Transcript Podcast Episode 13: Clear the Clutter (and stuff's dark side)
Clear the Clutter
(& stuff’s dark side)
Wannabe Minimalist Show Transcript Episode 13
00:00 You're listening to the wannabe minimalist show, episode number 13 on today's show, we're talking about how to clear the clutter plus the dark side of stuff.
00:12 [Music]
00:16 Welcome to the Wannabe Minimalist Show. I'm your host Deanna Yates, and each week on this podcast we will talk about what it really takes to be a minimalist with a family. I believe minimalism is a mindset for how we see stuff, but more importantly, being mindful of the items we let into our lives, homes and relationships. Let's do this!
00:44 Well, hello there. Welcome back to another episode of the Wannabe Minimalist Show. I'm your host, Deanna Yates from littlegreenbow.com. Today's topic is one that has been weighing on my heart ever since I started the 21 day decluttering challenge. It's one that I have just found so surprising as I've been going through room by room in my house and decluttering. It made me think of a blog post that I had written a long time ago and actually just updated for my blog this week. It's about the dark side of our stuff and how our stuff carries a weight with around with us that we just aren't really aware of. Plus then, because I was talking about this negative side of it, I really wanted to help everyone learn how to clear their clutter and get past it so that they could move on with the life that they have been dreaming of.
01:39 I have to tell you, this 21 day decluttering challenge, has been amazing. I have gone from room to room slowly decluttering as I've gone. And every time I go to a new space, it's easy. It gets easier and easier. I've got less things to throw away. I started with some harder rooms and this weekend we'll be working on the garage so it's gonna get tough again. But I am surprised at how easily I've been able to keep the rooms that I've already decluttered clean. And so that's really what today's episode is about. It's about how do we move past all of this stuff that's weighing us down. And then how do we get past this clutter, clear it from our our lives so that we can move on and have the lives that we want.
02:28 All right, but before we dive in and talk about how to get started on this journey, let's take a quick minute to talk about today's sponsor, which is actually my own Minimalist Starter Kit for Families. 02:41 It's a free resource and the perfect companion to today's show because not only will you get more information about starting with minimalism and clearing your clutter, but it is chockfull of actionable steps so you can get started right away. You can pick up copy by going to littlegreenbow.com/starter-kit. Again, that's littlegreenbow.com/starter-kit.
03:09 You deserve to live the life of your dreams and your family deserves to get the best version of you on a daily basis. You know the one where you enjoy your every days instead of counting down the minutes until bedtime. If you're tired of the chaos, I invite you to join me on the journey to minimalism that actually works for families. No, it's not stark white walls, one plate per person and zero toys. It's a life filled with meaning, simplicity and experiences. And I love this side and I hope you'll join me.
03:42 So take the first step with this family minimalism starter kit. It includes 10 mindset shifts to overcome clutter, our five favorite decluttering methods as a family , cheat sheets for how to get rid of paper cut clutter quickly and so much more. So go ahead. I can almost guarantee you will love life on this side. And did I mention it's free? So what are you waiting for? Head on over to little greenbow.com forward slash starter dash kit for your copy. One more time. That's little greenbow.com/starter-kit. Okay, so let's get back into the show and talk about the dark side of clutter. Okay, I hear some of you saying, sure, sure. I've got a lot of stuff, but I don't think it's that excessive and I don't think it's really causing me that many problems, but deep down, most of us know that we could live with less.
04:39 Perhaps you could give up that extra large set of dinnerware because you never host dinner parties or maybe you don't really need a TV in every room, or perhaps your fancy living room doesn't really get much use. But, you might not go so far to say that clutter is ruining your life or causing any big problems. And you're not sure you'd ever scream out, "Help me clear the clutter from my life".
05:08 Well, the statistics around clutter might surprise you. Clutter is a big problem in our modern society. People are no longer using their homes for living. They're using them as storage facilities. But before we dive in and talk about all these statistics around clutter, I've got lots of statistics to throw at you today. I want to talk about the real problem. So what is that? It is the clutter robs us of our most important resources, things that we would never knowingly waste by not clearing the clutter out of your home.
