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008: Decluttering part 3
827 Plays6 years ago
In this episode Dinah and Mia focus on how to help others declutter, and Mia interviews Jo and Kristen from Springtime Services, professional organisers in Melbourne.
Jo and Kristen describe how they support clients to declutter part or all of their homes. Their service draws on the advice of experts but they stress they avoid being prescriptive. Every client is different and their approach needs to be tailored for what will work for their clients.
Jo and Kristen find the biggest challenges for people to declutter are photos, children’s artwork and toys and gifts. They share the advice of Marie Kondo in respect to gifts: “Don’t keep gifts out of guilt. After the joy of the gift-giving moment is through, you can donate the gift without guilt. It has served its purpose.”
They talk about the particular challenges of decluttering when someone is downizing or moving to residential aged care and provide the following tips:
- Allow people to tell their stories about the items they are letting go of.
- Don’t let people handle their items too much as it can be more difficult to let them go.
- Find the right pace and time limit sessions as decision fatigue can set in after a few hours.
Their advice for listeners decluttering their own home is:
- Take items away immediately after sorting – don’t just move them to another part of the house.
- Getting started is the hardest part – it can feel overwhelming but the reward is worth it.
LIFE ADMIN HIGH
Dinah talks about the Spriggy pocket money app that she and her children use to make pocket money more convenient, educational and suitable to the way we handle money today.
POWER TOOL
- The Clutter Coach’s podcast Organize Your Life – iTunes or Stitcher
RESOURCES
- Springtime Services
- Department of Sustainability – where to dispose of toxic chemicals in Victoria
- Return Unwanted medicines
- Recycling X-rays
SHARE
Please head to the Life Admin Life Hacks Facebook page to connect with listeners and share your thoughts, questions or suggestions.
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Transcript
Introduction to Life Admin Hacks
00:00:03
Speaker
This is Life Admin Life Hacks, a podcast that gives you techniques, tips and tools to tackle your life admin more efficiently, to save your time, your money and improve your household harmony. I'm Diana Roe Roberts, a commercial and finance executive.
Meet Diana and Mia
00:00:19
Speaker
And I'm Mia Northrop, a user experience designer, researcher and writer.
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. Some of you may already have needed to help parents downsize or move into residential care or help someone else who, for whatever reason, needs a hand to get on top of their stuff. This isn't something Diana and I have first-hand experience with,
00:01:01
Speaker
So we decided to call in the experts.
Introduction to Decluttering with Joe and Kristin
00:01:04
Speaker
So today we're talking to Joe and Kristin from Springtime, a team of professional organizers in Melbourne. Welcome to the show, Joe and Kristin, and thanks for sharing your expertise with our listeners. Hi, Mia. Thank you for having us. Thanks, Mia. So Dina and I have spent a bit of time talking about decluttering and exploring the different philosophies behind why you might approach it in certain ways. But I want to know what does decluttering mean to each of you?
00:01:31
Speaker
Well, I'll answer on behalf of both of us. For us, decluttering means making life easier. It's about being able to find things more easily. It's about being able to tidy up your house really quickly because you have less stuff and everything has a place. It's about having more time to do the things that you like. And I think, and this is a really big one for me personally, it's about having fewer decisions to make in your day.
00:02:01
Speaker
And if I can give you an example, I'll ask you a question. How many lipsticks do you actually, do you wear lipstick firstly? Rarely. Okay. Well, I've done a little survey and of the people I know who wear makeup, most people have three lipsticks that they actually use. Yes, that's so true. Right. And yet in so many homes that we go to when we're working in bathrooms with clients,
00:02:30
Speaker
Our clients, oh my goodness, I think sometimes, Chris, what have we seen? 26 plus lipsticks? Old and manky. Yep. When we talk about it, clients admit that they actually only have three. In my bathroom, I have three lipsticks. I have my daytime, my nighttime, and I read one through. I'm feeling a bit sassy.
00:02:49
Speaker
So for me, that whole chunk of decision taken out of my day, I don't think about it. And that just frees my headspace up for doing things that I find more interesting.
