Radical Mindset Shifts to Declutter your Whole House this Year!

so what we're learning now with all this self-awareness that we have is that our thoughts influence our feelings which influence our behaviors and so if we're really serious about getting our house decluttered and simplified in this new year we have to change our thoughts around all of these things in our house and so today I want to go through each area of our house and give a completely different mindset this is different than I've shared this before but my hope is that if we can change our thoughts around this stuff it is just a matter of time before you're enjoying a highly simplified home too foreign well hi I'm Dawn from the minimal mom if we haven't met before I'm married to Tom and we have four kids ages 8 through 13 and we've been minimalist for about eight years now and it is the best thing I've ever done for my house but it has spilled over into all the other areas of our life now too and so we're so passionate about it and I really really want you to be able to enjoy a highly simplified house in this new year and so this video was gonna be much longer than my normal videos but I did put in place markers so you can skip through to the different areas that might be most pertinent to you and your situation right now and my hope is that this will help you to look at your stuff completely differently okay so I want to go through this video in order of importance the areas that I think make the biggest difference in how your house feels and consequently how you feel in your house so we're going to start in the kitchen and then we're going to move on to clothing next so here's the new mindset for the kitchen everything is harder in a cluttered kitchen everything is harder in a cluttered kitchen cooking is harder cleaning is harder staying up on the dishes is harder maybe you want to involve your kids in cooking and cleaning that's harder everything is harder in a cuttered kitchen because we're trying to navigate around stuff that we're not using it's not easy to get to the stuff we use every single day so as we head into the kitchen for another round of decluttering this year remind yourself everything is harder in a cluttered kitchen and that stuff that you're not using is standing in the way of you being able to cook and clean really easily you hear it said that the kitchen is the heart of your home but I do believe that having your kitchen simplified and decluttered changes everything about your house and how you feel about yourself so now I'm going to share a few of my favorite tactics and ideas for decluttering your kitchen I'm going to tell you three things you need to get and I really need you to actually get them if you are serious about decluttering your kitchen in 15 minutes so you need two cardboard boxes and a black trash bag we are all out of black I can't believe it I don't normally let that happen like Peter Walsh says if you don't have a lot of time to declutter the way that you counteract that is to have a predetermined categories so I'm going to show you how we're going to label these boxes and how that makes all the difference in what we're going to do today it's going to take all of the emotion out of it it's wonderful but I know we all have limited time or energy or we just worry about making mistakes or we get hard on ourselves we go to declutter the kitchen so we want someone to guide us through it right let's do that today I totally forgot to tell you the other good news about this method too you can do it when your kitchen is a mess isn't that awesome because often we feel like oh I should get my kitchen cleaned up before I try to declutter it uh nope you can do it when it's a mess in fact the mess is going to give us Clues to about what to declutter we want to label these two boxes if they're different sizes we're going to label the bigger one for donations and the smaller one for time will tell time really does tell us if we should be keeping things or not and then we have our garbage bag let me show you how this works how we're going to use our clutter and our mess in our kitchen to give us clues about what to declutter to get us started and to get the ball rolling let's start over here by our coffee maker okay so often wire Kitchen gets cluttered and stuff stays out or it's not easy to tidy up at the end of the day is because it has to be just as easy to put stuff away as it is to leave it out if you chronically have things sitting out like say by your coffee maker that's a good sign that there's not an easy spot to put it away now if I take like this box of k-pods and I'm like okay I I need to find an easier spot for this what I want to do is say this is where I use it so ideally it needs to be right here again it has to be as easy to put this away as it is to leave it out so logic would tell us it needs to be somewhere right here okay so I'm looking at my spaces I'm not going to put it up there this cabinet down here would be the next logical spot to put it so now I'm using this to guide me because I need to find a spot for this and not only find a spot but it has to only be like half to two thirds full because that's what makes it easy to put away if I have to move stuff around again easier to leave it out not easy to put it away so we need to free up a lot of room okay so I'm looking in here and then I can say like oh let's look at this miscellaneous been here that is taking up precious real estate what is this I don't even know this is in a box oh yeah so this is something I just took when I from my grandma when I was leaving her house I didn't actually want it that is for sure going into the donation box this I use this do you know how long I've been keeping this thing I'm going to use it I don't know like I still have an attachment to it I'm not sure if I'm gonna miss it so I'm gonna put this in my time will tell bin so what we're doing is we have our predetermined categories of time will tell donate and trash and so if I hold something up and I have not used it in the past year that means that it's not serving the current season that I'm in I feel like I get kind of intense with this I'll slow down a little bit because I want you to have a decluttered kitchen because it is so awesome I'm gonna hold something up if I have not used it in the past year that is my signal it does not matter if I spent money on it I thought I was gonna use it it means that it's not serving me in my current season of life there's nothing wrong with me there's nothing wrong with the immersion blender it's just a clear sign that it doesn't fit in my kitchen for this season and that is totally fine so this it either is going to go in the donation or the time will tell Vin again we're using these predetermined categories so I might be like I just don't know if I can donate it yet okay time will tell Ben no worries I'm not getting hung up on anything in here these other couple things in here I I think I'm gonna just throw these into the time will tell too and then do you know what's so cool about that once I empty out the gross stuff in the bottom wow now I can put my toaster into this handy little bin I'll have to relabel it toaster and now it is so much easier to pull the toaster in and out because it's in a bin and does that fit like perfectly awesome my toaster functions better now and you can't really see it in here but I have freed up a very nice very easy to get to spot to put my k-pods now so this is what we're needing to do is to prioritize our current season and how we're cooking and using our kitchen and that's how we're setting it up it doesn't matter what we got for our wedding what we did three years ago what season are we in now and that is how we are decluttering our kitchen okay uh let's find a couple other examples all right next I want to talk about free pass day with the garbage bag I think I have a video on the guilt-free timer but basically can we just give ourselves permission for one day to throw stuff away even if potentially it could be donated or someone else could use it or whatever the case may be because the truth is is me getting one full garbage bag of extra stuff out of my kitchen is gonna drastically change how my kitchen feels on the other hand one bag of trash of stuff that could potentially have been donated or recycled or whatever shared with a co-worker I don't know it's not going to make a Major Impact on the environment I don't want to be wasteful I don't want to be careless I want to leave the Earth in a better place for our kids right like all of that but today right here now I need breathing room I need to prioritize my mental health how my kitchen feels and functions my relationship with my family over a bag of garbage here's what I mean as you're looking at again and why it's okay to do this in a messy kitchen as we're looking at maybe the stuff on our counter I'm going to see things like this we don't need this cup anymore and there's some other garbage on here in the past I'd be like okay I should wash this I should put it through the dishwasher and then I'll donate it what's the problem it comes through the dishwasher and it doesn't get donated and for me right now in a busy season any little thing like this can totally derail my decluttering if I put it in the garbage bag right now it's done I walk it out to the garbage can it is done however if I put this off and say oh I need to wash it and donate it it's not done it's still floating out there it's not done I want you to be done with your kitchen in 15 minutes or at least have it way better again we're talking about this idea of things need to be just as easy to put away as they are to leave out so I'm looking at like okay why are the bread and tortilla chips always sitting out when there's a drawer right here that they're supposed to go into great question let's take a look at the drawer maybe there's too much stuff in there okay well this tour doesn't actually look that bad so maybe my family was just being lazy and not putting stuff away but I do see a few things in here like these things came with our NutriBullet I've never used these once I have used this lid so I'm going to keep this again I'm not even going to donate these I'm going to throw them in the garbage and that is totally okay and then I'm gonna look through anything else um I think those ones are okay okay that's fine yeah everything else just didn't get put away and that happens too okay I want to show you um my four burner trick for simplifying pots and pans next but just so you know I like literally told the kids last night in this morning don't clean up the kitchen like I'm gonna do a video in there so it is super easy to stay on top of our kitchen now that we have it simplified even though there are six of us using it all day we're all home all the time and so I don't have amazing kids and spouse that just automatically do everything I have a kitchen with very low inventory and that's how I keep up on it and that's how they keep up on it too okay let's talk about pots and pans what I recommend doing is using your stove as a template to declutter your pots and pans and so what we're gonna do is we are gonna take our four favorite pots and pans that we use all the time and we're gonna put them on the burners and then we're gonna have one extra so what I'm basically