Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Declutter your Way to Richer, Happier Life with Peter Walsh | Clutterbug Podcast # 179

Episode Date: June 27, 2023

Today I had the privilege of interviewing my absolute hero, Peter Walsh! For over 20 years, Peter has been helping families declutter and organize their way to a richer and happier life. Peter's tv show "Clean Sweep" helped me start decluttering and organizing my own home thirteen years ago, and I still use his methods when helping clients declutter and organize today. For more information on the incredible Peter Walsh, please visit https://peterwalshdesign.com/ Visit his Facebook Page at: www.facebook.com/PeterWalsh         You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, Clutterbugs, and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I'm excited about today's podcast. I'm going to tell you, I'm going to embarrass myself. I'm going to cry a little bit. I'm definitely going to overly praise today's guest because this is the most exciting podcast ever. This is one of the top moments of my entire life. Today I'm interviewing my absolute hero Peter Walsh. And if you've never heard of Peter Walsh, listen, I'm going to tell you, for the past 20 years, he has been helping transform people's lives through decluttering and organization. He had an incredible show called Clean Sweep. He was Oprah's personal organizer and he made lots of shows with Oprah. He was on Rachel Ray. He has seven best-selling books on organization, including two that are New York Times bestseller. And still today, he's filming a show in Australia called Space Evaders and it's starting the fourth season. Peter Walsh is, I feel like the king of organization. And I cannot wait for this interview. So let's jump

right in. I am beyond excited that you're here today. But I like stop it. No. I have to tell because my assistant, Christy, who set this up, she just had mystery guest put into the calendar. She had to know who. She needs to be fired immediately. She said, I was like, I need to prepare. Just give me a hint. And she said, you won't need to prepare. Just don't cry.

And I immediately burst into tears. And I cried for two straight hours. You're insane. You've lost your mind. You've clearly lost your mind. I'm embarrassed to tell you this, but I've been waiting 13 years. Oh, you're a crazy. Seriously, you're a crazy person. Go on. Go on. You changed my life. Absolutely. You are my hero. And I owe everything to you.

No, come on. Come on. Seriously. I do. And so I'm going to like, be mature. Listen, Peter, we're going to have a real grown-up podcast here, but I just, I guess I wanted to tell you, and I'm not going to cry, but, man, every time I get to help someone, the way you helped me, it's because of you. Well, it really is. And every professional organizer I've talked to, including the incredible Matt Paxton, everyone says the same thing. I'm like, who is your inspiration? Who, like, who's the reason you got started?

It's always Peter Walsh. Oh, look, that's lovely of you. You know, it's a, it's a weird business. You know, and I kind of fell into it, to be quite honest. But, look, the truth is my theory, my philosophy always has been cast that, you know, a rising tide lifts every boat, you know, and I really have always believed that. And, you know, it's a very strange business we work in. and I don't know, you know, I love it, I really enjoy it, but, and I, you know, people are always surprised

when I say, you know, I really don't care that much about the stuff, you know, but just see the, you know, the change in people's lives to see how it really affects people. I mean, that's what I really enjoy and I'm really bummed that the show that I'm doing now here in Australia, you know, we're about to start filming our fourth season. I'm really bummed that it's not airing in the US or in North America at all because the whole focus of that show is very much about the human transformation. And that's what really drives me. And, you know, I think a lot of shows have gotten so far away from that now.

You know, it's, you know, the color edit or whatever it's called, you know, Marie Kondo, you know, they're all. You know, so much of them are just, you know, such bullshit. It drives me demented. It just drives me demented. Man, I love that you would say that because one of the things I type to say here was, does it ever really piss you off that what's popular nowadays in organization is such fluff? Like, that's how I feel. It's such fluff and it's fake.

And I feel like it's going to set people up for failure more. It's easy. It's easy. It's easy. see, and that's the thing with TV. See, it's interesting, last week, two weeks ago, was the 20th, maybe a little longer than that, very recently was the 20th anniversary of the very first show I shot for TLC, Clean Sweep. And it's interesting that nobody was about the same time that Clean House launch with Nisi Nash.

And, you know, nobody really knew what organised. was, you know, NAPA was in its infancy, and it was purely because, it was purely because of what happened the first day on that very first shoot, which, which coincidentally, I was not even supposed to be on, that, you know, we were not even supposed, I was not even supposed to be on that shoot. But the, long story short, it was a woman who had two teenage boys, and she still had all of their babies clothes. And that very first show for Clean Sweep, we were supposed to build storage units in the garage for her.

And that was just insane. You know, it just made no sense to me at all. And when we started shooting and we had all of her stuff laid out, I said to her, and I don't know where the question came from, I said to her, are your best memories with your boys in front of you or behind you. Are your best memories with your boys in front of you or behind you? And in that moment she completely collapsed into tears.