05:46 You are wasting your precious time, your hard earned money, and your fought for sanity. Now I would ask if you don't believe me, but as someone myself who has lived with clutter and lots of stuff in the past, I know that deep down you feel it, you feel the weight. When you look around your home, you feel the Pang. When you make a payment on the storage unit and you curse under your breath when you are scraping the snow off your car, while your things are nice and cozy in your garage. Now there is no judgment here because I have done all of that before and that is why I am so passionate about not living that life anymore and I definitely don't want that life for you either.
06:30 All right, so let's get into those three things. Let's talk about how clutter wastes your time. Now in order to keep all of our clutter and not go crazy, we have to maintain it. We have to clean it and we have to organize it. If we look at how many things we have now, that's just the statistic here is that the average American home has 300,000 items in it. Can you fathom how much 300,000 items is? Imagine each item you owned was a person. Do you know how many of the upcoming Superbowls you'd have to host in order to fit 300,000 people in the audience? You'd have to host five Superbowls, five. That is so much stuff.
07:22 And with all that stuff, it's not surprising that the study show people lose on average nine items per day in their home. Now, I used to be guilty of this too, and honestly, until this last a 21 day decluttering challenge, I still struggled with it a bit. But once I finally cleared my entryway and made a home for everything, I have been very diligent about putting things back where they belong. And it's been amazing to not have to search for keys or my sunglasses or my wallet or my phone. It's been wonderful. And those items are the things that people lose the most. So over the course of our lifetimes, the average person will spend a total of 3,680 hours, or 153 days searching for misplaced items. Boy, I wish I would have put my stuff in a home and had a place for it so much earlier in my life, but you know what? I am going to save so many hours going forward and you can too.
08:26 And with all that stuff, what will happen to those 300,000 items that the average family has? Well we have to have somewhere to put it. The average home size for newly built homes in the U S is now 2,660 square feet is almost double what it was in 1975 when the average home measured 1,660 square feet. Now, the crazy part is that our families are actually getting smaller, so we don't need the space because we have more people in families, but because we have these bigger homes and we have more stuff that we're trying to maintain, clean and organize, the average time spend cleaning a house every week is 20 hours. That is a part time job. Just think of all the extra things you could do with 20 hours. It's flabbergasting. It's just shocking. I actually have been able to get our own home cleaning down to about 15 to 30 minutes a day.
09:26 And that includes laundry, it includes dishes and it includes a level of cleanliness in my house that I would not be embarrassed for a guest to stop by. And that's really all I need and it's possible for you. I have a blog post about that, so I will link that to that in the show notes below as well. So you have an easy way to get that. But that will have a weekly cleaning schedule for you if it's something that you're interested in. But I never could have done that if I would have had a house filled with stuff. It's just when you have less stuff, there's less to clean. So that is another way that clutter robs you of your time is because you just have so much of it. And so you just have to maintain it. And the last way I want to talk about how clutter robs us of our time, which I have to remind everyone is our most precious asset because we cannot get any time back.
10:19 You cannot go back and get more time. And that is why I don't want to waste another minute on having too much stuff. So this last statistic is that the average American woman will spend eight years of her life shopping. Now some of you enjoy shopping, but I am not one of those people. So when I read that I, it pained me so much. Why would I want to spend eight years of my life doing something that I don't even enjoy? By adopting the minimalist lifestyle and the mindset of only having what I need, it has been life changing and I no longer go shopping just for the sake of shopping. When I need something, I go out and replace it or I look for it online and it comes to me and I don't have to spend my precious hours wondering what I need or looking for something that I might need because I know what it is.
11:13 And it's been amazing, so highly recommend this lifestyle and I'm so excited that you're here learning about it in today's episode. Okay, now that we've talked about how clutter wastes your time, let's talk about how clutter wastes your money. Now, this point wasn't that hard for me to fathom. I mean, obviously if you're bringing stuff into your home, you probably bought it. It might have been inherited or gifted to you, but most likely the majority of the items that are in your home were purchased by yourself. That being said, though, I was shocked to learn how much we spend collectively on stuff, but before we look at just individual, let's talk about the evolution of the garage. I know this is a little bit of a segue, but stick with me. So I want to talk about how it's changed over the course of the last hundred years.
