Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - How to Simplify Your Life - Step One - Having Less | Clutterbug Podcast # 76

Episode Date: October 2, 2019

Welcome to the first podcast in our mini series "How to Simplify your Life". In this podcast we breakdown the first of the 3 STEPS to a simpler life. The first step is having less. I share 3 simple steps to having less stuff in your home and less stuff always equals more happiness.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys and welcome back to the Clutterbug Podcast. We're going to start a little series, just a three-part series, talking about simplicity and how just to make our lives easier. For me, the whole reason I'm really passionate about organization is because it makes my life easier, because I'm lazy, and I want to have the results that I want out of life without having to do the work. That sounds terrible to say, but that's the honest truth. An organization, while it's a little bit more, work up front, I saw that I could be lazier in life. I didn't have to spend hours looking for things or scrambling to tidy up before people come over or just feeling like I was a total disaster because my house was a disaster. I could invest a little bit of time and simplify my life. And so that's what I'm trying to do in all the other areas of my life. Life is hard and I want to simplify it as much as possible. So I have a simplifying your life sort of challenge, I guess, for you. And I'm breaking

this down into three things, simplifying your life in three ways. Number one, having less. Having less is just having less to worry about. It's having less stuff, but it equals less work. It equals less money being spent and being wasted, less things to clean, less things to keep track of, just less work in your life period. So the first thing we're going to talk about is having less. The second thing we're going to talk about is doing less. And that's going to be another podcast, the next follow-up podcast. We're going to really break down how to do less in your life, how to stop this feeling like we have to be busy or doing things that are wasting time, but not really getting us to where we want to be. How to just be a little lazier in life,

but still achieve those things we want to achieve. And last but not least, we're going to simplify our lives by wanting less, by letting go of that drive of all the things we're supposed to be doing or the things we're supposed to have or the things we, the material things we want to buy. If only we had this or did this or could be this, then we'd be happy. How can we want less? how can we be grateful for what we have today? And that's the third podcast we're going to talk about.

And when we do all of these things together, we really do simplify our lives. We make our lives easier. And when life is easier, we're happier. And that's what this is all about. So in today's podcast, we're going to break down some easy steps to having less. Number one, obviously, is decluttering. And when people think about clutter, they think it's junk. When I talk about decluttering that I'm looking at all the things that are crappy or not good

or like the junk in your house. And very rarely do people have actual junk in their home. Your home is filled with good stuff. You have expensive things. You have useful things. You have things that maybe have sentimental value to you. I don't classify clutter as junk or garbage. I classify clutter.

things that are not being used. So most of the things that are clutter are good. They aren't junk. And it might feel wasteful to get rid of things that you've spent a lot on or that are gifts or that you maybe could use someday in the future. But the truth is if you're not using these things right now and you're holding onto them in your home, it's clutter. And that is stealing your space. It's stealing your time and it's stealing your happiness. because a cluttered home, a home filled with lots of things that are not being used and not being loved makes us feel bad. It just really does. And it also doesn't allow us to have room for not only today, but tomorrow. It doesn't give us that breathing room in our home. Plus, it's a lot to clean. It's a lot to

have to keep track of to remember everything we hold on to. We have to like remember where it should go and where it is and what it does. and it fills our brain with useless information that doesn't allow us to have space for the things we want to really think about and that doesn't give us room for growth in our lives. And so you may be thinking, okay, that roasting pan I've never used is no big deal and that mixer and those clothes that don't fit but someday I might lose weight and those kids toys they're not playing with right now but they might one day or I might have another baby. when we think of all of these things, they're useful. But if they're not being used, they're making our space useless.

And those are the things that I talk about letting go of when I talk about decluttering. It isn't that we're looking around for junk and garbage in our homes. It's making our home have that necessary breathing room. It's letting go and simplifying our lives of the physical things that we're just not using. it's going to make finding things easier. It's going to make maintaining and cleaning your home easier. It's going to make life easier when we let go. So that's step one, declutter. Step two in the simplifying process of having less is spending less. And if you're anything like me, I mean, you say you want to spend less, but I'm impulsive. And so I'm at the store or I'm here and I'm like,

oh, I'm just going to stop and get a frappuccino at Starbucks or, oh, this is only $10 and it's cool. I'm going to pick this up. And all of these little things add up to like death by a thousand cuts. And as much as I want to say, today's the day, I'm going to be good and not waste money, at the time, I just don't think about it. I do have a sort of impulsive personality. So here's something that's working for me. It's a little extreme, but if you struggle with that death by a thousand cuts, those lots of little

