 generational hoarding and its impact. Ah, what a tough subject, but I'm really glad that we're gonna have this conversation today. I'm joining you today with the Clutter Corner audience and then also the Ask a House Cleaner audience because we have some really serious things we gotta talk about today. And I'm hoping that as you join me, I wanna say hi to everybody here joining me. I wanna hope that as you join me, I just did that, my screen went weird and whack-a-doodle on me. Isn't that cool and so weird? I wanna ask that you... Let me see if I can fix that because it's gonna be super distracting. Hang on. Me and my technology, ha! Who knew something weird like this would happen? See if I can make this be a green screen. There we go, green screen. Okay, green is better than wiggly blue. So hi and welcome. This is a tough subject that we're talking about today and I'm gonna ask that you do jump in and ask your questions. Sandra says hi, hi, how you doing? Vidtra says hi, everyone. Chatterbox says hi. Lisa says hello from Wichita, Kansas. I'm so glad you guys have joined us. One of the conversations that we've been having as professional house cleaners over the last several weeks and months is how do we approach situations where house cleaners are going inside homes and they're dealing with kids and teenagers that are in hoarding or terribly cluttered situations and are suffering results from it. And it's academic results, it's social results that they're suffering with. There are social issues, there are self-harming issues, there are self-esteem issues, and we see house cleaners that are going inside these homes and they come out brokenhearted and they're asking questions like, how do we help and what do we do? And it's a real concern and it started several generations ago. And so we wanna go back to the Great Depression which was triggered by the crash of the stock market back in 1929. So we're at almost 100 years ago. And depending on how you classify a generation whether it's 20 or 25 years, we're talking about four or five generations deep. And so right now we've run into a really weird icky sticky situation where we have residual effects that have kind of powered down generation after generation. Now, before we talk about kids and the effects that it's having on them, I wanna go back to a time when I was a child. I grew up in a home where we had very limited space and there were 19 of us kids. And so we were told whatever you can keep, you can keep inside a milk case. So we were limited on our personal belongings but the family had their own share of stuff. And this came from my grandfather who had hoarding tendencies. Now my grandfather grew up in the Great Depression. And so they were very resourceful about the things that they saved because getting new things was not as easy as it once was. So for example, one of the things that was really important to them is that they didn't waste anything. And so if anything was given to them even if they didn't want it, they'd say, yes, we'll take it. Thank you very much. And we'll figure out a way to make it work for us. And so they became very resourceful. I too grew up in a very resourceful home with 19 kids. We didn't have a lot of things but we would take what we had and we'd be very resourceful with it and we would recraft it, we would repaint it. We would take a wheel off of this and put it on something over here which meant the thing that we took it off of now was missing a wheel, right? So we were saving weird stuff. And so there's this weird kind of trap that some of us fall into. And I know that my grandfather, as a kid I was perplexed by this but my grandfather would be out walking and as he would walk with us and he would find a little nail on the pavement, he would pick up the nail even if it was bent and he would take it home and he had a little coffee can and he would collect these little nails and bolts and whatever he could find in these coffee cans. Well, what was interesting about that is if it was bent or broken, he would take a hammer and he would hammer it out. And now you and me would sit here and go, that's not a very good use of your time, right? It wasn't, but that's the era he grew up in. We don't waste. And his motto was waste not want not. And so that was a motto he shared with my dad when he was raising my dad. And then my dad raised me with the same philosophy. Now, let's flip the switch a second and I'll tell you about my mother. My mother is the second oldest of 16 kids. Her parents also grew up during the Great Depression. So what happened was my mother from the same era of, oh, let's save everything and let's be resourceful, also growing up in a large family had to make ends meet, if you will. And so the generation after generation of saving and storing and being resourceful with things comes from actually a really good place. If the world had saved and restored and repurposed everything it had, our landfills wouldn't be so full and we wouldn't be as wasteful as we are today, okay? So there are great things that came from that generation. So I don't wanna knock it and smack it upside the head and say, oh, that's all bad. I wanna say, wow, how amazing that we came from an era where we were taught to reuse things instead of waste them. All right, but now let's flash forward. We do live in an era today where everything is on discount and things are readily available to us. And we can buy things for very inexpensively. And so there's a whole generation of stuff that's like, I don't have the time, I don't wanna be resourceful, I don't care, this is old, let me throw it away and let me get something new. And there's a big sandwich group in the middle that are like, whoa, whoa, don't throw that away. I might be able to use that for something else. Here's a perfect example. Inside my house right now I have two irons. Now my husband does most of the ironing because he's ironing his own shirts and he's resourceful and responsible that way. But what's interesting is one of those irons does not work. It does not work and it does not work, which is why we replaced it and why we have a second iron. But he won't let me throw that first iron away in case the old one breaks. Okay, well, if the new one breaks, for example, you're not gonna go back and use the old one because it already broke. It's already broke. It's not gonna work again. It was so broke, we replaced it. We bought a new one, right? I know the logic is twisted and it's a little bit, doesn't make so much sense. But here's the rule. I will let him keep two irons because one gives him security in the event that the new one breaks. Okay, well, if the new one breaks, we'll probably buy another one, right? But the catch is this, lots of people have lots of things just in case. All right, so how does this affect the younger generation? And this is where it gets really confusing. There are a lot of kids that grew up with a lot of stuff and they don't have an appreciation for the stuff and they don't take care of the stuff and they have way too much stuff. And then parents now that get divorced, they try to buy the kid's love with buying them stuff. So now the kids have more stuff. And then if I fill my love from my parent comes from them giving me stuff, then the only way, and this is a trap, so beware parents, if you're buying your kid's love with stuff, this is a trap. If the kid wants to feel loved, what do they do? They ask for more stuff. What they're asking for is I want more love. I want more attention. I want to feel noticed and appreciated. It doesn't mean give me more stuff. There's a lot of the stuff kids have just is just confusing and overwhelming and there's