12:03 Well, think about it. Before cars were invented, people didn't even have garages. They had small homes and they were quite content. But over time, as the automobile was invented and introduced and became an American staple, well then everybody needed a one car garage. And it housed, you got it, your car. But over time, garages and homes have been getting bigger. We already talked about how homes had nearly doubled in size in the last 50 years, but the same has happened with garages. So now if you think about it, if you watch those home shows on HGTV, I mean a two car garage is a given and oftentimes people are looking for three car garages. But the crazy statistic here is that 32% of people with two car garages don't have room to park two vehicles inside. Instead we fill them with stuff, but we fill them so much with stuff that we don't even stop with the inside of our house in our garages, we actually have moved on to outside storage space. Now in the U S we have 2.3 billion square feet. That was billion with a B of total rentable self storage space that is available and the industry is growing at 7.7% and it has an annually since 2012 so our stuff is not going away and the problem keeps growing
13:36 in our own homes. We try to organize these things and the home organization industry is now an $8 billion industry. The business of organizers and bins has more than doubled in size since the early two thousands and it's growing at a staggering rate to have 10% every year. I have a whole blog post about how you can stop organizing for good and it turns out it will save you money, so I'll make sure I link to it in the show notes so that you can find that one as well. The last thing I want to talk about on how clutter wastes our money is just on the stuff we bring into our home. The wall street journal reports that Americans spend one point 2 trillion annually that was T trillion with a T on nonessential goods. Now think about that. These are things that we do not need.
14:27 That is why they're called non-essential. They are not items that are necessary for our survival. They are warranted things. Now, a snippet of that are what Americans spend on shoes, jewelry and watches. We spend $100 billion annually and that is more than we spend every year on higher education. So we collectively would rather look good then improve our thoughts and our minds and our wellbeing by being able to get a better job. Because we went to higher ed, we went to college and higher education and in a society that is drowning in student loan debt, it just, it's a baffling statistic. So anyway, that is how clutter wastes your money. And we're going to get into some of these things a little bit more when we get into part number three on the dark side of clutter, which is that clutter causes you stress. Now stick with me because I know this is a little negative at first, but we are going to get two ways on how to clear the clutter and move past all this.
15:31 But I really wanted to set the stage for why clutter is a problem and why we need to move on past it. So when you think about your clutter, you might not think it has anything to do with your stress level. After all, as I talked about in episode 10 of this podcast when I discussed why we love our stuff, you know we talked about the act of purchasing something and how that new thing will often give us a small high and makes us feel really good. But the problem is that high is really short lived and it becomes harder and harder to replicate over time. So check out episode 10 if you want more info insight on that and I'll leave a link in the show notes. There's going to be so many show note links today cause I've got lots and lots of info going on.
16:19 Okay, so remember how we were talking out money. Well money is often one of the biggest causes of stress in our lives. And here's a fact. You know, nearly half of American households don't save any money, half 50% that means if you are sitting in a room and you look to your left and you look to your right, you know, one of those people sitting on either side of you has no savings. That is astounding. It's even more astounding because we just learned about how much money we spend on watches and shoes and accessories, and we talked about how much money we spend on storage units and how much money we spend on home organization bins and it's just insane. So I know how that feels. I lived paycheck to paycheck for a while and it sucks. It's not fun. And I think that is one of the reasons why a lot of people get into minimalism is because we realized we don't need all this stuff. We don't need all this stress and we can save some money by living a good life that isn't dictated by consumerism.
17:30 So one of the ways that I really have found this to be really helpful is living with a capsule wardrobe. Now the average American woman, I'm doing so many statistics, the average American average American, but this one is good too. The average American woman owns 30 outfits, one for every day. The month. That is a 233% increase over the number of outfits a woman owned in 1930. Now I can show you how to create 74 outfits from only 12 articles of clothing. And in fact I do so in my French capsule wardrobe blog post. So one more link I'll put in the show notes. Um, but that one has been really popular because again, 12 items of clothing and you can make 74 outfits. That's pretty amazing. And finally, let's talk about how clutter not only causes stress for us as adults, but it also causes stress for our children.
