 Hey there. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm Angela Brown and this is the clutter corner We've been meeting here every week for several weeks to help you change your relationship with stuff And today we have a very special project that we're working on and we've invited a lot of our External friends and I say our external friends We have a whole bunch of professional house cleaners that are joining us on the call today And the reason for that is they are inside people's homes on a regular basis every single day And we're seeing an epidemic of clutter that we've never seen before It kind of started back in the pandemic Era when everyone was staying at home and they started opening up their scary rooms in their closets and their storage units And they started going through stuff to try to come up with Let's resolve some of the stuff that we've been hanging on to for a long period of time And as a result of pulling everything out it unearthed a lot of emotions And there are a lot of people that now have big piles of things or they have rooms of things that they're kind of stuck with And they don't really know what happens next and so there's this paralysis that has set in So one of the things that we're going to talk about today is the paralysis and where it comes from and then some Solutions and strategies to try to overcome it. And so if you are working with a professional house cleaner This is a conversation. We're making it safe to have okay We don't want you to chunk everything inside that room and close the door and go The cleaner is coming. We want that to be out there in the open and say to the house cleaner Can you help me with this if they cannot help you with that? They might be able to transfer that responsibility over to a professional organizer So there are professional organizers that we've invited to this call as well over the next several weeks We will be having them on our show so that we can ask them questions And we can interact with them and learn what their processes and methods are if you are a professional house cleaner Or you are a professional organizer or a mental health professional or you are a Medical professional that deals with hoarding and clutter. We've we've asked you to come join our show as an expert so that you can Share with us some of your experiences and help us with this because this like I said is is an ongoing issue Since the pandemic all right now some of the things that we're dealing with that are kind of at an all All-out massive action awareness is that it is affecting our mental health It's affecting our physical health and oftentimes with odd amounts of clutter it's affecting our personal safety and so as And I'm aware of it now because we have elder parents and there's a certain age where your kids are moving away from home And you have all of your kids stuff and then your elder parents have either things that they're downsizing And so they give you their stuff or they've passed away and now you have their home full of stuff and Innocently enough there are people that have never been hoarders. They've never been clutterers and now for the first time they're kind of trapped in this era of Yikes, I have all this stuff. What do I do? Right? So there is a story here and this is How would you say this is not a real person, but it this is the real person in all of us Okay This is a woman and her name is Rachel and I want to share the story about Rachel with you so that we Understand the nuances of what's happening to all of us. Okay? So this is Rachel and Rachel for all intents and purposes lives a very normal life. She has a regular job She's an upright citizen. She's doing everything. She's supposed to be doing living a good life but what has happened is Some clutter set in at some point and it was triggered by the death of her sister so she and her sister were like BFF's and her sister passed away and then suddenly She now has all of her stuff and then her sister's stuff and she's frozen Okay, she's just absolutely paralyzed and doesn't know what to do with the stuff So she does nothing with it. Okay as a result of not doing anything with it What happens is she ends up with a house full of stuff that she doesn't Know how to process she doesn't want to have the conversations because that means taking a real look at I'm gonna have to say goodbye to my sister, right? So there's this there's this tragedy tied with emotion and emotional attachment There's a lot of useless stuff that wasn't really important to her sister but because it Represents her sister. She doesn't want to get rid of it. And so this is the home life Okay, her business life is thriving. She's up for a job promotion. Everything is going. Well, but when she gets home This is what's going on. All right The reason this becomes so incredibly important is because if she doesn't deal with this right now and nothing happens What happens is it progresses to a state of disarray? Okay, so we go from a state of clutter to a state of hoarding and it was innocent enough It was never planned. It's just day after day a week after week year after year of not dealing with it And being paralyzed and not managing it. It got out of proportion. Okay so we're dealing with out of proportion at massive levels than we've ever dealt with before some of the things that trigger people to take Change in a paralysis type of situation with clutter is they may end up moving and then they're they're trying to sort through stuff And they're trying to deal with stuff and they don't have the the latitude of time Right because it usually the forced move is because of a job promotion or because of something happens And they got to make a quick decision. So in the process of that quick decision people are now frantically Scrambling like what do I keep? What do I toss and what have you? Okay? I want to freeze the story of Rachel for just a second and I want to go over to A note that came in from this last week Somebody's been following us on the show and I love this question But this is the question that they had about that particular here is one of the dilemmas I face as I struggle with throwing things away. I don't want to put it in the landfill But it is going to go into the landfill when you die This made me think of my recent experiences with emptying out my parents house and then my brother's house after they died We sold and donated as much as we could but in the end we had to face throwing many things away Because the homes were sold and we ran out of time and I also brought some things into my garage that I will never use It's easy to hold on to your own things when you're not up against a time clock I know this is where setting a deadline comes in and making a commitment to meet that deadline But I feel paralyzed to move forward because I am either emotionally attached to an item or it is going to bring up Emotional pain that is hard to face. I need to just rip off the band-aid and experience the pain Which will eventually lead to healing Here is one of the dilemmas All right that broke my heart when I got that because Many people are in this situation or they don't they don't know what comes next Okay, and so instead of letting the house get over cluttered and I love the fact that some stuff went in the garage And it was organized and whatever but with the admission that I know I'll probably never use this again. Okay, so then What happens to that what happens to the garage full of stuff because by hanging on to stuff thinking? Oh, there's emotional attachments here. I'm not ready to process the emotions I think I'll hang on to them in my garage for a couple of years. What that does is just like Rachel It clogs up the whole garage and we're using the garage now as a storage unit Which means you don't get to pull your cars in if you live in an area where there's a heavy winter time That means every single day when you get up you have to go outside and scrape the snow off the windows of your car Right, you got to turn the car on in advance heat up the car Thaw