not a place for all this stuff. Stuff gets old, it gets neglected, it gets not taken care of and then it gets abused and unappreciated. Then we expect kids to go out in the real world and make a way for themselves. And they're like, oh, why would I work? Everything's been given to me, right? So it's this weird trap that we find kids in. In the summer of 2015, we had a troubled teenager come to live with us and she was an amazing person. But she came from a home where her mother had passed away when she was young. And so as a, I think a residual effect, I don't know all the nuances of what was actually triggering her, but she had a real tendency to be a hoarder. And for a teenager to be a hoarder is kind of a unique thing because a lot of the items that she had did not even belong to her. She stole items from other people so that she could hoard them. And so even though it was a requirement in our home that her room was neat and tidy, every day she would unpile everything in her room, make these huge piles of clothing and items and stuff. And then literally you would have to go in and help her sort through those items and you'd find 20 or 30 cell phones. And these cell phones did not belong to her. She did not have the cell phones. She'd stolen them from other kids or traded them or who knows where she got them, but they did not belong to her. So there was a constant process of trying to go in and clear out the room and have conversations and go to therapy and try to resolve these issues. But what was happening is I think she was trying to sandwich her own emotions. Like I'm feeling all this sadness. And I feel like if I'm smothered in stuff, I will feel better. And so her comfort at an odd place was being surrounded and sandwiched and smothered by stuff. It didn't even have to be her own stuff, just stuff. And the rest of our house was not a hoarding house, but that was one of her behaviors to try to work through. All right, so while she was feeling these moments of sadness and despair, and there were probably a lot of other issues. But again, when the home was so untidy, she was always embarrassed to invite friends over. Like, hey, invite your friends over. We have a good house here that you can invite your friends. It's a limited environment. We know what's happening here. Your friends are welcome. We'll make you guys snacks or food. You guys can watch movies. But because of her own little bubble of, I gotta be surrounded in my stuff, she'd get really discouraged and depressed and embarrassed and then she didn't want to invite friends over. How sad is that? And so it was this ongoing tug of war of how do we make her comfortable and make her feel like she's important and she's needed and she's appreciated and also provide her with the social skills to then make new friendships and try to work through this scenario, okay? So there are a lot of issues that are going on there. I wanna say hi to all of our friends here. This is so exciting, you guys. I'm so glad that you joined me. I have Kaylee here. She says, make space for the children. That's true. Yes, please do. She says, love the positive lessons your grandparents passed down. Thank you. I love my grandparents. They were so cool. And Ms. Mola says, I'm a sentimental hoarder. Items that belong to relatives that bring back memories that people in my family crafted, et cetera. I was an only child and an only grandchild on one side. So lots of stuff. And I love this acknowledgement because there are a lot of kids that are from homes where they were an only child. And as a result of that, everybody tried to spoil that child. Everybody tried to give the kids stuff. And then as a result of that, the kids grew up thinking, I'm important if I have stuff, right? When in reality, we come into the world without stuff and we leave the world without stuff. We don't take it with us when we go. And so it's interesting when you start looking at the stuff we amass over the course of our lives. And how does it affect our families around us? So the first thing that I want to mention when we're talking about kids and teenagers is if they come from a home that is super cluttered or is okay with hoarding, a lot of times there are situations in the home that are less than desirable. And I say that in a sense from a hygiene perspective. It's really hard to go in and clean the shower, for example, and make it nice and sparkly and shiny if you're tripping over stuff to get inside the bathroom. Just finding the floor to get in there is the big deal. And so when you take a shower then, instead of you hopping into a place with nice hot water and it's a clean sanitary shower and you're having this moment of solitude and like, hey, I'm doing something nice for myself. And I love the hot steam that's coming from the shower and the hot water and I just feel refreshed and clean. What happens as you're dodging the pink slime on the bottom of the shower and maybe mold and maybe there's some soap scum on the sides of the shower walls. And so that becomes the new normal and that becomes okay. And so even though our kids and grandkids are taking showers, what happens then is that environment is that's their new norm and they get used to that, okay? Well, it's grimy, but it's my grime, right? And so they say that's how we live here and that becomes okay. And then what happens is then when they go out to become adults in their own world, they have a tendency to repeat those behaviors. Just like when kids grow up in a hoarding environment, they tend to repeat those behaviors. And so when I watched my dad have little coffee cans of nails and bolts, suddenly I saw him repeating what he saw his dad do. Now, my dad wasn't as studious to hammer out, smash nails or what have you, but incredibly resourceful. And so to this day, he has like every different size of a nail, you would think he has like a storage that's like a Home Depot unit. You need some bolts, you need some nails or whatever dads got them in all different sizes. And my dad is super organized. He has them all labeled and they're all in like matching crates and it kind of looks like a Pinterest garage and it's amazing, but it's got all the stuff. And do you really need all the stuff? And the answer is no. For example, I'm sitting on a chair right now that I put together, I bought it and it came in a box and then it has one of these star bottoms to it and then it has casters on it. And so it has five casters, but they sent me seven. Why did they send me seven? It only has room for five. Did it think that I was gonna break two of them or did it think that I was gonna lose two of them? I don't wanna be ugly or anything, but once the chair is on the ground, chances are that it's gonna get up and run away and like lose the some of its casters are kind of slim. The chair is gonna like move in like two or three feet of where it started. It's not going very far. Why do I need the extra two casters? So if this was my dad, my dad would save those two casters and he would get excited and say, look, they sent me two extra casters. How cool is this? I might be able to use these for something. And then in fairness to my daddy, super creative, he probably would figure out a place to put those two extra casters and like, hey, I got two free extra casters, bonus me. But the reality is we end up saving and storing stuff like that because that's what we knew from our parents. So my question is what message are we passing down to our kids and their kids and their kids? Because right now we're four or five generations deep since the Great Depression. And what's happening now is there's an era and it's kind of scary because I'm seeing it