And she jumped up and ran away from me. And I was very naive myself. I hadn't done much TV. And I just said to the camera guy and the sound guy, let's go. And we chased her down the street. And it turned out that she had always wanted another child. her husband wasn't that interested. And when she looked at those baby clothes,

what she saw was when she felt most valuable as a woman, as a wife, as a mother. And when being asked to get rid of those clothes, what she heard was, I don't value in her husband. She heard him saying, I don't value that period of your life. Because she didn't see those baby clothes. she saw them as markers of the time she felt most valuable in her life.

And once we talked that through, he was really surprised at that. And we discovered there was another woman on the street who had adopted a couple of babies from China or was about to. And we got them talking to each other. She gave all those clothes to this woman, agreed that she would love to babysit for her. We never built the organizing units. and that completely changed the whole direction of what I did. And it's been that ever since. I don't care about the stuff.

It's about dealing with the power that the stuff has because it's never about the stuff. And I think, you know, a lot of the TV stuff, the problem in making TV shows is that produces what spectacle. And spectacle usually wins out over substance unless you have the weight to pull it back from that. And fortunately, I'm an executive producer of the show here in Australia, Space Invaders,

and it's certainly one of the highest rating shows of its kind in Australia. And that's why I don't agree with all these other shows that are really about the fluff. And it's a real problem because, or they're about promoting brands and selling product, which again, you know, buying more stuff to organize the stuff that you don't need. It's just insanity, you know, and it's just rampant consumerism, you know, under the guise of organizing, which is propelling our planet towards destruction.

I hate it. I really hate it. And I, you know, I rail against it. Yeah. I feel exactly the same way. And I don't often talk about it because, you know, I feel like, oh, I don't want to offend anyone or seem like I'm being catty. But let's talk about Clean Sweep because I watched reruns. It was 2008 when I turned on the TV at my lowest point in my life, drowning in clutter, covered in baby clothes, feeling like a failure as a mother and as a human being, couldn't even get the dishes done most days, couldn't find clothes, couldn't find my shoes, couldn't find my phone.

and I watched Clean Sweep. And it wasn't about the transformation of the pretty before and after. The words that you said about, you know, I deserve this. And I'm not honoring memories by keeping it. This quote, you know, you said you're not honoring your loved ones' memories by keeping them in a dusty box in your basement. And you inspired me to get up and try again. And I was able to declutter my home and then organize my home.

And it really ignited a passion from that television show on TLC. It changed my life. And when I talk to other people, I'm hearing the same thing. It was like that this catalyst moment in my life where I heard the words I needed to hear and realize it wasn't about all the things I thought were important. It was about me and my family. and I needed to decide what was important today and for my future tomorrow. And I got rid of probably 75% or 80% of my things after watching that show.

You know, there are two interesting points there. Number one is that every single family I work with will start by saying, you know, I don't think I can get rid of anything or, you know, I might be able to get rid of 10 or 20%. Without exception, 75, 80% is the bench bar. Without exception, it goes, because they just don't. don't touch it or use it. And the second thing is that one of the things I realized early on is that if you don't judge,

you can say pretty much anything to people. Because for me, it comes from a place of honesty. And I simply hold up a mirror to people. That's my view. And frequently, I give people permission that for some reason they will not give themselves. and and we're all caught, you know, we're all caught in this belief and it's so, it's so pummeled into us that if you just buy the right things, you can acquire the life that you want, you know, and, you know, that starts from, you know, prenatal, you know, if you just buy this right crib,

if you just buy these right diapers, if you just buy this right stroller, then, you know, you'll have a much happier baby. You know, you can put your baby, a newborn baby, to sleep in a cardboard box, and the baby's just going to be just as happier they're sleeping, you know, in a $1,200 designer crib. You know, it's no different. And yet, if you walked into someone's house

and they had the baby sleeping, you know, in a drawer that they'd pulled out of a dresser or in a cardboard box lined with, you know, a comfortable mattress and sheets and blanket should be absolutely mortified. But, I mean, you know, there's no difference. But yet, you know, society tells us the more you spend, the more expensive, the gift, the greater the love.

It's so twisted. It's twisted. And then once we've purchased that thing, once we own it, it feels very wrong for people to now let it go. Almost like you're admitting that you made the mistake in the first place or it feels wasteful. So I'm just going to quote, listen, this, it's all too much. Stop it.

