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006: Decluttering part 1
996 Plays6 years ago
Mia and Dinah talk about the mindset and philosophies of various decluttering experts.
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Transcript
Intro to Daily Savings and Life Admin Hacks
00:00:00
Speaker
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00:00:30
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 Dinah Roe Roberts, a commercial and finance executive. And I'm Mia Northrop, a user experience designer, researcher and writer.
00:00:51
Speaker
For the next two episodes, we'll be talking about decluttering. This is a big topic that is as much about your attitude towards stuff as practicalities of how to get rid of it. The focus for this app is mindset and philosophies of various decluttering experts.
Challenges of Clutter and Decluttering
00:01:06
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Life Admin Life Hacks. We've been researching this episode during our council area's annual hard rubbish collection where they'll come and pick up large items that don't fit in the rubbish bin and they'll take it to the tip for you.
00:01:21
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And the stuff on the sidewalk is gobsmacking.
00:01:24
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People live with so much broken, damaged, obsolete, unwanted stuff. There are mattresses, appliances, baby bars, high chairs, bikes, pot plants, artwork, all piled up on the pavement right now. And hard rubbish obviously provides a welcome trigger for people to purge. I find decluttering exhilarating, much to my partner's exasperation. People have different levels of attachment to their stuff and relationships with their belongings, which can make letting go difficult.
00:01:54
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Or you might find yourself in a situation where you've not been able to stay on top of the influx of stuff. You might have just had a baby or returned to work or inherited possessions. You might have been ill or caring for someone else and you have less time to stop the avalanche and cull.
00:02:10
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And many of us grew up in homes larger than we have now and had a lot of space, but possessions were quite expensive. And, you know, as a child, I remember saving up to buy a Barbie doll in the sort of early 1980s and it cost $20. And when you sort of take into account inflation, that's, you know, more than $60 now, whereas you can pick up a Barbie doll at Woolworth's now for under $10. So I think it's very easy to accumulate those things.
00:02:37
Speaker
And although I've always had a reasonably clean house, I think there's been a slow mounting problem of deep clutter. I think clutter can sneak up on busy families and it can be very easy to buy things to quickly fill a need like buy a costume for us for a dress up party. And this kind of has this ripple effect. And I think there is a strong relationship between the clutter of your house
00:03:02
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and the challenges you might have with your other life admin. When we conducted our survey, we found that decluttering was one of those red flags where most people feel challenged by the amount of possessions they're living with. So while most of us don't need convincing that decluttering is a good thing, it's worthwhile considering the various philosophies that drive the reason to declutter.
Impact of Clutter on Well-being and Environment
00:03:24
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So one of the key ones is to avoid the mindless consumerism and materialism that happens when you continue to buy lots of things. And also related to that is surrounding yourself with necessary things that are beautiful and make your life happier.
00:03:42
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You may just want to focus on the idea of creating peaceful, organized spaces that are going to promote positive feelings for you and positive actions for you. And of course, there's always the environmental sustainability issue where we should be buying local, we should be buying used and basically buying less.
00:04:00
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And some people really just want to avoid that identity or the legacy of that feeling of being almost a hoarder or a pack rat. Absolutely. So it can't be understated as well that feeling of being overwhelmed or disorganised or stressed out or suffocated or drowning because of your possessions and your stuff. I find it really interesting that a lot of the language around feeling like you've got too many possessions as that idea of you can't breathe,
00:04:28
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you know drowning, suffocated, overwhelmed, you talk about avalanches, you feel buried. There's these really visceral words that people use to describe this feeling of being hemmed in and really emotionally burdened. There's this physical impact of course for just having no space and
00:04:46
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They've been stuffed everywhere, but there's this real mental and emotional impact as well. Decluttering means different things to different people. And so we're going to share with you some of the experts and their philosophies and how they what they think about decluttering.