everywhere I go right now. And it really became prevalent during the pandemic when people were staying at home and then they were like, whoa, check it out. I'm at home. I guess I should like go in that room, that room, well, we all know what that room is, right? It's the room that we kind of put stuff in and we were decorating the house and we had an extra painting and couldn't figure out where to put it. So we put it in that room and it's a new painting still has a price tag on it, but we've had it too long. We can't return it to the store and don't wanna get rid of it. And we got a whole room full of weird odds and ends. And they're good. Like they're good stuff. And should we ever redecorate or should we ever go into the real estate business and we become like home-stagers? We've got all the goods. What are we doing with them? What are we doing with them? And it's confusing when we have stuff we don't need, don't want, don't use. And then our family members think to themselves, that stuff must be important to us because we took such good care of it. This is not something we stored in a storage unit never to be seen or heard of again. This is stuff that we kept in our homes or worse than that stuff that was on display. We have home after home that we've gone into clean and there are China cabinets that are full of silver that hasn't been used in 60 years. And when we ask the homeowner, what are you doing with all this silver? They're like, I don't know, my mother had it. Did she use it? No, but she got it from her mother. Okay, well, that's great. But if you're not using it and your mother is no longer with us and her mother is no longer with us and you're not using it either, why do we have this huge China cabinet in the house that we have to clean and maintain and like move around every time we walk into the room because nobody is using it. And it's great if it's a display but lots of the stuff in our homes, nobody's using and nobody will ever use it again. And so can we get rid of some of that stuff? Because here's what's gonna happen. The next generation is gonna come in and say, oh, wow, this was my mom's. She had it on display in her living room. I tripped over that China for my entire life growing up. It must have meant something to my mom. And when we talk about sentimental hoarding, what does that mean? Does that mean we're holding onto a piece of our mother because she was holding onto a piece of her mother and her mother and her mother? No, the thing is this, we come to earth and stuff comes into our lives for whatever reason. I know a bunch of stuff has come into my life. Some of it I bought, but a lot of it people gave me and I ask myself right now, when stuff comes into my life, am I gonna use this right now? No, no, I'm not. Am I ever gonna use it? Probably not. Do I need to keep it? Probably not. Is it gonna hurt somebody's feelings if I give it away? Probably not. Okay, so then what happens is I tag it right there. I tag it with a post-it note and I tag it with who I got it from. So let's say that I got this from Michelle. And so I say a gift from Michelle on this such and such a date. And then I make a little note how I know Michelle. I know her from the church group. Okay, cool. If I'm gonna re-gift this, I'm not gonna re-gift it to anyone from the church group because Michelle might find out, right? But if it's brand new, it's still in its box and I've decided immediately that it's just the wrong item for me and it doesn't have any sentimental value. I love Michelle, but I don't need this thing that she gave me. And so what I can do is I can re-gift it for the next Christmas or the next birthday or the next white elephant gift party that we have. Let me tell you a minute for about white elephant parties. And I encourage you if you haven't done this to do this because the holidays are coming up. And this is one of the funnest things we've ever done. During the holidays, it gets really expensive for a lot of people. People get together with office parties, family parties and they all feel really obligated to buy each other. Check it out. More stuff. And it's really frustrating because you got to go fight the stores and you got to buy something for someone. And if it's clothing, you don't know what size they wear and you want to buy them a small because it would be insulting to buy them a large but you don't really know. And you can't ask because that would be rude. So you just buy them something, it doesn't fit. So then they get it and they're like, they kind of thought that I was the size and I'm not. And so then they have to take it back to the store and they have to get a refund and it's a whole bunch of hassle, right? So there are a bunch of things that we buy for people that really they don't want, don't need, can't use. And so what we started doing is we started doing white elephant holiday parties. This was so fun. We did this last year with everyone in our team. What we did was this. We told everybody to declutter your home and pick out all the stuff that you want. That's good that you're never gonna use again and wrap it up really nicely so that it looks like a fancy gift that somebody would want to have because we're gonna pick the gifts based on the wrapping. Everybody has extra wrapping paper in their house. We didn't want anybody to buy any wrapping paper but we had lots of extras. Wrap it up. We're gonna have a great big party and then we're going to give gifts and they're gonna be white elephant donation gifts that you guys don't want anymore. And then you can either keep your gift or you can swap it with another gift in the room. And so there were people, I can do not. There were people who brought a whole bunch of stuff. It wasn't just like I'm getting rid of one thing. They brought a whole bunch of stuff. We had a lot of gifts. So everybody went around the room several times and they were picking their gifts. And this is a really fun holiday party. This went on for a couple hours. People are picking gifts. They would open it up and they're like, oh, that is such a cool gift. And someone else is like, I want that. And someone is like, I'm never gonna use that. I hope someone takes this gift from me. So it became this joke. People wanted to get rid of some of the stuff. Some people wanted that thing and they were just weird odds and ends. Like there was this little llama that was one of those little chia pets. And my husband, I don't know why, but he loves llamas. He thinks they're like the coolest animal ever. So even though that was a weird gift that we would never have purchased in a million years, he wanted that really badly. And so he swapped like five or six times and people keep swapping for the little chia llama, right? And then also at the front door on your way out, we had a great big donation box. So if there was anything that you ended up with that you really didn't want, put it in the box on the way out the door and the next day it was gonna go to the Goodwill. And so it was a really great way to celebrate the holiday for everybody to get together, for everybody's families to have gifts and have a really fun time without spending any money. And because we were getting rid of stuff, it was okay to continue getting rid of it. So I ended up with a few things that I'm like, I didn't really want this. And I got stuck with it and it went right in the box after everybody left and it went to the Goodwill the next day. So it's okay. But what we did was we took things that were important to us for whatever reason we've been hanging on to them. We don't want them, can't use them but we'd love to give them away. Now this year we already told people like start