Because as soon as I watched Clean Sweep, I watched all the episodes, which was only on for what, two seasons? Yeah, it's funny. You know, we shot 120 episodes of that show. And it was wildly successful. But there was a change in management at this. That's the bottom line. There was a change in management at TLC. and they decided to shift away from a lot of those kinds of, you know,

home-based, do-it-yourself programs like trading spaces and clean sweep. And they didn't make anymore. They've never released the show on DVD or, you know, digital form. And even 20 years later, and it's now 20 years since we made the first show, you know, and I've made shows on the own network. I had five years with Oprah. You know, I have, you know, been 10 seasons on Rachel Ray. The consistent question or consistent show that I'm most asked about is clean sweep.

Still, all these years later. Yeah. It was life-changing. That's why. Because it was, it changed my life, Peter, in such a fundamental way. I say every time I do interviews, 10 interviews a week and they always say, how'd you get started? And I say, clean sweep.

Because it's the truth. And sorry, to that point, you know, it's funny, very early on I got an email, which I still have in my file at home, of a woman who was sitting at home in a terrible, I won't go into detail, but suffice to say she was in a just nightmarish situation. And she was sitting at home with a gun in her lap, intentionally. to shoot herself. And by whatever, you know, you know, wrinkle in the universe, clean sweep came on. And she had the same experience, you know, so, you know, it's a weird thing, you know,

the power of the show. And the effect it's had on, you know, hundreds of thousands of people. And to this day, you know, they, as I say, people still talk. about it. Sorry, I interrupted you there. No, yeah, it has a ripple effect. And, you know, I am a huge fan of Matt Paxton. He's on hoarders. I know you know Matt. As I'm on, yep. He also, I mean, credits his career with you and also was inspired by Clean Sweep. And and yet when we try to find it on the internet or YouTube, it's like, it's nowhere. And it's such a life-changing thing. But people can find it's all too much. So as soon as I was watching

Clean Sweep, I immediately bought your book. I read it covered. This is like my 10th copy because it's my Bible. I use your teachings. It's a little dated. It's a little dated. Stop it. Yeah. It's a little dated. I use this today still in when I'm organizing for people, when I'm teaching people how to declutter. I think it's the greatest organizing book ever written. I do because it's about the emotion. because it's about the why you're struggling. And right at the very beginning, you say, are you saving enough to, are you saving enough stuff to furnish a whole alternate universe

in which a skinnier you uses the dusty abdominal crunch machine every morning before inserting all your photos into your new album? And then you don the old wig you've been storing in your costume party you're hosting, at which everyone will be lounging on the extra chairs. you have sitting in your basement for the last six years. And I remember reading this and literally looking over at my crunch machine. Now, nobody has that anymore. Let's replace that with yoga mat or yoga ball. But the rest is so true. This fantasy of someday we're going to use, and it's not just one or two things. It's thousands of things that are suffocating us. And, and it's not just one or two things. It's thousands

of things that are suffocating us. And you always talk about letting go as being, as living a richer life with less stuff, which is so ironic because most people struggle to let go because they don't want to waste the money. Yeah, I think there's a couple of things in there. The first one is that this, this difference differentiation that I call the product and the promise that people buy a product, but they invest in the promise. So for example, you know, you buy the treadmill, the product, but what you're really investing in is the promise that it will somehow magically make you, you know, healthier. You know, you invest in the skinny jeans, the product, but the promise you're investing in is that somehow it will make your, you know, your butt tighter,

firmer, more attractive. You know, you buy, you know, you buy the car, the house, you know, the sweater, the watch, you know, the most recent piece of electronics. But what you're really investing in is the promise that somehow it will make you, you know, smarter, hipper, groovier, you know, more attractive to friends and family, whatever. And the problem is that houses are full of all of these products. but your life, your soul is littered with all of these unfulfilled promises. And that's where the emptiness comes from because people are looking at fulfillment

through stuff. And so they have the stuff but then can't work out while they still have this massive emptiness. It's because none of the promises are fulfilled. That's one of the huge, you know, that's one of the huge kind of disparities in in, you know, putting all your, putting all your eggs in one basket, I guess, or looking at the staff to give you, to fulfill your life's desires. You know, and the second thing is that it's interesting that if you look in Christianity,

you know, the word covet, you know, they shall not covet thy neighbor's goods, one of the ten commandments. And, you know, as being raised a Catholic, I never really understood what that meant. but as an adult from working in this business, I've come to realize that covet is an incredibly powerful word. And even thousands of years ago, you know, when the Ten Commandments were constructed, covet, I've realized that the comparison is the root of all unhappiness.

You know, you look at what someone else has. You look at what someone in an ad has. and worst of all you look at what someone on social media has, whether it's the clothes, the jewelry, the car, the holiday, or even the fake smile, and you want that, you covet that. And we all are now coveting what someone else has instead of being happy with what we have. And once you cover it, once you compare, you're on a fast track to unhappiness, an emptiness of your soul.

