Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Abundance versus Simplicity | Clutterbug Podcast # 49

Episode Date: May 2, 2018

Todays podcast is a tangle of loneliness, finding yourself and the difference between abundance and simplicity.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug Podcast. Today we're talking about the difference between the simplicity and abundance, and I wanted to share with you a new audiobook that I'm listening to. So I downloaded this new audiobook. It's by Bray Brown, who everyone is raving about as an author. You know, I'm attending a lot of these women's networking events to meet other, I guess, like-minded people. I'm looking for my tribe people. I'm looking for the people, I guess, who I feel like I can connect with and relate to in this world. And I'm having a difficult time finding those people. I think we all aren't we? We have a difficult time feeling those connections sometimes to other people, feeling like we belong. And while I was at one of these events saying exactly this, you know, that I'm having

trouble feeling, finding my place in the world, a lot of different people had recommended Brne Brown's book Braving the Wilderness. So I finally went ahead and downloaded the audiobook because you guys know I'm obsessed with audiobooks. And I have to say, it's pretty amazing. I see what all the fuss was about. I've already read her first book about imperfection. my gosh, I'm totally blundering this. I think it's called the Gifts of Imperfection, and it had rave reviews. It was a New York Times bestseller, but in all honesty, while I found it a pretty amazing book, I had a hard time relating to it because I'm not a perfectionist. I'm the opposite of a perfectionist in every way. I want to be more of a person who cares about the details. And, you know,

who has more of a filter before they talk, I suppose. I'm like, yeah. So, when reading this book, it was definitely geared to people who struggle to let go a little bit and who struggle with perfectionism, which I do not. So I didn't relate to that book, so I haven't bought another Brunee Brown book. But this, into the wilderness, I found pretty, I say this about every time I read a new self-help book, I'm like, this is literally the greatest self-help book ever written. It's life-changing. And I've said this about Eat That Frog, which I still love. I said this about the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, which I still love. I said it about Mel Robbins, the five-second rule. And here I am saying it again about Bray Brown's Brave the Wilderness.

But I'm only on the third chapter. So really, I mean, how much have I really read? But it resonated with me. The first chapter was all about our desperate need as humans to feel included, to feel a part of something. to feel accepted, I guess. And I mean, I've struggled this with my whole life. I'm just a weirdo. I don't know why I was always loud. I've always been impulsive. I get, I'm annoying, I guess. Ever since a kid, I was constantly just on the outside looking in. And I know a lot of people feel this way. I do. I know a lot of people feel this way. But I really was. I was a super loner. I never had friends, I guess. I did. I had occasionally a best friend, but I didn't, I wasn't a popular

kid for sure. And even my own parents, they would say to me, you walk to the beat of your own drummer or my mom would say, listen, if you just changed this or this or this said this about yourself constantly having these lists of things, you'd fit in a little bit better. You'd make more friends or you would whatever. And I definitely took it a little too far. I got a lot. I got in trouble in my teens. I started doing bad negative things, I guess, to fit in to finally find my place. And now as an adult, I'm still, I mean, I'm embarrassed to say, but I'm still at the point where I just feel like I don't, I'm not like anyone else. I can't find people that I can just be around and be like, oh, yes, you know, I get you and you get me and we just can get along. Those people are really,

really hard to find. And so reading this book, I definitely felt like, first, I'm not alone, because she feels the same way. And second, who the freak cares? Her whole book is about letting go of that desperate need to fit in, to feel like you have a tribe or feel like you have a group where you belong or find those people in your lives that you feel are just like you, or that will have you and be there for you. And of course, I have my family, but I'm talking, I guess, external people when it comes to friendships. So what the whole book is about is about braving the wilderness, being your own best friend, I guess, basically. How cliche is it? She puts it more eloquently. She puts it in a way that really inspires you, I guess, to stop worrying so much about fitting it.

and one of my biggest pet peeves is seeing other adults doing this whole trying to fit in thing. It drives me crazy. But I'm guilty of it myself. I'm guilty of it in different ways. So I have, I see adults who are buying designer clothing and designer handbags or driving specific cars. And I think, ugh, that feels icky to me. I feel like they're doing that just to fit in. but I'm really guilty of doing things like, you know, bending my own personality, toning myself down in social situations, watching what I say, thinking about what I say before I say it so I don't insult people. I swear, like a freaking sailor, and I have to not do that in public, and I have to make sure that I'm not jumping down my soapbox and yelling about Donald