decluttering again, go through your stuff and find more things for a white elephant party because it was a really fun thing to do. We've continued that through the course of the year. In our business, Savvy Cleaner where we train house cleaners and maids, we've got a whole team of people and we meet every Monday morning for our meetings. And we have what's called a lousy prize Monday. So every Monday, somebody brings it, it doesn't have to be a piece of junk. It's usually a piece of junk. But something that they don't want and it's something that somebody gave them or whatever. Like one was a little tiny bag, it was like a little tote bag but it was only like this big. Like if you were gonna take it to the grocery to put your groceries in it, it would fit all of a tomato or maybe two apples or something. Pretty much useless. And it had somebody's logo or something on it, right? It was a lousy prize. And so then we draw names, like we draw numbers like you pick from one to 500 and the closest person that picks that number wins the lousy prize. And next week they are responsible to bring a lousy prize. And so just the lousy prizes that have shuffled through our office, it's this huge game and it's so much fun. But you can do things like that that will help get rid of stuff, okay? And I don't recommend you give them to people in your family because we wanna get them out of your homes but there are things you can do like that, okay? So how it affects our families is a direct correlation on how they're gonna treat their families and their families and their families on through the generations, okay? And I'm putting a halt to it. I'm saying, you know what? My grandfather, his grandfather, my dad, my mom, they all had these great depression backgrounds where we save, save, save, save and don't get rid of anything for dear life. We hang on to it for dear life. And so my generation were like, no, we're not gonna save that. The things that are in my life, I want to be things that made us better people not things because things perish. I don't want to be remembered by perishable things, I don't. And so for me, it's a conscious effort really asking myself, do I need this? And the real kicker is this, if you'll go through your house and you'll pick out your stuff. I know that in the clutter corner group, we get together every Saturday and we take our donations to the Goodwill or the Salvation Army or other donation centers, homeless shelters and places like that that can use recyclable items. And one of the key elements is we're getting rid of stuff on a regular basis. So as stuff comes into our house, we're making immediate decisions about it and getting rid of it. And when the family starts to see that this is the new norm, it gives them permission to say, hey, wait a second, I might have some things that I'm not using anymore that I wasn't okay giving away six weeks ago. But now that I see other members of the house starting to kind of pare down their items and getting rid of things and like I'm watching them from a distance and nothing bad is happening to them for having getting rid of these things, maybe I can get rid of some of my things as well. And I remember one day I was packing the car and my husband came running out. He's like, wait a second, is this the box that goes to the Goodwill? And I said, yes. He said, I have some old shoes. And I said, I will wait. And he goes and he grabs his shoes and their shoes that he was never gonna wear again. He replaced them with new shoes, but kept the old shoes. And the one in one out philosophy is a great one because if you get something new, you got to get rid of the old. And the other day he bought a pack of 10 t-shirts like the white undershirts that you wear under a dress shirt and I hung on to him. He goes, hey, give me those, those are mine. And I said, they are, but I'll make you a deal. If I give you this pack of undershirts that you just bought, this means 10 new undershirts in your closet. Can I have 10 back in return? Whoa, wait a second. I don't have 10 I wanna give you. And I said, really think about it. You just replaced 10 undershirts. Can you give me the old ones or the ones that are stained or the ones that have like underarm stains or they might be ripped or they might be so threadbare because they've gone through the laundry so many times. Can you help me get rid of 10 if you introduced 10 new ones into your wardrobe? And it's a conscious effort. But we are consciously trying because we don't wanna be like our parents where we saved everything, right? And I am a firm believer in being resourceful. If I can reuse something 10 or 15 different ways, I just feel like I've achieved something like yay, right? But what that means is I can't go out and buy all the supplies to make the new things if what I'm doing is the resourceful thing. And then I have to finish the projects that I start. I wanna stop for just a second. And I wanna say hi to everybody here because you guys have just loaded me with so many notes here. I just love these. Always great videos, Angela and working through both my parents' things after their death four years later and still sorting. Diana, I wanna say I'm so sorry for your loss. That is a tremendous effort to try to go through things especially when a parent is involved. My husband lost his father two days ago. And so right now, my husband just for the last 48 hours has been around the clock remembering and reminiscing the memories and the things. And my dad liked this and he liked that and just the attachments he's had. And it's only been two days but that's gonna be a long process. And the grieving process is different for everyone. And so whether it's two days or four years or 40 years, there's a grace period where we have to give ourselves grace. And so I'm gonna ask as you go through that grieving process that you allow yourself to grieve. It's easy to put off the feelings because I'm really busy this week. And I've seen this a lot, especially in the homes of people that we've worked with over the years as a house cleaner, they're executives. And they're like, wait a second, I've got a meeting on Friday. I can't grieve right now. Although I had this tragedy in my family, I can't grieve. I gotta get through this meeting on Friday. Oh, it's not a good time right now to grieve. I have something else going on. Oh, my wife just got sick. I can't grieve that right now. I'm, you know, I can't, I gotta deal with this. And so they keep pushing back their emotions because life gets in the way. And as life gets in the way, it's easy to hang onto things. Like when I start grieving, I'll go through all my stuff. And it's huge because it just kind of builds on top of each other. And it becomes the things that define us. And so I want for us to take the time to grieve. It's okay to grieve. It's okay to feel the pain. And one of the things that we have a hard time with is we live in a culture that doesn't allow pain. We're told from a very young age, don't, don't feel anything. Don't be, you know, be a man. Don't cry. Don't be sad. Like, smile, be happy, repeat affirmations and always be positive. And I believe in all of those things, but at the same time, there's an ebb and a flow that oftentimes we don't talk about until we start dealing with mental health issues. And I say mental health issues because we have a physical health and we have a mental health. And we say mental health and a lot of people like stop right there. I don't have a problem. Well, it's not that there's a problem. What it comes down to is we want to take care of all of our health because it's connected. Our mental health is connected to our physical health