Benefits of a Decluttered Home
00:03:01
Speaker
Bedroom linen and bath towels, two sets for each bed, two sets for each person. Sometimes you wonder, how much should I have? What is enough? And you end up either buying things spontaneously or getting given things. Is that why people end up with so much stuff? How do they get to this overwhelmed state?
00:03:20
Speaker
You know, I don't have a linen press at my house. My house is really small, so I've just hijacked a couple of shelves in my son's wardrobe. And it's fine. I think we all end up with these towels that we first had when we were house sharing it when we were at uni. And for some reason, they just never leave. And we don't use them. So it's that fear that you think if you throw something out, you might need it later. I'll just keep it just in case I need it. Just in case. Or you just don't think about it. It just gets shoved in the back of the cupboard.
00:03:49
Speaker
When you declutter and you're down to one set of linen on the bed, one either in the washer or in the cupboard, it's just this whole chunk of decision making taken out of your day. And I think that's one of the things that we really love about a decluttered home. So what does a clutter-free house look like for you? I think a clutter-free house can still look untidy at times. I mean, I raced out this morning and there were still dishes on the bench and probably the kids' pyjamas still on the floor of their bedroom.
00:04:20
Speaker
And often when I tell people that I'm a declutter, they say, oh, you should come to my house. My house is so messy. I think there's a big distinction between a clutter-free house and a messy house when all our houses get messy at some stage. But the big point is a messy house can be tidied quickly. There's enough cupboard space to put things away. The benchtops are free and tidy. The hallways are tidy. There's no piles of papers or bags down the hallway for people to trip over or have to walk around.
00:04:50
Speaker
For me, a decluttered house feels calm and inviting. You know, you can see your belongings, your artwork and your family photos.
00:04:57
Speaker
ornaments and your mementos rather than just regular household stuff thrown around everywhere. Well on the surface it might look like there's a little you know tornado has gone through but you can restore it to that calm state really quickly. That's right. Really quickly when things have a home it makes you can do a tidy really quickly and and it means other people in your family can also say know where things belong and when things have a designated
Storage vs. Less Stuff
00:05:23
Speaker
home.
00:05:23
Speaker
they can put things away as well. It's easier that way. And I think Chris and I, we often encounter clients who say to us initially, I need more storage. I need more storage options. And in fact, quite often what they need is to have less stuff. Some people just want to, some help getting a pantry or a wardrobe in order. And sometimes we're helping people declutter their home, their whole house.
00:05:49
Speaker
You know, they might be moving, downsizing, renovating, or they might have moved into a house and been in there for six months or so and still struggling to get to some of those boxes that they just haven't had time to unpack. And the boxes have been stacked in the corner of a room. Sometimes we work, the two of us, sometimes it's just one. Sometimes our client likes to work side by side with us.
00:06:12
Speaker
Sometimes they give us a brief and once we get to know them, they get to know us, they trust us, they give us the key to their home and let us do our thing. Every brief, every job is different and so we work however best suits our client. And at what stage do they get in contact with you? Are they at some sort of tipping point where they try to do it themselves and they don't know what they're doing or is it more that they just don't have time to tackle this task?
00:06:38
Speaker
I think a little bit of everything, Mia. It varies. Sometimes clients are motivated by sudden decision to go overseas or illness. We have clients too that ring us and we have a chat to them and then it might take them a few months to sort of, you know, get the courage to call us again and have us in their house. But once the process starts, you know, some people just really get into it and the clients and, you know, they can do it themselves. They often say it's a bit addictive because it feels really good once they get started.
00:07:08
Speaker
The starting is the hardest part, I think, for most of the clients. We have a chat over the phone to them. We do lots of listening. We ask some questions. Sometimes if it's necessary, we'll do a visit out to the client's house. And once the process starts, we help put in organizational systems, and each of that varies from client to client. We don't have a set
00:07:32
Speaker
methodology that we are rigid about and that's very deliberate because every client is different. So whilst there's so much information out there on the internet and you know we've got Marie Kondo and so many books being published and many of them have fabulous advice and we draw from lots of different experts when we work with people but everybody's different and so we have to really go in there and
00:08:00
Speaker
The process varies because each person's individual and what's going to work best for them will vary from client to client. Yeah. What's your take on the Marie Kondo way of doing things? That's a good question.
