- Today we're at the
home of Rachel and Brian. They live on a farm in Eastern
Minnesota along with their nine boys. So they have a busy
household, a beautiful home, and it was so much fun to get
to spend some time with them. So today we are focusing on the piles
that accumulate on the master bedroom floor, and we're going to make
some huge progress with them. I think the coolest part
with this declutter, I mean, we got a ton of decluttering
done, we talked about inventory, but at the end of it, what was the most awesome to me was the
mindset shift that Rachel made and her feeling like there wasn't
anything couldn't conquer now. - Alright, you just said
something really good, Rachel. What was your initial thought
when you just looked at this pile? - Kind of like a little bit of
hyperventilating, but not really. Because it's a lot. It's decision,
kind of decision fatigue. - A lot of decisions. You know when you're gonna sit down
here and you have to make like a hundred decisions. - Right. And it feels
a little overwhelming. - Yes. That's a good word for it. - Exactly. - So my new mantra is "Piles aren't
scary." And so if we can start to switch that, because I know
the thought, you're like, ugh. And it's easy to just be like,
I'll do it a different day, right? Especially when it's in the bedroom.
- Exactly. - No one's going to see it, hopefully. - Exactly. -
So piles aren't scary. We just have to know how to break them
down and to just take pieces of it. So even today, if you have a pile in
your bedroom to be like, you know what? I'm going to look for five things. I'm going to look for a
couple of pieces of trash. I'm going to remove one small section
of it that starts to make it feel more manageable. We have our donation box.
You have to have one of these handy. It has to be as easy to donate
as it is to leave it on the pile. So that's why we need our box here. And
then we have our black trash bag too. Now I'm so glad we could
go to Rachel's house. And we would love to be able
to come to your house too, but obviously that's not possible. So our hope with this video series
is that you will work alongside us. So is there a pile on your bedroom floor
or somewhere else in your home that you could tackle right alongside us, and you
could benefit from these same things. So when you look at this, what feels
the easiest right now to start with? - My kids' things? No, I did have pre-approval for
this. But yeah, this is, their creative project bin, but you know, they go through stages of
what they're into. - Yep. - And they're not as into this anymore. So this would be an easy one to
start with. So... - This is good, this is so fun. - A lot of garbage.
But at one time it was treasures. - Yeah, the stuff they've
come up with. - Things that, they use tape and put it together. So
this is garbage. This is easy. - Okay, so let's get our trash bag. -
A lot of garbage in here, yes. - And it got set in here, I'm sure, one time you were cleaning and people
were coming over? - Right. And well, and actually this was the
concept of the container. So as long as it fit in this container, I was okay with it. - I love that. - Yeah, exactly. And things have just gotten
moved around as life happens. And so it ended up in the master
bedroom because why not? - Exactly. - So this is mostly garbage here. - We
have some recycling. We can sort it out. - Yes, of course. Yep. But yeah, that's... And it's funny because you think,
why didn't I do this sooner? - Well, right? Because you looked at the pile as a whole
and you didn't see the easy stuff to start with. - Exactly. - Is this more
project stuff or is that different? - This is, I'm not even totally sure.
- Alright, we got the mystery box. - Oh, I know. This is a binder that has been sitting
in my house for probably several years and it never gets used.
So, it's a lovely binder, but I think it probably
could go to someone else. - Someone else could use that more.
That's a great, a lot of these, if we could look at it, in a way
that stuff's been quarantined, right? If I haven't pulled something out
or grabbed for it, it's a good sign. I've moved this binder around 12
times to different spots in the house. - We've moved to about four different
houses, so that's embarrassing too. - Yes, it's how it goes. Totally. - I
don't know why I kept it. - Alright, well as long as we're
going through this box... - So I have learned that my boys
are not... - Construction paper. - And it's faded because it's that old. But I've learned my boys do
not like art projects or craft projects as much as I
maybe thought they would. So we don't need very
much. So I'm wondering if, I just noticed, maybe that's all we
need. - Then let's donate the rest. - And that's crazy. - This
should get used, right? Kids should be making stuff with all
this. - And it's just sitting there. So this is plenty. - Okay. What
else do you have? - And of course, a package of cotton swabs. - Obviously.
Alright, you have two of them. Where do these go? - Oh my goodness.
In the bathroom. Should I have my- - We actually have a runner here with us. Normally we would ask you to get up and
go bring it to the bathroom. - Okay, let's see here. And this is from a globe that was
electronic and it doesn't work anymore. So- - Easy. - That one's
easy. - See this isn't, already this hasn't been as bad as
we were building it up in our head. - This is Christmas ornaments that I bought and just put in here. I think I actually do like them, but they're not with the Christmas items. - So you wouldn't know to look in the
bottom of a box in your bedroom for your Christmas ornaments. - Right. - So do you have a spot for
Christmas stuff? - I do. I'm wondering if my runner would be so
kind to put those with the Christmas ornaments? Awesome. - So what's great now, is if we had to stop right
now... We'll put that back. We'll take our trash bag with us
and go out to the garbage can, and we haven't made things worse.