the car out before you can go to work So little tiny things like having unmanageable stuff actually creates extra chaos in our lives that leads to extra clutter Now it is very real that as we go through the course of our lives We're going to be emotionally attached to items this happens to every single person That's on the planet and the reason being is because we're humans and we have attachments to other people Right, that's that's part of our hard wiring is that we have attachments to other people and things So what can we do today? And this is I'm asking everybody as a participant. Can you help us with this today? Okay, here's a strategy and a solution the professional house cleaners and professional organizers are utilizing it right now And I want to share it with you today so that you can start doing it as well This is a role a series of roles of painters tape And so you can just buy these at the hardware store I've actually left links in the notes below on the YouTube channels that we're streaming to today This is painters tape it pills off really easily and it leaves no residue Which is why I'm a really big fan of it and I have this in multiple colors So with a sharpie pen what I can do is I can write the name of a person on this tape So let's say that I have two children and I've got a boy and a girl Okay, so for the boy I would let's say his name is Rob I would put Rob's name on lots of little pieces of red tape And I would take them to the backs of items in my house that I want Rob to have when I die Now I may not die for 50 years But if that tape is on the back of that item then at any point During the course of from now through the next 50 years when Rob comes to visit I can say hey look around the house and see if there's anything that you want that I have that I'm downsizing right now If he picks up an item and it has a red tape on the back of it He's free to take it today. Yay one less thing in the house, right? Let's say that the daughter's name Susan daughter Susan gets green tape So everything that I want Susan to have gets marked with Susan's name on it with a sharpie pen on The green tape tape to the back of the item so that anytime Susan comes for the rest of her life That she sees something with a green item on it She is now free to take that with her today now Here's a catch if she sees an item on it and it has Rob's color on it She gets to go to Rob and say hey Rob I noticed that mom has this particular item at her house with your tag on the back of it And I'm wondering how important is that to you and Rob might say oh I hated that thing mom always thought that I really enjoyed it and I didn't and I'm not interested in it at all You can have it they get a negotiate while you're still alive and somebody can still take it home today Okay. Yay. What a nice little simple easy program, right the yellow one I like to save for things that i'm using in my life right now Like it might be my hairdryer So in my house my hairdryer might have a little piece of yellow tape on it It doesn't have anybody's name, but the yellow tape means i'm using this in my life right now Please don't throw it away, but I had no emotional attachment to it whatsoever Okay, so if I were to die tomorrow for some reason and somebody were to go through all my stuff and they find yellow tape Oh, guess what this meant nothing to mom it meant nothing to her She just used it it was a utility item It was just part of her house part of her bathroom whatever we all have our own hairdryers By keeping it it doesn't mean any emotional attachments to mom. We are free to let this go right It's going to make clearing out the house super easy anything with yellow tape now Anybody that's coming into the house whether it's a professional organizer Whether it is a house cleaner whether it is a distant relative that comes in they're going to look at everything And go oh, this is all rob stuff. Let's call rob and have him come and pick up all of his stuff Now there are lots of apps that are also on our smartphones Where any person that's going through a house and a professional organizer or a house cleaner can help you with this In the house cleaning industry we do lots of upsell projects where if some reason somebody canceled on us We got a whole bunch of extra time on our hands We call up our list of people that are like hey, I want this service come help me with this They'll call you up on the phone and say listen. I've got an open three hours Do you want me to come do inventory of everything in your house? You're like sure come on over with the apps you just scan the apps you can either use videos or you can take pictures And then you can decide where this goes So you can make a pocket and say this goes to rob this goes to susan this goes inside the storage unit This goes to house number one This goes to house number two this needs to be stored in the attic this needs to be stored in the garage And you get itemized where those items are in the event that you're ever looking for something Let's say that there's I don't know a set of golf clubs and you're you're going to be at your Vacation house that's near a golf course. Where are the golf clubs? You can look really quick at the inventory and go Oh, yes, it's at that property right there next to the golf course. That's exactly where those are but that might also have Rob's tag on it and so when It's time for you to pass on or you're done with that house or let's say that this was a second house Now you're aging on in years and you want to get rid of some stuff Instead of the paralysis being stuck like oh, no, what am I going to do with my stuff in the extra house? What you can say is oh that stuff is already tagged for rob So we can give rob a log and he can look at the stuff and I want this this this this All the rest of this stuff can then either be discarded It can be sold at a yard sale or it can be let go of okay So we're starting to look at strategies that will help us end the paralysis So I have to ask the question and this is just one of the strategies that we use Okay, so I'm going to put that aside for a minute. I do have links in the show notes to the colored tape and the sharpies It's a very simple system. It works really well for lots of families the apps on the iOS and android are free Some of them do require money. There's one. I I forget the name of it But it is paid and it's for professional organizers and they can set up an account for every one of their Accounts that they're working with so house cleaners that are doing this process. You may want to do the paid one It's about 30 dollars a month, but it's industrial and it will let you set up You know 30 or 40 or 100 houses or however many houses you do So that's a great way to offer that to your your The houses that you're working for without them having to pay a fee But a lot of the apps for inventory of home items are free. All right. So I want to jump over here for a second We got a couple of questions Karen says I'm so sad and paralyzed is a mess Um, this is this is true There are so many people that are in this situation right now And it's because we're all dealing with a lot of the same issues right when everybody stayed at home during the pandemic All of us started facing the same issues and it started becoming a very real problem for all of us Jenny says I really like the tape with the twist. I have a family antiques and antiques I've purchased I all I have often thought how my nieces and nephews are going to know which is which I need to mark them so they know And I love the tape thing for that reason because at a quick glance You can have like a blue one for example could be all distant relatives nieces and nephews And if you have a particular niece or nephew, you just write their name on it And that way when people are going through the item, they're going to go Wait a minute. Who is Cheryl is Cheryl a member of the family? No, actually Cheryl was a housekeeper that worked at the house for 20 years. Yes, you know, she gets stuff too And so whoever's a member