And that's what wanting stuff, investing in stuff, as the source of happiness does to you. It just eats you out from the inside. I think we all know this, like on a fundamental level, but we have these moments of weakness where we buy things we shouldn't. And we've made the purchases. It's the letting go of those things that are, we look around and we see empty promises and we look, we see wasted money and we see that it's stealing our space. And for me, in my cluttered state, I hated myself because I looked around and thought, why can't I get my life together? Why am I so lazy? Why don't I have self-discipline?

What's wrong with me that other people can seem to do it? and yet I can't. And really what I needed to do was have the courage to just put stuff in a trash bag or put it into the donation. I needed that. But it felt like failure. Well, that's because, you know, you're thinking of, you know, I've spent good money on it. You know, it's kind of cost versus value.

You know, you've spent money on it, but you don't want to let it go because you don't want to waste that money. But then, okay, that's the value. you, but what's it costing you? You know, it's kind of sunk cost already. You know, if you've spent the money, it's sunk cost. I mean, I hear that all the time, you know, and then the excuse, well, you know, I don't want to put it into landfill. Well, usually that's, usually that's just a procrastination. But look, the other thing, too, is, you know, you're no different to most people, you tend to be, you know, people tend to be too hard on themselves and think they're unique.

You know, we're all, we're all struggling eight-year-olds who want the approval of our parents or someone, you know, in their place, who don't want to admit we make mistakes, who don't want to admit that we're often confused, who don't want to admit that, yeah, we want to grab that that extra cookie out of the cookie jail when mum and dad aren't looking. I mean, we're all, you know, we're all the same. We're all exactly the same. And I think that's, that's why it's important, especially in this business, you know, that you need a healthy dose of, you know, empathy and to, you know, eschew judgment, you know, that, like, we're all the same. Everyone's struggling with some shit. Everyone's dealing with their own demons. And so, you know, you need to understand that.

You know, everybody's struggling with something. And the stuff in your home, the stuff in everyone's home has a story. And for some of those stories are good and for some of those stories are horrendous. But it's easier, as weird as it sounds, it's often easier to hold on to the horror that it is to let go and, you know, slip into the unknown. That's who we are. Yeah. But once I started letting go, it became very addicting. I'm going to tell the truth.

I'm a little bit addicting to decluttering an organization. Because I immediately felt really proud of myself. And I immediately saw all the benefits of having less, which is I had more time. I was no longer looking for things. I felt, I felt, I think that was the biggest change in me. Like I felt more in control. Yeah. I felt like I was more confident.

and I was more confident. And that trickled to every single aspect of my life. My relationships improved. My finances improved. I just, and I started this incredible career helping other people transform their lives the exact same way. And I'm just, I'm so grateful to you. But I feel like the work is not done.

No, well, it never, you know, it never is. Millions of people struggling. You know, it's interesting. I tell this regularly that in 20 years, every single time I have worked with a family where there are children involved, young children, without exception, every single time when I work to declutter and organise a space, when children come back into that decluttered, organized space, without exception, children start to dance every single time. And they twirl and they spin.

And I think that's because kids instinctively realize that with the stuff gone, now there's room for, with the physical stuff gone, there's now room for all the important stuff to flow in, whether that's love or generosity or warmth or motivation, you know, all the psychic stuff that's really important can now fill the space. And I think that kind of energy children are much more in tune to than cynical old people like us. Yeah. Okay, I do have to ask because you're Australian. How the heck did you end up on a television show in the U.S. doing organ.

Were you an organizing expert before? Like, how the heck did you fall into this? You have to realize it was 19, when it was like 2003. I have a background, I have a very, very background in, I was originally an elementary school teacher. I have a master's in Ed Syke. I've worked in health promotion and drug abuse prevention here in Australia for quite a few years.

I'd also come to America in 1997 with a partner. We had a large international, interpersonal skills training company for, mainly for corporations, you know, around decision-making skills, giving and receiving feedback, you know, handling difficult employees, all of that kind of interpersonal skills training and organizational change in businesses. And then I got involved in the whole dot-com craze in early 2000 and rode that up and basically wrote it screaming into the ground. and I had a group of friends in L.A. who were tasked by, they were making reality TV programs,

they had a production company in L.A. And they were making this pilot for discovery called Clean Sweep. And I happened to be there one day for lunch with some friends. And one of them said to me, it was just when Simon Cowell was making it big on America's Got Talent. And I have an accent. and Americans think that if you have an accent, you're much smarter than you really are. And one of them said to me,

look, you've got experience in organizing in businesses, you have an accent, you've got a bit of experience in education and so on. You would be great at this. And because I'm a crazy Australian and I knew nothing would ever happen, I did an audition and I got the gig. And it just went from there. You intuitively knew then, because I've watched every episode a bunch of times, like on reruns.