doing is encouraging you you to simplify down to just five pots or pans and I know many are gonna be like that is absurd like but I really want to encourage you to try it because um I've done this with many others now and 99 of the time it's like the response is wow that's actually all we need but the beautiful part is that then you don't have dishes stacked up by the sink you don't have tons of dirty pots and pans on here and your cabinet are covered wherever you keep your pots and pans is so much easier to take stuff in and out of I don't expect you to like believe me right away until you've had a time to try this a little bit so use your time will tell bin and put any extras into there if you don't have the confidence yet to declutter them and just try it out and I really think it's going to work well for you too and it's okay to put dirty pots and pans on the stove like if they're like I'm seeing one over by the sink right now that we use totally okay we're just using it as placeholders to see what we need [Music] foreign and I don't even use the fifth one like four two frying pans a smaller pot and a bigger pot they all have lids too it's all we need all six of us home all the time it's seriously all that we need all right so uh we got the pots and pans decluttered we're giving our surfaces cleared off looking for clues for that we're okay just throwing stuff away today and now let's talk about a sign that you might have too many dishes so if you ever end up with dishes stacked up next to the sink it might just be a sign that you have too many so for us we have one place setting per person in our household not a lot of mugs and cups because I wasn't good at staying on top of the dishes so if we have a lower inventory of dishes they have to get washed every day or we don't have dishes tomorrow and for me that works so well so what I want to encourage you today is that if this has been a problem for you it happens to a lot of us then we have two options we can get in the habit of running the dishwasher every night but again I was never successful at that or we can just limit our dishes and so this we want to wash them first if there's any you can clearly throw away go ahead and toss those but then let's run them through the dishwasher and take out duplicates extras you know the water bottles the cups that we get at random places that just creep in all this stuff that wasn't intentionally brought into our kitchen let's go ahead and either donate it or put it in the time will tell bin and your kitchen is going to feel so much better and you're never going to have big stacks of dishes next to the sink again that is the best feeling okay let's talk about kitchen appliances because this can free up massive real estate and again make it so easy to put away Pantry items and grocery items and that type of stuff that we actually use every single day so we're really gonna lean on our rules now because I know the guilt that Creeps in I'm gonna look at each Appliance have I used it in the past year if not there is no exception if not it is going into one of my three predetermined categories so I'm gonna hold it up I'm gonna say I have not used this in the past year that means it has to go in the donation time will tell or garbage so which one it's just which one am I going to put it in um okay I'll I'm still not 100 sure I'm gonna put it in the time will tell bin on to the next one have I used this in the last year no okay you know what I don't I I could sell it on Marketplace I don't have time to sell stuff on Marketplace I'm gonna donate it and hope that I'm just planting super great seeds I hope someone else is blessed by it I hope they're excited when they see it at the thrift store I am just going to donate it because I'm not wasting any more of my precious energy and bandwidth on inanimate objects on stuff my priority right now is my peace of mind and my family's Peace of Mind see I'm getting like worked up again I know how much this stuff like hangs us up right and how it can make us feel not good about herself and feel like we've been wasteful or impulsive or whatever we all do it it's totally fine take your kitchen back though because it's gonna feel so good and you're never gonna have to be taunted by the dumb thing you bought again if you just get rid of it today all right so one more area I want to look at the what the clues are telling me I bought these groceries yesterday and they have not gotten put away which usually means that our pantry cabinet over here is getting a little bit full so what I want to do is look through quick and see if I have acquired any random groceries That We're Not Gonna use because it's still I'm not better now but it still happens every once in a while like I've even seen this right here I really thought I was going to use that for a recipe um and I haven't so right now the season we're in I'm just gonna put this on our extra grocery shelves in the basement because it would be more of a thing like if if we ran out of all of our food I would we would eat this so I'm gonna throw it down there uh because it could it's still perfectly fine and this was this is a little bit expensive but I'm gonna look and see if there's any other like random things that either can just get donated get out of here because I need to have space in here to move stuff around for it to function well or if there's anything else I can just move down to the basement that's why we keep our extra emergency storage in the basement because it has to function well up here or this is what happens right stuff doesn't get put away and remember it's completely normal to declutter your kitchen in layers we often talk about the onion method when it comes to decluttering where we make a pass-through it feels better we like how it's feeling and then we go back and make another pass so we build up our decluttering muscles we gain confidence in ourselves as we go so it's okay if you don't completely declutter it in one pass in fact it's actually encouraged to do it in multiple layers I just realized we can't be done yet we better talk about food storage containers real quick okay so here is a fast way to go through your food storage containers match up the lid with the bottom again if there's any you don't want throw it in the recycling or Garbage match up the lids so that they're on it set the space where you keep it for us it's like the third shelf in this cabinet put as many as fit in there if you have any other extras that are really nice put them in your time will tell bin put the rest in the garbage or Recycling and move on with life okay so there's a kind of a lot in this so I want to make a printable and I'll put a link down below if you want to grab that and just tap a little bit of like a written guide as you go through your kitchen but again I think the biggest thing I want to encourage you is to set up your kitchen for your current season of Life how are you cooking and using your kitchen right now and if there's things that you've used in Seasons past then let's either pack it away and move it out of our kitchen for now or be willing to donate it and let it go trusting that as we continue to promote peace and our own mental health inside of our house that if that season comes back around you'll be able to get the stuff again too okay so next we're going to move on to clothing this can be a little tricky but I have a good method it starts by making our bed I'll show you what I mean okay so here's our new mindset around clothing you're wasting too much time and energy getting dressed in the morning and feeling bad about yourself in the process so for many of us we have tons of clothes and nothing to wear right can you relate to that at all so what I want to challenge you with with this new year is to try a uniform or a highly simplified wardrobe and so we got to visit with Courtney from Project 333 and what she proposes is that you have 33 items in a three month wardrobe for so for three months you wear 33 pieces and this includes tops bottoms shoes jewelry it's it's pretty much everything chances are even if your closet is stuffed full of clothes right now you're doing the challenge already you're probably wearing a very small selection of clothes I couldn't believe once I've really simplified my wardrobe and my whole thing was like I am only going to have things in my closet that are an option for today that fit right now and that I feel good in and it was a very very small amount of clothing when I when that was my criteria for simplifying but I couldn't believe how once I cleared that extra stuff out how much better I felt about myself I did not realize how much that stuff was mocking me I mean like you used to be able to fit into this now you don't like you said you spent money on it I couldn't believe that and how I feel so much more positively about myself and my clothing now that that stuff is gone and everything fits it is I mean it is such a gift that we give to ourselves and it does it's totally irrelevant to what size you are right now it's saying that right now I'm gonna have 33 pieces that I feel good in yeah I mean I think there's this inner monologue for some of us that goes something like I have to fit into all of my clothes like it's my job to fit into my clothes and so if something's a little tight that's a reflection on me in a in a bad way and I reject that completely I mean I think it's our closed job to fit us yeah so if there's something that doesn't fit exchange it or replace it for something that does instead of I'm just going to hold on to this for another couple of years until I can fit into this while we're like telling ourselves that we're trying to fit into we're spending so much energy trying to fit into our clothes like what aren't we doing in the meantime yeah and what could we be doing that's more positive for ourselves than I have to I must fit into these jeans or whatever yeah and I know uh similarly to when I've talked about my uniform there's always a lot of pushback of like oh how could I possibly or I'm really into fashion but here's what I want to challenge you with will you try this this year because it is radically changed not only how quickly I can get dressed in the morning but how I feel about myself so there's a really easy way that we can do this whether you want to create a uniform or do Courtney's challenge of having 33 items and it starts with making your bed so what I want to encourage you to do is make your bed because this is where we're going to build out our wardrobe so I actually like to see what it is that my wardrobe is going to be made up of it's really helpful for me to actually lay out the pieces now the other benefit of this is that it's a favorite's first approach so as I'm building out my wardrobe on the bed I'm choosing my favorite pieces the pieces that I feel the best in what I want to challenge you is to not put anything on the bed that you don't feel good in but here's what I'll tell you you deserve to have a small wardrobe of clothes that fit and that you feel good in I don't actually give a crap what size you are right now no matter what size you are I am we all deserve to have a small wardrobe of clothes that fit and that we feel good in and that's how we can get dressed really quickly in the morning what I found for myself is that if when