- Your stuff is making you sick, it's making you unhappy, and
it's making you unmotivated. Your clutter is telling you really negative things about yourself and the worst part is
we don't even know it. We don't realize it. We get that kinda yuck feeling often when we're in our homes, we wonder what's wrong with us? Why can't I just get
stuff done that I need to? And I'm guessing that you don't realize that your clutter and your
extra stuff is to blame for it. Now I don't often come just straight out and say this kind of stuff, because for many years I didn't know. I knew what I had
experienced in my own house. I knew that when we highly
simplified our home, that all of a sudden I felt empowered. I felt capable. I felt creative. I felt like a better mom. I was more at peace. I could come home and
just let my guard down, but I didn't know if that would be the
experience for everyone. Now fast forward many years and I've got to work
with lots of other women. I've got to hear your stories. I see your comments. And what does everyone say? My house feels so much better. I feel motivated. I feel at peace. I feel like I can do the
things every single day that I need to do. So today I'm gonna share with
you three reasons your stuff is making you sick and unhappy, but more importantly
what you can do about it. (lively music) 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. We live in Minnesota just
outside of the Twin Cities and I have been preaching the gospel of minimalism for many years now. But like I said, I knew the benefits for
myself were awesome, so much better than I
could have ever imagined, but I didn't wanna be
so bold as to say that it would be the solution for
every woman and every mom and every family out there,
because I just didn't know. But the truth is now I know. I have heard the stories,
I have seen the results, and I have seen what
other women are doing now that their home is simplified. So the study that's most often referenced in regards to women and
clutter in stress was done in 2010 in California
and they studied a bunch of different households and
they found that women who lived in a cluttered environment, not only started out
their day with stress, but experienced stress throughout the day where those that didn't
consider their environment as cluttered, they were able
to see their stress levels, or their cortisol levels
drop throughout the day. That's what we would normally expect. Another study published in Current Psychology
found a substantial link between procrastination and
clutter of old age groups and frustration with clutter
tended to increase with age. Among older adults, clutter problems were also associated with life dissatisfaction. So again, we're seeing a
correlation between clutter and just being dissatisfied
with our lives. Further research shows
that disorganization and clutter have accumulative
effect on our brains. Our brains like order and constant visual
reminders of disorganization drain our cognitive resources, reducing our ability to focus. But not even just our ability to focus, it affects our relationships as well. In 2011, neuroscience researchers found that clearing clutter from the home and work environment
resulted in a better ability to focus and process information as well as increased productivity. Clutter can make us feel
stressed, anxious and depressed. A chronically cluttered
home environment can lead to a constant low-grade
fight-or-flight response, taxing our resources
designed for survival. This response can trigger physical and psychological changes that affect how we
fight bugs, digest food, as well as leading us at greater
risk for type two diabetes and heart disease. Clutter might also have implications for our relationships
with those around us. A 2016 US study found that
background clutter resulted in participants being less able to correctly interpret
the emotional expressions on the faces of characters in a movie. And surprisingly it doesn't go away when we finally get to bed. People who sleep in cluttered
rooms are more likely to have sleep problems, including difficulty falling to sleep and being disturbed during the night. So if you ever feel like your
house is stressing you out, there's actually a good
reason (laughs) behind that. There's research that supports it. So again, this is helpful though, because it helps us to
promote our own physical and mental wellbeing over the stuff that has taken up residence in our home. So decluttering our house has
never been more important. Okay, so number two, you've
probably heard me talk about the hierarchy of happiness. So this is some fascinating
research that was done in the mid 1900s, but, man,
does it ring true today. We've heard the saying that
stuff doesn't make you happy and why is that? It's because you'll only find stuff in the lower two levels of
this hierarchy of happiness. And that is to meet our basic needs. Do we need stuff? Absolutely. We need a house. We need clothes, we need
food, shelter, we need safety. We need those basic needs to be met so that we can move up
towards other things that actually bring true
