Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How External Clutter Creates Internal Clutter | Clutterbug Podcast # 48

Episode Date: April 26, 2018

In this episode, I talk about the connection between our physical environment and our emotional one.  A cluttered space can create a cluttered mind. Listen for tips to declutter both!  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. Today we're going to talk about how changing your external environment can have a huge impact on you internally. So thanks for joining us again today. We're talking, of course, about clutter. But I'm not just going to talk about how to clean up your space, but more the why. And even if you're not struggling with clutter and you have a pretty neat and tidy home, hopefully this podcast can help you just change your perspective i guess a little bit about your actual space there was a huge part in my life where i was struggling both externally so my house was a complete disaster but internally as well i mean i felt like a complete disaster i felt like a hot mess uh i was impulsive, I'm still impulsive, I just was constantly late for everything, I just felt frazzled

all the time. I felt like I couldn't adult very well, no matter how hard I tried, I was struggling just with basic day-to-day, like grown-up stuff, and everyone else around me seemed to not be struggling. I mean, maybe they were faking it, but for the most part, I was looking at all these other adults in my life thinking, they seem like adults, whereas I, to myself, seemed like a teenager just playing pretend. I was a mom. I was a stay-at-home mom. I was running a daycare. And even up until that point, like even through my early 20s, you know, meeting my husband and getting married. And even before I had kids, I just always felt like a teenager, just struggling just to just do the daily things. And so what changed? I wanted to change

myself. I bought a bunch of self-help books. I started, I practiced like meditation. This is like back in the day before meditation was even mainstream. Um, I just, I tried everything to change, I guess, my personality. I was having a lot of anxiety. I had talked to my doctor about medication for my anxiety. I had been put on laurasapan and clarazepan and a few different other medications to help manage my anxiety. And really what I got from those, I mean, everybody's different, but what I got from those medications was that I just felt tireder. I still had the anxiety, but I just wasn't as hyper. I felt just a little bit fogier, I guess. So perhaps less stress, but it definitely wasn't what I was trying

to go for. And despite my best efforts, it was so hard for me to change myself internally, to change who I felt like I fundamentally was. But what I really discovered was when I started making changes externally, when I started changing my environment, it had an impact on me internally. So when I did a simple thing like organizing my closet, I woke up in the morning and I would, you know, open the closet to get clothes. And it would be neat and tidy and organized and it would have structure.

and I felt a little bit more like I had my crap together. Like it was a tiny thing that I could do that made me feel more in charge of my own self. It gave me a little sense of control. It made me feel pride, even though it was a closet. I mean, the rest of the bedroom was a complete disaster, but that one little closet really had a huge impact. So I started organizing other areas of my home. And I realized that organization is one of those things.

that you can do, it only take a few minutes, but you can have a huge impact, not just in how your space looks, but how you feel and how you function, and how you think about yourself, and your perception of yourself, and your overall happiness. And so I became addicted, as you guys know, it became something that I started doing all the time and something that I really became passionate about. And then once I became completely, you know, had everything externally under control, my whole house pretty neat and tidy. I'm still, I mean, internally, I'm still kind of a hot mess, but trust me when I say it's much less of a hot mess than it was, I wanted to help others. I wanted to help others sort of achieve the same thing. And maybe it won't work for everyone,

but let me assure you, if you are at work and you have a messy desk, if you are at home and you're, you know, sitting on your couch and your living room is a disaster. If you're driving in your car and you've got a bunch of garbage down behind the passenger seat where the feet go or your car's really messy, that's having an impact on you. Whether you know it or not, that's making you feel kind of bad about yourself. It's making you feel a little stressed. It's making you feel slightly out of control and it wouldn't take long to remedy that. It won't take long to just tidy up your desk, to throw out the, you know, fast food containers from your car, to take a few seconds and put your laundry away or tidy up your living room. It wouldn't take very long at all to eliminate

that external yuckiness that our clutter and our mess brings to us. And unfortunately, I mean, this is something that we have to do on a daily basis. But remember, it doesn't have to take long, especially if we do do it on a daily basis. If we do it on a daily basis, if we, make our external environment a priority, and I'm not talking about Pinterest perfect, but I am talking about having the clutter and the mess and the just uncontrollable look of it under control. It's going to make us feel more in charge of our life. I also found that I was way more productive. You know, they say bodies in motion, stay in motion as some sort of physics thing that I don't really understand, but getting up and forcing myself to clean the kitchen sort of, you know,