I open my wardrobe doors in the morning if everything is an option for something that I have to wear today it is very easy to get dressed and and I don't get down on myself about not fitting into that other stuff that's hanging there or about the money that I spent on the things that I still haven't worn yet so when I open my closet doors I want everything to be an option okay so if numbers are helpful to you here's my current wardrobe so I have four pairs of jeans so I'm wearing a pair and then I have three one are like dark and nicer and then the rest are a little bit more casual I have two pairs of leggings and I wear these for both like I'll wear it with a long sweater or also just with the sweatshirts I've talked about before I had to like up my game right in my casual around the house where so I have five sweatshirts I'm missing I think one's in the laundry um so I have five no I'm wearing it it's this one I have five but kind of more casual just like around the house the tops oh my goodness I don't I don't really have like traditional pajamas but this is the stuff I just kind of like wear for pajama-ish and then I have five sweaters one is in the wash I do know that so I have five sweaters okay so I got my simplified wardrobe it's laid out on the bed and I moved it to the back of the bed now what do I do with everything else that's left right and so this is where we're gonna sort it into our three categories so we have our time will tell band donations and garbage so you're gonna come across a lot of things like this like I got this sweatshirt at the beginning of the season and I thought the color was good and it's kind of a style I like I don't love it so when I'm building out my wardrobe trying to have limited pieces it didn't really make the cut for does it fit well and do I feel good in it so this is the perfect type of item I'm gonna put in the time will tell bin and so I'm gonna test it out to see if I miss it now I might hold up this sweatshirt and be like I just I really don't like this I I don't wear it a lot if I know where my other pieces are I'm more likely to grab for those so this I'm just gonna put into the donation box this shirt is out of season right now and so I don't need it in my closet if you have limited space like cluttering it up but I do want to pull it out in the spring so that I'm going to put in the time will tell bin as well because that's what I'm gonna pull from when I reset this when the weather gets a little bit nicer and then I'm just going to go through this other stuff too and say okay that can go in donations that I don't know so I'm gonna put in the time will tell bin and so then we just hang on to this time we'll tell Ben to see if we end up wanting to pull everything out and so that's why this is a very safe process to test out having a uniform or a highly simplified wardrobe because you don't actually have to get rid of anything yet but I do like what Courtney says how she dealt with this over time so you you just set aside the extra clothes that you didn't put into your 33 items and so let's say we get further down the road Road we're really enjoying having this limited wardrobe now what do we do with the extras especially I mean maybe there are some high quality pieces that we would like to fit into again did you keep any of the extra stuff or do you just let it all go what was your approach to that so my this is where I brought back my kind of slow and steady approach and I decided at the end or beginning of each season I would go back to the stuff take out the things I wanted to rotate in take other stuff out that wasn't going to work for That season and then assess what was there now after the first three months there were some things that were so obvious I would never wear again or use again a lot of like chunky jewelry like I wanted a necklace to match every sweater I had that didn't resonate with me at all anymore so those were really easy to say I'm just gonna donate those and then after every season there would be an invitation to let go of even more and I think it probably took me a little over two years before it was all gone and so now I have my 33 items and a small like Rubbermaid container where everything lives yeah that's not in that current collection I love that because I think there is still so much uncertainty am I going back to work am I going to be working from home forever will I lose the extra weight that I've gained and so I think that's great to be able to set it aside for a little bit detach ourselves from it a little bit in some of the emotions that are associated and then just to be able to test this out there are going to be times that you don't fit back into things or that you might fit back into things but again not making that a primary focus I think is really healthy and if you're in a place where you just really need to streamline your clothing and getting dressed I highly recommend creating a uniform so in the past my uniform was a black top and jeans when we were selling selling real estate my uniform was a blouse and black dress pants and more recently my uniform has become again if I'm like going out in public my uniform is a sweater and jeans so again it might not be a traditional uniform like I'm not wearing a black munic T-shirt every single day right but everything fits I feel good in it it's just very standard what it is I'm gonna put on I have five that I choose from I pick one out I put it on and and I go about my day it uses so little energy or bandwidth and I don't start out the day feeling bad about myself which is such a big win and then here's one final tip that I think is really good make sure to have a donation box or bin in every single Clothing Closet in your house and so if you put something on and get dressed for the day and maybe you make it out the door and wear it all day maybe you just put it on and take it back off but if it does not fit if you don't love it if you don't feel good in if you're having to adjust it just throw it directly into the donation box within your own closet but I love what Cass says to also have these in your children's bedrooms because what happens they grow out of something they send it through the laundry and even though it's already clean right they put it on realize it's too small put it in the laundry hamper we wash it we put it back again and then the cycle continues right and so I want to have a space in their bedrooms where they can put stuff that doesn't fit that they don't like that might be stained and from there I will sort it out and decide what can be donated what can be sold what needs to be tossed their only responsibility is to make sure it gets into the bin and I will take it from there and that makes this whole process of keeping their clothing simplified really easy too all right now that we are dressed for the day let's head into the bathroom okay so this is literally the stuff that I was just using to get ready before we started visiting and the mindset shift for the bathroom is that it has to be just as easy to put stuff away as it is to leave it out and what this means is that most of our cabinets and drawers are only a third to half full and that's what makes it so easy to put stuff away this seems like a no-brainer but it's amazing how the Clutter Creeps in so I'm gonna use this drawer as an example so do you see how easy it is to get to the things I use every single day but what do most of us do um let me see here we tend to do something like this and then we wonder why it's so hard to keep this clean but also why it's kind of a pain in the butt to get ready in the morning right so shape your space promote the things you use all the time and clear out all the extra stuff you're not actually using it anyways and I think what's always interesting to me too I talked about this a little bit I have a draw a video called like stuff to draw theory that when the inventory creeps up in any of our drawers or cabinets that it's almost like instinctively we don't put stuff away then like stuff would just sit out on the vanity or on the floor instead of getting put away and it's because it's just a little bit too hard to put that stuff away and so even now as I'm just kind of making a pass through these drawers and everything I can already feel like oh it's me so easy to put stuff away again now because they're going to be decluttered and there's more room and so anytime the inventory starts to creep up that's when these spaces aren't getting picked up and and put back together on a daily basis okay so I have the top drawer looking a whole lot better and now I'm going to move on down to the bottom drawer and again this like decluttering is only taking I don't know a few minutes because we've done the heavy lifting in the past and this is just more like maintenance decluttering it's it's actually pretty quick and easy it doesn't feel painful I mean don't get me wrong there's always things that I'm throwing away I'm like why did we buy that there right like um like we're always gonna have that but I know now like just get rid of it keeping it's not gonna put the money back in my pocket it's not gonna make me someday use it or Tom someday use it so just get rid of it now and not have to worry about it right okay we have like double the space in here now and so now I know it's been really easy to just wipe this out but I also I had gotten just like some Epsom salt when I take a bath but I didn't have a place for it now it's gonna really easily fit in here so that's what I was talking about with our organization recognizing is there anything like new or different in this space that I haven't accounted for and so now I easily have a place for that and it is not on the floor next to the vanity anymore so that was a really easy way to make more room all right okay so two other things that are really helpful in the bathroom one is to know yourself are you the type to use step up we got a subscription for deodorant and I don't like the smell of it but it was kind of expensive it actually came multiple times because I didn't get canceled in time and so I had a bunch of these but I decided that I just couldn't get past the smell so I wasn't willing to use it up so anything that was unopened I ended up donating but there's been some other hair products and different things that I will use them up even though I don't love them so you need to know yourself are you willing to use something up or do you just need to let it go just sticking it in the back of the closet to go to expire and to never get used isn't a good solution so decide are you gonna use it up or pass it on I also recommend having a small time will tell bin for the bathroom so this is kind of a nice size because it fits in the back of this cabinet here and so if you're having a hard time partying with things especially things you spent a lot of money on using a small bin like this can be be really helpful I also use this now to keep extras of things so that they're not filling up the drawers because again it's not easy to put stuff away if the drawers are full and now if I need something I always look in here first before I go and buy it and we could get frustrated and say why doesn't all the medicine fit in the medicine drawer or container or we could say I'm just going to simplify down to what comfortably fits