Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - Joshua Becker - The Freedom of Owning Less | Clutterbug Podcast # 163

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

Does your "stuff" make you happy?  Does your life reflect your current dreams and goals?  In today's podcast, I am joined by Joshua Becker, the founder and editor of Becoming Minimalist. Joshua shares his incredible words of wisdom, and attainable ways we can release our excess stuff and embrace a simplified life.  Check out Joshua Becker's website: https://www.becomingminimalist.com/   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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today's podcast is going to blow your mind. Today's guest is so inspiring and also at the same time I feel so zen. I'm honestly blown away and I cannot wait for you to hear. So buckle up and prepare to have your life changed. Hey Clutterbugs. Welcome back to the Clutterbug podcast. I am beyond excited for today's guest. We have the incredible Joshua Becker.

Joshua is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of five books. He's also the founder of Becoming Minimalist, a website dedicated to intentional living that's visited over one million times by one million readers every single month. And he has a social media following of over three million people. His blog has been named by Success Magazine is one of the top 10 personal development websites on the internet and his writing has been featured all over the world. I like to think of him as the king of minimalism. Joshua Becker is making it mainstream

and making us all want to embrace a more simplified minimal lifestyle. So welcome Joshua Becker. I am absolutely fan-girling over here. Thrilled to have you. It's such an honor. Thank you for being on the Clutterbug podcast. Well, you are overly gracious. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's good to be here. I'm excited. I always love getting to get in a chat with people. I'm especially excited. I'm actually friends with Don from the minimal mom and I'm going to tell you the truth. Don't be insulted. For a really long time, I had a negative impression of what minimalism was. I thought it was someone with maybe one plate, a fork over there, bare walls. And I'm really disgusting.

it's so much more. And I also am seeing that minimalism kind of looks different to different people. And I'm curious, have you always been a minimalist? Is this something that you grew up with? How did this happen for you? Because you are, you are the leader of the movement. You are bringing this mainstream. You are opening people's eyes to something and I think changing their perspective too. Well, hopefully, hopefully it's certainly something I'm passionate about. No, didn't grow up this way. I always like to think I grew up pretty typical middle class, not eating at the fanciest restaurants in town, but never missing meals along the way either.

14 years ago is when I was introduced to minimalism and the short story is it was a Saturday morning we were doing our spring cleaning my son was five my daughter was two and I had this vision of my five-year-old son helping me clean out the garage we were going to have this amazing day together and he lasted about 30 seconds and was in the backyard I of course had the garage as my project and so hours and hours I'm putting into the garage, just taking everything out and hosing it all down. My son's asking me every about 15, 20 minutes, if I'll come back and play catch with him. And I keep pushing him off, pushing him off as this happens. My neighbor then was the one who introduced me to minimalism.

I started complaining to her. She was doing all of her yard work. And I started complaining about my garage project and how long it was taking. And she had seen the interaction. with my son. Anyway, she says one simple sentence, you know, that's why my daughter's a minimalist. She keeps telling me I don't need to own all this stuff. And I remember looking at the pile of things in my driveway, dirty and dusty and things that I knew weren't making me happy. Right. At least I would say isn't making me happy. Out of the corner of my eye, I see my five-year-old son swinging alone on this wing set in the backyard where he'd been all day long and suddenly had this further realization, not only were my things not making me happy, but all my things were actually taking me away from the very thing that did bring me happiness and purpose and meaning and fulfillment in life. And so that was the start of our journey. And I always think that's the lightball moment for minimalism. Like we would all say our things aren't making us happy, but the moment we realize

they're actually taking us away from the very things that do bring us happiness is what sparks the idea and sparks the thought to why do I own all this stuff and what can I start getting rid of. I love that. Every time I read any of your messages, any, anything you put out, do you know what I feel? I feel that. I feel the weight lifting off even when I haven't done the work yet. That must be what your life feels like, but that's what we all should feel like. And you say something, you say minimalism is the freedom from the passion to possess. And as much as I declutter, I'm not, I'm not there yet. I still feel. that passion to possess please help us why do we feel this and how can we stop looking for happiness in a store yeah um you're brilliant you uh you you ask meaningful questions that have all this

truth in them uh right right off the bat so i'm sorry i'm just throwing them at you i'm like solve the world's problems joshua you're like this is good this is good um uh first of all Well, yes, like minimalism is freedom. Owning less is freedom. And I think sometimes we can even think of the process of decluttering as being burdensome and not freeing, but something that I have to do, something that I don't want to do,

something that I know I should be doing, but like feel forced into it. And it's interesting because, Like, I grew up, I grew up going to church and, like, in a very faith-filled home and environment. And, like, I had heard about not being materialistic and not being consumeristic and not, you know, being greedy and selfish. And, like, I had heard all of those messages. But for some reason, they were always, like, like, the negative side of the consequence. Like, like, don't be materialistic.