Trump or whatever kind of crazy stuff that I do. I have to tone. that down. I need to keep it in because it isn't acceptable, right? It isn't acceptable to be, to be flying my freak flag every time I leave the freaking house. So I guess I'm looking for those people in life where I can just, I can let my freak flag fly and I can be myself. But her point is stop caring. Stop caring if you drop a couple F bombs in your podcast. Stop caring if people think you're weird or not and and just be yourself. You love cats? Wear your cat sweater and wear your cat ears and just talk about cat videos and don't feel embarrassed about it. I guess sort of that's her. That's, I'm paraphrasing. She puts it so much better. And then the second, the second chapter that she

was talking about was the damage that comes with once we find a group, I guess, we're so desperate for these groups, sometimes we wedge ourselves in or we find one belief that we have and then we center ourselves with other people who have that belief and we put ourselves into these factions. So we put ourselves into these little groups, maybe it's religion or politics or even, you know, your financial status, whatever it is. Maybe you're a hipster. Maybe you're a minimalist. I don't know. There's so many little segregated groups and we're so desperate to belong that sometimes we climb into one of these groups and what that can really do is block out other people who perhaps aren't in this group and what happens even more than that is sometimes when you're in this one of

these little groups you can judge groups that aren't in your group so you can start looking at everyone who isn't in your group in a negative way like your group's the best and they don't know what they're talking about and therefore they are the enemy and you see this of course in politics we don't even, I'm not even going to talk about politics. We see this in religion. We see this even in financial status, right? We see this in everything that people are in their group. And whether they're 100% in that group or not, they believe all the beliefs or not, they've put themselves in a category and they've really closed themselves off to everyone else. And so in trying to belong, we're actually lonelier than ever. And it is so,

true. So while I love the idea of, I guess, ideology, I love discovering myself and learning more about myself. And my entire brand of my blog, Clutterbug, is identifying your personal style, your organizing style. And I think that is a true thing. But I've even seen in my online Facebook group that people will say, you know, I'm a cricket and my husband's a butterfly, feel sorry for me that have to live with a butterfly. So it's already becoming that they're seeing the other groups in a negative way, that it's a him versus her, that it's a me versus you situation,

which is the last thing I wanted. What I really want people to take from knowing yourself better is just having more self-awareness, living more mindfully, realizing not just that you're doing something because it's just the way you do it, but why? Why are you the way you are? And I think that only leads to happiness. It only leads knowing ourself more and having more self-awareness and more mindfulness and everything we do just creates happiness. That's what it, for me anyways, that's what it's all about. Because we're

stopping judging. We're stopping feeling those negative thoughts about ourselves, why can't I do this or why am I not this person or why am I not doing this this certain way? And it leads to to self-acceptance that you're this way because you're born this way and this is the way you are. And I see this really working well in like extrovert and introvert. So we have people who are outgoing. We have people who are less outgoing. An extrovert and an introvert. And this is a type, I mean, a group of faction that people put themselves in that they're not really having one or the other being a negative.

it's just your well maybe an introvert people feel that that's a negative but but i wish it wasn't i wish we could take away i wish we could put our so why can't it just be hogwarts and we have the sorting hat on our head and we all get sorted into our categories but we don't hate the other categories so listening to this book i really recommend it but when she was talking about um the the negative that comes with putting yourself into a category and into a group, the negative that can come with that because we then judge others that aren't in our group or isolate ourselves from those other groups, then I started thinking about myself, because maybe I'm self-absorbed, but I started thinking about my brand and the clutter bug. And I definitely don't want that to happen. I don't want

people to start thinking negatively about a different organizing style. And I don't want any negative connections to that at all. So this brings me back to words. It's so important when you're describing something that you choose your words carefully. So I'm getting started to write my third book and I'm talking about the different organizing styles, but it is critical that I choose words that come across in a positive light and not something that can be taken negatively when describing the different personality types. And people can put a negative spin on any word, right? So it's so, so important to me that I'm making sure that I'm,

even though I want to put people into groups, that I'm not making one of the groups a bad group to be in or putting one person against another. So what I think I've decided on is to go with the words, abundance and simplicity. They're both positive words. They're both words that, you know, we would want to be associated with abundance and simplicity. They both sound positive, don't they? So when it comes to visual, how we like to see our belongings, do we like abundance?

Do we like to see a lot of our things and have lots of beautiful colors and artwork and be surrounded with abundance? Or do we need simplicity? More simple, neutral, muted colors, and less visual distraction. and when it comes to our organizing style, do we need organizing abundance? Do we need lots of categories, lots of detail? Do we need things put away? Yeah, I mean, is there a better word? I don't know, but we're going with abundance when it comes to the complexity of our systems, of how we store our things.