inside and when we do this we acknowledge the limits of our own unique personal space and so what do I mean all of the cabinets drawers Cupboards in our home are only about halfway full if that and what this does is it allows us to move stuff around easily to see what's in there to take stuff out and put it back away without having to juggle things around so if you want your home to be easy to tidy and easy to pick up make sure your cabinets are not over full so it's just as easy to put stuff away as it is to leave it out okay now we're gonna move into another room that gets a ton of use and that is the laundry room and so here we need to remember that clutter attracts clutter and even something like a bunch of laundry piled up can feel like clutter and these spaces start to get out of control especially if you have a laundry space that doubles as a mud room or you know it's in that location between the garage and the house something like that if you have any kind of clutter in there it is just a matter of time before other stuff is just getting piled up and isn't put away so I want to encourage you to highly streamline your laundry room whether you have a full laundry room or just a laundry closet only have the essentials there and it makes such a big difference I am actually very proud of this space because Tom and I gave it like a mini makeover uh last summer and it has actually been uh so easy to maintain and to take care of however since we remodeled this bathroom that's when a bunch of stuff ended up in there and it is so true clutter attracts clutter and as soon as there was like construction stuff piled on the floor it was like the rest of it just got out of whack let's talk about some of the stuff that I am decluttering from here and then I'll give you a quick update on like the bin system and what we put in place and how I feel about it so I have had this bag it's returns it was two T-shirts that I bought from Tom from Old Navy in the past I thought he liked the t-shirts there but these ones didn't fit and the problem was I bought them at an outlet and you can't just return stuff from Outlets everywhere and so they have been sitting there oh it was before Christmas that I got them but I don't ever go back to that area where that outlet was and so it was ten dollars so ten dollars worth of shirts there and I have to reconcile with myself now is it worth it to keep every time I see it I'm like oh I gotta I have to return that right is it worth it to continue to have that and when would I possibly do that Dana from a slob comes clean she'll say okay if you come across something that needs to be returned fixed do you want to sell it on Marketplace list it right now like here today or this week like when would I go that direction this week and I'm not and so I what I want to do now well I don't want to what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to donate those two shirts because to me it's not worth it anymore um I also have this rug and this was in front of the vanity when we had our old flooring in because it was linoleum and it didn't I didn't really like it so much so we put a rug um just to make it feel a little more current in here but I actually hate throw rugs scatter rugs any kind of rugs like this because you have to vacuum them they get kicked around and all that so I want to get rid of this rug as well because I don't want to put it in another spot in our house and I'm not going to keep it for someday there's also some random it's a strap to something I know we don't need it so that's gonna go but here we're bumping up against this idea of donating or getting rid of perfectly good things right those t-shirts are perfectly good that rug is perfectly good and in the past I think many of us were raised I might be similar to you that the way we assessed the value of something is what we we paid for it it does not matter if it's currently serving my needs if it fit my needs in the past like the rug and now it's not anymore that I have to maintain it that I have to care for it that I have to move it around that doesn't matter the only way we most of us have been taught to judge value is the price take on what we paid not even what it's currently worth and so this is this has been a huge mental shift for me to realize that there is a bigger cost than just what we paid that there is a cost to maintaining it and moving it around and storing it and protecting it and not letting anything happen to it every membrane that we have it that cost is significant as well and like I said the reason I we had done such a good job of keeping this laundry room up and not being a mess like it was so cool people could come in and use this bathroom and I'm like I can have the door open to the laundry room because it's not trashed like it used to be in the past like I've actually been very proud of myself in this simple system that we put in place and don't get me wrong I I feel very fortunate to have a dedicated laundry room I know many don't and so this is a luxury even though our house is small um but I've been very proud of it because the system works well and um like it's it normally on any other day if you would have stopped by before we did the flooring in here it was put together and picked up and so what happened like I said Tom left stuff in there and then the rug up kicked on the floor in there and then this bag was on top of the dryer and then it's it's like it became okay for everyone else to leave you know the bleach on top of the dryer and other pairs of socks and and other things because there was already something else out of place there and so that is a cost so that bag sitting on top of the dryer has cost us in being able to keep our house tidy and peaceful and clean and I don't know if it's the current season we're all in but I am much more aware of the impact of my surroundings now and we just have to keep our home picked up and tidied up in order for it not to feel like everything is chaotic and out of control around us and so I'm so much more aware so that's where these types of things feel even more costly more so than ever before having this extra inventory and stuff to keep track of it just feels so costly right now so like I said I'm gonna part with this stuff um I still don't like waste my wasting money please don't get me like I like I hate wasting enough money but for my own peace of mind and for the sake of our home right now I'm gonna let that stuff go so that it is just so much easier to keep up all right so we got the laundry room uh decluttered and pulled back together and so now let's head over to the kids bookshelves and School area I want to talk through some things kids stuff art projects that kind of stuff and we're going to declutter together over there I'm gonna have them help and then we'll head into the master bedroom we have the crew together we are going to declutter these shelves and we recognize because this area isn't so easy to tidy anymore that it needs some more decluttering and so we haven't gone through a lot of these bins in quite a while so we're going to go through those go through any other random stuff that's on here we have a garbage bag we'll bring stuff to the recycling and just kind of see what it is that we find are you guys ready to go okay so I just kind of see my role as a guide during this process right there's kind of three different categories of stuff we're coming across there's stuff that just needs to be re-homed there was like some board games and a few homeschooling books that didn't belong in this area so getting those back to where they go there's garbage right there's just started art projects to papers that kind of stuff um as we come across art projects this is something Corbin made at Co-op we ask okay is it special enough to go in your memory bin or not necessarily and so he said not necessarily and put it into the garbage bag and what's nice is as we do this more and more with our kids then it's um it's not a big deal anymore and then as far as like the Little Treasures that they have these bins down here are where um Gage gets to keep that kind of stuff so he can put anything in here that he wants to it just has to fit in here and so again totally using the container concept which is really works really well with kids and and I know sometimes some parents will say like my kids are super attached to stuff and that's understandable but again these are skills that they're going to take with them through the rest of their life is how I look at it so I really want to work with them to figure out what works with them and so for us just having a container where they can keep their super special stuff works really well we also have their like homeschool containers on here where their daily work goes and the problem with any kind of container is things that will hold things hold things right and so these containers get like just stuff put in and put in and unless we do take a few minutes every once in a while to go back through it and declutter it then they can accumulate too much stuff and then this whole area doesn't function well so we would made a quick pass through those bins as well and ultimately came up with a bag of garbage a few homeschool books to donate again I'm realizing with homeschooling stuff I know the question comes up like how do you keep stuff like to use next year with other kids there are only so many hours in the day and I'm realizing that it's very easy to accumulate way more homeschooling materials than we could ever possibly use and I know that applies to like hobby things and craft things and and that kind of stuff as well and so I only hang on to a resource again I'm still fairly new at this right but a book or resource those two of you who collect books too um if I know for sure we are going to use it again otherwise I'd rather pass it on and let someone else make use of it not let it rot away on our bookshelves right so uh that was only um eight minutes worth of work but this looks better more more importantly though it feels better like it feels so much better now just having it look nicer more put together and easier to keep this area tidy now that it's decluttered again and we've cleaned out the organization and let me assure you that this process gets easier the more that you do it so if in the beginning it feels a little bit difficult people aren't super Cooperative keep doing it because like I said I think it's so important that we teach our kids these skills as well all right let's head back in here quick to talk about bedrooms so the mindset shift for your bedroom is that it should be a peaceful Retreat it should be a place at the end of the day where no matter what happened during the day where we can rest and we can recharge and not feel stressed out we've talked about this before but piles and clutter that actually releases stress hormones in our body and so if we have lots of stuff in our bedroom it's actually not very restful right so I know I joke a lot of times about like getting rid of flat surfaces but and like we don't have nightstands or anything in here but it's it's so true that all of the flat surfaces in our home collect clutter so in here it's books and it's not uncommon for a stack of books to pile up next to my chair most of the books I read are actually on my Kindle app now but I