Don't be over consumeristic. Don't spend more than you have. It's always the negative side as opposed to the very freeing, hey, if you own less, you could free up your life. You could free up money and time and energy. And you could start living the life that you actually want to be living rather than the one that the world, that consumers, that marketers are just telling us to live in.

So yeah, how do you overcome the passion to possess? It's a, in some ways, I think it's a, a different conversation than how do I declutter? How do I overcome consumerism is, I always think the comparison is it's one thing to go on a diet to lose 10 pounds. It's something completely different to embrace a healthy diet going forward for the rest of my life. And the greatest benefit, of course, is in the healthy diet, not just the decluttering and then filling, filling back up again. But yeah, how do we do that? I think we recognize we start living it, like we start owning less and noticing the benefits of it. I think we start realizing that our lives are worth more than physical possessions.

I think we start seeing that our money can be used for bigger and better things than just buying more and more stuff. I think the more we embrace gratitude and generosity, the more we're able to overcome consumerism. I think we just notice, hey, we live in this society that is compelling us to buy things that we don't need. 5,000 advertisements we see every single day. 5,000 every day. Yeah, and really when you think about it, the heart of every advertisement is, hey, you'll be happier if you buy this thing. thing. Your life will be better if you buy this product. And I think we just get told that message so many times that we very subtly begin to believe it and start living lives where we constantly

want bigger houses and nicer cars and more clothes and cuter this and faster that. And it just becomes what we pursue, unfortunately. I think you're right. So, I mean, there's one thing to say change your mindset. But what you're saying is it's the messaging has a big. impact on your mindset too. So if everywhere we see and everything we hear is telling us a message, of course we're going to gravitate to that. And I changed my finances listening to messages from Dave Ramsey, from, I mean, I was reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The more I listen to that message, the more my brain gravitated to that message. I think what you're saying is everyone needs to listen to you more. That's what I'm saying.

I'll let you say that. But honestly, but I'll let me add. But honestly hearing that message. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll add one piece onto it. You know, it's, we certainly live in a world where we're told all these marketing messages. But I like to say there's no progress to be made in blame.

Like there's no ad executive driving you to target. You know, there's no ad executive. clicking to ship on on Amazon. Like those messages are somehow resonating with something inside of us, right? The way we grew up or a little more jealousy or envy or trying to fit into society or the people that we hang around with

or prove our success to people. Like there's some internal unhealthy motivations that those advertisements are grabbing onto that compel us to buy. And so I think both, you know, both are important to understand and diagnose. And neither are easy. The internal one is harder than, you know, trying to, trying to just blame Madison Avenue. But, you know, the reality is that there's something going on inside of us that we need to look at as well. Yeah, filling that void. You're right. Oh, God. That feels close to therapy and uncomfortable feelings, Joshua. I don't

like that. Close to like, close to more like just encouraging therapy, not, not actually doing anything. So you don't just have a pill, a pill I can take to fix my problems overnight. That's a bummer. That's a, but I feel like I'm getting there through practice. I really do. And I don't know if I'll ever be a true minimalist that in my mind, right, I have this perception of what being a minimalist is, but I probably let go of 80% of my belongings. And I'm in a place now where it takes me five minutes to tidy a room and they never get out of control. I never have to spend a Saturday cleaning the garage or cleaning anything. And that feels like a little bit of freedom. But it's also like you get a taste and you want more. I want more because you talk a lot about

minimalism, not just being freedom from your possessions, but simplifying so many other areas like time commitments and just your goals even, which I love because it's what's weighing, what feels suffocating. And every time people talk about their stuff and clutter and just life, you hear words like drowning. I'm suffocating. I can't breathe. And I feel like those words to describe that is so telling because it is this crushing from above feeling when we have too much on our plate when we're overwhelmed. And so I'd love if you talk to us about maybe I'm putting you on the spot again, but some ways that we can simplify, just simple. What can we do to simplify our lives? Well, I have found a great substitute word for minimalism is the word intentionality.

that my desire is to be intentional with the things that I own. I want to own the things that help me live the life I want to live. And I want to get rid of the things that distract me from the life that I want to live or the burden, the drowning, the suffocating that keeps me from the things that are truly important to me. I'm pretty convinced that if you sit across the table from anybody and ask them, Like, what do you most want to accomplish with your life? Like, no one says, I just want a house full of clutter.