00:05:01
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and their philosophy. But for me, my definition of decluttering is really getting rid of all those things which have a higher cost than their benefits. So I come to this with my financial background, my lens, but I don't necessarily mean the financial cost, but really rather the cost in terms of the space they take up, the time they waste to dust them, to move them, to think about them just by being in my house.
00:05:26
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Yeah. And I guess decluttering for me just means of getting rid of anything that's broken, that we don't use, that I hate looking at, that we've grown out of. You know, when you have children, especially, you just, things become obsolete so quickly and just moving it out. I find it sort of this flow of stuff out of the house because there's a constant flow of stuff in the house from gifts and
00:05:51
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crafts and just random purchases, so that flow of stuff in and out, in and out, in and out. It definitely seems that once you have children, you need to have a deliberate approach to decluttering because things do become obsolete quite quickly.
Mindset Shifts for Effective Decluttering
00:06:06
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Yeah. One of the books I've read to research this ep was Less is More, How to Declutter Your Life by Kim Carruthers, which was an excellent practical guide. She talks about the fact that, yeah, when we grew up or
00:06:19
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Previous generations might have had bigger houses with garages, spare rooms, attics, sheds. Now a lot of us live in smaller homes, apartments. We have limited storage space and yet stuff is cheaper. She also points out there's a real distinction between someone who might be a hoarder versus a clutter, you know, clutter or someone who's cluttered. Hoarders may recognize that they have an unusual relationship with stuff. There's something going on at an emotional level.
00:06:47
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that means that letting go of things is really quite emotionally difficult. People who just feel like their life is cluttered, they want less stuff, but they might not know how to tackle it. Porters want to keep their stuff and get more. So if you're wondering what the distinction is between those two, you can think about it in those terms. This book also really points out the fact that
00:07:08
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If it's greener to share things, to borrow things, to exchange things and donate them, then hang on to them. So some people think, well, I've got it. I don't want it to end up in landfill, but give it to someone else who's going to appreciate it or use it or get more value out of it, rather than having it sit in your home and taking up space.
00:07:28
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I did read something the other day, Mia, about it said, someday never comes. Often you keep things because you think someday I might need this. Absolutely. But it really never comes, doesn't it? Yeah.
00:07:43
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We have this conversation in my house all the time about things that are possible and things that are probable. It's like, well, that could happen, but will it? And it's the same with things. It's like, well, it's possible that one day you really will need that specific oyster knife.
00:07:59
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It's possible, but is it probable? Are you going to be shucking oysters yourself that much? You know, you just buy them from the market, pre-opened. So there's so many things like that around your house that it's possible that means it, but is it probable?
00:08:14
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Kim Carruthers also wants people to distinguish between a clean house versus just a house where you can find things when you need them, where everything has a place and you can put it back. So I think the aim for decluttering is not to have one of those houses that looks like it's from a magazine shoot, because that is not what that person's house ever looked like. That person's house has been styled with an inch of its life.
00:08:40
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And I've actually been through that process for our house and it didn't look like my house once I'd finished with it. So that is not what you're aiming for. You're aiming for a house that just works where you feel in control and not overwhelmed and you can find your stuff when you need it. I do think that's quite interesting because
00:08:57
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I feel like sometimes I have the clean house that looks like the magazine, but when you open the cup it's got the clutter hidden behind. Yeah. So I think that's an interesting challenge in my mindset. Yeah. I think so much of dealing with stuff is around your mindset.
00:09:16
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Another mindset adjustment is that idea of waste not want not. Something that might be in short supply now is actually space and time in your life. It's not the stuff. So don't waste time with the stuff. Get rid of the stuff and you'll have more space and time.
Techniques and Philosophies for Decluttering
00:09:34
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Another mindset adjustment is hanging on to things because you might want to pass them on to specific people you know. And I know I've held on to items thinking, oh, that'll be perfect for so-and-so son because they've just hit this age or, oh, I know so-and-so needs this. And I see that person twice a year. So I've had this whatever it is crammed in a cupboard for months at a time, just I could just like, oh, take it to the op shop. Someone else will find it that also needs it. You don't really have to, you know, give these
00:10:03
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old pairs of bathers or shorts or some random toy to someone hang onto it for such a long time. People from the up shop are probably going to need it more than friends or family. I do think this is also where you can use technology because there's lots of ways you can use technology to give stuff away. If you can also sell it, but use technology to quickly get it out of your house. So Facebook has been a great one for me for that. Yeah.