I was watching it in 2008, and it was done, I think, in 2004. So that was like four years later. Yeah. You had a way of seeing the truth in people. You had a way of cracking open their shell and getting to the why they were struggling with clutter that was so, I mean, I quote you on a daily basis. I do because you. saw it before anyone else.

No one else was talking about it. No one else was seeing it in that way. So this is just like some natural talent, not from God, because you don't, but from someone. Look, I don't know. I don't, you know, it's a great question. I, and I say this very humbly, I don't know why it is that people open themselves up to me as readily as they do, but they do. And I take that responsibility very seriously.

You know, I kind of joke that part of it is because I used to teach kindergarten kids. That gave me a lot of training in this area. Part of it is because, you know, my mother was one of 13 children, and she grew up on an outback farm in Queensland. It was very pragmatic. Neither of my parents finished eighth grade. I've got six brothers and sisters, and they put the seven of us through education.

I grew up, you know, very work. working class family and very pragmatic parents. I don't know. You know, it's just always been about, you know, in my life, about being practical. I don't know, you know, and being responsible for what you own. You know, as kids, we did not have a lot as kids. You were, you know, you were held accountable for what you owned and what you did. I don't know.

You know, I just love working with people. And I kind of... I think you're not... I mean, you, okay, I'm going to quote your book again. Listen to me. Oh, dear God. Plutter robs us of real value. Mm-hmm. I mean, there's so many, I quote you on a daily basis. I say, somebody says to me, oh, I spent good money on that. I said, the money was gone the moment you bought it. That's you. This is, Peter, listen to me. I'm going to admit, the things that come out of my face are just your lessons coming out. And these are like guru, life-changing. life skills lesson about stuff, and you're an incredible writer. You're New York Times bestseller multiple times. Hold the phone here.

But the thing is, but look, thank you. Thank you, Ella. Look, I'm not, but the other side of it is that if you spend, if you spend all your time in a pool swimming, you learn how to swim pretty well. You know, and I spend so much of my time, you know, with people. You know, when we were shooting Clean Sweep,

we were shooting two shows a week. So I would spend, I would declutter two, you know, two large rooms of two houses every week. And that was just, and we did 120 episodes of that show. So it was a crazy schedule. And you just, you got, I don't know, you know, you just develop a facility for very quickly reading a room, for reading people, for looking at their staff and being able to tell.

I can walk into a room and tell you very quickly what's going on in a family and in a relationship. And it's because, you know, in the same way that a builder can walk into up to a house and tell you, you know, how the room was built or a doctor can look at a patient. I don't pretend to have that level of professional skills, but having educational training, you know, a master's in education, you know, work for years in drug abuse prevention, understanding, risk reduction and harm reduction strategies, having worked in, you know, in health promotion, you know, having worked in, you know, making interpersonal skills training, you know, award-winning programs for corporations around all of those areas.

it all just weirdly comes together in a way that only the universe understands. I certainly don't understand how it all happened. It's very serendipitous, but I'm glad that it did, and I'm thrilled that, you know, I'm able to do this. But I can tell you, the very first time I spoke to NAPO, which was probably 2004, 2005, I did not have a good reception. It was, I was not, well, oh, God, no, a lot of people did not. I was not welcomed by a lot of people at the very first National Association of Productivity and Organising People, or it was called National Association of Professional Organizers then,

because the Clean Sweep had not launched very long, and the feeling was, and I think justifiably so, that the show painted a very unrealistic picture of how the process was done, you know, how quickly a home could be decluttered, you know, and I actually asked that, that was one of the first questions I asked the audience, which I think they were shocked about. I said, how many people think I should not be here as the keynote speaker? And there was this stunned silent. Well, that's, I mean, that's what I'm like. Let's get things out in the open.

And there was this incredible silence and real hesitancy. And then, I don't know, maybe a third of the people put their hands up. And I said, I'm really thrilled. I'm thank you for being so honest. And I think these are probably your reasons. And they absolutely were. And, you know, I think audiences, that's, you know, 17 years ago, nearly 20 years ago, you know, audiences then were very naive about, you know,

but the other side of it was that that marked, you know, a hockey stick growth in people, you know, you're an example of people who saw the show and decided to adopt, you know, adopt a career in professional organising. I think for many people then it was a housewife hobby, as much as people hated to call it that. And, you know, professional organisers, I think, in many cases, were treated as glorified house cleaners.