of the family can have their stuff marked If the the homeowner is not ready to let go of it right then so it works out really really well All right, so moving on back to Rachel. What happens to Rachel is this and that's kind of a a tale of tragedy But I want to I want to bring this up because this could be any of us So this became Rachel's house Really of no fault of our own just paralysis A the trauma of her sister's loss set in and as a result of that she didn't get rid of stuff and it just kind of piled up Well, the other tragedy was at work There's this really hot guy and she was going to have a relationship with him and every time he would come over to the house She did not invite him in and she did not invite him in because we just saw what the inside of her house looks like Right, so on the outside, she's got this really nice put together package And on the inside there's a whole bunch of hidden shame from the paralysis of not knowing what to do And because of the shame, she didn't want to invite him in So instead of saying hey, listen, I am going through some personal stuff I need to work through it But I've got all my stuff and then all my sister's stuff and I I'm frozen in time and I don't I don't know how to Deal with that. Please don't hold that against our relationship Right, we talked in several of these episodes that we're having about starting to be honest with ourselves And starting to have those tough conversations That would be a tough conversation to have to say listen I I I'm now addressing hoarding issues that I've never dealt with before I don't want this to become the new normal for me And so in the process of our relationship, I need you to be aware that I'm dealing with this Okay, if there was an honest conversation, he might say Let's get help together or he might say can I help you or he might be able to be empathetic Right, there are options when you are honest about your situation What she was not honest about her situation What happened in this particular situation is because every time he would bring her home and she would kind of like push him away He took it as you're not interested in me and he left and the relationship ended So now the paralyze the paralyzing behaviors from her hoarding or her clutter Ended the relationship What's also interesting is like I said she was up for the job promotion But because this was her house and this is what she's dealing with she was not able to Clean out her stuff in a timely manner and because there was no timely manner of cleaning out her stuff She was not able to move On the schedule she was supposed to move on And as a result of that the job promotion went to someone else So not only did the clutter cost her her job Not her job or her promotion and her relationship, but now we find her sleeping in her car And I say this is a sad situation But she's sleeping in her car because that's comfortable and it's a safe place And she doesn't have to deal with all of the stuff Right, so what I want for us to start to look at is there's a domino effect that happens when we're paralyzed And sometimes paralyze paralyzing from the clutter it comes from lots of things It can come from PTSD. It can come from stress. It can come from, you know We bought valuable items and paid a lot of money for it This happened a lot during the pandemic people bought a lot of things to kind of I don't know Make us feel like we're cool again because everyone is focusing on social media And everyone on social media is cool and has cool stuff except we don't we have like weird odd stuff That's not cool. So we bought a lot of stuff paid a lot of money for it And now we find ourselves in a situation where we've got too much stuff and boxes of clutter Right, so her safe place now is sleeping in her car and then even worse than that She's showering at the gym because she can't even get into her bathroom anymore Right, so this is a little bit of a tragedy because we are we're running into all sorts of different kinds of problems that we've never dealt with before because of I don't know fear because of being unsure of ourselves because of being afraid that it like The video that we watched earlier that the stuff that we have is going to go to a landfill Like what happens next and how do we get rid of our stuff? Right and what are the physical symptoms if you're sleeping in your car and you're not eating right? You're not sleeping having a house full of clutter has increased my stress levels I've started having panic attacks and other physical symptoms Like headaches that last for days I have insomnia and can't sleep at night for worrying, but I just can't seem to get started on cleaning up the place What can you recommend for me? All right, and again, this is not something that she planned This is just the residual effect of where she ended up with her stuff Now we talk about the stuff and this is a probably an extreme situation not everybody's house is like this This is actually from a job that came in this last week And the extreme cleaner that sent it to me was able to clean up the property And by cleaning up their property. It was a $12,000 job And they were sharing it with me by saying what can I do to help people that are in this situation? Because first they're paralyzed and at first it just seems like oh, it's it's kind of you know I'll deal with it later But as it piles up and as it gets worse day after day after day it's costing people their jobs their relationships It's costing them $12,000 to clean it up and then for what for what when we could actually be in a process of working through that right now Now I have got good news and bad news and I know you guys do not want to hear the bad news Because I only want to bring you good news, but we do have some bad news and the bad news is that clutter Is an ongoing thing. It's not like you're going to clear everything out and then never deal with it again It's a new part of our lives. Okay, that's the bad news. The bad news is it's an ongoing thing Stuff is going to come into our life and stuff needs to go out of our life It's not healthy for stuff just to come into our life and then stay It needs to eventually go Okay, and I want us to think in terms of the big picture the big picture is that stuff comes into our lives We enjoy it for a time and then it goes. It's just like being born. You have a child child comes into your life You're like, yeah, I had a baby. Yeah, and there's lots of balloons and celebration And then the kid grows up through their life and then they grow on and they become a parent of their own and they move away Right, it doesn't mean that we didn't have great time with them and enjoy them And they were a huge part of our lives and still are It just means it was a natural progression of things Now the paralysis comes from way back when when we are little kids our parents say go clean your room We go, okay, we go in our room and we look around We're like, wow, there's this big room with all these toys and stuff and I love all this stuff And I have no idea what it means to clean my room No idea And so we sit there and we you know shuffle stuff around And we're like, okay, I think the room's clean and we leave and our parents are like, oh, you didn't clean your room Nobody ever showed us how to clean our room Okay, one of the things that I deal with on a daily basis is I work with thousands of house cleaners They get in the business and they're like Don't tell anybody but I don't I don't really know how to clean. What am I doing? So we have in the cleaning business we have a checklist And this is a checklist that all of us professional house cleaners use And if you want to download one you can download one. I have a I think I have a note here where you can download it Um And it's free. It's absolutely free. I'll put it up here on the screen But it's uh, it's a checklist and what it does as a professional house cleaner Is it gives you a list of all the things that make the job complete? So you go to a customer's house and you say while i'm here, I will