Because thanks to your runner, but if you had to do it too, you'd
be putting stuff away as we go, and we won't have any issues
of making the mess bigger. Even my mom who recently had back surgery
and we've been doing some projects in her house, she was like, nope,
I still have to. She's like, I could make the excuse, oh, I can't
run things right now, but she's like, it just makes it more stressful, more
overwhelming. So even she has been like, nope, I'm going to take something
to where it needs to go. And so that's how we keep
from making bigger messes. But we have just a few
more things left in here, so why don't you pull
those out quick. - Oh dear. This is going to be
controversial. Essential oils. So I wanted to be the
essential oil person. But they realistically
don't get used. So... - Do you have someone you
could share them with? - I honestly don't know of anyone. So I don't know if that's something
you can donate. I don't even know. Either that or they probably just need
to go because they sit around and they don't get used. - And they do
expire after awhile too. - Right. - So actually what I wanted to
start out talking about, Rachel, was when we think about inventory, this seems to be the
idea that connects most. And so if we look at an average person
and how much inventory you can manage. And then now we add in that Rachel is
married and they live on a farm and they have nine boys. And so the inventory that we can manage
goes down and down. You homeschool. So that takes it down another notch.
And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just being really realistic about
how much we can manage and how much not. And so maybe in our perfect world, we diffused oils every morning for our
homeschool and it set the stage for us to have a really good day. But
realistically right now, we've seen that you don't have the
space to manage that. And that's okay. - That's okay. It just takes
accepting that. - Right, and so, as we continue to go through this,
we can use it as a barometer. Okay, how much inventory can we realistically
manage? It's pretty little. Because your main priority,
like you even said when we met, I want to sit and read to my kids.
- Right. It's true. Or work out. Things that are more important
right now than... - So again, that means we're just at one of the
lowest levels of inventory that we can manage. And that's okay. So as
we continue to go through this, we might use that too, as a barometer
for if we're going to keep stuff or not. And so like Rachel said, she had a lot of homeschooling
materials here and that can be tough. Lots of things we think we
would use, we'd like to use, we think our kids will love, but they
don't necessarily. And throughout it, she kept saying, I thought
my boys would like this. I thought they would like
to do lots of art projects. I always saw my boys doing lots of art
projects, but the truth was they weren't. And so I thought it was so cool Rachel
was able to recognize that that was a fantasy self idea. And that's
okay. But what was so great, I think she got rid of about half of
the homeschooling stuff that was there, is I feel like things like homeschooling, other hobbies or things
that we spend our time on, they're actually more enjoyable when
we're working with less inventory. When we just have the things
that we need and we use, and we don't have to sift through
all of the other stuff to get to it. Now I'm going to be honest. When I first saw the piles
and Rachel's desk area, which we're going to show in the next
video, I was kind of intimidated. This stuff is the toughest. Okay, so we're going to work on
the piles next to the bed now. I think we have about three different
categories of stuff. We have photos, we have a mystery box of paper clutter
from a previous desk clear off, and then we have some homeschooling stuff. So we're going to start with the photos
and then we'll work our way back. And so if we're feeling
at all overwhelmed, we just have to take a small piece at
a time. And it sounds, I don't know, it's like, oh, that's
what everybody says. Oh, just break it into smaller
pieces, but it really does work. So we're going to start with the photos
and then we'll work our way back. So I think many of us can relate
to the laundry basket of photos. It just happens. It's a
random box, tote, something. And so what I was asking
Rachel is realistically, would you have time in the next year
or so to put photos into albums? - Probably not. Probably not. - And is there any reason,
any project you committed to, a scrapbook or anything,
grad party coming up, that you would have to have
photos ready for anything? - No, it's just simply I want to
have some photos of their childhood. We are album people where
we like to look through the albums. - So we just want to store these
safely, so when you do get to a season, it would be super fun at some point to
pull them out with the kids and be like, we're going to put them in albums
and sort them out and everything, but we just need to store them
safely until you get to that point. - Right. - Alright, we're going to send
Tom out to get a bin. And then... - There's probably some
random things in here too, but I think it's mostly photos. - Let's
do a quick sort. So these are albums. - Those are just empty. - It looks like the picture frame
that we put in the bin. Oh, how cute. - That was once hanging,
but now it's not hanging. And so do we take it out of the
frame and get rid of the frame? - If you don't have an intention
of using that frame again, I think it'd be easiest to
store if we pull it out. So we have a bin here and so you
can go ahead and start putting, we'll put the photos in first and then
we'll see how much room we have to put albums in. So imagine we're alongside
you and we're asking you, when was the last time you used this? How much inventory can you
actually manage right now? Has this stuff been quarantined by sitting
here in piles for months and months and months? Wouldn't it feel so good just to be done
with it and not have these piles here anymore? - So now we're getting into
a little bit more paper clutter here. - Do you have a memory
bin, Rachel? - We do have some. - Okay, great. So you could always stick
that stuff in your memory bin. - So this is photos that, or
albums that are full. So I suppose, I'm gonna those in there. A random shirt. Wow. Wow. That could probably get
donated. - Sentimental items? - No, it's not actually. - It's
not the shirt he proposed in? - No. Wow. Okay. So that
is just mostly, wow. So now this is just some random...