And I said that too, and people hated me saying that, you know. And I think even to this day, you know, there are some people who just, you know, stick the name professional organizer on their, you know, on their on their door and should not be should not be professional organizers you know and you know and and the skill the skill and scale of the profession differs some people should just be color coding clothes in closets and some people should be you know have much greater interpersonal skills and should be you know working you know to affect interpersonal change but it's it's difficult to monitor

of those. I'm going to be honest. I'm going to talk about some things I've never actually talked about because I feel like you will get it. As a professional organizer, I feel like I'm a bit of a fraud because I'm not a detailed make it pretty person. I'm not to line everything up and label everything. And I've been doing this for 10 years. I stopped working with clients about three years ago, but 10 years I worked with clients. There's never a client that I didn't remove at least a truckload of stuff from their home. When I'm going to somebody's house, we're eliminating. And so they say that clean sweep is unrealistic. I mean, I've never done a whole house, but I can promise you this. I've never done a house where I didn't remove in one day a truckload of bags and bags and boxes. That's my job

is to get to their why, to crack them open, to expose it, to help them heal by letting go of the stuff and I take that very seriously. But when I did a show, I did I did two seasons on HDTV. Going into that show, I thought like, we're going to do this real. And the feedback I got from HDTV was we don't want tears. We want a pretty transformation. And I spent days with these families like snot, bubbles, emotions. They had huge transformations personally. And almost all of that was cut from the show. Yeah, well, that's a production choice. That's a, that's a choice that networks that companies make about the kind of program they're making for their viewers. They make a choice about who their target audience is. And that's what I meant before about, you know, the producers

often want spectacle over substance. In your case, spectacle, when I say it, spectacle, it usually means more stuff. They believe that there's more stuff. It's more compelling. But for me, I have much greater respect for my audience than that. Because I think that people, and it's been proven here, the last season of the show here, Space Invaders, the ratings were growing between 17% and 20% week over week here with our last season. And the show, while there is a very strong renovation component,

there are actually three co-hosts, there are two co-hosts with me on the show. So there's a really fantastic renovation component, but there's a massive personal transformation component, and it's the one that I think people tune in, I mean, you know, I vested interest in saying this, but we absolutely do not steer away from that because otherwise, you know, the personal transformation makes no sense unless you see the emotional journey.

But that's the problem if you're a hired talent as you are, to put it bluntly, no power. You have no power in a production. Whereas here, you know, I basically conceived this show, and so I do have power, unfortunately, the production company, and I see eye to eye on this. and the truth is if you spent days shooting a show, you know, we spent four days shooting our show

and it's cut to 43 minutes. And, you know, often the show that's aired is not the show you remember making. But that's the nature of TV. You know, you have to understand that that's the nature of television. And that's where a lot of criticism comes from that people will say, oh, you didn't do this

or you didn't do that, well, that's because it's on the cutting room floor. And it's a shame because, you know, a TV, you know, was initially conceived as a, you know, a great, or was thought of as a great tool for education, and now it's, you know, it feels like it's a great tool for doubling down the masses. You know, and I think, you know, you've done a great thing in terms of, you know, creating your own channels and producing your own content in a way that you can control and push out there. rather than through mass media. And I think TV particularly is a dying medium.

You know, nobody watches TV anymore, says me, who, you know, is still making a TV show. But the truth is particularly in the United States, you know, audiences are dropping. I think the latest numbers are somewhere like between 10 and 14 percent year over year. You know, nobody's watching TV. Certainly not young people anyway. So, you know, I've... the other thing, this is my, so I love my YouTube channel because I can talk and I can teach and I can be passionate and hopefully every time I'm trying to inspire them to get off the couch

and change their life. That's always my goal. But now with TikTok coming in and there's a change again, people want, give it to me, give it to me, give it to me. It's very hard to connect with someone than 30 seconds. I'm fairly pessimistic about, you know, where we're headed as well. I may not be the guy, you know, to answer this for you. I don't have a very kind of positive outlook on, you know, on where we're headed in terms of global consumption, in terms of what we're doing to the environment. You know, I walk into stores, you know, into any of the large variety stores, you know, home where stores and look at all the all the crap you know that's being you know manufactured that we absolutely don't need that people are filling their homes with you know an incredibly cheap

prices so if it's cheap it must be good um or if it's cheap i'm going to buy it you know that's what drives people but the thing is that you know and you know if we want to be more organized you know to be organized or going to all to be organic and organized you know to be organic and come from the same root, you know, organic, whole, human, complete, one. You know, that's what organic is. And if we want to be organized, it's not about our stuff, it's about our home, our head, our hearts, our hips, our health, you know, and we're global citizens now. If we want to be organized, then, you know, it's about not the stuff we buy, it's about the lives we live. And that's kind of the message I have now after 20 years of working in this.