do still if it's too expensive to buy the book on the Kindle and you can get it for really cheap like second hand I'll do that I try to use the library when whenever possible but it still just happens that books are given to us or I pick them up places so um I'm going to make a quick pass through the books that are here and I know like this is a this was like a journal that went along with a book and I really liked the book so I thought the journal would be good um but then I don't I'm like I'm not using it it's been sitting here forever so I'm gonna donate this I've never even written in it so I'm gonna donate this in Hope someone is very excited um to get it at the thrift store this was a book that was helpful for a season I got a couple good ideas from it but you know have you ever noticed a lot of books have like one or two really good ideas in it and you kind of get the gist of it and then you don't really go back and visit anymore I don't know maybe some people do go back and revisit the books I don't like I know that about myself so even though I really liked the ideas in here I don't find myself grabbing for it to revisit it so I'm gonna let this one go as well I've seen with this one like I really liked it at the time but I picked it up to revisit it I'm like meh I like fresh stuff sometimes so um I'm gonna let that one go this one I really like but um I don't need it down here right now so I'm just gonna store this upstairs this one I'm currently reading so I'll keep that um down here I think both of these I'll just put upstairs and so again I just I don't want the inventory here to be so much that it feels stressful or do you notice this with like books and magazines the fomo right the fear of missing out like oh I heard that book was so good and I have to read it or I'm not going to get like the good ideas out of it right and it's like it's actually stressful like it actually feels stressful to us and we don't realize it and like this is our bedroom right this should be a peaceful and calm and relaxing place to be and so um so I really do try to keep just the stuff that we are currently using out here and then either donate the rest and pass it on so someone else can actually use it or store it in a different place so it's not cluttering up our bedroom but I did want to touch on real quick um this idea of having less inventory coming in so that we don't have to do so much decluttering and inventory management I've noticed for myself like I really have to steer clear of the dollar store it kind of helps that they're raising the price to a dollar 25 so I don't feel as much impulse to buy there but if I do have to go there I mean there's still a handful of things that I get there I like have a very specific list and I have to be very careful um not to get extra stuff similar with thrift stores even though I like to go there to get stuff for the kids I I steer clear of like the home decor or the adult clothing I'm like no it's like I have a very clear purpose what we're coming here for because I still love a good deal and like I will just grab stuff because I'm like oh it's only four dollars I'm you know I'm just gonna grab it it looks kind of cute and so like I have to be very careful about thrift stores the dollar three dollar spot at Target like I really try to like just move like beeline or right past her or just do pick up so that I'm not tempted to buy extra stuff so I'm definitely very aware of things that are like on sale on clearance a really good deal garage sales thrift stores because I just know how easy it is to to reaccumulate this stuff that we're working so hard to declutter and so this is where I want to give you permission to break up furniture sets to get rid of a dresser that matches the rest of the set to get rid of any furniture you're not using that you inherited that you bought at a garage sale because you loved it at one time but it's not actually serving you anymore and so is there any extra furniture or flat surfaces that you could move out of your bedroom so that it doesn't collect clutter it's easier to keep your your bedroom clean and tidy and it truly is a peaceful place to be uh I mean obviously we've gone pretty far with our bedroom and it's not super big but I love this this is my favorite room in the whole house it is absolutely aware I recharge and I look at the out the window at the bird feeders and just relax at the beginning of the day and the end of the day and it has been so good okay now it can be at this point where we start to feel a little overwhelmed decision fatigue is real so we are making a lot of decisions when we're decluttering and so I think it can be helpful to remind ourselves why this is so important not only for us but the other members of our household so I got to visit with Dr John deloney and here's what he had to say about that do you think if we would be willing to let this stuff go from our house do you think that's going to make a difference on our mental health how we feel so is is it worthwhile to to do this this is very unpopular and it's just the science and we're talking about this before OCD ADHD anxiety all these things have a direct neurological response to chaos in an environment I wish that wasn't the case but it's just true and so when you look over the last 100 years if you just took a graph of stuff accumulation and the mental health statistics you can just lay them on top and they look exactly the same right we're surrounded by so much junk and our brains can't process it I mean put on top of that how much that junk is purchased with a credit card yeah and our brains know we're not we're not safe because we owe this person money and that person it's just too much and so yes I hear it all the time I feel it all the time people start decluttering and start getting ready to get rid of so much stuff and they find peace I'm so anxious anymore I'm sleeping better my kids aren't all wound up all the time yeah yeah okay so we're feeling convicted again why we need to keep decluttering and simplifying so let's move into what can be kind of like the advanced decluttering or a little bit harder areas and it's these cabinets and closets and random catch-all places okay so my hope today I'm going to show you this process of dismantling and going through a catch-all space a scary space there's actually a step-by-step process that we can go through and once you do it in one space it's just rinse and repeat like you just keep doing it on the other areas and even better yet we're gonna do it in five minute chunks so even if you have time limitations energy limitations family limitations it doesn't matter because you can literally work on it at five minutes at a time and I'm gonna show you exactly that today when you're feeling intimidated by a space like I did not want to do this today again thank you for holding me accountable but I I just go into it and I say I'm just gonna sort like with like I'm just sorting like with like and that's exactly what I've been doing here on the floor so again if my space intimidates you you don't have to fix everything about it right now just sort like with like and so we have a very predictable standard steps that we can go through because that's the scary part is when we look at the space and we're like I don't know where to start I don't know what to do with this stuff that's why guys got put here in the first place right that's why stuff gets shoved into cabinets and closets because we don't know what to do with it and so that's where we need like a very specific process so step number one we are just going to group like stuff with like stuff I don't have to get it rid of anything if there's obvious trash throw it in your trash bag if there's obvious donations make sure you have your donation box handy but the the main focus here for this first set of five minutes is just grouping like stuff with like stuff okay so now uh typically in the past now what the problem is is that I have all of these piles now and I've made a bigger mess and so what I'm going to do is deal with the piles that I know what to do with so there's like um some memory bin stuff here I have um a pile of garbage and recyclable some extra school supplies that don't belong in here and on one hand this can be intimidating because you're like Don this is what I've done before I pull everything out and then it gets left like that right we're not going to do that this time that's why we're starting in one specific spot like one cabinet one drawer one shelf of a closet we're not pulling everything out we are making this manageable so I am gonna deal with each of these now even though I'm not fully done with this space I don't want to leave all of these piles so then step number two what we're doing is we are just now looking at the individual piles now they're very small manageable amounts of things and so we're taking the bigger project and we're making it smaller and more manageable the only thing that's actually going to be left here than when I put this stuff away is some of the school supply stuff that I can easily stick back in here and actually have no mess here so even though I'm pulling stuff out and sorting it like by like making piles I'm still gonna deal with each of these piles now even though I'm not fully done some of it will just get put back in for now and it's giving me a much better idea of how we'll organize this and then the other stuff that I want to keep in this cabinet I'm just setting that aside for now because what's what's happening through this process is I'm getting a better idea of what's going to permanently live in here so then I can add in some organization but we're not going to get to that point yet because we want to fully declutter this all right we generally refer to this type of stuff as like catch-all spaces and it can occur anywhere really throughout your house it can be the bedroom floor it can be you know we have these cabinets here shelves uh various cabinets of the kitchen that aren't used very frequently these faces collect all of the random clutter right and they and they can be somewhat tricky and intimidating to declutter so here's our mindset shift in these types of areas if you're not using it now right now today this past week this past past month it is highly unlikely that you are going to use it in the future you've heard me talk about this before but the average American uses only 20 of the items in their household that means the other 80 is being stored for someday for our fantasy self for our ideal self so for some other version of ourselves or some other reality when we have more time and energy right so if you are not using it now it is highly unlikely that you are going to use it in the future so that's the lens that we're looking at this stuff through now but we still need an action plan to break it down and to tackle it step number three we need to acknowledge how much inventory can we actually manage so even now too I'm seeing our old thermostat is in here I think we had kept it to see if we would use it in a different house but the problem with things like this is you have to be able to remember that you have it and even now that I have that organization in place down in the basement if I go and stick this in one of those bins like we're not gonna remember like I had totally forgotten