Like, no one says, I just want to have as much stuff as I possibly can. Maybe a few people would say that. But most people need deep down, we all talk about the same thing. We talk about love and we talk about relationships. And we talk about family and making a difference. And these are the things that are really most important to us. But what happens is when we're not intentional about, about the possessions that we bring into our life,

when we're not intentional about the time commitments that we commit to, when we're not intentional about what we spend our money on, when we're not intentional about even the habits that we bring into our life, that this is when I think we start to feel almost like someone has come along and hijacked our passions and directed it towards things

that don't matter, things that we want to have directed them to. So in a lot of ways, I think minimalism is about bringing back intentionality into life. I like to define it as removing anything that distracts us from our greatest values. And so how do we do that? I think that we find, I think that we find one, one small area of life and we start taking back intentionality. And I find that intentionality in one area tends to bring about intentionality in other areas. I'm sure you can probably see the same thing in your life. You know, for me, I started minimizing my possessions. I started getting rid of the things that just unintentionally accumulated in my home.

And suddenly I started looking at, hey, how, you know, am I eating healthy? Am I taking care of myself? You know, what are the commitments I'm taking on at work? and what's the reason behind them? And why have I committed to all these things? Are they actually serving me or are they taking me away from the life that I wish I was living instead? So anyway, yeah, I think minimizing possessions is a great place to start to just bring back intentionality. Pick one room.

Pick your car, pick your living room and just pick your bedroom. Like pick the easiest space and get rid of anything in that space that doesn't serve a purpose. and I think you'll start to notice a change happening in your home and eventually in your life. Before we listen to more words of wisdom from the incredible Joshua, I have to thank today's podcast sponsor, Hello Fresh. Hello Fresh really helps me simplify meal planning and cooking because I always get incredible meals delivered right to my door. It's all of the ingredients. They're pre-packaged for me. Everything's planned. It's super fresh. right from the farm to my door in seven days or less. But I think my favorite part is the fact that they're actually delicious.

I have over 40 meals to choose from, but they taste like chef-prepared meals. So I'm like so proud of myself and I'm learning how to be a better cook. And the instructions are so easy to follow. My teenagers are able to do it too. And they're gaining more confidence in the kitchen. It's like a cooking class and meals coming to you. your door all in one. And right now you can save 60%. Go to hellofresh.com slash clutter pod 60 and use that promo code clutter pod 60 for 60% off plus free shipping. That's hellofresh.com promo code clutter

pod 60. A lot of people say to me, what if I regret? What if I have regrets? What if I make a mistake? There is a lot. I've worked with thousands of clients and it really a lot of the time does come down to fear and anxiety about doing the wrong thing. I think we all want what you have, but there is this underlying, well, what if I do it wrong? What if I make a mistake? And in my own, I mean, in my own life, there's nothing that I really regret. I mean, I'm sure there is. I'm sure there's things I've Deklundr that I'm like, oh man, I probably needed that, but I can't think of even one. So was it really that important? But I'm sure you've sort of encountered this same fear-based sort of visceral effects that we have when it comes to letting things go. Do you have advice? My advice is always

push through the fear. I know it's scary, but we can't run away from scary things, but you're much cleverer than I am, Josh. Well, I think sometimes we fear the wrong thing. Like we fear, what if I get rid of something? You know, what if I regret making this change in my life?

Well, what about the fear that you're missing out on living your best life because you haven't made these changes? Or to think in terms of possessions. It's, you know, what if I get rid of something that I end up needing at some point down the road? And like you, like you, my story is the same. Like I, I'm sure there's something, but I can't really think of what that might be. Rather than thinking, yeah, but what if I get

rid of something that I end up needing? Yeah, but what if I end up living my life holding on to a thousand things that I don't ever end up needing? Like, usually, that's how it is we get rid of a thousand things and there's just one of them that we ended up needing and we regret the one thing rather than noticing how much life we freed up by getting rid of the 999 other things and so yeah fear is pretty powerful and very motivating and can be very helpful at times i just think sometimes we have to be careful to make sure we're actually fearful of the right things and that we're directing fear towards the towards the right places. And we have a we have a tendency to think that, you know, the decisions that we've made in the

past are correct, uh, as opposed to thinking, you know what, maybe there's a whole new way of life that I'm just now being introduced to that I haven't ever considered, uh, and might change my life entirely for the better. I literally want to go, I want to go feel some trash bags right now. I'm feeling I do clutter all the time, but this is what I need. We need to hear the message about digging a little deeper because the difference between my life now and when I had a house full, the real difference is time. And this is something you can't really. It's so hard to explain to someone because you can't conceptualize this until you've lived it.