You know, I'm very dispirited looking at the fact that, you know, consumption is still an all-time high, you know, that people are still buying crap they don't need. You know, this seeming national covetness fostered by the internet, you know, people still look to stuff to fulfill their lives. Here's what I'm going to say. I think the greatest way to stop consumerism as an individual, this is personally, to stop that addiction of buying is to feel the pain of decluttering. When I had to declin, it hurt, it's like getting spanked with a ruler by a nun. You're like, ouch, I might not, it makes you stop and think when you're at the store, when you feel the pain of letting go and like, I should. I shouldn't have bought that.

Oh, I got to donate it. Ooh, I shouldn't have bought this. Look at all this stuff I wasted money. It makes you stop and think twice when you're at the store. So when we have this big problem of overconsumption and all of us have these shopping addictions, how do you as a person stop this habit? I think you can make a, you can stop this yourself if you're listening by filling a bag, by looking at your stuff and being real with yourself and feel the pain.

of letting go you know you should, you're going to think twice when you're at the store. Of the more you let go of, the more you appreciate what you have, the more you just let go of all the excess, the more fulfilled you feel, and the less likely you are to make those impulse buys at the store. And I know this because I've seen it with myself

and I've seen it with thousands and thousands of my clients as well. Peter? Yeah, look, it's interesting. It's the paradox of the less, you know, that everyone thinks that more is better. And it's funny how you can be so filled with, filled with so much by embracing the less. And I see it constantly too, that every single time when I have helped people let go of stuff and only bring back into how, I can't remember who it was originally said this,

it's not my quote, you should only have things in your home that are beautiful and useful. And when I've helped people to get to that point and the things that they do keep are treated in their home with honor and respect, that that feeling that you have when you go on holidays and you step into a hotel room

or step into a place you're staying and you just have that feeling of, oh, this is so relaxing, this is so beautiful. You can create that feeling every time you open the front door of your own home. And if you don't have that feeling, why don't you have that feeling? And you can get to that. And that is the paradox of the less, that by having less, you can actually give you and your family so much more than you ever imagined.

and it's only by letting go that you actually come to discover that. As weird as that sounds, that's the truth. And for me, that's where the bright light is in all of this. Yeah, it's a bright light for me too. I'm impulsive. I have ADHD. So I had a shopping problem. I still, I'll go to the straw, be like, look these candles.

Two for one, they're on sale. But my brain goes, right. Where are you going to put it, Cass? You already have candles at home. Are you going to have to just declutter this? This is now my brain stops me because I've done the work of living with less. I now have this unconscious break when it comes to buying things I shouldn't. And that came from decluttering a lot over and over and over again.

And this is something you can do too. You can save yourself money. You can save yourself so much by being brave enough to let go of the things in your home. Okay, I do have to talk about one more thing because this is going to be my new Bible. Let it go. I have aging, I have aging parents. My stepfather has terminal cancer. He only has a few months left. And so my mother is very aware of having to downsize and let go. And this is the most emotional, just, I have aging parents who now have to downsize and I obviously am going to have to be their support in this. And I read the words in your book and I feel like I got this a little bit

better. But what was your inspiration for this book? It's my recent book, Let It Go, Downsizing. It's a whole process for downsizing. After my mom passed away, my three brothers, three sisters and I basically had to go through the whole process of decluttering, downsizing the family home. and basically from years of doing that process with families and then the whole very personal approach of doing it with my own siblings with my own family that's where the book came from. So it's both kind of a personal journey and also 20 years really of 15 years of collected knowledge of how that process works and it really is a very, kind of how to book built on personal experience.

How do you get to, how do you decide what to let go of? More importantly, how do you decide what to keep when you downsize? How do you decide how much of what you are keeping to keep? You know, how to negotiate that with other people in the family. What are the methods for letting go of stuff? Yeah, it was an interesting exercise with my brother's sisters to say the least. Well, I'm grateful for it. And I'm going to put the link down below for anyone else who I just think every one of your books is a must.

I'm just going to say that. I want to talk about two things before we go. First is with all these popular organizers up here, do you ever think I said it first and I said it better, bitches? Um, because I think that every day. Um, he wears the crown. He is the king. Um, yeah, that does occur to me pretty regularly actually. Yeah, I'm glad. Um, it's all too much was translated into Japanese many years ago.