about this and so it's a kindness to ourselves if we come across things that we've forgotten if we'll just let it go because it has no value to us if we can't remember that we have it to use it right so I'm going to donate this so that someone else could make use of it and I will have forgotten about this again by this time tomorrow well much sooner than that but it won't it will never come back to me again right okay so real quick I I want to draw attention to this point if we forget about stuff that we have or we can't easily locate it when we need it it's like it doesn't exist it has absolutely no value so as you're going through these spaces if you find yourself saying like oh wow I had no idea that was here it's a very good idea to Let It Go like I said that thermostat was still perfectly functional but I didn't remember it was there so if we found ourselves in a position where we needed a thermostat we would have just went and bought it because I didn't know that it was there and so again we might be letting go of perfectly good stuff because we simply can't manage it all now again here's it's like no that's something I really do need to remember then we need to find a place for it that we can put it where it's very clearly labeled and we know where days but we just can't make everything that type of priority so again this felt like really intimidating and scary but once you actually start breaking it down it's not actually that bad I also have to be like really realistic with myself now I've come across quite a few workbooks especially for the early years and it's so easy to acquire that kind of stuff so I think I'm gonna let this book go and I'm gonna keep this one and just try and be like realistic because I mean these have all been down here for quite a while without even being used and so really realistic if I'm actually going to use it this year or if I should just let it go and let someone else make use of it all right more paper completely empty notebooks I'll put out the school supplies and then this basket don't I I think we might just donate this because we don't use these so I think we're gonna let that go look another one and then I just have more like extra school supplies in here what we have to do is we have to look at the inventory so much differently than we have in the past we don't say like oh well we could use it no if if there's a could in there it's gone if there's a well someday no it's gone because to get my home to that point where I can clean the whole thing in a couple hours I can't have any random inventory I can't be shuffling stuff around that's why my house was hard in the past right because of all the extra inventory so now we have this uh all sorted out and so actually the stuff that I need to put back in here isn't really that much so I have a huge pile of garbage that I'm just gonna go throw away I have some things to donate so I'm gonna go put those in our our current donation box and um really there's not much else to put away here today then so that actually feels really good see these spaces seem so scary and they're actually not that bad at all all right so what might have hung you up in the past things of like oh but somebody gave this to me you have learned tools and skills to say no unfortunately I can't manage that kind of inventory anymore if I'm not using it right here for this school year or if I don't know beyond a shadow of a doubt that I'm going to use it in the next school year it's gone I can't manage extra inventory because I went through I got rid of all the trash I re-homed stuff that just didn't belong in here now I have a better idea of how I want to organize this face right so we always declutter first and then we can come back and add in organization based on you know if you know your organizing style I think that's always helpful so um like Cass always says stuff stacked up horizontally is not organization and we know that right like even like this stack of books is more neatly stacked and it's still hard to see what's there so it's like that kind of organizer and so I actually got two of them because I want to use one for paper the printers right above here so different kinds of printer printing paper and then also just like handwriting paper and scratch paper and then the other one I actually want to use for workbooks and notebooks because again like I said when they're stacked up like that it's hard to get out what you need and to see everything that you have and I did spend a little bit more on them and got ones that were pretty good quality just because again I feel more confident that that I know this space now and how I want to organize it so I feel okay spending a little bit more money on it but if this were still kind of an experiment I would have just got like a much lighter weight or like one of the cardboard ones and not spend really any money on it because these were like thirty dollars on Amazon but I think like there would I think they will last a really long time it does seem very sturdy so why don't we put this up here and see how it's going to work for this paper that's here I my friend Tiffany said the other day she said I used to get so discouraged when I would think oh I already decluttered this why do I have to declutter it again but she's like as soon as I switched it to saying no I just have to reset this space she's like I didn't get I wasn't so hard on myself I didn't get so down on myself and I was like that is brilliant right all right well I think that's actually going to work really well and then like I said I'm gonna put the other one together and put it straight below here but what I what I tell myself is you know when we first put these cabinets in space I didn't actually know how they were going to function so it's okay that now I need to go back uh do a little bit of decluttering and then put in some organization so yesterday we put this together and I actually had it up there it's really heavy especially once I added all the paper to it so I decided that I thought it might be better to put it on a bottom shelf and then I put the other one together and so I want to put this one next to it and put workbooks and notebooks on it and so there wasn't good organization in here and so now I know what I'm storing in here and I know better how this space functions so now I want to add in a little bit more organization doesn't that look so nice does it look good cards yeah yeah I really like it stuck in organized and then what I want to do is put the workbooks that I'm thinking we're going to use this year but I like that this type of organizer is going to limit my inventory so now I have a container I'm going to respect the container and only keep what comfortably fits in here and like I mentioned I'm willing to now invest in some nicer organizers like these were thirty dollars that seems that's a lot of money to me but I know they will last a very long time and they're good quality and I trust myself now with the type of organization I'm putting in because like I said it's been two years right like I know how I want this space to function for the top shelf again I just don't I don't want it to keep getting piled up by step so this was the school supplies but um I don't actually like keeping the school supplies the extra school supplies in here because um sometimes kids go into it and just keep pulling out extra and extra that we don't actually need so I actually keep the school supplies in the boys's closet upstairs but I do just want to keep something in here so I think I'm going to take the school supplies out of this basket I have a basket upstairs with more school supplies in it and I am going to keep this basket here because I need some kind of filler there otherwise stuff is just going to get set there but I don't necessarily have anything that I need to put in it right now it just feels very strange it's in this one still oh yeah and this was just stuff to get put away that doesn't need to go in there either so this is kind of where where we're landing at and I just have a few more things here to put away and also I tend if I have empty baskets or bins then I try and donate them um because stuff that holds stuff will hold stuff and they tend to just fill up again with stuff so once I'm I feel pretty good about what I have going on here um and these are pretty low investment then I go ahead and donate them I never want to be wasteful I don't want to get rid of something only to buy it again but my experience has been I get rid of it I don't ever re-buy it again and my house is easy to maintain so it is so win-win right so I know the fear like I I understand it I am Frugal and cheap too I I fully understand it but I just really believe too that your experience is going to be that you don't miss the stuff and you never end up replacing it so there's actually not as much risk involved as you might be thinking so again we decluttered we're getting the organization adjusted and in place we we understand that we just have to keep really low inventory for these spaces to function well and now we're getting to the end and doesn't this look so much better and again it didn't take that much time like these were five minute chunks of time and obviously like I have strong decluttering muscles I'm I'm much more confident now when I declutter but let's say it took an hour right wouldn't that still be so worthwhile and so I just want to encourage you today this weekend what area could you tackle today and just spend five minutes on just five minutes that's that's really what it took and and Dana's been talking a lot lately too she was like don't worry about the next five minutes and the consistency and the five minutes after that just here today right now what could you spend five minutes on and it just it's the getting started okay so now that we got warmed up on these kind of contained catch-all spaces we're gonna move on to the big scary areas and that's our actual storage spaces like attics garages and basements okay so the mindset switch for our storage spaces is that just because it's out of sight does not mean that it's out of mind even though I can close the door to our basement and not notice the stuff that's down here I'm still worrying about it is it getting wet or am I getting into it is it going bad did I forget about it am I using everything up the extra kids clothes and winter gear that I had stored away this stuff is constantly hanging over our head and we've shared that video on the silent to-do list this stuff is sending us messages keep me safe keep me organized don't forget about me use me so that the money wasn't wasted on me there right it is constantly sending us messages whether we're looking at it or not now those same steps that we used upstairs in catch-all spaces we can use those exact same steps down here as well so uh step one I think it's important to have some tools that are going to make this job a whole lot easier so you know me I have bins I have chalk markers and these clip-on chocolate labels that I really like a lot I have a black trash bag black is key a donation box is super handy I don't know that we're going to come across any donations here but as soon as I say that then we will and then I also have some Post-it notes for temporary labeling we're going to talk about grouping like