And then there are people who need organizational simplicity. So they need something that's just fast and easy and doesn't have a lot of different categories. So those are the words I'm sticking with. And I'd love your opinion. If you think that those work, I don't want to confuse anyone to thinking that when it comes to organization, that organizing abundance means you have a lot of crap and organizing simplicity means you have less crap, because that's not what it's about. It's about the method that we put the stuff away, the method of the system. Is there an abundance of detail? Is there abundance of categories? Or is it simple is there is it simplicity when it comes to the categories so yeah i'm we're we're putting ourselves

in factions here but they're friendly factions that all get along and i i also would love your opinion on if you've read brine brown's book brave the wilderness or just your opinion on this whole idea of yeah the negative that can come with with different putting ourselves in different groups And the sad part is, the truth is, we're doing it because we want to feel included. But the after effects of these groups is sometimes exclusion, excluding the people, even maybe the people we love, because they don't have the same political or religious or whatever it is, whatever group we've decided to put ourselves in order to feel a part of, in order to feel like we belong. So, I'm rambling. I hope you guys enjoyed. You probably didn't.

You're probably like, you're probably still not listening. For those of you who are still listening, thanks a bunch. For those of you who have stayed at the end. You want me to share a story? I'll share a story with you. So this weekend, the kids were gone. And Joe and I, it was our anniversary, 12 years. Can you believe that?

12 years have been married to that man. And so it was just the two of us. And we went out and we went to the movies and we went up for dinner. And we came back late and the dog had a bloody ear. And he was scratching his ear. and he was shaking his head and I'm like oh my god I was freaking out like is there something in it did a mite crawl in there does he have some sort of you know fox tail that I saw on on YouTube once when in his year and maybe it'll make him deaf and of course I'm crazy I'm a bit of a hypochondriac

when it comes to myself and my kids so obviously when my pet is in distress I'm losing my mind and he's howling and whining and yelping like like literally he's about to die so it's 3 o'clock in the morning and I take him to the vet, an emergency all-night vet. And the first one I go to, they're in surgery. So I wait a half an hour, but they're going to be another half an hour. So I drive all the way, like another 45 minutes to go to another emergency all-night vet clinic. And I get him in and she wants to look in his ear and he is losing it. And he's trying to bite her. And he's, I mean, he's totally a nice dog. And he's howling. She just wants to touch his ear, but he's acting like it's hanging by a thread. Like he's had it ripped off. And so this is

making me freak out. And I'm trying to hold him down and I'm giving him treats and they muzzle him to finally look in his ear. And she tells me it's a little bit red. And she has to do a swab. And so I have to hold him tight. And another vet assistant comes in and is holding him as well. And the veterinarian's holding him. And she swabs his ear. His anal glands. Listen, I hope you're not eating. They excrete this yellow stuff all over me. Now, if you have no idea what a dog's anal gland is or what it smells like, you're very lucky. I'm not going to go into too much detail, but it's basically the equivalent of a skunk spraying.

So it's something that they use when they're scared as a defense mechanism. And it isn't, I mean, it isn't poop. It is something more foul, something the foulest of foul. And so the vet's like, oh my gosh, get the cleaner. And I'm reeking. I have a weak stomach. I'm gagging. I'm about to throw up.

It smells so horrible. I have to drive home like that. Not the point. The point is they end up swabbing his ear and they run it through a microscope. You're not going to believe this, you guys. He had a mild yeast infection in his ear. Mild, being the word here. She actually said to me, your dog.

He's a giant drama queen. And I'm trying to, you know, I'm petting him and I'm loving him and he's whining and he's yelping and he's acting. So she asks me to step outside in the hall and I do and I stink. She probably wanted me to leave because I smelled so bad. As soon as I shut the door, he stops. And she puts medicine in his ear and she treats him and he doesn't whine. I don't hear a thing.

I open the door. He sees me. He instantly starts howling again. Honestly, you guys. He's tricking me. He was like, she said, have you given him treats or extra attention? He is so smart. He was faking it. I mean, it's not like he didn't hurt, but he was turning it on, man. He was cranking it up for attention. As soon as I left the room, he stopped. As soon as I came back in, he just let it out and was acting like a giant baby. So we ended up, I mean, he had some cream in his ear and that's it.

He's going to be totally fine. And I'm not even going to tell you how much the emergency vet bill was and that I didn't get home to four in the morning covered in anal fluid. It was a thing. Being a pet owner's a thing. But I thought I'd share that with you. It's not really, hopefully you guys weren't eating. And anyways, if you watch my YouTube videos, you're like, okay, I get it. If you don't watch my YouTube videos, you're like, why did she share that ridiculous story at the end of her podcast? Anyways, thank you guys so much for listening. I'll see you next time.