00:10:30
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There's also the idea of that special occasion stuff. And I know we all have this. We have the good stuff that we keep and only bring out when friends or family come over. They don't even know it's the good stuff. Ironically, they don't know it's the good stuff.
00:10:47
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You may as well use it all the time. You may as well use it all the time. And then there's also that trap of only of buying stuff because it's on sale or it's from the op shop. So it's cheap or you saw it on the side of the road.
00:11:01
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But if you can't store it, you don't need it, and you could use the money for something else, it's not really a bargain. So just buy what you need. Bonus if it's on sale or if it was free on the side of the road. But if you don't need it and you can't store it, don't get it. And don't shop for recreation. It's not entertainment. You need to go shopping only because you need something.
00:11:24
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and you need to buy something that is going to be of value in your household. It's not a hobby. So that's Kim Carruthers. Tell me about some of the people you've been investigating, Diana.
00:11:35
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So I guess I went with the big gun, so Mari Kondo. So her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tiding Up, has been kind of an enormous success and has a bit of a cult following, yeah, global sensation. So she calls her method con Mari and people who follow it call themselves the converts, which I think is hilarious. Perfect.
00:12:01
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And although I think she has been good for the decluttering, I guess, movement, I think sometimes she's a little bit too extreme. And so, you know, people can sort of poo-poo her concept. But her fundamental principle is that if something doesn't spark joy or it's not useful, you should discard it. And she also is very clear that you must assign a home for each item.
00:12:27
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So her process is to work through things by category. So gathering everything from that category together and then holding each item before making a choice about whether it sparks joy or is useful. What are some examples of the categories she suggests?
00:12:46
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So she actually has a very prescriptive process about the categories too, and which order you should go through them in. So she says you should start with clothes. So gather all of your clothes together and go through this process, then do books second. And then she has the next category, which is kind of everything else. She calls common or miscellaneous items. So that includes, you know, all your kitchen items and your towels and sheets and everything, but doing them category by category.
00:13:13
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and then she saves the sentimental items for last.
00:13:17
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on the basis that once you've become good at the process of discarding, you'll find it easier to discard some of those sentimental items. It is a bit of a muscle that you have to train. You do have to sort of, yeah, start with things that you don't really care that much about because it's easier to chuck them before getting to, you know, at the moment, my last bastion of clutter is this box of memorabilia. And I've just hit the box of letters that I've kept since
00:13:45
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Since childhood, teenage letters, love letters as a 20-year-old, without reading some of them, some of them I'm just like, oh, OK. But that is time consuming to go through. So, yes, the suggestion of leaving that stuff to last makes utter sense.
00:14:05
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Yeah, she's also very prescriptive about first of all, you've got to decide what you're going to discard and then you organize it. So don't try and do both of those things at the same time, which I think is kind of an interesting way of looking at it. And she's also quite prescriptive about how you should store things. And in particular, how you should store clothes. There's loads of YouTube videos that you can look at.
00:14:29
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which show her putting away clothes and so she rolls them and sorts them
Minimalism: Quality Over Quantity
00:14:34
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in particular order and in colours and those sorts of things. I'm not folding individual undies.
00:14:41
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does look gorgeous, all lined up in like light shades through the dark or like some Pantone display. But Jesus Christ, when it's laundry day, I'm just tossing them in. I know where they are. It's fine. It does. I have really I have actually embraced her way of rolling some of my clothes for the sort of things that worked for me. But I definitely have not tried that with my kids. I've just been really clear that there's kind of buckets. And if the right clothes land in the right kind of bucket, then I feel like that's a win.