and it's connected to our social health and our financial health and our relationship health which is our families and our wellness. It's connected to how we think and are able to reason and respond and learn. It's connected to our educational health. So there are all different types of health that are associated with us being well. And so there's a process. And so many times we say, well, I'm busy raising the kids. I don't have time right now to take care of me. I'll take care of me when the kids grow up. And then when the kids grow up we're now taking care of their kids and we don't have time to still take care of me, right? So I really want us to focus on there's a grieving process and I am so sad when somebody loses a family member because it is heartbreaking but there's also a process that has to happen in order to recover. And I'm not saying it doesn't mean forget them. It doesn't mean let go of their memories. It doesn't mean that they're less important in your life. What it means is they are such an important part of me. I wanna honor that part of me by celebrating my own life and becoming the best version of myself through the things that they taught me through the things that they shared with me through the person that I became as a result of them being in my life and we honor those moments. I am doing an interesting study right now and I know that one day one of the most influential people in my life was my dad and I would love to have all of his little cans of nuts and bolts. Not really, I'm not gonna use them ever. I'm not gonna make anything with them but how can I honor my dad? And thank goodness he's still alive. How can I honor him while he's alive? So what I did was I said, is there any chance we could get together for one hour a week? And we could do a podcast and I could ask you questions and you could share with me your insights. And he said, yes. And I was like, cool. And then he said, I'll make it even better than that. And he said, I will create a book of my insights and wisdom. And I don't know if I have the banner here. I would love to show you if I do. Hang on one second here. This is the book that my dad wrote. It's called The Insights and Wisdom of O Moon. And he goes by O Moon because he doesn't want the world to hunt him down and harass him and his family. As they do harass people that have YouTube channels. So in all fairness, he's actually much wiser than many of us give him credit for. But he wrote this book called The Insights and Wisdom of O Moon. And then every Saturday, we get together for one hour and I interview my dad and I ask him questions and he shares with me his insights and his wisdom. Now what's really cool about that is this. When my dad leaves this earth, I'm not gonna take any of his stuff. I don't want any of his physical belongings. But I will cherish forever the podcast that we're creating every Saturday morning over on the Live With Impact channel. And if you wanna check it out, it's youtube.com forward slash and then the at sign Live With Impact. And that is where you'll find O Moon every week doing the podcast where he breaks down, check it out. The insights and wisdom are characteristics of a leader. And so if you were gonna be the best version of yourself, the best parent, the best leader, the best business owner, what would you do? And he talks about things like character and integrity and honesty and compassion and accountability and it's brilliant, absolutely brilliant. And so the reason I bring this up is that's the impact that he's had on me. And then what can I leave behind? And so when we talk about the generational impact of hoarders, yeah, I do have hoarding tendencies and I probably always will. It's probably like being an addict where you have something in your blood that you're drawn to or you're attached to. I mean, I don't know why, but I can go into a store and see something on sale. And there's a little part of dopamine that gets me really excited. Like I need that thing. It could be a pair of shoes. And then it might be a comfortable pair of house shoes. And I say, oh, look, how cool are those shoes? They're on sale for $3 or something. And then not only are they on sale for $3, but they have one in every color. And I start thinking, oh, wow, every outfit, it would match everything that I have. I could just get this inexpensive pair of shoes, but do I need 10 pairs of shoes? And the answer is no, I don't. And so that's a part of me that will probably always be because I love deals and discounts. And I think that's the era we live in right now. We've been trained as a society to love deals and discounts. And so when we go through, I'm gonna just say a drive-through, for example, they have like a little meal that's very expensive and they have a big meal for just a few cents more. And we think, whoa, I should get the big meal that's a few cents more, right? Because more food for just a little bit more money. Not thinking about the calories and what that's gonna do to our, make us have lethargy or go into a food coma or add two pounds to our waistline or whatever it is. It's just a deal, therefore it must be good, right? So there are all these different little effects that kind of like compound on top of each other. And then that becomes who we are. And when we look at kids, there's a whole generation right now where kids have just enmeshed themselves in electronics. And I remember when I was young and I bought my first computer, it was almost $2,000 for my first computer. And I saved and saved and saved for it because I could see the value of the time it was gonna save me from the tasks that I could automate way back in the day when nothing was automated. There were no apps, there were no software. I mean, you had to hard code everything. It was, I mean, times were tough and those computers were expensive. But I saved because I knew that it was gonna revolutionize the way that I did my business. And I thought, man, this is awesome. I need one of these. And we have kids today that just a $1,200 iPhone is just like, nah, you know, it's two years old. I need no one. No, you do not. You can still take some mighty fine photos with the iPhone 12 and you can still, you know, talk on the phone and you can still text everybody and all the GPS still works and they update the software. So the software is the most updated software. It's just that it's not the latest color or whatever it is, right? Very small minute changes and kids are like, ah, the old one doesn't work anymore. I need the new one. That's an era that we have right now. Kids are collecting a lot of stuff. I've seen little tiny babies that have more toys than my entire family, all 19 of us had combined. One kid, one kid. What is with this, right? And as parents, as grandparents, as the favorite aunt or the favorite uncle, we're empowering kids to have more stuff. Now I've gone inside people's homes to clean their homes and as I've gone inside, I've had to have contests with siblings, like who has the cleanest room when I arrive this week? Because the person with the cleanest room gets their floor vacuumed. And the other floors, you can't even see the floors. They're so cluttered with clothes and toys and shoes and stuff, right? I had a host contest. I brought blue ribbons with me and I would give out a blue ribbon to the kid that had the cleanest room. And the kids are like, oh my goodness, I gotta clean my room and I get a blue ribbon. And they would hang them proudly on their mirrors inside their bedrooms. Like, hey, check it out. I had the cleanest room this week. And what I realized was if I bring one and you can buy packs of like 10 for 10 bucks online, if I