Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Inside the Messy Middle: Why Progress Doesn't Look Like Progress | Clutterbug Episode #338

Episode Date: August 10, 2026

Hey Clutterbugs! If you've been decluttering for weeks and your house STILL looks like a mess, let me be the first to tell you you're doing everything right. If you're putting in the work without seeing results, you're not failing. You're in the Valley of Disappointment, and it's exactly where you're supposed to be. After 17 years as a professional organizer, I've learned that progress isn't linear. You can work for days, weeks, even months without seeing visible change—and then suddenly, like magic, everything clicks. But most people quit right before they reach that breakthrough moment. In this episode, I'm breaking down the Valley of Disappointment (a concept from Atomic Habits by James Clear) and showing you what it looks like for each organizing style. Because understanding WHERE you are in the process is the difference between giving up and pushing through to that transformational moment. The Valley of Disappointment is temporary. Your breakthrough is right around the corner. Don't quit now—you're closer than you think. Go work on a space that feels stalled while you listen. Make it 1% better. That's all you need to do today. Want to get organized? Learn 6-Step The Clutterbug Method: https://clutterbug.thinkific.com/courses/Clutterbug-Method You can find more Clutterbug content here: Main YouTube Channel: @Clutterbug Website: http://www.clutterbug.me TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/ #clutterbug #podcast #adhd #decluttering #valleyofdisappointment #atomichabits #stuck #selfimprovement #melrobbinspodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

If you've been decluttering for three weeks and everything still looks like a disaster, you are in exactly the right place. Before we get started on today's podcast, you are not allowed to just listen or watch. I want you to get up right now. Get up and take action because at the end of this hour, you are going to be so proud of what you accomplished. And today, I want you to move to a space in your home that feels stalled, that feels. that feels like you started or you're just doing it over and over again and it's not getting better and it feels defeating.

It feels disappointing. Move to that space and what can you do while listening to make it 1% better? Can you declutter five things? Can you straighten something? Can you move a few things around? Like let's take a tiptoe forward in a space that feels sort. Stalled. Feel the momentum. Borrow some of my motivation and keep pushing ahead. I'm not going to say that you're going to reach that magical point at the end of this podcast where you're like, everything's perfect and I made

progress. But I can promise you this. You will be so much further ahead than before you started listening. We're talking about the valley of disappointment. How even though you're working towards your goal, it doesn't happen overnight and it can feel like you're not seeing progress. So what is even the point of all this hard work? I've been really looking at decluttering differently lately because, and even organizing too. I've been doing this for so long, almost 17 years. I've been working as a professional organizer. And there are still people in my community who are feeling disappointed, who are struggling. And I think the reason is I have a tendency of just being, like tunnel vision, you know? Like I've also fast forwarded through all my struggle and I'm now on the

other side. So I'm like, solution, solution, solution. But I'm not so great at really acknowledging not only the struggle, but how long it takes before you actually see results. Recently, I did a new video that I'm so excited about on my YouTube channel that also looks at the clutterbug quiz differently. Because in order to know your organizing style, you basically have to know what works for you. Even if you go and take my quiz, it is based on questions of like the end result. Do you prefer this or this? Does this work better or this? Well, what if you have no idea what works? Right? What if you have no idea because you are still on the struggle bus and you haven't got off yet? You don't know if you're visual or hidden, because right now everything's just so chaotic and you're drowning, that that's not

a really helpful question. If you are still struggling, if your house feels like a disaster and you're taking the clutter bug quiz, you have to answer based on fantasy you. You have to guess what you would like it to be in an ideal world. And that's not helpful at all. So I had to think, like, how can we change that? And instead of having people fantasize, about their ideal perfect home, what if we look at the mess as it is right now instead? So I just shifted the perspective. Instead of asking like what do you want it to look like? I said, what does it look like when it's messy right now?