happiness, self-actualization, helping other people, becoming
who we are meant to be. When we were younger,
I think we all imagined that we would be becoming an even better version of ourselves. But what happens? I think a couple things happen. Marketing is insane. Marketing tells us over
and over again, no, don't shed your stuff and move up this. Stay right here and get
bigger and better stuff. Get fancier clothes and nicer cars and a bigger house and fill
it with all kinds of stuff and that's what's gonna make you happy. That is what marketing tells us. And it is a lie. It is such a lie. And you can look at research. When people buy a new car, what happens? Okay, so we got our old car and
maybe our happiness is here. We get a new car, we see a spike for a little bit. New car smell. It's fancy, it has a great sound system. It's nice to drive. People think I look cool. So we have this spike in happiness. A week later, what happens? You're right back down where you were. We have all experienced this letdown after getting something new. And so we have to put the
blinders onto the marketing, realize that they are just
trying to sell us something. They don't care. (chuckles) Like they don't give a crap
about our actual happiness. We have to put the blinders on and we have to realize that true happiness comes from moving up. And the other thing that happens is we just fall victim
to our circumstances. Life is hard and crappy things happen to some of you way more than
it seems like than others. And I am so sorry about that. And it can make it feel nearly impossible to continue to move up. But what I would propose is that your stuff is bogging you down. Again, like we were talking about, what clutter does to us, it is very hard to think about
becoming a better version of ourselves to do the hard
work that it sometimes takes to become that version. When we are living in
a cluttered space that is stressing us out,
it makes us feel stuck. We just get caught down here in these bottom two layers
trying to organize our stuff and keep it safe and
not forget we have it, feeling bad about the
money we spent on it. And it makes it difficult to move up. But I will tell you this, since we decluttered our
house and simplified it, I have never felt more capable
of moving up the pyramid. I have this new confidence in myself. I believe that I can do things that in the past I didn't think so. And honestly decluttering my house and following through with that commitment to myself built my confidence, but it also gave me a peaceful environment where I feel like there are possibilities. I feel like when you walk
into my highly simplified and decluttered home, it feels
like there are possibilities. I don't always know how to describe it, except that I feel able, I feel capable. I feel like I can seek out
the resources that I need to get to the next level. And I'm not talking, this can very much still tie
into our spiritual beliefs and like who we believe
that we're meant to be in line with our
spiritual beliefs as well. So I'm not even trying to separate that. I'm trying to say that
we all had these ideas of who we wanted to be and
who we wanted to become. And I don't know why it is, but as I have decluttered
my house and simplified it, I feel like that is possible. And so, again, I don't know why, but other than the fact that
I feel like this stuff bogs us down in these bottom layers,
that we get stuck down there, and we lose our confidence in
ourself to be able to move up. And I truly believe that for you too if you will declutter
and simplify your house, you are gonna be able to become a better version of yourself. It might look different than
what we originally imagined but I think you're gonna find a lot of happiness and
fulfillment in the process. And then number three, I think I was actually standing right here when I originally talked
about the silent to-do list. This is a fascinating concept. It is so cool. It comes from Fumio Sasaki
in his book "Goodbye Things." And what he says is that every single item in our house is sending us a message. It is saying, clean me, pick
me up, organize me, use me. Don't forget about me, protect me. It is so interesting, the
messages that our stuff sends us and often we don't think about it. And what is even worse is that most of the stuff in our home is
sending us negative messages. Negative messages, we're just
going about our business, trying to live our day, and this stuff is saying why
can't you stay on top of me? Why can't you keep up with me? Why can't you keep me organized? Why does this always happen? Most of them are negative messages. Now there are some exceptions. So I'm just noticing
the flowers Tom got me on the (laughs) counter here. And there are things that are
beautiful and that we enjoy. Like I look at these
and I'm just like, wow. Like what a cool creation and
what a cool creator we have. They actually cause me to feel happiness. I look at something like this and I see life and they
just bring happiness to me. I almost sometimes feel sad because I know that they
will die at some point. I won't get to enjoy 'em, but