stupid expenditures that honestly add up to a big chunk of change at the end of the month, here is something I recommend. It's a seven-day no-spend challenge. So every month, you're going to lock up your credit card and your debit card and your cash for one week. It means on the Sunday you're going to go grocery shopping, you're going to get lots of groceries, you're going to fill up your tank with gas, and then for one entire week, you're not going to spend one dime. It's like, oh my gosh, I could really use this, or I forgot the

eggs, or we ran out of mayonnaise. We're going to make do. We're going to eat the things that are in our freezer. We're going to see something like, oh, really beautiful shirt, and we're not going to buy it this week. Maybe it's still there next week, we can come back. But by giving ourselves that all or nothing approach to our money for one week out of the month. We're going to spend nothing. It's so much easier than having to minute by minute fight those impulses. By really just locking up your credit card, locking up your debit card, leaving it at home and living with no money for seven days, it forces us to have less. It forces us to spend less. And you're going to be amazed. Not only is this fun because you really have to get creative and think about, you know,

dinners and using what you have, but it's really going to be an eye-opening experience that shows you you don't need to always stop at Starbucks and have that fancy coffee before you start your day. You can make it at home and bring it with you. So it's a really cool. It's honestly a fun seven-day challenge and I really recommend you give it a try. Personally, I'm going to do this every single month because I am an all or nothing person and I know that this for me is what really works and spending less equals having less and that equals a more simplified life. The third step to having less is really prioritizing what it is you do want out of life and this is like just grabbing a piece of paper and writing down what you really want material wise. For me I mean I'd love a

your house. And when I look at all those dollar store purchases or all of those Starbucks coffees or all of those random books I buy that I never get around to reading on Amazon, when I look at all of those little things that I'm wasting money on, it's probably enough to add up to that larger mortgage payment that would give me what I really want. Maybe what you really want is to take your kids to Disneyland. And you're spending $20 here, $5 here, $10 here. on stupid things that seem okay at the time because it's little bits, but if you would save that money, you could have had that trip to Disneyland. So this is about prioritizing what's really important. And then how much would that actually cost? And then how much would you need to save every week to get

there? And that simple act of writing that down is going to give you a tool to say, okay, well, today. I'm, oh my gosh, this t-shirt, it's only $10 and it's really cute. But if I save that $10, I'd be so much closer to my actual priority goal. And just the act of writing it down and breaking it down and giving yourself a goal is going to put you so much closer to actually achieving it. So again, the three steps to simplifying your life are having less, doing less, and wanting less. And in today's podcast, I'm challenging you for the first part, which is having less. It's decluttering, making those hard decisions about things that you are just not, you know you're not using them.

You're not using them. They might be expensive. They might be useful. They may be sentimental, but they're stealing from you. They're stealing your time and your happiness and that space inside your brain because you have to think about them and worry about them and clean them and just all that stuff. Decluttering. simplifying our life by having less.

Step two is spending less. Spending less of just all the little tiny death by a thousand cuts things we waste money on. You can either start a journal where you track all of your spending for a week, or you can be really drastic and consider the seven-day no-spend challenge, eating what you have in your fridge and your freezer, and not leaving the house with a debit or credit card. It's super extreme, but honestly, it's a really eye-opening way to look at your spending habits and to just simplify your life.

And step three is prioritizing those purchases, so we're not filling our home with dollar store junk and all of those little things that we're not even realizing that we're buying or we're not thinking it's a big deal. Let's look at the bigger things, the real things. we want out of life. Let's see how much of those cost. Let's break it down and let's think about that every time we're making one of those small, stupid purchases because doing these three steps adds up to having less. And when we have less physical stuff in our lives, we're happier. Not talking about having to be a full minimalist. I'm talking about just making your life easier.

I want every day to be easier for you, to be simpler, to be less work. And the way that we get there, it starts with having less stuff. So I hope you're feeling motivated. I hope you're feeling ready to jump in with this three-step simplifying process with me. And you really look at your home today. You look at what you could get rid of. You look at how you could spend less. and you look at what do you really want when it comes to physical things?

And let's make a plan to get those instead of wasting it on all these little nickel and dime things that are filling up our home that are making us unhappy. And we'll stop the cycle once and for all. So thank you guys so much for listening. I really appreciate you taking the time to like chill with me and talk as I'm going through this journey of simplifying my life. next podcast we're going to be talking about doing less we're going to be talking about how to stop that feeling like we have to be busy we have to be just like accomplishing all of these things in our

to-do list because most of the things that we're busying our time with are not things that are bringing us happiness or even getting us closer to any of our life goals they're wasted time so how can we do this i'll see you next podcast or i tell you how See you then.