And we can diagnose your style based on that. So just like I say, there are only four organizing styles. There are only four types of messy too. I know that's a really bold claim. But the reality is you might be maybe a combination. here and there, or you may be this type in one room and another and the other, but at its core, there are only four different organizing styles and four different types of messy. It's kind of reverse engineering the clutterbug quiz, but it's working because you take all the guesswork out

of it. So in order to make this video that shows you what your mess looks like now, I had to totally destroy my office, which is also my craft room, which also has a closet, Like, I trashed it so that every wall was a different type of messy. And then I had to reorganize it, not for my style, but for the four different organizing styles, which means all my organizing stuff was relocated. The point is, I completely trashed half of my house in a very stressful way for you. Because I know it's going to help you and it's going to be such an effective tool in a different way to look at yourself and have a real diagnosis. So you got to check out that video. It's on my

clutterbug channel, but it also got me thinking about the messy middle. And let's go even a step further, the valley of disappointment. And if you're watching this podcast in video, you see that I'm actually in Joe's office. I'm in a completely different place because the basement is still a work in progress now. Like my office is not back to normal. And it might take a while. to get it there too. Every project I've ever done, every project I still do now, I start out like so optimistic and then things get to a point where it's like, what have I done? There's panic. This is a nightmare. It's never going to work out. It doesn't matter what I'm doing. This is the lived experience. You can probably relate. Sometimes I call it the messy middle. Sometimes I just call it the,

oh my gosh, I'm in over my head, what was I thinking? But I didn't have a real name for this until I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. James Clear says, the valley of disappointment is that part of life, like when you start something new, whether it's a new hobby, a new project, a new habit, and you're not really seeing progress. This is where most people quit. You're putting in the work. And yet you're not seeing that needle move forward. And that's because progress isn't really linear. You know what I mean? It isn't like I do this and then I see this result. It compounds in the background. And then before you know it, it's like, boom, you got there. But you're putting in the work without results for a while. And that could feel really defeating. And I'm going to give you,

I have so many examples of this in my life. But I think the best one is growing a social media channel. This is bonkers. This is like the, to me, such a perfect example. when I first started creating videos, I would do put in all the work to learn and film and edit and upload and no one would watch. Second video, no one's really watching. Third video, again, no views, no subscribers, no comments. And this went on for a while. But I'm like putting in work for nothing. You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden I start getting views and then I start getting views on the old things I had already uploaded too. It was like this, it's almost like compound interest. It's bonkers. But the work I put in, like it's retroactive, if that makes sense. And this,

you'll see this when you're organizing. I see this with every makeover. I start the makeover. So excited. I have all the supplies. We start decluttering. I start getting into it. And then I'm drowning. I don't see progress. I've made things worse. I have no idea how I can get out of. of here. It's like I put in two days of work and it's like, oh my gosh, it's nowhere better. But you just keep chugging along. And like magic, and I swear to you, this is what happens, in the last hour before the homeowners come home, that's when you see everything get pulled together. It isn't that I did all the work in the last hour. It's that the days of work before, which felt invisible, actually like come to the surface and reveal.

themselves later in the process, like at the end. It doesn't matter if you're trying to lose weight. You're working out. You're trying to save money. You're trying to get your home under control. It's the same kind of value of disappointment. That's part of the process. So if you've started, say, decluttering or trying to organize and you're like, I'm doing all this work and I'm not seeing anything, this is part of the process. I'm going to go back. I'm going to rewind 17 to 15 years. I mean, I can't tell you the exact moment, but to the moment where things really shifted in my home, where it was like, I went from, oh my gosh, everything's a nightmare to, holy crap, my life's under control. And it wasn't like one day that I can pinpoint. And that's because of the

valley of disappointment. I started my journey decluttering. And then I watched Peter Walsh's clean sweep and was so inspired and I started putting things into dish pans and trying this like macro approach to organization. But yes, I saw slight improvement, but I was still drowning. Why? Because I had to declutter in hidden areas, closets, and under the bed. And I had to pull things out to try to make new homes for things. And I'm like, yes, you know where the perfect spot is for my cooking utensils? this drawer, but that drawer was filled with all my paperwork, which meant that was shifted to a pile. It was a lot of stuff shuffling in the beginning. It was a lot of like making one spot better. And now five spaces are a little bit worse. And it felt like what the heck am I doing? It felt a little