Marie Kondo's Decluttering Influence
00:08:16
Speaker
There's not a lot that she said that hasn't already been said by other people in the past, but I think she's marketed in a brilliant way. Sometimes perhaps she's a little bit hardcore.
00:08:29
Speaker
Please don't ask me to rip pages out of books. I mean, it just actually makes my chest hurt to think about it. There are some parts of her book that really resonates with some of our clients. Some of them really like that idea of, you know, holding an object and thanking it and farewelling it and being grateful. And others, I think that's madness. So there are bits of it that we really like and that we draw on. And again, it just varies from client to client. But like hats off to Naomi Kondo. She's, she's some,
00:08:59
Speaker
She's been hugely successful. Yeah, she has packaged it up in quite a compelling way. I think anything that's really encouraging people to think about all the items they surround themselves with and what they really need and what they really want their lives to feel like is a good thing. It's about where you start. So when you arrive at someone's house, if you're doing a full decluttering of someone's house, where do you start? The first thing is to gauge just how kind of anxious
00:09:27
Speaker
the client is feeling about the process. So it's quite common for people initially to feel a bit ashamed or embarrassed about having, I mean, we're strangers to begin with, coming into their homes and looking at their things. And that dictates the pace that we go out, doesn't it? It does.
00:09:45
Speaker
That's not everyone. Some people are quite okay about it. But if people are feeling really emotional about the process, then we usually will start with something that is not sentimental. So, you know, a laundry, a pantry, a bathroom, these are good places to start. Most people aren't hugely emotionally attached to their spice racks. So, you know, that's, we can, we can get going and we can build some rapport and get some confidence and start sort of teaching them the process of
00:10:14
Speaker
of going, of making those decisions and getting our categories sorted about what's being, what's hard rubbish, what's being recycled, what's being returned to somebody. Quite often people have things in their homes that aren't actually theirs. They've just been meaning to get around to getting back to someone and what's donations. As clients get the momentum and the confidence and we get our rhythm going with each session, we'll start tackling the more tricky things.
00:10:44
Speaker
Other times clients will say to us, we'll find out what their pain point is and it might be straight, they might say to us, like every time I walk in my house and I look at that front room, I feel stressed. If that's the case and they're ready to deal with it, then we'll go straight to what their priority is. What are some of the trickier areas? Where do you find people get bogged down or it's, you know, starts to get a little bit
00:11:11
Speaker
emotional or a little bit. Oh, goodness. Sometimes it's the most obscure things, really. Little things that Joe and I might pick up and think that we make an automatic decision that doesn't have a purpose and it's old and it can go. For some reason, that client just wants to cling to it.
00:11:32
Speaker
It more often represents something else, something a bit deeper. I love working with our clients and you start hearing the stories and particularly as you spend more time with clients and you get to know them a little bit better. They share some of those stories and then the pieces come together and it starts making sense to you why that mahjong sesh was an old family game and it meant time that the family sat around a table playing the game together.
00:11:56
Speaker
When Diana and I were talking about what sort of we have too much of, one of the things I realized is I have a lot of cutlery in the house, cutlery that belongs to my mum, cutlery that belongs to my grandmother. And for a lot of people, they're like, why the hell have you got seven cutlery sets?
00:12:13
Speaker
And it's because we used to bring out that cutlery for Christmas, all these big family occasions, these good meals. And so I have really fond memories of this special cutlery coming out. And it represents those beautiful moments in my childhood. And that's why I have seven cents a cup. And we need to hear people's stories sometimes about things. And that's why we can't be too prescriptive about what stays and what goes, because we don't know the backstory. And
00:12:42
Speaker
And at the end of the day, the client, you know, is in charge about what matters to them and what they want to keep. And the idea is not, you know, like if you love those cutlery sets and they mean a lot to you and you want to keep them, then that's okay. It's not about clearing out everything in your house and having everything down to an absolute minimal. Things that people often find difficult to deal with are photos, children's artwork.
