noticed how many popular children's books and movies make you feel guilty for letting things go you've got Toy Story where the toys are alive and have emotions and feel sad when they're given away you've got books like the velvetine rabbit that talk about how toys can become real if you only love them enough and make you feel guilty if you don't want or play with them and what about the movie The Brave Little Toaster and that incredibly traumatizing scene where the cars are getting crushed as they sing sadly about their lives I [Music] your I'm not the only one who remembers this Mi and don't even get me started on Rudolph The Rednosed Reindeer and that toy orphanage they had for the sad unwanted toys did any of these books or movies traumatize you as a kid I'm sure I can't be the only one who noticed this drop me a comment and let me know if you agree with me or if there are any other books and movies you can think of that I missed and we can add those to the list as well so for me clutter was part of of a trauma response as well as a generational curse that ran in my family but for other people it might be something like shopping addiction or losing things in a fire which happened to me as well around that same time too or maybe a scarcity mindset from growing up poor that's contributing to their clutter problem and the point I'm trying to make here is that even though our life experiences and the things that we go through are unique and are deeply personal to us at the same time they are also very much a part of our shared Human Experience and even if the small details aren't exactly the same almost all of the emotions and challenges that we face when we're decluttering are shared by millions of people around the world so remember if you struggle with clutter and mess you are not alone so flash forward to my early 30s I've graduated college and worked hard to create a better life for myself I'm married to my wonderful husband and we've just welcomed our second son into the world and at that time we moved to a new state my husband was traveling 50% of the time for work and I was left alone for weeks at a time with a new baby and a toddler and I felt like I was drowning I felt so much pressure to give my kids a better childhood than the ones my husband and I had growing up that I was running myself into the ground trying to be super mom and do it all and it was taking a huge toll on my physical and mental health I was exhausted I was sleep-deprived and I spent all day running back and forth in an endless cycle of cooking and cleaning and chores and child care there was this one time when I had to go in for surgery and I had to go under anesthesia to get the surgery and then when I woke up from the surgery I asked the surgical nurse if I had said anything funny while I was under and she told me that I was complaining to the whole operating room about how messy my home was and how I was constantly cleaning and picking things up only for it to still be a mess at the end of the day and they thought it was hilarious but I was like this is my worst nightmare come true I was so embarrassed and then I also found myself feeling pretty resentful towards my husband because he got to travel to all of these cool places around the world and stay in fancy hotels and eat nice food and meanwhile I was stuck at home in survival mode feeling like I was a failure as a wife and mother with baskets of unfolded laundry sitting around for weeks at a time and not even having the time energy to shower and wash my hair and I saw these other women who looked like they had it all together with their nice clean homes and their hair and makeup done playing with their kids and looking happy with their Pinterest perfect houses and their cute little arts and crafts projects and it made me feel like I was the problem and that there must be something wrong with me and sometimes it feels like God or the universe find a way to put the right person with the right message in front of you just when you need it the most and for me that person was my neighbor who had just moved into the town home next to us and she and I were outside standing outside our garage chatting as my kids ran around out there and played after I had gone over to say hi and introduce myself and she was telling me about how her and her husband were empty nesters who were downsizing from a five-bedroom home and in the process of decluttering and selling all of their stuff online and I was just floored I was like people can just do that like you can just decide to get rid of your stuff and she laughed and told me to read this book called The life-changing magic of tidying up by someone named Marie condo and I think I ordered the book the same day and when I got the book I finished reading it in less than 24 hours and I know the conari method can be a little bit of a divisive topic where people either love it or they hate it but for me the most important thing that that book did was it gave me permission to let go and it wasn't until I started decluttering the 30 years of stuff that I'd been accumulating that I finally understood just how much that clutter had been affecting me and the rest of my family and that's when I had the big aha moment that the problem was never me the problem was that we simply had too much stuff and all of that stuff was draining so much of my time energy and peace of mind that it was no wonder that I had barely anything left to give to the things that were supposed to matter most to me so I started decluttering and at first I tried to stick to the conari method but as I'm sure a lot of people who are moms or have full-time jobs have realized when they try to do the conari method is that it's not always easy to do these big decluttering projects and I had to tackle my decluttering in short bursts here and there like when my kids were napping or I could set them up with an activity so I could be decluttering for 10 and 15 minutes here and there while I was in the same room as them and when I first started decluttering I was shocked by how hard it was to let go because clutter is never just about the stuff right it's not the stuff we're hanging on to it's the stories and the emotions and the memories that we've attached to that stuff and I remember how I used to just sit there and cry as I was going through that stuff like the Barbie doll collection that I was never allowed to play with and my Mom's wallet with receipts from 1992 still inside of it and all of the cards that she'd been given decades ago at her baby shower when she was pregnant with me and I would easily go through one or two toilet paper rolls at a time because I was crying so much as I was sorting through my stuff but I found that the more I let go of the lighter and better I felt and the more it inspired me to continue getting rid of clutter and to simplify my home and life in other areas I became a much more intentional shopper because I realized that my habit of going in to shop at thrift store after I was dropping stuff off for donation was only adding to my clutter problem as was my habit of picking up cheap toys for my kids from the dollar spot every time we went to Target and picking up random Furniture artwork and toys that I would find on the street on trash day because back then my little hoarder heart couldn't bear seeing stuff go to waste oh my gosh you guys all this free stuff out here by our trash and I'm leaving and I can't take it I could have turned that into something I could have taken those benches oh my gosh and I found myself getting better and better at saying no to the things that didn't add value and joy to my life so that I had more yeses to give to the things that did because I had so much