do these things What are the things? Well in the dining room We're going to do a general cleanup and we're going to put everything where it needs to go if there's a place for everything We're going to wipe all of the appliances and the surfaces of the tables and the chairs Then if there's furniture polish that needs to be added We're going to add the furniture polish and if there are baseboards or there are pictures or lampshades We're going to dust those and then if there's any garbage in that room. We're going to remove the garbage And then the last thing that we're going to do is we're going to sweep and mop the floors Okay, so there's a little checklist that says here's what we're going to do in this room So when you go in the room, are we going to do all kinds of other things? No We're just going to follow the checklist. That's what we bid the job on. That's what we said we were going to do This is pretty standard stuff in most people's dining rooms except most people's dining rooms don't have a garbage can So if there's no garbage can you don't remove the garbage can you just remove any of the garbage that's in the room, right? So if a kid were to have a checklist Then what they would do is they would know like hey This is what i'm supposed to do when i'm inside this room, right? We make it easy for them But as we get old and we become adults many of us don't know what that looks like as far as You know cleaning the room. So it's okay if you're paralyzed It's okay because maybe nobody ever showed you how to unparallel yourself and how to how to get the help Right, so i want to go back to rachel for a second because what did rachel do? And this becomes really important because this is something that we can all learn from But in rachel's situation with the house of clutter she's got $12,000 now That is going to have to be paid to to do this this cleanup job Well, there are next steps and some of the next steps are asking for help now We've talked over the last couple of episodes About the possibility of being honest and what that means is just asking someone else for help, right? There's no shame asking someone else for help There's no shame and there are people that are trained to answer those questions There are people that are trained to help with ptsd And there are people that are trained to take you aside and say and lots of professional house cleaners can do this But they can take you aside and they could say no one ever showed you how to clean no worries I got you covered and they can show you a checklist and they can show you how to clean the house In between the times that they come to help you clean And even if you only hire a professional house cleaner for one time And they come to your house and they show you how the checklists work And then they walk you through each of the areas of the home And they show you like this is what it means to wipe off the countertops And they show you the right microfiber cloths to use and they show you how to wipe the crumbs onto a cutting board And then fold the cutting board into the trash so that the crumbs don't fall out onto the floor They can show you things like that and then when you're done with that session, you're like, oh, hey Now I know what to do, right? It's not that anyone is dumb or stupid or that they are mentally ill But I want to stop for just a second and say that not Dealing with the issue can contribute both your physical and your mental wellness So when we talk about mental wellness, it doesn't mean you're mentally ill What it means is you will be mentally healthier If you follow these procedures and you start a procedure and you start up a plan of action So even if you don't have any money at all, there are places that you can start for free Okay, and one of the things that I want to highlight is our youtube channel This is the channel that we are meeting with You're on right now if you're watching this on youtube if you're watching it on facebook then You're watching it somewhere else But we got a youtube channel with a whole bunch of ideas little tiny short videos longer videos And we're doing this series every single week so that we can help people change their relationship with stuff Right, then we do have a facebook group and this is a facebook group where you can come to us It's absolutely free. There's no charge whatsoever. You don't have to be a hoarder to participate But this allows you then to come and upload pictures. Okay. This is my dining room This is what i'm working on this week and a whole bunch of people are going to jump in and go you got this We we got you covered and i'm really excited because we've seen a lot of progress of people going through Their homes and their bedrooms and their storage units and we have this thing on saturdays Or we have a donation saturday where every week collectively as a group We go in and we try to like is there anything in my house right now that i'm not using Anything that i'm not emotionally attached to Because when we talk about being paralyzed and not being able to to you know, I can't decide on anything Can you not decide on anything? Or is there something in your house that you just really don't care about and there's no emotional attachment whatsoever If there's no emotional attachment, let's get rid of that stuff first We want to do the easy stuff first easy is good Right because once we've dealt with the easy stuff and makes the harder stuff easier to do Here's the reason why if I go to the gym today and i'm working out I'm gonna hurt tomorrow. My shoulders are gonna ache. I'm gonna be like, oh, I hurt so bad But then if I go again tomorrow Oh, I still hurt so bad and then the third day. I'm like I kind of hurt don't hurt as bad It's kind of like wearing off me by the fourth day I'm kind of like hey i'm kind of getting in the groove of this kind of like this We're kind of having fun And by about the fifth or the sixth day of going to the gym All of a sudden those muscles that we've broken down are starting to rebuild and all of a sudden We start having those endorphins and we start feeling like hey I'm totally getting the hang of this and by the second week of us going every day to the gym All of a sudden we've started to build very tiny muscles and now we're like, hey, wait a second I'm a little bit stronger than I was before the decluttering muscle Get stronger the more you do it as well as last week in the week before we talked about procrastination and indecision If you have a hard time making the decisions We want to go through a series of steps Right and the series of steps that we want to go through for those of you that missed it The first thing we want to do is we want to gather information What is it that's making us freeze about this particular thing? What is it once we have all the information then we have a decision and we can move forward So the next step is then we have to identify our priorities How much of a priority is this and we want to go back to rachel for a second And I say rachel is a fictitious person But there's a rachel in all of us. It could be our next door neighbor. It could be our relatives It could be us. Okay. There's there are rachel's all around us But the reality is what are the priorities if it's costing her her job promotion If it's costing a personal relationship If she's living in her car because she doesn't have room in her house to to sleep and to eat and to live That's a problem. Why because she's still paying for the rent or the the mortgage on the property, right? So it gets expensive and now to actually have somebody come in and haul all this stuff away $12,000 That's a small part of a down payment on a house You know what I mean? She could have she could have gotten to the next home or something She could have you know, bought a new car down payment on a car or something She could have used the money in a profitable sort of way other than just clearing out clutter because she was paralyzed Right. No shame in being paralyzed, but the shame comes from The life that happens after that