bit like floundering. And I even remember my husband saying like, you are making things worse. You know, you're spending all this time and like the house kind of looks trashed and what are you doing? But I just kept going. And just like in a makeover where things miraculously come together at the 11th hour, the same thing happened to my home. It was like I was building the foundation. And so my construction site looked like a disaster until I was able to like, put the finishing touches on. And this is every project. You don't see that impactful, like, until the bitter, bitter end. And so this is why we give up. Because of course,

if you are putting in hours decluttering and trying to zone, and maybe you've set up an organizing system, but you turn around and you're like, but everything is still awful, what is the point? please know that quitting now, quitting now is the biggest mistake because you are almost there. You are not going to see this life-changing, impactful difference until you get to the end. The reason that when we're in the valley of disappointment, it can feel so epically disappointing is because our brains are conditioned to notice the negative. more than the positive. So even though we've made a little progress here, all we're noticing is the mess, or it's even more than that, we like think about unfinished projects in our brain. It gives

it way more brain power than the things that are completed. So even though we've done a lot, all we can see and think about are the tasks still left unfinished, which can feel so defeating. And the closer we get to having an organized functional home, the more the messy, disorganized, unfunctional stuff is apparent. You know what I mean? Like, when everything's chaotic, all we see is chaos. But when things are starting to get under control, it almost magnifies the stuff that isn't working. It makes it seem and feel bigger than it did before.

I always think about progress as kind of just like I think. about compound interest. And this is really fascinating because I did not know what compound interest was or how it worked for the majority of my adult life. And when I found out, it was like I discovered some magical secret of like rich people, like something I shouldn't know. So first, okay, this is what compound interest is at its basic level, knowing that I still don't 100% get it. But here we go. say you earn 1% on your dollar. So then you have a dollar and a penny. And then the next day, you earn 1% on that dollar plus a 1% on that penny. And then over time, before you know it, you've got like $5. And now your $5 is making money on the $5. The point is it's compounding.

It's adding on top of each other. And the progress is growing without you really noticing or having to do extra work. And the same thing happens in your home when it comes to decluttering and organizing. You've made things 1% better, which doesn't feel like much of anything and it's probably not noticeable. But if the next day you make something 1% better again, you aren't just making it 1% better. You're also making it 1% better on top of yesterday's 1%. So it's like 1.1%. Ha ha. I don't know. Math. And then the next day, it's like 1% better on the 1%. So now it's like 1.2%. The point is, before you know it, you're putting in the same small 1% effort.

It doesn't feel like extra, except now it's like 100% better because of all, it's exponential. All those 1% better stacked on top of each other add up to a big percentage without you having to do more work. or put in more effort. It's totally magical, but in the beginning, it can feel like you're not seeing anything at all. Okay, let's use a different analogy. I love analogies. Let's think about when you're boiling a pot of water. You put it on the stove, you've turned it on, and you're looking at that, please don't watch a pot. It never boils. But you're watching it. And even though the temperature's rising, it looks exactly the same. The water's not moving. And then maybe you see like a little swirling, but you're still like, bro, you've been heating for a long time. And then just like magic,

it seems like within a second, you see the bubbles in the rapid boil, right? The whole time, the water's been getting hotter, but you haven't noticed until it reached that critical moment of like transformation. And that is what happens in life too. When you are upgrading your life, when you are making that transformation, whether it's somebody who's an organized, tidy person naturally, you know, when you, it doesn't matter if you're working out, if you're trying to get your finances and all, all of it, while you're creating new habits and making change, it isn't noticeable until you've reached that boiling point, until you've reached that moment of absolute transformation. But it doesn't just like, it takes.