18:28 Now this one is a British researcher and they found out that the average 10 year old owns 238 toys but plays with just 12 daily. So having this many toys causes children to have lower attention spans, become more selfish and not take care of their things. Now I have definitely noticed that not taking care of their things part with my own daughter, when she has a lot of toys, she doesn't tend to find, you know, their value. She doesn't know the value of them, but recently she really wanted the Barbie dream house, and I think I talked about this before, but I felt horrible driving home with a Barbie dream house in the back of my car. I don't know why it just, it really triggered something in me. But the good thing was she actually sold two items to get this dream house. She sold her play kitchen from when she was a lot younger and she sold another doll house that she had that she really didn't play with because she wanted to play with the Barbies and she had seen this one at another friend's house and literally she was still talking about it six months later.
19:33 So it made sense that this was an item she really wanted and because she had to sell her things and use her own money that she earned, she has been much better at taking care of it. So I have actually seen this play out in my real life.
19:50 But when children have too many toys, it interrupts their concentration, their focus, and their sense of independence because they are constantly needing to come to you for help. They need you to help them find things. They need you to help them get things down. They need your help because they can't do it on their own. They're overwhelmed. But the good news is, okay, we've talked about that dark side of clutter, but I want to get to the silver lining here. There is hope.
20:19 We can clear the clutter and we can stop this madness. Now after I really discovered that clutter was kind of ruining my life and causing me way too much stress, I started making steps to let it go and I want to help you do that too. So I've been able to tackle my home and clear the clutter slowly over time and I know that you can do it all at once. And you know, for me it works better slowly. And for a lot of you, I think it will work better slowly as well. Just like losing weight, drastic changes rarely stick. And that's why a lot of people yo-yo diet, I'm on their weight. And I also think a lot of people yo-yo diet on stuff in their home because they try to do too much at once. The following seven tips are things that I have actually lived and experienced with decluttering with my family.
21:10 It hasn't always been easy and if anybody ever tells you the decluttering is easy, honestly just turn away, turn them off, stop reading their blog post because it is a challenge and there are things you're going to have to face, but you can do it and it's so worth it. Okay, I promise, I promise, promise, promise, and I want to help you learn from my mistakes. So that's why I put these seven tips together. We're going to talk about how to clear the clutter once and for all.
21:40 All right, so here's tip number one and this one's really important. I want you to share your goals with your family because in the past I have let the task of decluttering and maintaining my home be my responsibility and that was my fault. That was on me. That approach. It left me burnt out. I was resentful of my family for not helping.
22:00 I was stressed out when they would make a mess and it just left me angry honestly. But once I sat my family down and I talked to them about why I wanted to, to declutter and asked them for help and shared with them the emotional reasons and what it would mean for me and my vision, you know, honestly they were not only willing to help, but they were super encouraging as well. We were able to talk about our goals as a family and the kind of life we want to live together. You know, so often we just get so caught up in our day today and we just do things because they seem easier than change. And honestly, people, we as human beings are really resistant to change and we don't like things to be different. We are afraid of what it might be like on the other side.
22:50 So as crazy as it sounds, we would, we will sometimes choose to stay in pain because we know what it's like. We stick with the devil we know instead of venturing out and trying something different. That might be a million times better just because we're afraid that it might be worse. But trust me, it's not worse when you have less stuff. It's way, way better. And remember how I was talking about that Barbie dream house just a minute ago. Well, one of our goals as a family was to save some money for bigger items or bigger trips. And my daughter got onboard by selling her own things so she could buy the thing she wanted and she didn't have to wait for her birthday. She didn't have to wait for Christmas. She could do it all on her own with our help of course. But, and you know, the bonus was that when she bought it with her own money, she treats it better and she values it more and it, she's prideful in it actually.
23:46 And so it's really good for her independence as well. But by being real with my family, sharing my emotions, and giving us all a reason to live with less stuff, we've been able to clear out the clutter that weighed us down for too long and get about actually living our lives. So that's tip number one. Share your goals with your family.