with like and and the categories we're going to use for these but I don't necessarily know right on the onset here because it's not my stuff uh what all the categories are going to be so Post-it notes can be really nice for a temporary categories all right well why don't we just get started and then we can talk through what it is that we're doing okay I'm also gonna time this whole process to see how long it takes because in my head I have built it up to be like a 12 hour ordeal with of just 12 hours of pain and Agony right I don't think now that I'm looking at it again I don't think it's gonna take that long so uh step number one I am labeling the bins that I know that I'm going to need so that I have a spot to sort into so I already know there's some categories here like painting supplies and caulk and um light bulbs that there's a good amount of stuff there that I can put into so that feels good and then um I'm gonna start sorting into those and just looking for obvious trash um another thing to mention is as far as our organizing Styles I'm a ladybug which means I like big broad categories and out of sight Tom's a cricket he likes stuff out of sight but he likes much more detailed categories and so that's not me so I'm just using my organizing style right now Cass will say it cast from clutter rug will say like default to the the broader category if there's multiple people that are working together on it so I'm gonna go big broad categories right now and then from there if Tom wants to break it down into smaller categories he is more than welcome to so don't get me wrong even when I look at a space like this it feels very intimidating and overwhelming it's like oh where do I start um I'm not going to know what to do with any of this stuff and so that's where creating a few categories that we know and then sorting like with like is the easiest place to start because what I'm telling myself is I'm not making any hard decisions right now if I come across something I'm like I don't know um I'm just setting it aside I'm trying to get the bulk of the stuff into these categories that I already have here and just throwing away the trash and relocating stuff that I know has a home elsewhere and so as I was going then I did also decide um to make a category for wiring I'm like oh I think we're going to come across all wiring stuff so I just put it on a Post-It note and then I also have a temporary category for tools because Tom doesn't keep his tools down here they should be up in the garage um but you know how it goes like tools will wind up down here so I might not leave that as a permanent category but it just feels nice to have a spot to put that kind of stuff right now and so again I just use Post-it notes so it's very temporary and easy to change if I want to okay I want to give a six minute update because I can't believe how much better this feels in six minutes so again here are my bins and you can see like the painting one um and the light bulb one is starting to get filled up a little bit the other ones are pretty empty still um but I was able just even to get rid of a lot of garbage and a chair that was in there I don't know maybe it's not coming across in person here it feels so much better and it feels like I've made a lot of progress in just like six minutes like I said and so I'm feeling very energized and motivated to keep going right now because I can actually see progress and I feel like I'm making a difference and I feel like when Tom walks down and sees it sees me like oh wow that looks awesome he will ask me don't get me wrong he will ask if I threw anything away or got rid of anything and I'll very honestly be able to tell him no I didn't I I only got rid of trash otherwise I just put stuff into categories doesn't it look so much better all right why don't we keep going okay so let's just talk through some of the stuff I'm finding I think it's all the same stuff you're finding in your space it is too right um it turns out this black bin has like a bunch of extension cords in it um I feel like Tom would want those so and they'll probably go out to the garage so I'm sending that aside to ask him about I I'm fine with that I'm Gonna Keep I don't again I don't want things to hang me up or to stall out my progress and those types of things in the past would have been like oh well see I don't know what to do with this stuff so I can't possibly tackle an area like this and I'm like no I'll just set it aside I'll ask him what he wants to do if he wants to for us to create a space down here to keep them or if it's something he wants to like roll up and hang up in the garage um I'm also coming across things like all these like user manuals these random baggies with like a few little Parts left in it like so that that's all gonna go and it feels so good it takes kind of stuff for me I am just tossing it so you do what's best for you and your situation here's the thing we're not good like we don't keep um owners manuals like here's one for our water softener because we've found like Tom had to you know place the replace the element in our water heater a little while back we didn't consult the manual he went online and found a YouTube video of how to change it right so for us the season we're in there's nowhere where I could put this where he would know to look for it and then that's how he would get the information and so all of this stuff even this like this little random baggie with stuff was buried in a bin there is no way he remembered that was there now if he did and I or I wasn't sure I could create a spot for this kind of stuff like I was like well I could have a miscellaneous bin or a random parts bin or something and so there there are solutions so if you're like oh I couldn't possibly throw that away that's what I find create a bin for it like it still has to have a home right it just can't float around like this this is stressful when it's the bins of random stuff right and then there's also just like some packaging stuff that I could tell I've gotten wet again our basement gets wet and so that was just very clearly trash that I was throwing away so actually so far it it's been going really well we're at now another like 10 minutes in I can see floor um I can start working on the shelves now like this is actually going way better than I thought that it was gonna was good so I actually am feeling very encouraged right now and so again I know how we build these things up in our head to be so scary and so intimidating but I think I think if we've been hanging out for any amount of time I think you're looking at stuff differently I think you've been building up your decluttering muscles certainly if you're getting to a point to tackle something like this you've built up your decluttering muscles and so something that might have even a year ago completely you know stumped you thrown you off or whatever you have a different skill set now than you did in the past and so I really feel confident for you too that you can tackle areas like this and we have a system in our plan and it doesn't have to be so scary and intimidating okay well um why don't we get uh go closer to the shelf and I'll I don't know we'll see all right see now something now something's totally gonna throw me out there all right but I don't think so all right why don't we keep going so what's so great about grouping like stuff with life stuff is we start to see how much we have like the painting bin is overflowing because we had so much stuff for painting it was just all all over the place so we would just buy it again right and so same with like all the tubes of caulk the reason I knew we needed a category for that was because Tom was like oh hey will you go run in the basement and see if we have some adhesive and I'm like looking through them all I'm like oh my goodness we have 85 of these hands right and they're kind of expensive so if they're all in one place it's very easy to see what we have and to go look there first obviously before we go and buy it again I'm also still coming across some just like really random things and so like I said I could just create a bin of random stuff but there's not that much um so I think what I'm gonna do is actually ask Tom because I kind of just have a feeling this stuff doesn't need to be kept anymore so I'm just gonna make a little pile here and then ask him real quick what it is like if these can be kept so we have this shelf it just about cleared off so I think I'm gonna start moving some bins onto it and then we'll keep going but we're making great progress this feels really good all right let's look at this top shelf for a second I'm seeing there's a ceiling fan up here it's such a bummer we had it put this in when we first moved in the dining room and then realized it was just way too big for that space and then eventually Tom put in recessed lighting which we love and don't actually even miss the ceiling fan but we had spent over a hundred dollars on this beautiful ceiling fan and so at the time it felt very wrong just to get rid of it but what happens it just comes down here sits in storage and no one is making use of it so I'm gonna get all the pieces together put it in a box and donate it because it's still like brand new and once it's gone that's actually going to clear out a ton of space up here okay so I'm really happy with the progress we've made so far but I think it's also important to know our limits so about 10 minutes ago I was feeling really energized and like wow this is going so well like I want to keep going and now I just realize I'm like starting to feel kind of tired and like oh this is getting hard and so decision fatigue is real and so if you kind of get to a point where it's just feeling miserable um it's probably a good idea to take a break and then come back again but the great thing is we've re-familiarized ourselves with everything here we've realized we have the skills to be able to deal with this so it doesn't feel so intimidating to come back and tackle it again in a little bit okay so back at it uh I have a little coffee here ready to go okay so I want to work on this shelf together now I do have my bins here for my categories to sort into so um that helps me I feel like I'm prepared to work on this and then I thought we could just talk through I've been putting putting off this shelf um because there just seems like there's random things I'm not gonna know what to do with so I thought we could talk through some of this stuff together and I'll just show you like what I come up against and what my plan is for it okay so one thing that I have learned to do if I'm gonna bring something down to a storage space for our basement in a box I write on the outside what is in it and I just have that side face forward so that is Health as far as having like mystery boxes but as I say that guess what's right here a box with nothing written on it so um this is polls like door pulls um extra ones from the kitchen I do want to keep these and then these are more oh I did write it on this one okay okay uh drawer pulls so those are more of those so I um I actually want to combine these into one um box so I'm gonna do that but I won't waste our time right now so like this we actually have three of these and this is dried um like mortar thinset not just like mud um so this is not