takes all of that slow progress to get to that point. It takes the work without the results until you hit that one moment when it all comes together. So unfortunately, I would love to tell you some magical ways to get out of the valley to instantly climb your way out. But the reality is you're supposed to be in it. That is the shortcut to getting the results you want. It's like in just like living through the valley and understanding that just like the valley kind of feels like a hole, doesn't it? It feels like the, oh, you're in the mud and the sludge. And as you're climbing out and making these little steps of progress, there's also going to be some backsliding. There's going to be times where you take one step forward and you felt like you've been pushed

back two steps. Again, it's all part of the process. We are chugging along without results. until we hit that critical point where we climb out and it's like, da, da, da, da, da, we've developed a new and incredible habit, except most people quit before they reach that point. I think one of the reasons people quit is because they have no idea where they are. Like, they don't even understand that this is like, they're so close and that it's supposed to look like this disaster mess right now. So let's talk about what the valley might look like for you so that if you can recognize yourself in it, you can have some confidence that first this isn't going to be forever. And two, you are actually on the right track.

It's really important that you know what your valley looks like so you don't think that you're doing it wrong so that you don't think you're making a mistake and so that you don't give up. All right, let's start. You know, it would be really fun. Let's talk about the valleys, but let's connect them to the four organizing styles. just for funzies. Let's start with a butterfly and what a typical butterfly valley of disappointment looks like. So you've started your journey. You are doing a five-minute pickup every day. You're trying

to get things off the floor and give good enough homes for them. Feels like you're working so hard because you are. And then you wake up one morning and your living room is a disaster. And you look around and all you notice are all the things that you've dropped everywhere and not put away. And you're like, I just cleaned this yesterday. Why is it a disaster again? And it can make you feel like I want to give up. But here's what's happening. This is why your value is so important. You, for the first time, are actually noticing on a regular basis, not just when things get insane or not just before companies coming over and suddenly your clutter blindfold comes off. But every day, you are noticing how you're putting things down. You're noticing the mess. You're noticing that things

are out of place. And this is progress because the thing for butterflies is they're often clutter blind because they are just in the habit of dropping everywhere and seeing it that way and not even really noticing. If you start to feel like I'm doing the work and I'm still noticing the clutter, that's part of training your brain. And every time you're picking something up and putting it away and it feels like, I just did this yesterday and I'm doing it again, you are creating muscle memory. You are training your body and your brain to put things away where it goes. And this is painful. This is disappointing. This is messy. This feels like, oh my gosh, but there will be a day. And I promise you this, that you will get to that boiling point, will you get to that transformational point,

where you will wake up in the morning and there won't be mess anymore. Because you have gotten to the point where all those habits you're stacking, all that practice, all that noticing, all that work reaches this critical limit where you just have become a tidy and organized person. But you've got to keep going. And as a butterfly, you're going to have multiple valleys and multiple. journeys because, yes, once you start getting in the habit of picking things up and putting it away, you're probably going to want to go a step further and start creating like the most organized and functional home you can. Like you're leveling up again, except 99% of organizing solutions

are not made for butterflies, which means it's back to trial and error. You're going to put a basket for shoes here and then you're going to kick the shoes over here instead. You're going to have toy organization and your kids are going to pile or cram in a corner over here. And you're going to have to adjust and try. And you're like, where's the paper going to go? I have this command center I'm trying, but it's not working. Why? We're going to adjust and try again. It's going to feel like disappointment. It's going to feel like I did the work and I'm not seeing the results. What is wrong with me? I'm a failure. But I'm telling you, you're not. You're in the valley of disappointment. Because the more you keep making things 1% better, it's all going to add up to eventually