24:07 Tip number two is to be methodical. I know I talked about going slow and doing little by little changes, um, a minute ago and that is why it is step number two here because it's a really important now before my daughter joined our family, I never appreciated all that extra time that I had. I bet you I could have decluttered my whole home in a weekend. Back then it wouldn't have been a problem if I left the room half done. You know, I have bins, open papers everywhere.
24:38 Probably a sharp object pointing up here and there. I would have known when I woke up the next day what was going on, where things belonged, where everything had ended up and I could have jumped right back in. But let's be honest, I have a family now and now that I have a child, it's a whole different approach that I need to do when I'm decluttering. I can't do the whole house. I can't leave things a mess. I have to work piece by piece and if she is home she likes to help. Of course she gets easily distracted and she wants to play with all the new things she finds, which totally slows me down, but that's why I focus on one area at a time. We can work on it, start to finish and I give myself full permission to put off any other space until that room and that space is done.
25:28 D O N E 100% completely done. It's the same approach that I teach in my Wannabe Minimalist Facebook group where we are currently in the middle of a 21 day decluttering challenge. If you're listening to this when the episode first airs and I'd love for you to join us, it's free and I am amazed at some of those before and after pictures that you guys are sharing over there. It is so exciting and I mean really uplifting and you guys just amaze me day in and day out. But the surprising thing with being methodical, I think you all think that it's probably going to be slower than the process of doing everything at once, but you will be surprised at how much progress you can make super quickly. I know it seems like it would be the opposite, but clearing one area at a time actually means that I'm never overwhelmed.
26:19 It allows me to not feel guilty if some of my other rooms are a mess because I haven't gotten to those rooms yet and I have found that that I'm having less clutter rebound. Does that make sense? Like less clutter is ending up back in the rooms that I've already worked on because once a space is cleared and decluttered I know I have all the things that I need for it and I don't need to go out and and find other things or you know, I do it more from an approach of what do I need in this room instead of, Oh, this is the stuff I have that I'm going to fit into this space. Now if I find something in a different space in the house, let's say I'm, I've already decluttered my bedroom and I'm in the living room now and I find something there that I want to keep, but it doesn't belong in the living room. I think it would be better in my bedroom. Well, I have to find a home for it in my bedroom or I have to toss it. It's simple as that and it really works. I have been amazed at how just wonderful my house feels every day and how easy it has been to go room by room cleaning my house. So please jump over into Facebook and join us in the want to be minimalist Facebook group. It's free. We're doing a 21 day challenge and I really hope that I'll see you over there. So that's tip number two, be methodical.
27:38 Tip number three is to start with the easy stuff. Please, please, please wave. You have never decluttered. Please do not start the process of clearing your clutter with family heirlooms items from your childhood or things that you have a strong emotional attachment to. You will only set yourself up for failure if you go this approach. Now, other items I would avoid if I am decluttering at the beginning are things that belong to other people in your home. Now, I have talked about this before and a lot of people will say, I want to declutter, but my husband, I want to declutter but my children, I want to do this, but now I am lucky my family is onboard, but they haven't always been and that shouldn't be an excuse. Anyway, there are plenty of things in this home that belonged to me that are my items and if I wanted to clutter my things than I am welcome to do that.
28:38 So you want to start with your own things and it's going to be so much easier to get your family on board if they see you enjoying life with less stuff. Once you are less stressed, happier and able to relax more, your family will be drawn to the process. I promise. It also helps if you talk to them about why you are decluttering. So remember that goes back to tip number one, which I really think is my most important tip. And then once you've decided, okay, so you're not going to start with your hard stuff, you're not going to start with other people's stuff. I suggest starting in your closet because even though it can be very difficult to declutter your wardrobe and find your personal style, everything in there is 100% yours. It all belongs to you. It all has your emotional attachment. Everything in your closet that you put on your body is yours.
29:33 And then once you get through that process, it makes every day easier because you wake up, you like what you're wearing, you feel confident, you feel happy, and you now have the energy to go out and do all the rest of it. Okay. Then as you push forward around your house, I like to move on to rooms with little emotional attachment. So these are the bathrooms, the dining room, laundry and entryway. Now these rooms, I choose them because they all have very specific purposes, which make them much easier to clear out and maintain. And I also find it incredibly helpful to have a family command center in the entryway to keep everything organized as you move through your home. And then as you learn to live with less and you flex your decluttering muscles and you're getting stronger and you're starting to enjoy the process, then you can move on to the kitchen, which usually just has a lot of stuff.