but I went from a life where I felt busy and hectic all the time to freeing up enough time to create a business, to engage in tons of hobbies, to actually visit friends and family. And the only thing that really is different is I have less stuff. And it doesn't seem like why are these extra plates taking away time and how is this stuffed animals all over my kid's bed actually costing me time? But it is. it's it's fractions of a second that add up to minutes that add up to hours that add up to days that your stuff is stealing from you. But how do we, how can we really convince people of this or is this something that you just have to fill a box and feel it?

I'm putting you on the spot again. I agree entirely with your premise. to a degree that you can't even express. The way I say it is we cannot understand the burden of our possessions until we begin to remove them. Like the proverbial frog in the pot where the water is getting hotter. Like we just collect more and more and it just feels normal. It feels like this is what life is supposed to be like until we make a change, until we start getting rid of the things that we don't need, and suddenly we're shocked. I'm just the same as you.

Shocked at how much time I have in my life. It's cleaning and organizing and maintaining and managing, repairing, replacing. But it's even more than that. It's all the time that we spend on the front end thinking about having to do the cleaning or thinking about the thing that we want to go buy or we want to get and researching the price and rushing out to get it and thinking, oh, I'll just return it. And then we have to take another trip to the store to return it or whatever it might be. And man, as soon as you free yourself up from that, You are right.

Like my business today is because of freeing myself up to doing that. There's not a doubt in my mind that most of the things that I've accomplished in my life, not just professionally, but in my faith and in my family is directly tied to freeing up my life. The New York Times recently called the modern American generation, the most tired, rushed, stressed, hurried, generation of all time. And there's not a doubt in my mind that that is because we have just owned more possessions than anyone at any point in human history. Like any point in human history, no human being has owned as much stuff as we do today. And how do you help people see that? I don't know. I tend to think people know it. Like they don't know. They don't know. They don't

connect it to their possessions necessarily, but they know, hey, I'm just really tired and really stressed and really busy. And I wish I had more time to play on the floor with my kid. I wish I had more time to volunteer. I wish I had more money to give. And I think maybe the the moment we see, hey, maybe it's all the stuff that you've collected around you that's keeping you from doing those things. It tends to resonate. I think it tends to flip a switch in people's lives. I sometimes say my job is just to remind people of something that they already know to be true that our lives are too valuable to waste, chasing and accumulating material possessions. Oh my God. That's so good because yeah, we have robots that vacuum for us.

We have dishwashers. We have technology to make life easier and yet life is harder. And right, we have all this conveniences to make our lives easier and yet it's harder. Yet our homes are messier. We have less money than, right? And just what is happening? And when you look at the real differences between yesterday and today's generations, it's stuff. It's stuff. On paper, we should be killing the game.

We should be happier and have so much more. time. The core difference is the excess of stuff. Yeah, I agree. Joshua. I agree. I always think my grandma is like the perfect example of this. My grandma is the best cook that I've ever known in my entire life. And her kitchen was like a third of the size of ours. She had like a third of the kitchen tools that we have today and all this stuff that was supposed to make cooking better and easier has actually made us worse cooks. Like there's just something to be found in having a few simple tools that we know how to use that are multifunctional and we get good at them rather than thinking the next kitchen

gadget is going to make me a better cook or the next cleaning thing is finally going to free me up from having having to clean almost in any and every case they just add burden rather than subtracting it you're a genius and i'm going to listen to you every day on repeat but right now because i have you trapped i'm going to use you as a therapist because you are good at this okay here's my biggest issue when it comes to clutter and a lot of people's when it comes to clutter i purchase things that a little bit makes me proud if this makes sense. So I love to craft. When I create something, I feel so good. It feels good. And one of the core things for overall emotional happiness is pride. We need to feel that. But I tend to then try to shortcut it by buying the supplies to feel the pride

instead of engaging in the activity that makes me feel proud. But I justify this with the fact that, well, I need the supplies. And so whether you're a book lover and you're collecting books because being well read makes you feel proud or you're a crafter or you love to, I don't know, exercise and you're collecting things because the possession does have a small bit of importance in the overall prideful act of the thing we're doing. But it muddies the waters. And now when I walk into my craft room, I'm so overwhelmed by all the stuff that I'm not even crafting. And I think I've answered my own question, but I want to hear it from you. I mean, can we have our cake and eat it too? Can we have the stuff that makes us feel proud? But then why is it making us feel sad at the same time?