100%. But you're not going to see it till it gets to like 95%. That's where you see that like flip into like, oh, yes, this is actually working. So you just need to remind yourself to stay the course. All right. So let's talk a little bit about the Ladybug's Valley of Disappointment. And I do feel like this might be the most disappointing, heartbreaking valley of all. I might be biased because I'm a ladybug and I've experienced this so many times. But it is so defeating. The thing about a ladybug is they really pride themselves on their home, the spot that they see and that guests see, being under control, being beautiful, being having minimal clutter. The issues that a ladybug have is that they're hidey hoarders, that they shove things in all the

hidden spaces because not only do they not want other people to see it, they don't want to see it themselves. They're not just doing this before company comes over. Every day, someone's done with a glass, they're hiding it. Joe can have a pop that he just opened five seconds ago and I will, without even realizing, dump it and recycle the can. Is that because I'm a naturally tidy person? No, it's because I'm neurotic about seeing stuff. It causes me severe anxiety. And yet, I need to get organized in my hidden spaces because being a ladybug and shoving and hiding means I can never find anything. I'm not actually organized, right? Because my house looks tidy, but everything is chaotic and I can't find and put things away quickly. I can now, but I couldn't

before. So, so the method, the valley of disappointment happens because in order for a ladybug to get organized and to declutter, they have to pull things out of their hidden areas and deal with it. They have to empty that closet of doom. They have to take everything out of that under their bed where they've shoved. They have to open up those junk drawers and pull all the mess out, which is exposing it out in the open, which is their worst nightmare. They've taken a spot that looked from the outside to be clean and tidy, and now they've made it look so much worse. It's saying it's progress, but it feels like backwards. It feels like you tried to make things better, but in fact, you've made things 10,000 times worse, which is why ladybugs will go their

whole lives. Never actually getting ahead. Because in order to get ahead, they have to make things so, so bad. One piece of advice that I have for ladybugs in their valley is to start so small. Because, yeah, if you're like, my kitchen looks good on the outside, but every single cabinet is a disaster and you empty every single cabinet, you're going to cry yourself to sleep at night for the next week and then just shove it all back to make the egg in the end. You know, you're going to give up because it's too big. of a mess. It's too big of a valley of disappointment. So we start with one cabinet. We start with one shelf of a closet. We start with one corner of a pile that we've hidden in the hidden area.

And we're going to slowly, yes, we have to pull things out to make progress, but we're going to do it slowly. Now, here's what I'm going to, this is the only disclaimer I'm going to say. In order to make hidden spaces functional for ladybugs, in almost every way we need to have been and baskets, which means we need shelving. We can't just stack totes on the floor. We are not going to unstack them and open a lid to put things away. We're going to shove on top. So there are going to be situations where in order to make that better long term to get to that finish line, you have to empty an entire closet in order to install shelving. That's what I just did in the basement. And it felt like, honestly, I felt my anxiety at an all-time high. The rest of my house looked good. So now,

this space, I felt panicked. I was sweating. My heart was racing. All I wanted to do was shove it in a closet and make it disappear and not look at it. I contemplated just throwing everything out in trash bags to make the anxiety stop. But then I had to remind myself that this is part of the process, that it's supposed to look like this, that the valley of disappointment is the messy middle. And just knowing that helps. I think the other thing that is so helpful for me, is I've realized now, I understand that all those physical responses that I feel to the stress that comes when you're in that part of a project, doesn't matter what it is. The value of disappointment is so stressful. I know that that fear response isn't real. I know I'm not actually afraid.

It's that my brain registers discomfort like that and the unknown and that part of the middle, the same as it would if like a tiger was about to eat me. It feels like real physical pain and fear when all it really is is perceived anxiety. I do like grounding exercises. I remind myself it's all part of the process. And the last thing I do that's super helpful is I have the end goal in mind in a visual way to remind me that I'm getting there. I know a lot of you guys aren't a big fan of AI, which I completely understand. But whether I'm using an inspiration picture from the internet, or I take a picture of the space and I ask AI to generate what it would look like, clean and tidy, both of those give me, give me at least like the lighthouse in the storm.