30:27 So it's overwhelming at first. Um, you can move onto your bedroom, which may have some emotions there. Your living room, which is a joint space that you want to be cozy, your garage or your basement, which honestly are where all of us, how's all of our stuff. And then you can finally hit up those family heirlooms and the photos and things like that. Children's artwork and things that are harder to get rid of, but only tackle those things after you've done all the easy stuff first. All right, so that's tip number three. Start with the easy stuff.
31:00 Tip number four is give everything a home and a label. So I have found that if something is worth keeping, it is worth giving it a home and a label. So some of our biggest clutter issues really come from not knowing where to put things in the first place.
31:19 But I've noticed that when my daughter was in daycare, even the two and three year olds were able to keep spaces neat and tidy and trust me, those teachers did not harp on them to put things away. They sang songs and the children cooperated, right? Well that's because those children knew where everything went. All of the toys had a home. And each of these homes was labeled. Usually they were clear plastic bins or you know, a big cloth bin, something like that. But all the kids knew where everything was supposed to go. So they never even fought back. They just put it where it went. And once I started implementing that tactic in my own home to give something a home and then label it so that it really stuck, everything was so much easier. It took out all that guesswork. Cohen cleaning up and trust me, after a long day or a week or you know, probably your kid's having a meltdown because they're hungry. The last thing you want to do is make another decision like where something should go. So take a minute when you are decluttering and make sure you give everything a home, label that home, tell your family about where the things go, and then get ready to live with less chaos and less clutter. It's fabulous. So tip number four, give everything a home and a label.
32:43 Ooh, tip number five is a good one. It is removing temptation. Now over the holidays, we were watching a Christmas movie with extended family and because it was on network television, it continued to be interrupted with commercials. It hadn't really hit me until then, but our daughter is not exposed to many commercials and definitely not as many as I was when I was younger. Now I know we face our own challenges with different temptation and social media and all of that and it will come into play at a time, but for now we generally just consume movies through Disney plus Netflix or Amazon. Now, the good thing about this is that she is not bombarded with someone trying to sell her the latest and greatest toy every 10 minutes. You know how hard it is to not want those toys? We pay the monthly subscription to avoid those commercials and it just removes that temptation from her.
33:40 Now the same thing can be done for you. Of course, if you're watching your shows on Disney plus Netflix or Amazon, you're also avoiding the commercials. DVRs are another great way to get around those commercials, but another way you can do this is to stop getting catalogs. Remove the temptation to buy the latest and greatest or newest shiny object and get, don't even let those catalogs in your house. Now my favorite way to unsubscribe from catalogs is a website called catalog choice.org of course, I will make sure to link to it in the show notes, but you can unsubscribe from those catalogs and they will stop mailing them to you before the people that lived in our apartment before we moved in must have loved shopping and we had stacks and stacks and stacks of catalogs. It was, Oh, it pained me so much every day I went to the mailbox to get our mail because it was always, it was always filled with catalogs.
34:40 Now I can get my mail once a week and I have maybe one catalog in there at a time and so I can unsubscribe a lot faster. Now the other thing you should do is unsubscribed from brand emails. Sure, you signed up for that 20% off coupon, but you no longer need to be tempted to buy something. Every time you get an email, over time you will get worn down. So don't force yourself to make those hard decisions. Sure. It's easy to say no the first time you see something, but by the 10th time you kind of wanted. So just don't even go there. And finally, stop following anyone on social media who makes you feel bad about yourself or like you need more in your life in order to measure up. I have a truth for you. You as a human being are enough and no amount of stuff is necessary to prove your worth.
35:32 Let that sink in, please. You are enough and no amount of is needed to prove that you are worthy. All right, so that's tip number five. Remove temptation before it even comes into your door.