Sure. Well, you just, yes, you answered your own question. And even just in your phrasing right there, it's not owning the stuff that makes you proud. It's the act of creating is where you find, where you find the pride. And so it is, I think, easy to be. become to get caught up to mistake the purchasing of the supplies for the hobby to actually then actually fulfilling the hobby whatever it might be I like I have I'd like to think that I'm a reader I have a ton of books that that I haven't read and I don't know it makes me feel like I'm smart because I'm buying the book, but it actually doesn't help me until I go through with the reading of it. And I think it's a big one when it comes to hobbies. You know, like we, we collect all the

stuff and it doesn't help us enjoy the hobby more. It becomes a distraction from the hobby rather than actually actually living it out. You know, arts, craft and arts, I always think is an interesting case, Orson Wells, the great filmmaker, once said, the enemy of art is the absence of limitations. And I think that that's helpful for people to think through. We sometimes think the more supplies we have, the better artist we're going to be. But in reality, sometimes art is best created and most created

when we have just the things in front of us, And we're going to create with the supplies that we have. We're going to do our crafts with the things that we have in front of us as opposed to rushing to the store to buy something and then never actually fulfilling the craft. Because it does take, it takes from being able to fulfill the thing. And I mean, because you're a book lover, I love that you said that, that it makes you feel smart because it's all tied to your identity too. I identify as a crafter and then therefore my stuff feels like an extension of my being.

as I'm sure books do for you. It feels like part of you and your coreness. And a lot of people feel this, whether they're a chef and they love to cook or they love to, whatever it is that encompasses them and I feel your belongings feel like an extension. But I guess you can still be an artist and a crafter without having to keep all the arts. But you're still going to be a book lover without having to keep every book that you ever purchased. And so that's such a good, message, Joshua. Thank you. It's such a good message. I want to talk about one last thing before I let you go. I love your, whenever, when I read this, when I read this, it like stopped me a little bit. You said, don't just declutter de-own. And I don't know why those words really resonated with me, but it did.

The idea of de-owning something feels freeing. The word declutter feels freeing. The word declutter feels like work, the word de-owning to me feels like empowerment. Is that why you're kind of, is that your message? Was that your intent? My intent was, and yeah, people love that quote and love that article. My intent was, I think, to look at the difference between temporary solutions and and permanent solutions. And I think in its truest sense, decluttering is, hey, I'm getting rid of things that I don't need. But a lot of people, when they think of decluttering, they're just like reorganizing stuff or they're just getting rid of like the surface level clutter that I know I don't need. But the process of like really rethinking ownership and and really removing ownership of an item is is a very permanent solution.

Like we organize our stuff today and we just have to reorganize it again tomorrow. Or as Courtney Carver once said, don't you think if organizing was the solution you'd be done by now? I always think that that's so brilliant. Just moving stuff around. It's so harsh. Yes. Just holding on to all this stuff never solves the problem. But when we rethink, hey, what am I owning?

What am I keeping? Do I need this? What is actually serving a purpose in my life? What is helping me become the person I want to be? And what is just keeping me from it? And then removing that is it's an act of permanence. It frees up physical space in our home. and mental space in our mind and its opportunity for generosity.

And I think it really starts to blaze a path for life change when we really start rethinking, what do I own and why do I own it as opposed to just getting rid of the surface level stuff or just finding a better, cuter box to put it all in. I'm inspired. I mean, you're absolutely. brilliant and you have such a calming oh you're just like I just want to do whatever you say so um thank you I'm going to go and deown some of my craft supplies I feel zen and motivated at the same time which is a very rare and beautiful combination to have so thank you Joshua thank you so much

for just being here and I know you've inspired every single person who's listening to this podcast please let my listeners know how they can find you and hear more and all the amazing ways that you can change their life for the better. I'm a lot of different places. Becomingminimalist.com is home base for me, certainly involved on YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and have plenty of books and a couple of magazines that I publish. But yeah, everything rolls through Becoming Minimalty. homeless.com. So I'll send people there. Thanks so much. Thank you very much. And thank you guys for

listening. We'll see you next time.