It gives me a sense of it's, I'm working towards something and I can see that finish, that finish line, which helps ease my anxiety. Before we talk about the bees valley, if you have no idea what I'm talking about when I talk about bees and butterflies, I developed a system called the Clutterbug method that helps people identify their organizing style. And I have a free quiz you can take over 20 million people have taken this quiz. So you can go to clutterbug.com, take the free quiz and understand your style. And if you still take the quiz and you're like, I'm not sure because I don't know what works for me, you want to check the video called Four Types of Messy on the Clutterbug YouTube channel, which will give you a new perspective and self-awareness. Okay, let's talk about the bee and what their valley looks like. And it looks like stress and anxiety. Why? Because if you're a bee, everything is already super visual and it's organized chaos. So you've made piles, you've sorted, you kind of have some idea of where things are or you want to know. But in order to

to make things better, you now have to disrupt this and make things even more visual. You need to start decluttering, which is super hard for you and letting things go. And you need to start embracing kind of good enough homes that isn't a pile for your stuff until you can go back and make it perfect later, which might look like undoing the hard sorting and micro-organizing work you've done. You kind of have to slide back a bit before you can go forward. as a bee. You may have to, even though you've sorted your craft supplies and you have like a little pile of yellow yarn and a little pile of pink yarn and a little pile of blue yarn and different kinds of gauges of yarn. I know nothing about yarn. But the point is bees know a lot. And maybe you've sorted into a

million piles and you have no place for it to go. So in order to get ahead, you have to throw it all into one bucket called yarn and give that a home just so you can unbury the rest and make progress. And yet to your brain, it's screaming, I've just made things worse because you've made it less organized in order to get to a point where you're more organized. And because bees, bees are just overthinkers. They are. They remember all the little things and they're thinking and they're planning and they're just like, oh my gosh. And on top of that, now you're trying to create a new habit and you're trying to like adapt your system and change your system. The mental overload that you're feeling can be absolutely exhausting, which is why I always say to bees, when you're, when you first

start the decluttering process, you're not making piles of where things go or how many things you have. it's just, is this staying or not? And that's to stop the decision fatigue. Bees have more decision fatigue than any other organizing style because their brains run a mile a minute. Plus, they're so visual that they've got all that visual stimulation reminding them too. They need to simplify, which means am I keeping or not, which again feels like anti-progress to them. It feels like I'm going to just have to go back and do this again. feels like, but I could do it more efficiently by sorting into piles in the first place. But real progress for a B is this dumbed down, like, messy approach until you reach that boiling

point where you can now like take everything to the next level and see real lasting change. And last but not least, let's talk about the valley for the cricket, specifically when it comes to trying to get your home more organized. The valley for the crickets is a little bit sad, and here's why. Crickets generally are more organized naturally than other people to begin with. So when they're trying to level up and get rid of the stacks and the piles and the paper, or perhaps that one room that they tend to neglect, they're working hard at making things better, but they're not getting the recognition. It's not being noticed by anyone else. Because a cricket making things better, it's already so good to the outside everyone else.

They're like, what are you doing and what is the point of that? You know, it already looks good enough. So to take it to cricket level, they're not going to have this dramatic transformation that the other bugs are going to have. And that can feel disappointing. I'm married to a cricket. And Joe gets really excited. Like, Joe will spend two days in his office reorganizing it, you know, two days. And I'll come in and he's like, look, what I did. Friends, you know, because it's behind closed doors and it's these little micro adjustments that definitely are improving his life. But it's not going to be like you're going into a butterfly's house and you can't even

see their floor and now magically everything's tidy away. It's not going to be like that. It is going to be this subtle, tiny, micro change that really only a cricket's going to notice. So when you're excited about the change and no one else sees anything, that can make the valley of disappointment even more disappointing. The whole point of this is, I want you to understand that being in the valley, being in the part where you're just like, what is the point and what have I done and why? Why am I putting in this work and not seeing results? That's normal. That's exactly where you're supposed to be. And I want to encourage you not to give up because your breakthrough,

whatever that's going to look like and everybody's will look different, it's right around the corner. And it happens when you least expect it, when you've just got your head down and you're chugging along and you're focused on tiny 1% better consistency. consistently. You're going to lift up your eyes. You're going to look up and be like, holy crap, look how far I've come. And it will feel magical, but you've got to get there one tiny step at a time. I have to take a second to thank today's sponsor, Cozy Earth. You know, I switched to Cozy Earth bedding years ago, and now I'm a sheet snob because Cozy Earth sheets are so soft and their temperature