00:13:07
Speaker
Oh, gosh. And gifts. Oh, my goodness. You know, I have we have come across wedding gifts that are still in the box that is shoved in the top of a wardrobe in a spare bedroom that have never come out of the box. And yet people feel so guilty about parting with it. So we often have to do a bit of work on once. And I think I think Marie Kondo actually talks about this. Once a gift is given to you, it is yours.
00:13:36
Speaker
And it doesn't mean you weren't grateful or appreciative or that you didn't value the gesture behind it, but you don't have to keep it. I think a lot of people are going to sigh with relief when they hear this a few times listening to this episode. Kids toys are the other ones, I think. There's so many parents say, oh, I couldn't possibly throw that toy out. Mary really loved it. And I've worked with a number of women in their toy rooms. And two weeks later, they've said to me, oh,
00:14:06
Speaker
Mary didn't even notice that we'd thrown that out. And they started playing with, you know, particular toys more. Yeah. I think Kristen's right. It's quite often clients, once we've sort of decluttered their children's toys, say that their children start playing quite differently, a lot more imaginative play, a bit less going straight to the screens. And part of that is about
00:14:32
Speaker
The children are overwhelmed. If there's too many toys to choose from and they don't have complete sets, I think it's easier just to pick up an iPad. And so quite a few of our clients have said that the way the children play is quite differently because they can see the things, they can make a choice and they've got the room. Setting an example to children is a really important one as well. You know, I mean, often we run our houses like our mothers did. If they see
00:14:59
Speaker
You know, you're keeping a nice sort of decluttered house and making good choices about what to buy, what to keep. Then hopefully, you know, they'll follow that through as well. My own children, I've got teenagers now and they're quite keen on selling things as well that they've outgrown. So there's a win in that for them as well.
00:15:21
Speaker
And I guess there's some things where you have to be a bit sort of environmentally responsible about how you dispose things. I think both people know, okay, I can give you options. But are there other places that you've discovered a great worthwhile recipients of some other things that we might not have been so obvious? Yes, I'll just touch on the Op Shop if I may though.
00:15:42
Speaker
We have to often educate our clients that unless an item is in full working order and good condition and you would be prepared to give it to a friend, please don't give it to the op shop because quite often people, you know, not deliberately, I think their intentions are still good, but use op shops as a dumping ground, which just actually creates cost for them. You know, hard rubbish is a necessary evil in our job and certainly a lot.
00:16:11
Speaker
of times, particularly when we're doing a full house, a lot does go to hard rubbish. In terms of what can be recycled, and of course we try and recycle as much, our first protocol is usually our local councils. They do vary from council to council in terms of what they accept, but a lot of them do have free drop-off for your light globes, oils, paints, paintings,
00:16:35
Speaker
X-rays, old mobile phones, all sorts of things. I just put them in the bin. What are you supposed to do? Don't. Even my local library has a little box where you can put X-rays, CDs, old mobile phones, video tapes, all sorts of things.
00:16:59
Speaker
You know, it's very convenient just as you're driving past one day just to slip them in. It doesn't take much time at all. Because I think there's lead in the x-rays. Lead. And that's why they need to be recycled separately. Take them out of the paper first, though. It's the thing with it for me, you know, with the hard rubbish, it's that that first time you declare that there might be an elephant in hard rubbish, but hopefully that then makes people stop and think going forward about what they buy and how much they need.
00:17:29
Speaker
So whilst there's an immediate impact, you know, hopefully over time, people get smarter about what they what they purchase. And other sort of sort of irresponsible ways of getting rid of things is medicines, all your expired medicines, take them down to the chemist, don't put them in the bin, take them to the chemist so that they can be disposed of safely. We've even had locksmiths will take keys. I mean, one client we went to
00:17:58
Speaker
She had like an ice cream bucket full of keys. She didn't know what any of them were for. I don't even understand how anyone accumulates that many keys, but she did. And we took them to the locksmith and he was delighted. So that's, you know, yeah. Oh gosh. The other thing we didn't mention was the toxic chemicals. Department of Sustainability have free drop-offs of toxic chemicals around the stage at various times. If you jump on their website, it's free. You just book in a time. It's a great service.