00:15:11
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So I really, I don't feel the need to be as extreme as her, but I am really drawn to that efficiency of being able to quickly find what you need and put it away easily. So I did love that part of it in particular. So another
00:15:28
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very popular approach has been the minimalists who are two American guys who have been blogging for several years now. They actually have a podcast and it's a Netflix movie and they really focus on quality and experiences rather than things.
00:15:45
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So here's a quote from their blog. Minimalism is freedom from the trappings of the consumer culture we've built our lives around. That doesn't mean there's anything inherently wrong with only material possessions. Today's problem seems to be the meaning we assign to our stuff. We tend to give too much meaning to our things.
00:16:03
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often forsaking our health, our relationships, our passions, our personal growth, and our desire to contribute beyond ourselves. Minimalism is a tool to rid yourself of life's excess in favor of focusing on what's important so you can find happiness, fulfillment, and freedom.
00:16:20
Speaker
Lots of people hear the word minimalism. They think of warehouse apartments with lots of surfaces and hardly any touch keys around, and they rail at the idea that anyone could live that way, especially with children. But that's kind of a magazine construction of minimalism, perhaps. The focus really is the idea that you're getting value from your possessions and you're only getting things add value to your life. So everything that you own serves a purpose or brings joy.
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah, this has really sort of resonated with me. I think for two reasons. The first one is that probably some of the happiest holidays or family holidays we've had have been when we've gone camping and had not very much and sort of made do and the kids have enjoyed just being out with nature and they don't need any of those toys or positions to create those connections, which actually are what make you happy.
00:17:15
Speaker
Yeah. And I guess the second reason is because my husband grew up in a developing country. And so he has this sort of mindset of minimalism because he grew up with not very much. There weren't any shops to buy anything from. All they had was to buy things from was a market or a supermarket. And so in terms of clothes and things like that, they only bought them once a year when they went on a big trip.
00:17:40
Speaker
to another place that had shops. His reflection is how much better his life was, how much more he enjoyed himself when it was simpler, when there were less things to worry about, less things to tidy up and to put away. The minimalists in their blog suggest a game that you play with yourself. They call it the 30-day minimalism game.
Emotional Liberation Through Decluttering
00:18:02
Speaker
On day one, you get rid of one thing. On day two, you get rid of two things and so on. And it can be anything around the house that is obviously substantial enough. I'm not talking about one piece of paper, but you're slowly building and honing your eye as to the things around your home that can go. May also have a 21 day journey into minimalism where there's different focus and activities for each day to kind of change your mindset and move into a less cluttered space.
00:18:33
Speaker
I like that idea of that challenge. I think my husband, I think growing up from that background, he's always had the one in, one out rule for his, particularly for his own clothes. And so when he just naturally, when he goes to the store and buys a new t-shirt, he throws one away or gives it away to charity. And it's a great discipline to get into. I'm envious hearing that. I think at last count, my partner may have had about 30 t-shirts, but moving right along.
00:19:03
Speaker
The Joy of Less by Francine Jay. So this book, she's talking about a lot at the start about people's emotional attachment to things.
00:19:13
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She says, we have to remember that our memories, dreams and ambitions aren't contained in these objects. They're contained in ourselves. By eliminating the remnants of unloved pastimes, uncompleted endeavors and unrealized fantasies, we make room for new and real possibilities. I have to say this resonated for me, especially the uncompleted endeavors
00:19:36
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and unloved pastimes. Like one of the things I put out on the sidewalk this week was a pile of terracotta pots for pot plants. And we've had these pots for years. We plant things and they die.
00:19:51
Speaker
because it was a little pot. I now realize why some people invest in those massive pot plants that cost a lot of money, but they have one big plant in it. And those plants are so much more robust than the little ferns or a little flower, you know, they die.