regulating and I wash them over and over again and they feel even better, that anytime I go to a hotel, I'm actually going to a hotel this weekend. I know I'm going to be disappointed and I'm going to crave my sheets at home. It feels like luxury and it doesn't have to have luxury prices. I'm getting older. Treat yourself to a good night's sleep. I deserve it and you do too. Cozy Earth doesn't just have sheets. They have lots of towels and even clothing their pajamas. jamas are amazing, absolutely worth it. Go to cozyearth.com and use my code clutterbug to save up to 20% off right now. Again, that's cozyearth.com and use the code clutterbug. Now it's time for my favorite part of the podcast. Talk to Cass. And first up, we're going to hear from Carrie.

Hi, Cass. I have a quick question. My mom is 81 years old and she's a butterfly. I was wondering if you might have advice on how I can help her organize the files on her computer. Right now her desktop is covered in files. And it's honestly so many that they're on top of one another. And if she saves something to the desktop, she can't find it. I tried making a few large category folders for her, but the desktop went right back to being a cluttered disaster. Do you have any advice on how I could help her organize the files so they're visual? She has a Mac. Thank you so much. much. I love your show. Bye. Hi, Carrie. Okay, I super love this and you're not going to like my advice because digital is the thing that I struggle with the most, but I do have advice. For a butterfly or

a ladybug, never more than three folders on the desktop, okay? Because more than that is just, it's too many lids to open. It's too many buckets in microorganization. You can have one for photos. You You can have one for finance and you could have one for other. Those are a really good place to start because at least you know everything that's going into those are somewhat sorted. But also, Carrie, everything on a computer is searchable. So she can open the finder window. And I would even put a shortcut right on her desktop because my mom, who's in her 70s,

is not super computer illiterate. So making like a desktop like a find. and then she just types in photo. She types in, even if she wants a photo of like her granddaughter, she can just type in her granddaughter's name. And maybe that'll bring it up because Mac photo sorting is amazing. And it can recognize people's faces. The point is, let the technology do the searching for you.

And don't worry so much about putting things into folders and categories because at the end of the day, if you need to find a bill, you can just type in the name of that bill. and it will come up. I'm also a person that just puts everything on my desktop. So when I download something, I don't want to look for it in a downloads folder. I drag it right to my desktop so I can find it later. But then my desktop looks insane. So here's the thing. You can go to the finder window and under the favorites, you can click on desktop and make sure you have icons selected. And you can then scroll through and it organizes it for you. So I know like on the desktop, it looks like a chaotic

mess, but in Finder, it will actually organize it for you. You can organize it from like by name or previous like the latest added. It can organize it by month. It's pretty amazing, fascinating. So even though it looks like chaos, your computer has the ability to make it look not chaotic to you. The thing that I do too, it's just like, listen, I'm not an expert. You're going to cringe. Everybody's going to cringe. I just select everything on my desktop and drag it all into my random folder. And then if I need something, I search the random folder. So when I can no longer see my desktop, I drag and select everything, pull it in. I just hit like replace applied all. And magically, my desktop is clear in one second. The point of all of this is you have to do what works for her.

Like, don't try to change the way she's doing things. Show her a way of using your technology that you already have to make it work for her. Now let's hear from Aspen. But before we hear from Aspen, I have to tell you, we had a decluttering dinosaur a while ago. A decluttering dinosaur is when someone shares something really old they found during decluttering. And this person had found a banana that was so old. it turned into dust when they went to touch.

It literally looked like a banana and they touched it and it was like, poof, like you know, like something from Indiana Jones when that old crypt just turns into dust. So with that knowledge in your brain, let's hear from Aspen. So I was listening to some old episodes again. And I got to the episode with the dusty banana. And I'm very sorry if you don't want to hear this. but I felt the need to explain the dusty banana.