brought one $1 blue ribbon, all the kids in the house would scramble knowing that the house cleaner was coming and they would try to clean their room so they could receive the blue ribbon of the week because that meant they had achieved something. Isn't that sad? And there they were every week, like hurrying and cleaning and making a big to do about it. And they would proudly hang those just a whole row of these blue ribbons. And it became a game. But you know what, it was an investment in those kids. Let me show those kids how to clean because here's what happens. We're all part of a community when kids can participate in the cleanup around the house. And they can put their dishes away after every meal and they can put their garbage inside the trash can. And they can pick up the paper items, paper plates and paper cups and bags and things from DoorDash or whatever they can throw those in the trash when they're done. What we're doing is we are empowering kids to be part of the family community. And then when they go out into the real world, guess what? They're like, hey, I know what to do with the trash. I know how to take out the trash and put it out on the curb at the end of the week before trash day. And now they have a set of skills they can use in their next situation. So are we training our kids to be corridors and to collect clutter and to buy their affection and their love with stuff? Or are we teaching them how to interact with stuff by processing it and getting rid of it every week when you take a donation down to the Goodwill or the Salvation Army? Are you teaching kids that even though we have stuff coming into our house, when we receive something as a gift, if we don't need or want it, instead of hanging onto it just because it was a gift, the gift doesn't mean love but we can immediately re-gift that to someone else. We have an entire shelf in our house and this is a really cool shelf. It has all brand new stuff that people have given us that we can't use, don't want, don't need, or it's a duplicate of something that we do need or want. And it's all brand new stuff. Every single time there's a birthday or a holiday or whatever, we go shopping on the shelf. There's a whole shelf of stuff that we already have. Yay. And we just go in and we go, oh, this would be a perfect gift for so-and-so. And then we re-gift it. And I hate to say this but I've received a lot of gifts and they're all still new with tags. They're new in the packaging, they're new in the box. And I mean, I'm even savvy enough now to save the wrapping because a lot of people spend a lot of money on wrapping. They got these special gift bags with bows and all the stuff and I just leave it inside the packing and then just change the name tag and give it to someone else. It's already done for me. Yay. Hey, that saved me a whole bunch of time, right? I want us to start looking differently at our lives because lots of people feel trapped by their stuff. They feel trapped. I don't want you to feel trapped. I want this stuff in your life to bless you and to make your life easier, not harder. I don't want you to wake up and say, oh, I have to sort through all this stuff. Okay, we'll sort through a little bit of it today. Start with a little area that you're in right now and sort through a few items in that area. And then tomorrow start in a different area and don't bring more stuff in. It's not a matter of organizing stuff. It's a matter of removing some of the stuff that we have. We don't need all the stuff we have. We really don't. And so if you give yourself permission, like, hey, what bad thing happens to me if I get rid of all this stuff? Nothing. And with the belief that more stuff is gonna keep coming into our lives. If you did nothing to amass new stuff, new stuff would still arrive into your life. I don't know why, but it seems to come from nowhere, right? And I got a whole bunch more comments here. So I want to say hi to you guys. Hi for those of you that are just joining us. Tony says, you were meant to speak to me today. My mom passed in August. She hoarded in her apartment for over 15 years. I'm still cleaning out my mom's apartment and I'm stuck and I'm so overwhelmed. Tara, I am so sorry for your loss. I am so sorry. 15 years of sorting through someone else's belongings is and can be overwhelming. And the question we have to ask when dealing with your mom is who was your mom? What was your mother's message that she left on the world? And is there something that really embellishes and honors and how would you say exemplifies that message? Is there something that was really memorable to her? I know when I was young, there was a woman, she was not related to me in any way. She was a neighbor lady who lived about six blocks from us. And I was this little hyperactive kid with ADHD and I was bouncing off the walls all the time and I was homeschooled. And I don't know why or how it happened, but my mother took me and my two older sisters. So there were three of us girls. Every Wednesday, we went to this little lady's house and she would teach us how to knit and tat and embroider and crochet and all these little hand knitting hand things. And she was like a grandma to me, if you will. Again, not related in any way. And from the time that I was young, I had all these things that I had created, handbags and hats and scarves and pillowcases and like we created a whole bunch of things. And it was kind of a way for us to spend time with her while she was teaching us these lost arts. And when she passed away, it was one of the saddest days in my life because I'd become really close to her having spent four or five hours with her every Wednesday for years. And when she passed, my first inclination was to hang on to all the things we had created together because I wanted to honor her. And I said, in the world that she lived in, she was always creating something new. Hanging onto the old wasn't her passion. She would always give away the pillowcases and the hats and the scarves and the fun things she had created. And so giving them away was her gift. And so what could I keep that would honor her? And it ended up being a tatting shuttle which was really small and it fit inside a little tiny shoebox of memories. And so I tried for my entire life when I was getting rid of important objects from people who meant a lot to me. What can I keep that will really shine a light on the essence of who this person was and make it something really tiny and something small that I could then keep because I didn't want to just get rid of everything. There's a part of me that has sentimental attachments. And so as I wanted to hang onto some things what one or two small items will mean the world to me if I hang onto these and then let the rest of it go. And so as we work through those things, they're tough choices. These are really, really tough choices we have to make. And I want for each of us to give ourselves permission to grieve and then to find those one or two items that really speak the emotions that we feel every time we see that thing and think of the person that meant so much to us. Jeannie says, right now while listening, I'm going through my clothes and I'm donating because of your video, thank you. Thank you so much. I love hearing stuff like this because we're all in the same situation. We're all in this together. We're all in the process of going through some of our things that we have to work through, right? So I love the fact that we're able to work through through this together. Amanda says, that's an awesome idea. In Quiz says, I worry about setting up a living trust as a homeowner in savings when not having any other person in