where you're living in your car and you're showering at the gym and all this stuff To try to keep up the appearance like hey, I got my life put together Well, in fact, there there are other issues, right? And if we go back to rachel for a second I'll remove the the priorities here But if we go back to rachel for a second one of the things that was interesting about this particular scenario And I do have a list of places we can go online that are Licensed places there are therapists on here There are places where you can get online counseling if you're scared to leave your house Or if you're ashamed to meet with someone face to face There are a lot of resources here And so if you go to the show notes for today's show and that is over What is today's show that is a this youtube thing? I'll leave this up here for a second so that you can take a look at that This is a list that you can tag into Either for yourself or for a member of your family that you're helping Or if it is in fact A client of yours if you're a professional organizer or you are a professional house cleaner This is a really great resource set of resources for you Setting an appointment with yourself. These are color-coded moments where maybe she's going to meet with a therapist Maybe she's going to meet with a professional organizer Maybe she's actually going to do some decluttering and clear out something for the super saturday donation But once it's on the calendar it then takes on a life of its own because it allows us then to have Real opportunities where we are actually dealing with this stuff instead of putting it off because by putting it off That doesn't solve anything right that doesn't solve anything It's just we find ourselves in a worse situation because procrastination and Indecisiveness lead to only more clutter and that only adds to the paralysis of the clutter that we have Okay, so this is our life and I want to remind us this is our life We get to live it right this is my life I get to live my life the way I choose And what I want to do is I want to choose to live it to the highest of my capabilities And so when we talk about How are you living your life? Do you need help? Do you need help? And if you do where are you going to go to get the help? So like I said, we do have resources But another thing that I would recommend and this is something that we find helpful in rachel's situation Is that there are a lot of people that are going through some of the same stuff And so by joining a group either an online group or joining a physical group There might be a group in your area that's dealing with some of these very same issues And a professional organizer a lot of professional house cleaners There are medical professionals that will help you find these groups You can also do a search online for the area that you live in and just get connected with other people Because what we're finding is there are a whole bunch of other people That are going through some of the same stuff that can help us so that we're not wandering through this alone Right. You do not have to go through this alone. All right The pros and cons are one of the things that I wanted to mention If you're afraid of getting rid of stuff go through the pros and cons. What are the pros and cons? Let's say that we were getting rid of clothing in your closet You can go through the pros and cons. What happens if I get rid of it? Yay, that's a pro What happens if I don't get rid of it and those are the cons So by having a logical conversation with yourself sometimes that removes the pain of Do I really need this? Am I really going to use this and we can go back to some of the other things that we've talked about in other issues Where we use and we rely on some of the solutions that we found one of the solutions that we found And this is my personal closet What we have is The different sizes of clothing So if my normal size of clothing is a size six I might keep a size four and a size eight in case I get a little bit fat or a little bit skinny And that way I have clothes that I can shrink into or grow into but it's the same with the pants, right? So if I have one size on either side of the size that I'm wearing That gives me the option of getting rid of all the size tens all of the size 12s all of the size twos the size zeros I know that if I'm in a size six and my go-to is either a four to an eight if I lose a little bit of weight Or I gain a little bit of weight. This is a strategy that I can use that will help streamline that process So I want for us to have some kind of strategies as we move forward so that there are no surprises and so that unlike Rachel we do not find ourselves in a situation where we have to pay gobs of money to have our stuff hauled away and this is one of 20 trips that it took to clear out our Rachel's house, okay And I say our Rachel the the client was actually named something different but to protect them We we use the name Rachel But 20 trips just like this to the landfill to get rid of the stuff that Was just piling up because there was no commitment to getting rid of it so we do want to take a look at the The situation and just just try to find a balance in all of it and find out why are we hanging on to stuff Because if it's not bringing us joy Is it the highest version of ourselves? And that's what this comes back to is are we are we in a situation where we're We're we're living our life or are we settling for the life of someone else? All right, here is another reason why some people become paralyzed with decluttering I'm paralyzed when it comes to cleaning out my kids rooms The kids have grown and moved But I wonder if I will need the cribs when the grandkids come to visit Or maybe my children will want the furniture they used when they were young I have so many toys that my kids enjoyed. I hate to just toss them I'm frustrated because I could use the bedrooms for other purposes But I don't want to get rid of the stuff and then later Wish I still had it Please help me all right, so this is a very real situation and I'm I'm I'm sad and that we end up finding ourselves Having stuff that we did not use do not Do not know how to get rid of and we're stuck with it because we haven't made those decisions So when the person said that I want to get rid of the stuff, but I'm afraid that my kids will need it or want it How often do the kids come when we talk about gathering the information weighing the pros and cons asking the questions Maybe it's seeking another another opinion what that comes down to and let's visualize the outcome If you need that room for other things, what does that look like? If you are a painter and you want to use that as a craft room What does it look like for you to remove the crib and remove that other stuff? And is the child going to come visit you while they're still an infant We've had lots of grandparents that have held on to the hope that their grandkids are going to come when the grandkids come The parents are like, oh my kid screams all night. I don't want them in grandma's house They're going to keep grandma up and they actually stay at a nearby airbnb or a nearby hotel They come to visit during the day, but they don't actually keep the kid. They're at grandma's house all night anyway So all of the hanging on to the crib and the kids stuff Grandma could have let that go and she could have had the craft's room to explore her painting and whatever, right? So going back to the tape Did we have things in that room that we labeled that said this was for this grandchild or this was for this particular child Because if susan comes to the house and it's her kids that would be using the crib and she's like We don't we don't do that anymore. Anyway, they're sleeping on a regular bed They could have let that crib go two or three years ago And grandma not hanging on to that in the rare hope that when the grandkids come they're going to use that bed Right, so again, it's being honest and open about our conversations and then visualizing the outcome What does this look like when i'm