So when you have an old banana, you have mold spores growing on it, and they have their sort of like root systems, mycelium. They eat the banana, all the banana, they hollow it out, they suck out the moisture. And then once it's done eating the banana, it wants to send out its spores, you know, it's babies, its seeds. And those are a very fine dust because they need to float away and we need to find new bananas to eat. So when you have contained the banana inside of a bag, then all the spores are just all in that bag ready to fly away and go look for new bananas. So if you encounter a black dusty banana, do not indirect. Soak it in vinegar immediately.

and then seal that banana in a plastic bag and throw it away. And then use something like vinegar to wash out the rest of the bag because that's going to kill the rest of the mold spores and it's going to keep them wet so that you're not breathing in the mold and you don't have more mold flying around colonizing the rest of your bananas. Another life pro tip is if your bananas mold regularly, take the spot where you normally leave them and clean that with vinegar because there's probably secret little molds spores that you can't see living on your counter and they like to eat your bananas.

Aspen's first of all a genius. I'm guessing she's like a chemist or some biology major. Thank you Aspen. Hearing you describe that made me think of the last of us, you know, with all those mold spores in the air. It was crazy. And also a story about my daughter and pollen. Do I, share it, yep, I'm going to. Okay, real quick. Also, did you know almost every butterfly's home that I declutter? I find a rotten banana in their space. Side note, my daughter has really bad allergies, and her eyes, she's allergic to trees in nature. Her eyes are always like, like watering and swollen. And when she was very, very little, she was asking why. So I explained to her that trees have babies by releasing pollen spores, which then are going into her eyes. And her little brain put two and two

together because, like, they're releasing their pollen and the male pollen's mixing with the female. Anyways, she's like, why are the trees having sex with my eyes? And I don't want to say that dusty banana. I guess it's more spreading its babies with you just reminded me of that story. The more you know. And last but not least, let's hear from Tara. Hi, Cass, it's Tim. Sarah from Central New York. I discovered your podcast last year and I've been going through a lot of episodes. And I was just curious if you have any on affintasia, the inability to see images in your mind's eye. There's different variations, but I see total darkness, which means I can't visualize things. I think it makes it harder for me to remember things, remember where I put things. And I wonder how much

much it contributes to my clutter issue. I have a clean home, but I always think that I have a safe spot to put something, and then I put it there, and then I can't remember where it is. I am a ladybug, so I'd just like to chuck things into bins, but label the bin so I know where everything is as I'm going through this process, but I thought it would be a good idea for a future episode. So thanks so much for what you do. I can't wait to keep decluttering. And thank you so much. Tara, I think that's the most fascinating thing I've ever heard. I have never heard of this before. That's so fascinating. I know that some people don't hear an intern or monologue, but I didn't realize that some people didn't see pictures in their mind. So when you're putting something down and you're

trying to like remember where it went, you can't remember as in you seeing it in your mind. So how could you ever possibly know? This is so interesting. I don't know if I have specific tips. I'm going to look more into this and research it because I find it so cool. But what if you, like, can you hear, do you see words or do you hear sounds as memory recollection? Because my friend always sings a song when she leaves the house. She's like purse and keys and I don't know, it's some little song she sings to trigger her memory to remember things. I wonder if you can look at the way you do remember things. Again, if it's like auditory or if it is words and kind of hack that system to help you remember when you put things down. I'm going to research this because

I find this so fascinating. I did learn becoming when I was diagnosed with ADHD and taking medication, that it is not normal to have multiple trains of thought on top of each other at once. And this opened up a whole new world to me of how everybody's brains are different. And then I started thinking, does blue look the same to everybody? And when a dog barks, does it sound the same to one person and the other? The brain, it's fascinating. I hope you're proud of the progress that you've made today. I hope you can look and see a slight difference and change. Celebrate that because that's also part of the valley of disappointment. It's like it can feel like it isn't enough to say good job and pat yourself on the back.

So we're not getting the dopamine hits. We're not getting any rewards. What if you reward yourself today, even though it isn't done? Even though it isn't perfect, celebrate the tiny success you made. Thanks so much for spending time with me. I love hanging out with you guys. I hope you got so much done and I'll see you next time.