00:20:10
Speaker
The dots were sitting in the back of my backyard and I'd walk past them every day to the car. I think, oh, I should really do something. I should really plant something. But I could never be bothered because I knew they were going to die. So I got rid of them and they, I put them out on the sidewalk and they were gone an hour later. Someone else has come and taken them. So I just feel, I've let go of that idea of that uncompleted endeavor that was just making me feel guilty.
00:20:36
Speaker
Oh, that's really interesting, Mia, because when I was decluttering, I found all these tennis rackets that we'd kept. And actually we've had them for so long because we thought we would somehow start playing tennis again. But because they've been sitting there for so long, they've all perished and they're now no longer usable. So we should have admitted to ourselves a long time ago that we weren't going to play tennis and given those rackets up.
00:21:00
Speaker
So someone else could have got some use out of them instead. They were barely used, but then just perished and have wasted away. Yeah.
00:21:08
Speaker
So two final points from Francine Jay. One, she says, obviously, you need to detach from your stuff, which takes psychological strength and flexibility. Much of the stuff that surrounds us is not necessary for our health and happiness. And Diana, you gave the example of going camping. Lots of people can relate to the idea of going on holiday or camping. When you do live simply with fewer items and
00:21:31
Speaker
you feel great about it. Or consider if you were to move overseas and you can't take everything with you, you might not want to shell out the storage. What would you actually leave behind and let go of? And then the ultimate thinker is, you know, if you were to die and someone else had to go through your stuff and sort it out, would you be leaving the legacy of someone who had the necessary and special gorgeous items or a pack rat's hoard?
Comparative Methods of Decluttering
00:21:59
Speaker
So the idea is to start thinking yourself as being a better gatekeeper of the things coming into the house and asking yourself, is it useful? Is it beautiful? Do I have a place to put it?
00:22:11
Speaker
Yeah, I think every item I pick up or think I'm about bringing into the house, I really have now got to that mindset of thinking about where it's going to go. And so not taking things just because they're free, for example, if you go to my husband has done lots of runs and walks and cycles and often they give you a drink bottle. Don't take it, saying thanks, but no thanks. I don't need another drink bottle if you've already got 24. Don't bring another one into the house.
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah it's hard, it's hard to say no to that stuff and it's hard to say no to cheap things. I mean Kmart now is full of cute cheap things and it is really hard to not go in there and just think yeah I need to upgrade my dustpan and shovel because mine's plastic and this is some beautiful pastel colour and I need it.
00:23:01
Speaker
I need more blonde wooden pastels in my life. No, you don't. Wait till the other one breaks. Probably won't get Christmas wish lists if they're desperate. So we've talked about a few different methods of decluttering that these experts. So just to summarize them, you can take the Marie Kondo approach where you're dealing with a category of things like dealing with books or paper.
00:23:23
Speaker
You can go for an approach where you do zones or rooms of the house, like start with a kitchen or part of a room, just one cupboard or the fridge, or start with a small area that can look much better in the time you've got available. And you might just want to work on that time method. You might decide, all right, I'm just going to do one hour a week or 10 minutes a day where you set a timer, or you might want to go on like a 21 day blitz, but you've set a period of time and you can just do what you can manage in that time.
00:23:53
Speaker
Well, you might want to approach it like the minimalist and set yourself a target over a number of items every day or have the 30 day challenge of getting rid of one thing on day one, two things on day two, et cetera. Or you might just want to adopt the one in, one out rules. So going forward, when something new comes into the house, you're chucking out any duplications.
00:24:14
Speaker
or excess of that one item. But basically you need to know yourself so you can decide on the method and the timeframe that will suit your personality and goals. Are you the kind of person where slow and steady is going to mean that you're gonna sustain the effort or is a sprint going to just work with the momentum and the inspiration that you have?
00:24:35
Speaker
You do need to think about why you're doing it and identify this. So you're motivated to stop or start habits and routines that support the decluttered state. You might also want to have a look at sort of Instagram and Pinterest before and after photos because that might inspire you to get started.