Oh my gosh. That's not needed. Yeah. Okay. So that could get donated. So this is super helpful. -Good. - To, well, do I need the manual? You would've stopped?
- I would have stopped. I would have started to go through
them and then I wouldn't have started anything again. - I don't
think you need the manual. You could always look that up online. - That's was thinking. Wow, so we have a basket that's empty. I don't even know for sure what this is. So should I just start
going through this paper? - Yeah, why don't you do
that real quick. Hopefully, how long has it been in the basket
in here? - This paper? - Yeah. - Oh my goodness. A couple
of years. A couple of years. - So you could probably do a pretty
quick sort. Look for anything value. - That's valuable. Okay, very
good. So this is a lot of, some scrap stuff but
a lot of memory stuff. So I have memory bins
somewhere in the storage room. So maybe Grayson will be
able to help with that, but some of this stuff is
like from when we were dating. That one can go, can go. But this one is special to me because
I made a farm book and here I ended up marrying a farmer. - That's awesome.
So that for sure goes in a memory bin. - Yes. So this is just, I suppose
like you said- - Random paper. - Because I don't know if
it's a Cricket thing or not, but I'd be feeling like I need
to read through each paper and try to, but you know... - It's been quarantined and we're going
to look for just for anything important that's obvious. Vehicle
titles, death certificates, marriage certificates. - And this is
seriously what has hung me up before. Seriously, is I thought, oh, there's going to be something important
on there that I'm going to miss. - I forgot. - Yup. Oops, and it's, yeah, it really has prevented me.
I would get the pile smaller, but I would never totally get rid of it. "Find a recipe for maple glazed salmon." Good thing I kept that. Never found that recipe. Never
found that. That is so funny. Oh my goodness. Most of
this stuff is garbage. There's just a couple things that I don't
want to let go cause they're memories, but- - Yeah, and that's why
we have our memory bins. I'm glad you already
do because that's huge. - Yeah. What's funny is the things
that I thought I wanted to keep for memories, and now about half of
that stuff I don't want anymore. - Isn't that funny how it changes? And that's a great thing about the
memory bin is it sets a container for how much we can realistically keep and manage. And then we do over time trade stuff out.
Something that you see important now, I'm going to replace with something else. - I like that idea. You know, you just feel like you need to spend so
much time and attention on one thing. Oh, is this something I
really need or not or...? - I mean, I think it was just
having someone else there, Rachel was really able to
make decisions quickly. And she even commented
on that too. She said, I will sit down to go through these piles, especially some of it was
that paper clutter stuff, and I'll get hung up not knowing if
I should keep a certain thing or not. And I love what Marie Kondo says.
In regards to paper, she's like, our goal is to keep none of it. So really being discerning when we're
holding a piece up, do I have to, absolutely have to keep this? And if not being willing to let it go
so that we can move through this stuff more quickly. But again, that's where it can be helpful to have
somebody else there with us so we can speak it out. And sometimes even as
the words are coming out of our mouth, we're like, oh, that's silly. I
obviously don't need it anymore. And so it can be so helpful to
have someone else helping you. It could be another member of your
household, a friend, a family member, but don't underestimate the power of
having someone else there with you. - So that is that box. - So this stuff is going to go into a
memory box, which you said is downstairs. - Yep. Yep. Okay. - So we
have these large chalk labels, which I really like for storage bins. So I'm going to let you write on them
if you want to write Photos, whatever, however you would label
them for your storage area. - And where do you get these labels from? - Those are from Amazon. - Oh, okay. - Yeah, I really like them because you could
wash this off and relabel it at some point, if you- - Oh, you really could.