actually living my own life? All right, so I hope that some of the strategies. I hope that helps a little bit I'm going to jump over here and answer some questions for you guys because we got a lot of questions coming in And i'm super excited about that now is the time to ask those questions so that we can get those answered Uh I have Rosanna says I definitely will sending virtual hugs. That was not a question. That was a comment. So thank you for that Jenny says not sleeping in my car. I actually make my bed almost every day. I love that I love that that is a great start to what could be an unlucky situation If you make the bed every day and you're you force yourself to do it It also removes the temptation of putting stuff on top of it because then you have to move that stuff at the end of the day Right, so by making the bed every single day Those are small steps that put you in the right frame of mind and it puts you in the right place every single day So so that you then can Focus on what is important, which is then living the next part of your life And i'm trying to find my banner here to get rid of that The next banner here was eliminate options options And I do want to highlight that because when we have lots of options that can lead to paralysis We talked about this in our our episode on in decision where you go to a restaurant You got some massive menu. There are so many options. You're like frozen and you can't decide So you take 20 minutes to decide what's on the menu, right too many options leads to paralysis So if we don't know what to do or if we have too many options, we can just freeze So by eliminating the options makes it easier to decide you go to a restaurant. Here's the secret Decide i'm not having dessert right now and get rid of the dessert menu. I'm not having drinks right now It's lunchtime. I'm not it's not happy hour. Get rid of the drinks menu. Okay. It is lunch time So i'm going to get rid of the dinner menu and the breakfast menu and now we're just down to the lunch menu, right? So by eliminating options, you can narrow your choices, which makes it easier to decide I know it's a trick, right? Okay, so along with that. We got a couple other questions here Rachel said yay, I've made it it's spring cleaning time and although I try to declutter throughout the year I always do more in the spring. I felt paralyzed at times, but you've helped me Angela. Yay Rachel i'm so excited that you joined us today And I want to highlight this because oftentimes this is so weird But because we have spring cleaning a lot of people think they have to wait until spring to clean No, you know one of the things that we've done in the professional cleaning industry And i'm really excited about this is we've helped professional house cleaners put families on deep cleaning four times a year So that there's deep cleaning four times a year, which is you know Every three months and what that does is that removes all the buildup and instead of it taking a whole weekend to do Making it this huge project. It's littler projects that are done more frequently throughout the year So everything stays a whole lot more clean and it's a whole lot less work And it's easier to do and it's manageable that way nobody gets tripped up on oh You know the spring cleaning because when you talk about spring cleaning like wow That is a huge project and for a lot of people it takes two or three weekends And it becomes an overwhelming task and they try to do the garage And all the rooms of the house and the kitchen cupboards and the closets and the linen closets and underneath the bathroom sinks and it just becomes this overwhelming thing then because it's so overwhelming It's paralyzing and a lot of people don't get around to it So instead of doing it just once a year by breaking it up into smaller sections It's more manageable. It's more manageable for the homeowner. It's more manageable for the house cleaner And it's far more affordable on an ongoing basis because you get to spread the money of the big clean throughout the year on the four deep cleanings I know it's revolutionary, right? It's pretty cool. All right, so Sunny girl 87 says just another smith. I hear you. I think of all of us who struggle think the same way Maybe a foundation of hoarding. I don't know what this foundation of hoarding is But what we're talking about over at hoarding world Is there are a whole bunch of us that are trying to deal with our relationship with stuff? And as we are we're having lots of questions and some of the questions are and let me remove this here So you can see this this is our facebook.com groups forward slash hoarding world And one of the things that we do over there is people are welcome to ask any question I've got a team of people that work with me. Some of them are professional licensed therapists Some of them are people on the savvy cleaner team, but as professional house cleaners as professional organizers There are a lot of people that have come through our ask a house cleaner show They're jumping in here and they're answering questions and they're helping us find solutions in real time So that those people that are looking for free solutions Can still have ongoing support and you can post your pictures people can give you ideas They can give you suggestions and that kind of thing because we don't want anybody that's looking for help to be turned away Saying well, I'm not quite a hoarder But I have you know five storage units worth of stuff that I got from all of my Parents when they passed away and I just didn't know what to do with it And so what we want to help you work through that item by item like I said, it's it's an ongoing thing This is going to be an epidemic for a long time And I say that because lots of we're six generations into collecting stuff from our parents and their parents and their parents And then two sets of parents and lots of people are getting divorced now. So you have Instead of just one his parents and your parents you have The step parents and there's a there's a lot of stuff right and it's coming at us from all angles right now And these kids move away from home A lot of kids are leaving stuff behind and there was one woman that we worked with and this is really important Her daughter who was 14 years old went to live with an auntie And when she went to live with the auntie She left all of her stuff behind and said to her mother don't move my stuff is really important to me Well, she and the auntie hit it off really well and the the auntie was maybe a better parent for her at the time But the mother hung on to her daughter's stuff thinking one day the daughter's going to come home She said it was really important to her hang on to it So let's fast forward like 20 years and the mother's still hanging on to the 14 year old version of her daughter's stuff So we asked the daughter we were able to get up with the daughter and say hey Do you want the stuff mom's been hanging on to it for all these years and she's like no She said i'm you know that was 20 years ago. I'm not even the same person whatever I had 20 years ago I don't care about it's just old stuff But now the mother's like not moving hanging on to the same house Bedroom is decorated the same way like holding on to the the fast hope that she doesn't want to do wrong by her daughter Well, the daughter it means nothing to the daughter anymore anyway, right? That's where the tape comes in if there's something really important to you tag it Say this is really important to me You can even get a special color of tape maybe orange tape or purple tape or something and say This was my pride and joy. This was super important to me And then as you you pass on your kids can look at your stuff and go this Was really important to mom and they can all pick or choose an item That was important to you that they want to hang on to I have and I try to find the smallest item I can Of the people in my life that I want to hang on to I I try to find one or two small small items that I can hang on to that represent