00:24:52
Speaker
And just to sum up, why is decluttering worthwhile? Because we know it takes effort. We know it takes a while to gear yourself up for it. You might have a physical space issue. You might find rooms or cupboards that are awkward. You can't open stuff without other things falling out.
00:25:09
Speaker
It's getting in your way. You can't find stuff. You're tripping over stuff. You've got precarious falling stacks of stuff. So if it's a physical space issue, it's worth doing. I also think that links to saving time because if you know where everything is and it's easy to put things away, you just save so much time. And there's also the money aspect.
00:25:31
Speaker
people find that they buy new stuff because they forgot that they own the same item already, or they can't find it, so they gotta go buy it again. And I think it changes your mindset too, and you learn to make do with things rather than necessarily buying the perfect thing. Make do with something, and usually it doesn't really impinge on the happiness or the outcome of the situation. And finally, there's the emotional aspect. So if you're gonna be decluttering, then you can deal with the guilt from
00:26:00
Speaker
errant spending on something that you didn't really need or use. You're not going to feel so stuck and weighed down by your possessions instead of having them bring you joy and those ideas of feeling trapped or suffocated or drowning.
00:26:13
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where you might not want to invite people over because you've got this uncomfortable secret that you're just living in chaos. That's a real thing. Lots of people go through periods where they're living that way and they just can't face the idea of cleaning up.
00:26:30
Speaker
for people to come over, so it's just not, they just don't invite people over. So this is not a fun way to live. We all deserve to live in places where we feel calm, where we feel in control, where we feel buoyed by the things that are around us instead of dragged down by them.
Environmental and Family Benefits of Decluttering
00:26:48
Speaker
It's also much better for the environment having less possessions. And I think that's the thing that's resonated most with my children, you know, what they've been taught at school about the environmental impact of landfill. So I think that that's something that can help motivate you as a family group to take change. It's the ultimate motivator, hopefully, the health of the planet.
00:27:09
Speaker
So Mia, that's all we're going to cover about decluttering in this first episode. Do you have a life admin hire of the week? My life admin hire of the week is that I feel like I'm finally nailing meal planning. I hate cooking dinner. I've got two fussy eaters for kids. My husband is a much better cook than me. And at the end of the day, when the kids are moody,
00:27:32
Speaker
The last thing I feel like is getting inspired about what to make for dinner. And I get quite resentful and exasperated by the whole thing. And I've tried things like Hello Fresh and Marley Spoon, those meal, you know, ingredients delivery services, so that I'd need to cook less. But I kind of got uncomfortable with all the excessive packaging that they come with. And half the time the dinners were really carb heavy and the kids didn't like them. So I kind of abandoned that.
00:27:59
Speaker
I feel like I knew what to do. I love the planning with kids blog by Nicole. I've reached goes into a lot of detail about meal planning. She's a Melbourne mother with five kids and she's just got systems like for everything. It's brilliant. So I knew like I knew what I needed to do, but I resisted doing it. I had so many negative feelings wrapped up in it. So it's taken me a long time to just reframe it in terms of this is a choice rather than a chore. I want everyone to be eating healthier. I want to sit down, have nice family meals.
00:28:30
Speaker
I want to extend the kids palette gently. And I don't want to have to think each night about what the hell we're having for dinner. So I made a little matrix so that we've got a mix of seafood and vegetarian. We've got a night where we have leftovers. We've got a night where we have a roast. Fridays, we have homemade pizza or homemade burgers.
00:28:52
Speaker
And then one night a week, I'll do some kind of soup or slow cook or curry stew thingy. So I've got this sort of grid to work from. So I plan in the morning. I jump on. It's kind of funny. I've been cheating. I've been using the menu planning services like Hello Fresh and Marley Spoon and My Food Bag because they publish their weekly menus each week. And so I go on there and get ideas. And then I just think about what the kids like.