clutter it took me a good 3 years to get through most of it but by the time I was done I had sold donated or given away over 90% of our stuff and not only have we not missed any of that stuff but almost every single aspect of our life has been improved without it and at that point I realized that we had moved past decluttering and gotten to the point where we could call ourselves minimalists and what's funny is I never set out with the intention of becoming a minimalist because minimalism wasn't even on my radar back then I think that a lot of people think that minimalism is boring or scary and it means living in empty rooms or not having any furniture because they're getting mixed up and Confused between the minimalist aesthetic and the minimalist lifestyle but one of the beautiful things about minimalist living is that it's up for each of us to Define for ourselves what minimalism should look like for us so when I say we are minimalists for us that doesn't mean getting rid of stuff that we love and use instead what that looks like is knowing what's essential to us and keeping things that we use on a regular basis or that are meaningful and important to us I like to call it reality-based minimalism because it's very much rooted in common sense and focuses on practicality and authenticity over Aesthetics so for example when I was decluttering my kitchen I realized that I hated using my instant pot which I purchased because it was the most popular and hyped up Appliance of the moment and I had had a hard time getting rid of it mentally because a it was expensive and B I felt like I should like it because everyone else did even though I'd only used it once or twice but the reality was it was just sitting there collecting dust in my kitchen cabinet and instead of that I was reaching for my rice cooker almost every single day instead so I got rid of that instant pot with no regrets along with my slow cooker and a lot of other kitchen stuff and I realized that when it comes to decluttering a lot of us are thinking backwards and we're trying to force stuff to fit into our lives which is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and we need to flip our mindset and realize that the things that we own should be making our lives easier and fit into our lives instead of it being the other way around so at that point I stopped making excuses for my clutter and trying to force it to fit into our lives and we kept the things that we truly loved and used all the time and let go of the things that weren't adding Joy or value or serving us anymore I got rid of a ton of clothes like the ones that I had been keeping since high school but that didn't fit me anymore or the ones that I had worn to work but that I hadn't touched in years since becoming a stay-at-home mom and I got rid of the Lion Share of the things passed down to me by my parents and grandparents but I kept the most special ones which I was surprised to realize were the things that I had been using or displaying all of that time like my grandfather's jewelry box and the knife set for my dad that I used to prepare our meals so so for us owning less isn't about getting rid of everything we love or depriving ourselves it's about making space to honor and appreciate the things that we love and value even more and if you struggle with clutter and feel constantly stressed out overwhelmed or like you're always falling behind maybe you could benefit from decluttering and simplifying as well and I think it's so powerful to know that you are always just one decision away from a completely different life and sometimes all it takes is for the right person or the right mess message to find you to give you that little push that you need towards taking the first step towards changing your life and from that point on it's just about focusing on putting one foot in front of the other to keep taking each next step on the path to a clutter-free and simplified home right now it's the start of a new year which makes it a great time to hit the reset button and set big goals and decluttering your entire home is a great goal but even if you're only able to do a little bit of decluttering here and there if you get started now and stay cons assistant you're going to be so glad you did when this time next year rolls around because the thing about progress is it compounds just like in one of my favorite books Atomic habits James Clear talks about the power of 1% improvements and how if you only get 1% better each day at the end of the year that means that you'll end up 37% better by the time you're done and 1% is amazing like that's probably the rate I was going when I was trying to declutter my home so just imagine how much you could accomplish if you gave a 1% effort or more and I think that besides getting started staying motivated to keep going is also tough especially when things pop up and life gets busy which it inevitably does and one of the things that slowed me down was not having a support system to bounce ideas off of or to share tips advice or encouragement when things got hard and that's actually one of the things that drove me to start the aen life blog and channel here on YouTube because I remember how lonely it felt when I was fix figuring all of these things out for myself and that's why I love sharing tips and ideas to help people declutter and simplify their lives from a toz here on my channel each week but not a day goes by where I don't have someone reach out to me on Instagram or through my blog or email to ask me if I could come to their home or do video coaching with them because they want a little bit of extra help and support and if you've ever wished for the same I wanted to let you know that I have a brand new decluttering course called clutter GPS that's opening for enrollment starting on December 31st and I designed this course to be a complete step-by-step guide to declutter your home and keep it that way for good in clutter GPS I talk about things like goal setting motivation and practical ideas for working through everything from emotional roadblocks to busy schedules and I also share a simple three-step declutter method that makes it easy to declutter even the most overwhelming space and not only are there over 60 text and video lessons that you can watch anytime any place anywhere but there's also a bonus min course with tips and ideas on how to get rid of clutter once you're done decluttering it with tons of resources to know where to sell donate or give away your clutter and you'll also get access to a private Facebook group where you can ask me questions and connect with other clutter GPS students for support and encouragement so if that sounds like something you might be interested in you can find more details about it down below it also happens to be my birthday this week and I can't think of a better way to celebrate it than by sharing the joy and freedom of decluttering and simplifying with you I'm so excited and I can't wait to see how much we can accomplish together this year and I'll see you next week until then take care [Music] bye-bye

Channel: A to Zen Life

Views: 239,750

Keywords: declutter, decluttering, minimalism, minimalist, essentialism, how to declutter, clutter free, clutter-free, minimal mom, minimalist living, minimalism decluttering, decluttering minimalism, decluttering motivation, decluttering tips, decluttering for beginners, minimalism for, minimalism for beginners, decluttered 30 years of stuff, hoarder to minimalist, hoarding to minimalism, minimalism saved my life, minimalism changed my life, minimalism before and after, a to zen life

Id: 9p2BfoNUbGI

Length: 18min 26sec (1106 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 26 2023