motivates me to keep going in the day. When I wake up to a clean space or I wake up to, you know, a tidy bedroom, or I open my closet and all my clothes are neatly hung instead of all over my floor like they used to be. And I'd do the sniff test. I feel motivated. I feel a sense of instant energy that I normally wouldn't feel if I'd, I was living in cluttered space, even now there are days where I'm busy and life gets in the way and things get out of control. I feel drained physically and emotionally when my space looks cray cray. So how? So how when we already are lacking the motivation and the state of our house is giving us even less motivation? How do we get started? How do we make this a priority and get that

motivation to get up and get going. Well, let me tell you, waiting for that motivation to come is crazy pointless. We just have to do it. We have to say, let's just take 10 minutes. Let's just take 15 minutes or let's just do the kitchen counter and we just need to go and we need to let go of the idea of having it be perfect. We don't need to get lost in the details when it comes to organization. It's about clearing away the clutter, putting things back as best we can in the their home so we can have that visual calmness and that visual simplicity that we really need, you know, to have ourselves inside our brain feel that way. Less stressed, more simplicity, more relaxed and more happy. And there's some of you out there that are visual organizers,

but just because you're a visual organizer and you love to have your things doesn't mean that you have to have clutter. And what I mean by clutter, for me, the definition of clutter is having things that aren't in their proper home. So if you're a visual person, you probably want to have your toaster and all your things out on your kitchen counter, and that's totally okay, as long as that's their home. What isn't in the home is the mail that's in the pile on your counter, or the pile of laundry that's sitting on your couch, or just any of those things that aren't where they're supposed to be. Those are the things I'm talking about when I'm talking about cleaning and decluttering. your space. Everybody's space is going to look different. Some people are going to have more stuff.

Other people are going to be on the scale of more minimalism. It's about having things put away. It's about giving structure to your home and order. So you can have structure and order on the inside, even if you're like me and you're a crazy disaster. So I want you to give it to try. I want you to give it a try today. I want you to think about the spaces in your home or maybe it's your office that makes you feel the most drained. That gives you that feeling of like, it just takes the wind right out of you. Maybe just walk around your home and take a look at each room.

You will have a physical reaction to the space that needs to be addressed first. And maybe all of your spaces are going to give you that physical reaction. When you walk in a room and you feel your chest kind of tightening up, or you feel that little tickling of anxiety, or you feel that inkling of depression or that you're feeling a little bit of the life sort of sucked from you. That's the room that needs your addressment. That's the room that you need to fix. So it gives you those opposite feelings. So you walk in that room and instead of feeling anxious and upset, it's going to make you feel energized and happy. And your space can do that. It will do that.

physical environment. When it's a mess, makes you feel like crap. When it's clean, it makes you feel happy. I don't know the science behind it, but I promise you, it is 100% fact. So give it a try. You deserve it. And even if you're really struggling and drowning in clutter or you're pretty tidy, we can all do it. Doesn't matter where you're starting from, we can all get there. And now is it It takes is just 10 minutes at a time. And the great thing about that is, as soon as you get started with your 10 minutes, that motivation that you forced yourself to have is going to turn into momentum to keep going. And some of us are going to have to put on our big girl pants and parent ourselves and say,

you know what, this has to get done. I'm not going to watch television until it's done. I'm not going to do anything fun. I'm going to force myself to do this because it's just part of being an adult and I'm not going to stop until it's done. And remember, not to get lost in the details. Don't let perfection control it. Good enough organizing is good enough for today. You can always go back and make it perfect tomorrow. But we're talking about clearing the clutter, clearing out the physical distractions and the physical stress so we can clear out the emotional

and the internal. Thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoy. I hope you're feeling motivated to grab a garbage bag and get rid of some garbage of your house or donate 21 things today or just put things in a basket instead of having it spread out all over your kitchen counter contain some of that clutter just so it's less visually distracting and less visually upsetting to you. So thank you guys so much and I'll see you next time.