00:29:19
Speaker
pull it together, scan the fridge and the pantry for what we've got and then I go straight to the supermarket and buy the ingredients and I've actually been cooking. I've been cooking in the morning instead of waiting till the end of the day when I can't be asked to do anything and it's working. We haven't had we haven't had Uber Eats for like three weeks and we haven't had to run down to our local takeaway store that's at the other sort of go-to for several weeks so
00:29:48
Speaker
I feel like I'm finally coming out the other side of what's been years of meal planning guilt. That sounds like it's a really satisfying result. I know lots of people, like this is a no-brainer for them, but for me it was a big deal. Anyway, Dinah, no life had been high for you this week, but a life had been low.
Practical Success Stories and Expert Help
00:30:08
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Yeah.
00:30:09
Speaker
And I feel like it has consumed me because I use, you know, Google Drive obviously for my life admin storage, but also for lots of other projects that I'm working on. And I also use Box for work to store my work files and.
00:30:29
Speaker
For some reason, out of the blue, I could no longer access either of those cloud storage drives using my home internet connection. First of all, I assumed that it was a problem with my computer, and so I was Googling all of these problems.
00:30:49
Speaker
found out that I thought it was a problem with the modem and so I was trying various things to reset the modem and I spent hours and hours researching what the problem might be and trying various ways to solve it and then finally I couldn't solve it so I finally phoned Telstra who our internet provider
00:31:10
Speaker
and discover that it actually isn't my fault. It's a network problem. And I really, if I had done that right at the beginning of the process, I would have saved all of this time. And I think that I had this assumption that I was competent enough to solve this problem. But the reality is right from the beginning, I needed an expert. And, you know, this is kind of
00:31:31
Speaker
important to think about when it's best to engage an expert rather than to try and do things yourself. And, you know, it didn't cost me anything other than the half an hour of being on the hold to Telstra waiting for someone to answer my call. But really, if I'd done that much sooner, I would have saved all of that time of and wasted angst about not being able to do things efficiently because I couldn't access all of the files and documents I needed. So it has been an awful process.
00:31:58
Speaker
After the third hour of googling stuff and trying stuff and it not working, that's your red flag for call an expert. Like if you can't solve it within three hours.
Inspiration and Community Engagement
00:32:09
Speaker
Yeah, definitely invested too much energy in a very busy week to try and solve a problem I would never have been able to solve. And Diana, you've got not a book review, but a Netflix series review, which is just kind of music to my ears right now. I need a new show to binge.
00:32:27
Speaker
And so it was really relevant that it came up the notification this week, new series called Consumed has now been added to Netflix. It's actually a Canadian series and it's about decluttering. So a Canadian lady, she goes in and supports families to declutter their homes. So she goes through a really interesting process, which I really, I thought there was some elements of it that people might
00:32:52
Speaker
might resonate with them. So if you're thinking about trying to get motivated, it might be a good series to watch with your family so that they can see the process. She goes through this stage thing. The first thing is she goes into their houses and she gets them to pack everything up and then into boxes and remove it from the house. And she only allows the families to keep 10 things. And then they have a couple of weeks where they have to live with just these 10 sort of
00:33:19
Speaker
additional items other than the essential items to cook, etc. And then they put everything into a warehouse and the families have to go through a process of deciding what to keep and what to toss. And she tries to get them to only keep 25% of their belongings and she puts a little yellow square on the ground of how much they can keep and then
00:33:41
Speaker
The thing that I found the most interesting about it was then they revisited the families three months later to see how they were keeping up with this new state of decluttered life. So really, I think it's a great show to watch if you're looking for inspiration about some various things you might want to try and the benefits too that these families experience from the decluttering. I love a good before and after. I love a good makeover show. I can't wait to try it. Thanks.
00:34:08
Speaker
So that wraps us up for today. In the next episode, we'll get into the practicalities of how to tackle your stuff. Remember to consider your attitude to decluttering this week. Raise your awareness of the quantity and quality of things within your home. Identify how and why you might have accumulated this excessive stuff. And think about the best way you might sustain a decluttering effort, sprint or marathon, room or category or number of items.
00:34:34
Speaker
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