for now I'm like committed to just fully enjoying
them and appreciating them. So there are some things
and I do think this is where maybe like Marie
Kondo's idea of like, does it spark joy, right? Is it creating happy thoughts in your head or is it feeling really negative? And so for mem, I have had to declutter those
things that feel negative because again, I am deciding
that my mental health and how I feel in my
house is more important than the guilt of stuff
that I've spent money on, the guilt of gifts that
have been given to me, things I've accepted, I
bought at garage sales, that I thought I would use but I didn't actually really need. Those feelings are real
and they don't feel good, but I have to keep reminding
myself, no, I'm worth it and my family's worth it to
have a home that is peaceful, again, where we can come
home and let our guard down. And what's been really interesting to me, I've heard a lot of women
say, around this concept, I feel like my house is screaming at me. Like when you become aware of
this, you just look around, and you look at the stuff and
you're like, oh my goodness, all of this stuff is telling
me things that I need to do. I have to do this and put this away and mail
this back and all this. And as we begin to declutter
and let that stuff go, you realize that you're decluttering the negative messages too. And again, I think as women,
we're more susceptible to this. I know many women have shared
this idea with their husband who didn't really quite understand their decluttering journey. And he was like, "Listen, I don't know if what
this stuff is telling you but here's what it's telling me." And that has been a really helpful concept to help them to kinda understand our world and how this stuff makes us feel. But again, it's not always easy, but if you take nothing
else away from this, you and your mental
health and how you feel in your house is more
important than this stuff. You, a living, breathing human being is more important than this
stuff that has no feelings, no life of its own. You're more important to that. And it stinks to declutter stuff that we spent money on, that
we thought we would use, but again, remember that
that messaging of marketing, they told us it was gonna fix everything. That maybe wasn't your experience. Just because they said that,
doesn't mean it was true. Did this stuff meet the need? Did it make your life easier? And if not, we have to
be willing to let it go, because it is not worth
our time and energy. I watched a video just recently and it was like seven things
millionaires don't buy anymore. And I'm like, "Okay. You know, we all sometimes wonder what would it be like to
be a millionaire, right?" And they don't buy stuff. And he said like, "My time is so valuable that I don't want to be bothered with stuff that I just
have to shuffle around and organize and take care of. They buy experiences, they maybe buy really
nice cars, (laughs) right? But they don't buy the
same stuff and they realize that their time is so
valuable, and yours is too. I don't care if you're not a millionaire, your time is so valuable too. Your mental energy, your capacity, your ability to believe in yourself, to show your kids that you are becoming a better version of yourself, to be the mom and the wife and the friend that you've
always wanted to be. I know, we don't think that
the stuff in the clutter in our house is what is
standing in the way of that. And I'm here to tell you, I think it is. I think it is. I still don't understand why all the time, except for that it steals our energy, it zaps our motivation,
and it robs our time. And we can't do that anymore. We get one life and it goes so
quickly, it goes so quickly. And so we can't do that anymore. And so you are worth more than this stuff. You are worth more than this stuff. Let it go and you are gonna find so much freedom in your house. You're gonna be happier.
You're gonna be motivated. You won't even have to search out videos on how to get motivated anymore, because you'll be motivated. It will be so awesome. And so I just like, I just
want this for you so much. I wish I could come to your
house and help you declutter. I can't do that, but the best I can do is to point you to the 600 plus videos that we have made on decluttering your house and I can help you that way. You know, we have courses and membership groups and that stuff too if you do need a little bit extra help, but just keep consuming this content, keep it in front of you, unfollow people that sell you stuff. Do store pickups so you
don't have to go into stores, stop the flood of stuff coming in, and work on getting the stuff out, and you are gonna feel so
much better about yourself. I just guarantee it, or your
money back, (laughs) right? All right, well, I'm gonna
link to those videos down below that I have mentioned. I think they're great resources and I just want this for you so much. And I will just continue to
shout it from the rooftops. All right, well, I love you. I hope you have a really good day and I'll look forward to
seeing you again soon.