going to come off and I know we have two more that I've already come across so I'm just gonna throw this away and then we have an extra container I'm gonna set aside to see if we need it to organize and if not um I'm just gonna get rid of it I don't like having extra empty containers around because then they just fill back up with stuff this is what I was worried about we got this to do um to like seal our ducks we thought it was always warm in the basement and not upstairs we thought if we could seal them off better but then Tom found a different solution so we have had these they haven't been opened and so our home improvement store you can return stuff um for store credit without the receipt even though it's been a while we've returned stuff after a couple years um and then I also had found a bag of Plumbing fixtures and so we're going to return those as well because um both Tom and I have realized if we just try to like keep this on hand for like another time even like the plumbing stuff he always every time he has a project he just goes to the store and gets the stuff he needs for that specific project so there's no sense in trying to store it and so I'm just going to return this and not have to deal with it anymore and similarly was um this soffit meant I don't remember what wasn't right about it but it wasn't right so I'm just gonna dust off this box and return this as well so that's gonna go this was like extra tile from our bathroom we don't even have this tile in there anymore so I'm gonna throw this away and then here's like another bag of stuff from our home improvement store Flex Seal tape I'm gonna this is gonna get returned as well so again I'm not even gonna try and keep this stuff if it is unopened and we're not using it it is going back to the store even if we would take a little bit of loss from not having a receipt we just forget about it like we can't remember everything that's here so more tile that can get thrown away this this is the worst this is like a little random bin of stuff um and so I'm not I don't feel qualified to go through this so I'm gonna put it in the tool bin for now and it is what it is empty bag um some kind of LED light I'm assuming we were testing it out to see if we wanted it upstairs if that's going to go back to the store and a window insulation kit we have new windows now so it's fun we don't have to use this so this box is a little beat up I think I'll just donate this because I don't know that they would take this back to the store but we don't need that and Oh I thought I'm like light bulbs I haven't been for light bulbs nope empty light bulb box so all right and then this um I'm in a this can go back as well wow this whole shelf was like all returns and I was so scared of it oh man all right tools and oh his case got opened upside down I'm gonna flip that open or flip it over and get everything put back into it and then that's going to go on the lower Shelf and then we are pretty much done this is just a couple pieces of our old flooring so I'm just gonna let that go too I have time to manage that kind of stuff all right wow I feel really good that actually wasn't as bad as I was expecting it to be okay I still have a little bit to deal with on this bottom shelf but I feel like I need to see some progress so I'm going to start at the top and work my way down cleaning off the shelves and putting bins in place and I just feel like I need that win right now and then that's going to give me the motivation to keep going so here we go all right I decided I wanted a matching bin for the plumbing stuff you don't have to have nice bins for this right I I don't know I feel like we've gotten to the point I kind of talked about this when we did the other part of the basement where um now I want everything to look nice and match and all that but we're like eight years in right and I'm I feel a lot more confident about my organizing and decluttering and that we'll be able to maintain this and everything I mean I started out using diaper boxes in the beginning for my organizing so and it worked just fine and it was free so and I do I really like these um clip-on chalk labels I think I'm gonna do one short though which is kind of a bummer all right so we got the top two shelves done let's keep working our way down and we're just about done which feels really good one hour 48 minutes isn't that remarkable um so we were keeping track of how long it would take that's how long it took to get from here to Here and Now what we're trying to decide is should we go all the way and paint the floor what's your vote Corbin likes things done all the way right and to look really good all right so I think we're gonna paint the floor and then we'll also show you everything piled up that we are donating tossing and returning because that made a huge difference in being able to get this space simplified so I have to run into the store I get some more paint then so we'll grab some paint and we'll show you everything that we're getting rid of and so again going through the lens of decluttering or organizing someone else's face something we can do to give them peace of mind is say I'm not going to get rid of anything I will pile it up off to the side and so if you want to go through it or look through it or make sure I'm not getting anything rid of anything you would want it's all here so here are our garbage bags um these are the bags of stuff and things we're going to return this is to donate this is like the extra trim and stuff that I think we can get rid of some other garbage stuff over there so it doesn't look like much in person it feels like a lot more but um that I couldn't believe how much just garbage there was empty packaging scraps from remodeling projects and so just even getting that out can you see this bag is like it is full so I know we have another one started so um just getting rid of that kind of stuff it's amazing how much extra space that it created but I just want to mention too I know we're kind of talking about like you know decluttering other people's stuff and organizing it and all that and I know um I had a really great conversation in our mentorship group last week that it it can be really defeating when we live with people that aren't supportive of our decluttering efforts and you know potentially are even the opposite and criticize what we do and I've just heard from so many recently that it just makes it so hard and so I don't know that I have a lot of great solutions for that other than to say I'm sorry and I wish that um it were easier because like that's just really hard when you when you've decided the value like you believe it'll benefit you and your family and it just feels like you're being criticized or put down for what you're trying to do and so I'm sorry that really stinks and um I know you're definitely not alone and even a video like this can bring up thoughts of like well I wish my you know so and so would let me touch their stuff right even I just want to help even just to organize it right in a really crude way so anyways I'm sorry if that's the boat you're in and I just I do know that it can be really difficult so I'm sorry for that I think we're ready to get this all put back together and look at the the final before and afters that's the best part isn't it and I really want to encourage you that if this stuff has accused you of being lazy and unorganized and buying stuff that you didn't need or buying stuff for a fantasy self it's okay you're not alone no one actually ever taught us how to manage this stuff how much to keep how long to keep it for or even how to organize it we weren't taught these things and the generations before us simply didn't have to deal with as much inventory as we have had to it's never been easier to get stuff right and so we're learning this as we go we're figuring it out but what I really want to encourage you is that if you will highly simplify your storage spaces you are going to be taking a mental load off you are going to be lifting this mental load and you're going to have so much more mental energy and capacity to dedicate to other things that really matter to you so this stuff doesn't matter and you're not gonna miss it okay now if you want to get the kids involved maybe there's some areas that have their stuff let's head back upstairs and I'll show you my tactics for doing that all right I went back and forth if we should talk about toys and it's a video but here's what I'm going to tell you minimalists know that kids don't need toys to thrive marketing Society grandparents tell us we need our kids to have lots of toys to have a happy childhood and the truth is is that if you will research it yourself you are going to find that kids thrive in simplified spaces where they can use their imagination kids don't need toys to be occupied they need their imagination and the awesome part is their imagination goes with them wherever they go that's all I'm gonna say on that there's so much more I can say on that but we're gonna let it go I encourage you to research it on your own so that you have your own convictions around toys I'm just the I'm just the messenger right that I'm just the messenger and I actually recorded a whole hour-long teaching about my thoughts on toys why it's so important to declutter them and how to do so and so I'm going to link to that down below if you are interested in seeing the full version of that I'll put that link so it's too much it's toys are actually a really big topic you really gotta understand why to be able to declutter them successfully I think so that's why I don't want to try and cram it in here I'm just going to link that down below if you find that helpful okay so that's a pass around our entire house shifting our mindsets and how we look at stuff and if your mind is constantly like trying to revert back to safety and keeping stuff and old ways of thinking it's actually just doing its job our brains are wired to take the path of least resistance so again don't get too hard on yourself if any of this still feels hard you get hung up on certain categories of things that is completely natural but the best thing we can do is stick together and keep challenging these thoughts and these mindsets together and even if it takes a little bit longer than you would like you're still going to be so glad that you did and by this time next year your house could look completely differently if you need a little extra support we do have a mentorship group and I'm in there every day we do very specific challenges celebrate with each other we hold each other accountable and so you can find details about that down below as well but overall I'm excited for you as we reset our house after Christmas this year it was probably the easiest yet and so every single day I just continue to be so glad and so grateful for our simplified home there's just so few things that I regret getting rid of but the benefits have been even better than I ever expected so of course I really want that for you too all right I love you I hope you're decluttering efforts go really well and I look forward to seeing you again soon

Channel: The Minimal Mom

Views: 1,610,069

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

Id: 48rXxs5pgME

Length: 86min 49sec (5209 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 03 2023