my life. At this point, 66 years in my life is worrisome. That I understand. I understand because there are a lot of people that don't have anyone to leave anything to and they don't know who's gonna take care of them as they age. But this I want to suggest. I wanna suggest that you start partnering with people around you. And this I wanna share with you. I just joined a gym a couple of weeks ago. I decided I'm gonna get back in shape and menopause has not been kind to the extra weight that I've packed on. So I decided to go to a gym within two weeks time. I've made a whole bunch of new friends at the gym. Now here's the caveat. I don't have time for a social life but I do have to get dressed every morning. So if I'm getting dressed every morning at the gym in the locker room with other women that are putting on their makeup, we can chitty chat while we're putting our makeup on and we're getting dressed at the same time every morning. So we all go do our separate workouts. And then in the locker room, there's this little social half hour where everyone is chitty chatting and catching up on all the details of each other's lives. And what's really interesting on the way out of the gym the other day, there's a woman I just met. We've only known each other for two weeks. And she said, who do you have in your life? And I said, what do you mean? And she said, if something happens to you, who do you call? And I said, well, my husband and what happens if something happens to him? And I said, well, relatives or whatever. She said, I'm gonna give you my number. If you ever need anything, call me. And I said, Jenny, who do you call? And she said, I'm gonna call you. And I said, okay, let's swap numbers. So we did. And here's the important thing. There are people in our lives that are not on our payroll. And this is a catch because I got a lot of people on my payroll and they're probably the first responders because they would be the first to find me if something happened. But we need close friends. We need friends and it can be friends from our community. And if we're not part of a community, it's okay. We can still be part of a community. We can still have time, right? Communities come from church groups. Communities come from neighborhoods like the neighborhood association. I'm not really big on socialization. I work a lot. But one of the things I noticed is that one of my neighbors came to me and said, I'd really like to be your friend. And you're a really hard person to be a friend too because you don't come to any of our neighborhood activities. I said, I don't have time and you all just get together and drink wine and I don't drink alcohol. So it's kind of weird for me. And she said, what I'd like to do is meet you at the country club every Saturday morning at 7 a.m. and let's go walking together. I'd like to get to know you better. My first thought was like, what are you selling? She's like, I'm not selling anything. I just want to be your friend. I was like, okay, cool. It's 7 o'clock in the morning. We'll go walking. And it's really cool because we'll walk in any kind of weather. And I've got to know all about her family and all about her kids and we chat together and it's really great socialization. So for those of you that are in the same situation and you are between friends or if you don't have anybody to leave your resources to or if you need resources, it's not too late to connect to somebody or something. And there are lots of groups out there. And if you want to get started, my suggestion is that you first check in your own neighborhood. What's happening in your neighborhood? Is there a neighborhood Facebook page? Do you belong to a church? There are also organizations like, I believe it's 211.org where they can put you in touch with organizations and associations where they can help you either set up a volunteer opportunity. I know that at the YMCA where I just joined a YMCA, they've got a lot of volunteer opportunities. And the volunteer opportunities are not just with that one YMCA but there are branches all over. And so they'll get together and they'll have like Saturday garage sales and Saturday bake sales. And they'll donate to different like coat drives and different things like that that everybody gets to participate. They also have jobs. And so I know that at the Y that I joined, right now they're looking for more help. And so there are a lot of seniors that have picked up jobs where they're like, oh my goodness, this is a great place for me. I was gonna come to the Y anyway and work out. And this is an opportunity where it's an environment they were gonna be in. They get a discounted or free membership. And then they also get paid for the time that they're either they're sitting there welcoming people to the thing or hanging banners or cleaning up or whatever they need, right? So there are a lot of different opportunities. Amanda says, that's a huge blessing to have in life. And I'm thinking that comes from another one. Someone says, I tried to give her items some dignity by giving many of her things away to people that live here that are needy. I feel like I can sell her good things but it will take me forever. It is possible it will take forever but they also have estate sales where on one Saturday you can get an organization together and it could be a group of friends or it could be neighbors or even family. And they come in and they bring all of your stuff and put it outside and you put prices on it and you can have three or four of your neighbor friends help you with an estate sale. And you can sell all the things that you're ready to let go of at one time. And then you can do it every year as you are ready to let go of more and more things. And I love the fact that you are willing to give it to some needy people that were in the area that could use that. Holly says, you can be sentimental but also not a hoarder. That's true, that's true. There are a lot of people that are not hoarders. There are people that are immaculate in the way that they live but have hoarding tendencies. And so there's a really big difference between somebody who just has a lot of stuff and then people who have a lot of stuff that they're connected to that necessarily does not take up a lot of space. Right now we live in an era and this is a whole new wave of hoarding but there's electronic clutter. There are a whole bunch of people that have thousands, thousands of photos that they've never been able to sort through. And they have hundreds of files and a cabillion emails. And as technology upgrades itself, we're updating and updating and updating and updating and people say, oh, I have a laptop that kind of the hard drive on it went out and they're saving it. And they're gonna get it fixed because maybe the keyboard still works or whatever. And we've run into this whole new era of they've got 12 laptops now stacked up. We have people that have old, I kid you not, ZIP drives from way back when when they had those, not the floppy disks but like the little hard disks where it would save like 35 megabytes of storage space. And then people that have gobs, I'm guilty of this. I still probably have, I don't know, spindles of CDs and DVDs with content on them that need to be transferred to hard disks. And then we have the little hard drives which were the little five terabyte hard drives that were so cool because they hold five terabytes instead of 32 gigabytes or whatever the CDs held. There are people that have a lot of electronic stuff. So there's a whole new generation that is hoarding a whole different series of things. And so what I'm talking about hoarding, it's not just junk in a house. It's a lot