00:18:26
Speaker
You just put all your toxic chemicals into a tub in your boot, you drive up, they open the boot and they take it out for you and you drive off again. It's so easy. I have to ask what kind of toxic chemicals you've got. I think it's like methytopes, anything with a poison symbol on it. You really are not supposed to, I mean, you can't tip that stuff down the sink and you're not supposed to put it in your rubbish bin.
00:18:47
Speaker
even things like fire extinguishers. Every home, particularly in garden sheds, will have products that you really are not supposed to put in your local rubbish bin. So you just go on the website for sustainability.
Recycling and Disposal Tips
00:19:08
Speaker
OK, well, now I know. Now we all know. I don't worry. This is so many learning for us over the last few years too. The other scenarios you mentioned was help when people are helping their parents downsize or move into residential care. What sort of special approaches or things worth taking into consideration in that situation? In that situation, it's a particularly stressful time for the family. Often the parents are looking at selling the family home.
00:19:35
Speaker
Parents might be ill or they may have just lost one of their parents, so they're going through a period of grief. So we need to be particularly sensitive to that and to the family's requirements and their needs. Sometimes getting in a third party can often, you know, assist with eliminating the stress and the conflict, you know, within a family. And we have frequently had sons and daughters say that we've really, you know,
00:20:05
Speaker
save the relationships within their families because often there's more than one son and daughter involved as well. And by getting a professional organizer involved to help manage the process, and it's a huge process when an elderly family member is moving into care, there's so much going on. And often you're even talking about power of attorneys changing and all sorts of things. It frees the sons and the daughter or the carer
00:20:33
Speaker
to actually care for their loved one and put their energy into that while we're doing a lot of the background work of dealing with the physical side of the house. It's about showing respect too to the elder member of the family that respecting that, it's their things and we try and empower them
00:20:57
Speaker
and give them the opportunity to make decisions about what they want done with their things that they no longer need. So what three things would you advise listeners if they were in the situation where they had to help someone else declutter their plays?
Storytelling in Decluttering
00:21:11
Speaker
Allowing people to tell the story if they need to about things. Whilst it might seem time consuming at that point, it will keep the process moving if you allow people to talk about the stories.
00:21:26
Speaker
I think, for example, I can remember working with an elite athlete once who had retired and she was time to get rid of all the Lycra. And, you know, there was a lot of it. And she competed on the world stage and she had to tell me about what each little crop top, what she'd done, what event. And that was part of the process of letting go and moving on. It was part of the grief. And this is an interesting one. If you're helping people,
00:21:55
Speaker
to declutter their home. Don't let them handle things too much if you can help it. So we were working with a lady and she said, I've realised that when I'm holding things, I have a lot more trouble letting go of it. But when you're holding it and I'm looking at it, I can make a much more sensible and rational decision. A bit more perspective. Yes. So sometimes we find
00:22:19
Speaker
You sit the person down and you hold the objects and show them to them, and then you're moving them into the piles. They're making the decisions, but the less handling, the better. And finding the right pace, I find, is the other sort of tricky part of our job. Everyone works at a different pace. So if you go in there, all guns blazing, and we have the ability to make decisions quickly, but our client might need a little bit more time.
00:22:48
Speaker
we have to, and usually this happens in our sort of first session or two with a client, is find a pace that works for them. And usually as time, you know, we usually limit our sessions to three to four hours because by that time that person's got decision fatigue and they're so over deciding, do I need that tea cup or not? You know, how many do I need? So simple decisions become a lot harder. Yes. Yeah. Time limit.
00:23:14
Speaker
is a really good idea if you're going to work, if you're going to help a family member or a friend. How about if you're doing yourself?
Effective Decluttering Advice
00:23:21
Speaker
What would you advise listeners who are planning to declutter their own home? So let's say you're tackling your kid's playroom. Don't. You do all the hard work of pulling everything out and sorting and making your piles.