my interaction with them on planet earth And then have a little tiny jewelry box of those little items that each one of those were like a little symbol of my grandma or You know a woman that helped me When I was young with needlework and I have a little padding shuttle from her And there are a couple little tiny items that will just fit in a little box that if I'm going to take an item of collections with me That hey, it's super important It's this little tiny box not big households of furniture and china hutches and you know Dishes and things like that try to narrow it down to the smallest thing And then just keep one item from each of the people that really meant something to you And so in the event that you end up with something small that's cool But we don't need a whole entire house to represent how cool that person meant to us Because they came to earth without any of that and they leave earth without any of that And we leave earth without any of that so hanging on to something just because it was important to someone at one point in time Not a good enough reason, right? All right, this is tough stuff. I know Sunny girl says it is gut-wrenching to address uncomplicated hoarding allowing it to pile up as gut-wrenching to and the principles are similar It is similar and it is gut-wrenching and it's really hard when you have seniors That have been hanging on to stuff for a long period of time And then it becomes either a health hazard or a trip hazard And they can't get through their home now with their mobility devices That's either a wheelchair or it's a walker or it's a little walker with wheels on it Things that they're using to support themselves and if they're tripping on items in their house That's a safety issue for them And so we don't ever want it to get to a point where we're sleeping in our cars Where we can't sleep on our bed because there's overwhelming stuff We don't want it to get to the point where in some of the pictures we saw earlier today of rachel's house There's uneaten food or there are Soda cans that still have some residue in them Then you get ants that are attracted to that and there's a less than desirable situation That comes as a result of letting things go Okay, we don't want to find ourselves in a situation where we let things go And so going back to The earlier question about let's gather all the facts and the information One of the things that might be paralyzing us and we don't know what to do But if we start thinking it through a logical basis and we might need a friend to help us do this You bring in the boyfriend that Instead of inviting him in because you were scared you bring him in and say, hey Can you can you have a conversation with me about some of this stuff? And maybe another person with another set of eyes can say listen If nothing else, can we just get rid of all the soda cans or the soda bottles that have ants in them? Because there's still soda pop at the bottom and it's attracting the ants Can we just get rid of those and you might say yes I have no attachment to that whatsoever and that might be an easy place to start So even if you're paralyzed even if you don't have a checklist But I recommend you get one because it will help streamline the questions that you have Okay, if the question on the on the checklist is you go through and you remove all of the trash Well, you can go in and you might you might not want to get rid of anything with emotional attachment But you might be able to say I can get rid of all the paper plates I can get rid of all the pizza boxes and get rid of all of the the soda cans or the soda bottles Right, that might be an easy place to start But it's like building the muscle Once you start building the muscle it starts getting stronger and stronger and stronger And you say okay now that I've gotten rid of all the trash now I can get rid of the dishes So you start moving all of the dishes out logically what happens to the dishes Well in a perfect world they go to the kitchen sink. Oh no. No, there's too much stuff in the kitchen sink So logically what has to happen? Well loads of dishes Okay, so let's start the loads of dishes so that we can start whittling away at the dishes process And so just by focusing on that one item we're not focusing on the whole house We're not focusing on the closets. We're not focusing on the garage full of stuff We're focusing on just the one thing which is the dishes and by focusing on one small area It's like a domino effect because if we're going to do the dishes, that's our only focus. What does that mean? What it means is eventually I'm going to see a cabinet and it's going to be empty It's not going to have anything on it. So what is the next logical step and it's a domino effect Well, let me clear off this counter And what else is on here that's not dishes? Well, maybe you have some papers and maybe that Weasels it's what into your next section. Which is what do I do with the paperwork? Do I have coupons and do I have trash and do I have mail and do I have bills? And then the next question might be what am I going to do with those? And you start with the easiest thing first and you say I'm going to get rid of all of the junk mail and the Advertisements first. Okay, don't worry about the bills. Don't worry about all this other stuff Just get rid of the junk advertisements first and as you sort through stuff You might say well low and behold while i'm doing this I could make a stack of all the bills Okay, great put them in a stack. You see how that's a domino effect and one thing leads to the next The more you do the better your exercise muscles for organizing become And as you start getting rid of stuff, it's going to increase those muscles as well Now there was a woman whose house we cleaned When we went to her house She had lots of shelves lots of shelves And part of the problem was she kept buying more shelves for all of her stuff And her living room looked like kind of like a little mini office depot Where you had all these rows of shelves and she had a little step ladder that she could move from Isle to Isle And bless her heart She kept hiring this handyman to come build these shelves for her And they were like arriving a box and we put them together and put her stuff on them And it was neatly organized, but the problem was this In her 80s She has this little step stool that she's trying to move from Isle to Isle so she can get to her stuff So I have a problem with that because I do not want any 80 year old person climbing up on a step ladder In their house when they live alone to lift heavy boxes of stuff That was put up there by a handyman who is not there to help take it down Okay, you see where we're headed with this? It's just not a good scenario Instead of organizing the stuff we have to get rid of a whole bunch of that stuff that we're never going to use again Is okay It's okay We had a conversation with a woman this last week and she said I've got a second house that is fully Furnished with all the stuff in it. I just can't let it go because it's good stuff Okay, but you're in the 80s And you're never going to go there again Okay, so we have to start having different conversations about which of your children Do you want this to go to can we start labeling those items right now? Can we start inventorying those items right now? Can we let those kids come pick up those items right now so that you Get to witness how much they enjoy those items that you're giving them And if the kids don't want any of it right now now is the time to decide We don't want to be hanging on to all of that stuff until she passes away because one day she will And then every one of the family is going to fight over it or they're going to feel obligated to get rid of it And if they do then what? Maybe she was Treasuring something and then it's just going to go into a landfill or it's just going to get Be donated to the Goodwill or something because The person that came next didn't see any value in it, right? We want to we want to pay attention to the things that really