35:47 Tip number six, use routines to keep order. Now, before I became a parent, I totally resisted routines. It's probably because I no longer had anyone telling you what to do on a daily basis, but you know what? Turns out routines and habits are amazing and such an easy way to get stuff done without feeling like you're working too hard. Let me give you an example. Think about brushing your teeth. Does brushing your teeth feel like hard work? I'm now talking about flossing. That's another thing. And honestly it's a habit that I am happy to say I now have. But just brushing, if you don't brush your teeth, the whole day will feel off.
36:27 That's how clearing the clutter from your space can become for you. Doing a little bit everyday can become a habit and it will stop feeling so hard. So one way I like to tackle this problem is with a good morning routine, a good getting home from school, routine, end of the day routine are getting ready for bed routine. Whoa, that's a lot of routines. But my favorite routine is a 15 minute put away party at the end of the evening. This is when we all pitch in for 15 minutes and sometimes it's less depending on how much stuff we have. But when the timer goes off at 15 minutes, we're done. And we put all the things away that are out of place. So remember we give everything a home number four, tip number four so that when we have 15 minutes before bed, we put everything away. And now our house is clean and waking up to that clean house every morning.
37:23 Oh, the feeling I almost cannot describe it. And it only takes us a few minutes and we do it as a family and it's super fun. So that's tip number six. Use routines to keep ordering your home.
37:36 And tip number seven is to celebrate each victory. This is one I also struggled with for the longest time. So this is a mistake that I want you to learn from when I set a goal. I genuinely want it to be a big crazy, audacious goal. When I found that I was burning myself out. So now I have learned to celebrate each victory along the way. This helps me to feel good about my progress, see how much I've grown, and to keep my energy up so that I can get to the finish line. And you can do this too. You can celebrate each win by taking a before and after photo of your rooms.
38:13 Or perhaps you can clear the clutter from one room at a time and then enjoy living with that room for a few days before you move on. But one of my favorite ways to celebrate a decluttered home is to invite friends over. And that's how we're ending the 21 day decluttering challenge. I've already let my friends know that I cannot wait to have them over. It's also giving me a few tutors in my corner to help me get through to the end of this challenge. So I have a date on my calendar. They're coming over and I need to be done by that day, come hell or high water. And honestly, I'm really excited. I can't wait. I'm going to open all my cupboards and my cabinets and my closets and my drawers and I want to show them all the hard work I've done. So only invite friends that understand your crazy side. So I'm very excited that I have friends that I can do that with, but I can't wait to show them all the progress I've made in just 21 days.
39:11 So that was tip number seven. Celebrate each victory.
39:15 Let's recap all of our seven tips on how to clear clutter once and for all. Number one, share your goals with your family. Number two, be methodical. Number three, start with the easy stuff. Number four, give everything a home and a label. Number five, remove temptation. Number six, use routines to keep order. And number seven, celebrate each victory.
39:44 Okay friend, now it's your turn. I'd love to hear which of these tips for clearing the clutter are you going to start with? I'd love for you to jump over to the Wannabe Minimalist Facebook group and let me know it's totally free. Remember, you can search for us on Facebook. Again, it's the Wannabe Minimalist Facebook group and I'll be sure to leave a link in the show notes to make it even easier for you to find us.
40:07 Come on over to the group and let me know if you agree with the three dark side of clutter, things that we talked about and which of these, how to clear clutter tips you want to implement first. I can't wait to hear from you and help encourage you on your journey toward less stuff and more happiness. So jump on over to the Facebook group and let me know what you're thinking. If you liked this episode, I would love it if you would subscribe and leave a comment or rating so others can find this show too. I'll see you here next week when we will be in our third and final week of our 21 day decluttering challenge. We are having so much fun in that group and I continue to be amazed at how much progress you were all making on a daily basis. So come on over and join us and I look forward to seeing you here next week.
40:57 [Music]
41:00 so this episode might be over but we don't have to say goodbye just yet. Head over to my website littlegreenbow.com for tons of great resources, freebies, courses, and a link to join my free Wannabe Minimalist group on Facebook. Let's tackle this thing together. And if you love this episode, it would be really helpful if you left a rating and a review so more families can find the show too. You're awesome! Thanks and see you next week.