00:23:37
Speaker
Don't then just reshuffle those things to somewhere else in your house. Put them in your boot and take them away straight away. Get them out. Take them to the op shop or take them to St Kilda Mums or take them to the tip if they have to. But don't just move them into the garage or move them into the hallway for later because I think quite often people
00:24:00
Speaker
do the hard stuff at the beginning, but then just have ended up reshuffling. So Kristen's right, get them out of class. In fact, add that into your time. If you set aside an afternoon and you know you've got three hours, work hard for two hours, then go, okay, that last hour is I'm going to put them in my boot and I'm going to drive around and drop them off. And do that straight away. It stops people coming home and going through those boxes and second guessing your decisions or you second guessing your own decisions. Yeah.
00:24:29
Speaker
I have fallen prey to that when I've put things aside in a bag and one of the kids has wandered into my room and found the bag. And they're like, what's this mum? They start pulling things out and it's all unraveled. It can be difficult to get started with decluttering, but all of our clients, and I can say this 100%, say at the end of the process, they feel lighter, like physically lighter.
00:24:57
Speaker
and like a load has been lifted. So even if it feels overwhelming to begin with, the reward is there at the end. We've never had a client regret going through the process. They all feel that lightness and that relief at
Implementing Life Admin Strategies
00:25:15
Speaker
the end. And they all give us a hug. Yeah, we did get hugs, which is really nice. And when the house, when a home is physically decluttered,
00:25:25
Speaker
It really lends itself to people applying the strategies, the life admin hacks that you guys have been talking about in your podcast. You know, it's much easier to put these fantastic systems into place, like having the shared electronic diaries and the paperless home once you've got the house in order. So they marry in beautifully together.
00:25:48
Speaker
Beautiful. Well, hopefully our listeners are inspired to get into it. It's a good time of year if you've got some extra time over the holidays or using New Year's Eve as an opportunity to have a clean slate. Yes. This sounds like a good place to start. So thank you so much for your advice and sharing your experience with us today. Thanks, Mia. Thank you. So, Diana, do you have a Life Admin High of the Week for us?
00:26:53
Speaker
Oh my God. Sorry, I'm sorry. I just, it makes me laugh because my kids are still pretty little and the pocket money's not on their radar, but I can just imagine getting into some IOU wars and tally keeping and the conversations. Oh, the joys of parenthood. Sorry, keep going.
00:27:43
Speaker
Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.
00:27:58
Speaker
Yeah. And there's other opportunities to use actual coins and notes. It doesn't have to be through pocket money. Yeah. I thought I would talk about the clutter coach organize your life podcast. This is a weekly podcast. The episodes are five to 10 minutes long. Each episode tackles an aspect of decluttering an organization.
00:28:19
Speaker
And it could be from dealing with unwanted gifts or dealing with the piles. You know, we've covered the topic. But what I like about this is for people who need a weekly nudge, it's perfect. It's very practical. It's very relatable. And it will just give you that weekly motivation or inspiration if you need coaching through a sustained decluttering effect. So you should be able to find it on your podcasting app of choice.
00:28:43
Speaker
That wraps up our deep dive on decluttering. Try this episode's life hacks at homes. If you're helping someone declutter, work at the pace of whoever you're helping. Rushing them may lead to them stopping altogether. Let them tell the story of items they're letting go of to help them through the process. And consider hiring professional organizers to free up families to care for your parents instead of dealing with physical stuff. And thanks so much for listening in 2018 for our first season.
00:29:13
Speaker
We'll be taking a break over the summer. We've absolutely loved putting this podcast together and you'll see us back in February 2019. Stay safe and have a great break over the festive season. If you'd like to join us on our life admin journey, please head to our Facebook page, life admin life hacks to follow us and share your thoughts on what we're doing and feel free to post any comments or certainly post suggestions that we might be able to use. We hope to see you there.
00:29:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening. Show notes for this episode are available at lifeadminlifehacks.com. If you're a fan, please subscribe and share the love and tell a friend or review us in your podcasting app.