matter while we have the chance to do that All right, a couple of a couple of things here. Man, I got a lot of questions and I didn't get to all your questions Um Butterfly says I need this my depression PTSD and anxiety has me paralyzed from doing what I need to do every day and therefore Now I have a cluttered mess and I've got to get it under control I hate that you're in this situation and I want to say that you're not alone And so by by talking about some of the solutions we talked about today and also Reaching out when we talk about having the real conversations with other people And saying hey, I need some help That's either reaching out to a therapist or a friend or a family member or an online group Even like the hoarding world group that we have on facebook where you can come and just say guys I'm working through this room. Here's a picture of the room. Where do I start? There are going to be a whole bunch of people that have your back I've been in this group for for many months now and there are a whole bunch of people We do care about you. We clap when we see that you've covered some some territory and that you've gotten rid of some stuff We take pictures of our donations every saturday and we take them at the location So like in the back of the car as you're dropping them off at the donation center in front of the donation center We've got pictures at the donation center the people that are like posed for the pictures like hey This person dropped their stuff off like hooray and yay. I mean we are we are really serious about making some progress So please do not go at this alone. Okay. We're in an era now Everybody's accepting lots of things about life that we always try to kind of like That's not the way things are that's the way things are now. Okay. This is the new norm And we're going to be okay with processing it. Okay. We're going to give ourselves permission to process the stuff Okay, it's not a big weird scary thing anymore. It's normal. Everybody has extra stuff We're going to deal with it together. Okay. We got you here. Alrighty Um Peace four seven seven seven says I tell myself each weekend that I'm going to declutter but each weekend passes with no action by me Um, okay, so I want to follow up with this. I want you to keep me posted I want you to come join our group But I want you to post and show me what you're doing because I'm going to jump in there and I'm going to I'm going to Be watching and I'm going to say what did you do this week? Did you take something to the the center did you take something to the donation? What did you get rid of and week by week? We'll go through stuff. Okay, like I said, nobody's done this Nobody's doing this alone Uh rent says I haven't done a lot but some Starts uh somewhere for only 15 minutes a day and make it a habit then go up to 30 or only 20 if that's what you can do And I love this I love this right because if you start small It's just like building the muscles if we start small and we do a little bit It builds on top of each other the more you do the stronger you become at it But I'm going to share this with you The stronger you become at it the better your self confidence becomes as well You start trusting yourself more and you start saying, you know what I got this under control I I can do this and making those decisions comes a whole lot easier and you become more Adept or more Proficient assorting through your stuff and then all of a sudden you start making different Selections so when you go to the store you say wait a second That is going to end up on my decluttering table in a couple months from now This is cool today, and I might use it once or twice, but I know myself well enough to know I'm not really going to use this at all. So while this is super cool. I'm going to enjoy this from a distance I'm going to take a picture of it right now that picture is going to remind me of the joy that I'm having in this exact moment I'm not even going to buy this. I'm not even going to take it home I'm not even going to hit the buy now button on the internet I'm just going to look at it and go what did you do that was really fun And then I'm going to leave and I never have to declutter it and we're going to be decluttering in our heads Before we actually take possession of this stuff Whoa, how cool is that? Right It's a whole new set of tools that we're going to be using to help us as we progress through the next several phases Of what we're going to call the new norm The new norm is when you start clearing clutter away and you start getting accustomed to and comfortable with the space Because if our norm has always been clutter clutter clutter and there's a lot of stuff around us If we're not willing to change the new norm When we get rid of stuff We're still stuck in our old comfort zone And then all of that stuff comes crashing back in on us only To have us declutter again Right and I'm praying that there are no more Money that rachel has to pay that there are no more big dollars 12,000 dollar bills But she's going to have to pay for the clutter that she got rid of this one time Okay I'm hoping that this is a new a new start for her and that it's turning over a new leaf and saying wait a second That was really expensive. That was a lot to try to go through and now moving forward We're not going to bring stuff into the house that we're not going to use that we're going to later have to declutter I'm hoping this becomes the new norm and we have to be okay with that If you're uncomfortable and you're having like fits like ah, I need some stuff Where can you go to enjoy that stuff? Maybe you need to go to a yard sale or a thrift store and look around and not touch anything and not buy anything I'm now at a point. I have hoarding tendencies But I I now can go to any store and I can walk in and walk out with nothing I don't need to buy stuff. There's there's there's a way that I can now look at stuff and say, hey, that's awesome That is so cool and Enjoy the moment, but not by it. I don't need to buy stuff anymore in order to have that little thrill of of seeing it and enjoying it Right, so we have to start looking at the world with new eyes We have to start acting in a slightly different way We have to be willing to be uncomfortable until we can change the the comfort zone into a new norm all right Um sunflower girl says Hey, angela. This is my first live with you. Although. I just got here. Yay. I'm super excited I'm going to give you a happy bell. Here's my happy bell. It's got a little happy face on it That means welcome. I'm so glad that you're here Jenny says And that's so me to fill it back up with new stuff or new trash Jenny, you're not alone. We all do that. That's the reason we're having this conversation is because we're starting a new norm Okay, this is this is us saying this is my life. This is my life It counts. I'm going to do it differently this time and instead of waiting until we then Die and our relatives have to sort through our stuff. We're going to do it right now We're taking responsibility right here. The buck stops right here. We are in control of our lives We're going to tag this stuff that we want our family to have And we're going to move forward with the pride and the tenacity of knowing that this stuff comes into my life It's like the tiny child that was born that then grows up to be an adult We enjoyed it while it was here. Now it's on its way, right? All right I'm going to leave you with that today. I will be back. I've got another call I got to jump on but I will be back in the comments Leave your comments in the notes below and I'll be back on facebook and also youtube will continue this conversation For the rest of you, please come over to the hoarding world It's an ongoing conversation where you can upload pictures and we can surprise and delight each other with the progress that we've made Have a great week and we'll meet here again same time same place next week and until then please Take care of yourselves because this is your life and you do deserve the best