Um, and I pointed that out at some stage to someone. and that was an interesting moment. That's about as much so I'll say about that. I'm going to say it. People always say Marie Condo was the queen of organization, and I always follow that up with Long Live the King, because you said it first and you said it better. And I do, and I say it because it's the truth,

and I want you to know that we know that. We know that, and we as a community of organizers, No, no, no, no, no. Look, it's a big sand pit, and I really do believe this. It's a big, big sand pit, and there's enough room, there's enough room for everyone. Look, it's, it's more amusing than anything. You know, it's, I mean, I'm not sure there's even one original thought in the universe anymore. So, look, if it helps people real, I mean, to be honest, if it helps people. It's very humble of you. Well, I don't know. You know, you don't know me that well to be able to say that. I just find it very amusing that F sharp is F sharp is the best note to which to start decluttering. And so, you know, Marie selling F sharp tuning forks on our website. I just find that the most amusing thing of all. I did not know. Can we collectively eye roll? It's fine. It's fine. No, don't. Look, it's, look, it's really about, look, I'm being kind of, I'm being silly here. Look, it's horses. for courses. And I really mean that. Look, I have, I, I, I, I don't agree with Marie Kondo's methodology. I've, I've, I've worked with Marie and I met her before. She's absolutely lovely and delightful. And I wish her a huge commercial success. And I genuinely mean that. I just don't

agree with her methodology. I really don't. I think it's, I think it's naive and I, you know, I just don't, I just don't think it would work for most of the people I work with, you know, if you asked a hoarder or you asked a child, you know, show me everything that sparks joy, good luck. Certainly in my experience, it would never work. And so I just don't agree. I think I just don't agree with her methodology. That's, and she probably doesn't agree with mine. But the fact is it works for many people.

And if it works for them, good for them if it gets to the right outcome. That's what I believe. And that's what I mean. That's what I mean. That's what I believe. Yeah. She made decluttering, she inspired people to declutter and that's at the end of the day. All that matters. But I just wanted to let you know that you're the king. Okay. One last thing I want to say before I let you go. I appreciate you so much. I can't watch Space Invaders and this crushes me every day. I've tried a million ways to like illegally download it. Can you please just think about something in the future? I hope you get 50 seasons. But when it's done, can you put it on YouTube? So the. It's. You can see it for free. That is way beyond my pay grade. I would love for it to be available digitally, you know, through the interwebs.

But it is beyond, I do not own the content. So I have no control over that. I'm sorry, I wish I could. And if I could, it would be up tonight. But unfortunately, I cannot do that. Well, Len, I'm crossing my fingers that someday this is available. I mean, I'll buy it on iTunes. I'll buy it on Amazon Prime.

Sell it to Netflix because the world needs this. The world needs to hear your wisdom to find the courage to let go because that's what you gave me. You gave me the courage, the wisdom, the knowledge, the life skills to let go. And I mean, the organization is easy. The organization is nothing. Now you're just putting stuff into baskets. The real work is letting go. And you taught me that.

So thank you. Well, and thank you for the work. Well, and thank you for the work you do. You know, look, you know, I accept the fact that I inspired you and I'm, you know, thank you. I'm glad for that. But the truth is at the end of the day, and when people say that, the reality is that that may well be the case, but you, they did the hard work. That's the truth. You know, that's the other side of that coin.

I might have been an inspiration, but I wasn't there to do the hard work. And I think that's why I, you know, you say I'm humble about it, but it's because I know the work that's involved in getting from inspiration to reality. So, you know, you did that, not me, you did that. And so you need to take, you know, the lion's share of the credit for that, as do as does anyone who's climbed out of you know a cluttered overwhelming you know amount of stuff in their home and that's where I'm you know I'm I'm in awe every time I work with people who for whatever reason make that decision and manage to make that real in their lives so thank you but you know

thanks to you know you do great work all your stuff is absolutely amazing you know I'm pleased to be you know playing in the same sandpitter ship Well, we're not in the same sandpit, but I'm grateful to have a couple of little bits of your sand. No, we're both in there. We're both in there. I'm honestly so eternally grateful to you. I'm glad I didn't cry like a baby during this podcast. But when somebody, I'll be 90 years old and somebody will say to me, on my deathbed, they'll say, who is your hero? And it will always be people off. Dial it back. Dial it back. Dial it back.

Dial it back. It's lovely. It's lovely to talk to you. It's lovely. And fire your assistant for not telling you who the guest was tonight, okay? I love her. No, she just put a smiley face. I literally burst in tears.

Look at it. I'm getting emotional now. Stop it. Thank you, Peter, for being here today. My pleasure, guys. Any job. And I'm going to put links in the description. If you, if you haven't watched Peter Walsh, go to his YouTube channel, go to his website.

let's all write a like a letter to the government of Australia to release Space Invaders. Season 4 is in preparation now. It's such an honor to be able to speak with you. Absolutely my pleasure. Anytime I really enjoyed it. Thank you so much. We'll see you later. And thank you for listening.