of different things. It's one family having seven generations of dishes. Seven generations of dishes because it was, they were all that child remembers eating with all these different places, dishes and stuff for holidays through the course of their lives. And though they only may use that set of dishes once for one meal a year, they're still hanging onto that. There's a lot of stuff and lots of people. I live in a neighborhood where lots of people have a place for all their stuff. There's a lady that lives in a neighborhood we cleaned and she bless her heart. She bought the house next door to her as a storage unit for the house she had that had overloaded with stuff. And then she moved all of, and the houses were immaculate. They were organized. There was a place for everything, but oh my goodness, she just had so much stuff. So now she had two houses right next to each other and she would just kind of toggle between the two houses depending on what she needed. We live in an era right now where people not have one busy house. The houses are organized. The houses are tidy, but they've got their house. They've got the parents' house that they inherited. I do like this, meaning her parents' house. Both parents' houses, they got those houses. They got their own house. They got a storage unit. They've got a shed. They've got a garage. They've got an attic. We're seeing stuff we've never seen before. And so however organized we are, it's still an issue. Ah, why does it have to be an issue? Aira actually says I just bought a new car that hardly has any storage areas. And I have to declutter it and downside what was in my previous car. I love the fact that you are aware of that. That's awesome. And Marion says, my mother said the depression didn't really hit the Netherlands, but then the war there was a hoarder. It was the entirety, but she didn't have an overabundance of anything, an overabundance and everything was put away. It's interesting when we see how many people have put all their stuff away and they've tidied everything up and we live in an era where everybody's like focused on organization and Pinterest looking bins with labels on them and storing all the stuff. We just have way, way, way too much of it. Hi to all you guys, why not use it? I also had a grandmother had special dishes that were only used on special occasions. And I love special occasion dishes, but if we're gonna sit down as a family, let's make every meal a special occasion. Let's use all the dishes. Let's use the dishes that we've been saving for years and never did. Why did we not use them? How sad would it be for family members to come in after we're gone and say, I ate one meal on this set of dishes? No, please let's use them now. That's what life is all about is making those moments now. I've heard that hoarding is a mental health issue. Yes, hoarding is a mental health issue, but so is everything that we do in life. If it's connected to your mental health and your mental wellbeing, it's a mental health issue. Getting up in the morning and not sleeping in late is a mental health issue. Going to bed on time is a mental health issue. Making sure that you have social interaction with other people is a mental health issue. And I wanna really be aware of the fact that our mental health is connected to our physical health and all the health around us. I don't wanna isolate it like it's a disease. It can be a disease. And there are certainly people that have exacerbated it to the point where it needs extra special attention. But every decision we make goes back to our mental health. And so do we deserve to be mentally healthy? The answer is yes, we do. We deserve to be physically healthy. We deserve to live in a good clean house. And so that's my message for you here today. Holly says, my dad is a severe hoarder and his mom also hoarded. And I'm constantly pleading with him to go through his stuff. It's very selfish behavior, not to care about the burden I'll face when he dies. Thank you for bringing that up because so many kids feel that way. So many kids feel that way and they don't want their parents' stuff. They don't. Lisa says, I'm wanting to create new relationships but I'm embarrassed by my clutter so I can't invite people over. Lisa, I wanna give you one suggestion. Until you can invite people over, please make some friends and go out. Go out. Please meet people at restaurants, meet them at a coffee shop. Coffee is less expensive than a meal. Meet them at a park. If you don't know anybody, please go to a park. You'll find people walking their dogs. Go out and talk to people about their dogs. Make conversation and make some friends because the first thing that will help us in getting rid of our clutter and inviting people over is number one, giving ourselves permission to say, hey, I'm okay and I deserve friends. Everybody deserves friends just like they deserve to live in a clean, healthy, happy life, right? You deserve friends. So even if your home is not friend ready yet, you are enough and you matter. And so I want you to get to a place where you can have friends over but until that moment, please go out and meet friends wherever those friends are, okay? It will relieve a burden from you that it will immediately that you get connected with people who care about you because you do matter. All right, I have, man, we are running out of time. We're gonna have to continue this conversation, you guys. Holly says, I was too ashamed to invite friends over to my parents house when I was a teenager because of the clutter. The house has only gotten worse and it makes it very difficult to clean. Yes, it does make it difficult to clean if there's clutter. And again, we inherit some of these behaviors from our parents, but we do have a choice. And I love the fact that you guys have joined me here today because joining me lets us know that we have a choice and joining me here today lets you know that you're not alone. You're not alone in experiencing this. Everybody right now is experiencing this. We are four, five, six generations deep in stuff. This is not new. This is not an isolated issue. This is something we're all going through together. And I wanna pay attention to the younger generations because the kids of today are growing up in an era with all the electronics and they're focused on what's in front of them. And what's in front of them is the tendency to buy more. It's the tendency to be cooler and get cool points by having stuff either they don't need, don't want, can't use and can't afford only to amass all this stuff. And it does not bring true happiness, love, compassion, kindness, friendship, any of those things. So they're amassing wide arrays of things that do not bring them happiness. And it's showing up in other ways that are sad from isolation and sadness and self-harm and a bunch of other things that then trigger a whole bunch of other series of issues. Okay. So it is time for us to give ourselves permission to get in control of our stuff because like I said, this is an epidemic and it's something that needs to be addressed. So I really appreciate all of you guys joining me today. I love you guys. I just, I really appreciate these times that we're able to spend together and the conversations that we're able to have. I am gonna let you guys go today because I do respect your time. Please leave your notes in the comments below. And then when I get a few free minutes, I'm gonna jump back in and answer as many of these questions as I can. Please know you are not alone. But please remember that you are enough. All right, you guys take it easy and I will see you again, same time, same place next week. Take care.