That's neat. - So that's kind of fun. So we'll stick those on. Okay,
so we're going to send, oh, you can't see them now. We're going to send the photo
bins now down to storage, which is great. And then we just have a couple more things
to get through and your bedroom floor is going to be cleared
again. That's amazing. - So Rachel had three main
areas of piles in their room. Two were in the bedroom itself. And
then one was in their walk-in closet. Why don't you show us what's
hiding behind the door? - Okay, it's a very big closet and we don't
even use much of it for clothing. But here's the pile. Here's my pile. And it's mostly art supplies. A few random baskets cause I like
baskets, found them at a thrift store. But don't even know what I'm going
to put in them, or if anything so... - Like I said, everyone's
clutter is the same, right? And we know how this happens. We
see a basket at a thrift store, a garage sale or someone offers it to
us, and we're like, yeah, I love baskets. Of course I'll take that. The problem
is, like we talked about earlier, when it comes to how much inventory
Rachel is able to manage right now, they weren't getting used. - I mean, I don't know. See if
I'm looking at these right now, I don't know what I
would even do with them. So do I just maybe let them go
or hold on to them thinking, Oh, I'll put something
in them someday. - Well, how do you feel when you see this
on your closet floor? - Not good. Not good. - And if we moved them to
your storage space in the basement, we're going to forget about
them. Most likely. I mean, again, with your life right now. - Right. Right.
- So I think if you can think of a, how I'm going to use this
today, let's keep it. If it's a, I don't know, then we'll let those
go. - I think I will keep this one. Because I like that one and
I do use them occasionally, but I think I can let these
go if I'm being realistic. - And I just thought that was, I thought that was so wise
of her to recognize that
right now in this season I'm in, it's just not the number one priority. - So this is a pretty nice trash
can, do we donate the trash can? - Let's donate it. - Okay. - Unless you can think of a spot
right now in your house you need it. - I really can't. These do not get used. They could be donated, or I
suppose, these do not either. - And if there's art supplies,
what I've learned too, if they make a mess and I
don't like picking them up
or having to have the kids, I'm like, it's gone. Like, I
don't worry about that anymore. - And you know how you talked
about our fantasy self? I feel like this was my
fantasy kids, if you will, that they did art and craft projects.
But they'd rather be out climbing trees. And so I think just keeping a few things. - Our kids are so creative and it's
expressed in so many different ways. We don't need tons of art supplies
to do that. And so I could just, I could feel a sense of freedom as
she was getting rid of that stuff, and just knowing that pile is not
going to be on the floor anymore. She doesn't have to manage so much
homeschooling inventory anymore. Okay, so we were able to pare down
everything here to this stuff. Rachel, that was awesome. Does it feel good? - It feels very good. It does. It's kind of funny letting go of
some of that stuff that has been held onto for years. - Yeah. You're doing
an awesome job. Alright, so let's, we're gonna move this stuff out,
bring in the homeschooling bins. Overall, I was so proud of Rachel
and the progress that she made. So how are you feeling right now? - Really good. A little, I guess
you'd call it decision fatigued. - It was a lot. We did a lot
in a short amount of time. - I don't even know totally
why it feels so emotional. It feels kind of silly that it
would be, but it's... - I mean, we just covered everything from your
childhood, your childhood artwork, the births of your children. Am I a bad mom because I haven't
filled out baby books? - Right, it's kind of a lot. - It is a lot. - And the fantasy self of I'm going to
be an herbalist. So it feels amazing, and then it feels why did
I let that go so long? But it was just a matter, I think, of learning the techniques
of how to get through it. The good thing is now
Rachel feels empowered. There was one box left of paper clutter
that we didn't get to and I'm like, should we stay and do this? Can you do
this? And she's like, Nope, I got it. And so do you feel more confident now? We did leave one box of paper
clutter in your bedroom. - Oh, much more confident. Much more. -
You're not going to labor over each? - I feel like I've gotten over
the hump, so to speak. - Yeah. That's encouraging. - And I don't
know why that was so hard to get over. Because these piles have been here for
so long, but now that we've done it, it feels like I'm going to conquer
the house. Like I can do this. - And that was just the coolest
thing. It's hard in the beginning. It is hard. It's a lot of work.
It's emotionally draining. But as we do this and as we
get our systems in place,
it becomes so much easier. So push through the hard work, do
it alongside us as you're able. And you're going to be able to look
around your master bedroom floor and be like, wow, that looks
awesome. It feels so good. And I feel so much better about myself.
So we truly want that for you too. So coming up in our next video, we are going to tackle Rachel's
built-in desk in her kitchen. Those are the worst. But
knowing her Clutterbug style, we're going to put some
simple organization in place. We're going to assign some homes to things
and just talk through how we can make that space function really well so that
it doesn't get overwhelmed again in the future. So thank you so much for
joining us today. Thank you, Rachel, for sharing your home with us. And we are so excited for what's
to come for you and your family.
