Clutterbug - Real-Life Hacks and Tips to Declutter, Organize and Clean your Home Fast - The Declutter Journey || Interview with Laura from How to GYST | Clutterbug Podcast # 133

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

In today's podcast, I talk with fellow YouTuber Laura from How to GYST about her decluttering and health journey.  She discusses her struggles with postpartum depression, and how decluttering helped get her life back on track!      You can find more Clutterbug content here: Website: http://www.clutterbug.me YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@clutterbug TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@clutterbug_me Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/clutterbug_me/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Clutterbug.Me/   #clutterbug #podcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey Clutterbugs, welcome back to the Clutterbug Podcast. I'm so excited today because we have Laura from How to Get Your Shit Together. Hello. Hi, thank you so much for being here. It is honestly an honor. I am fan girling so hard right now. Oh my God, don't. That's crazy. If you have not seen Laura on her YouTube channel, you have to go check it out at How to Get Your Shit Together. You're so inspiring. And I'm excited to have you today. We'll talk more about your journey and your health and decluttering. So, but first, introduce yourself to everybody. Tell us a little bit about yourself. So my name is Laura. As you mentioned, I am originally from Ireland, currently living in the US.

I have one daughter who is not at all on board with decluttering. I also have a husband also not on board with decluttering. So it has been quite the struggle. But I think when my daughter was born, that's when I really don't. into decluttering because I was struggling so hard with feeling very overwhelmed, feeling like my life was very chaotic. And that's kind of how it all started for me. And it's been a weird and wonderful journey ever since. And how old is your daughter now? She is nine now, which is just crazy. It is crazy. So the same age is my son, Milo. Yeah. It's a special age.

It's a special age. It's a great age. Oh man, just hold on. Hold on. man teenage years. I feel like they're already beginning because she's she's already like on the cusp and some of the behaviors are there. I'm like I can't I can't I'm not ready for this. Yeah it's hard having teenagers. I thought I thought babies were hard and then I thought oh no toddlers is hard and then I had this wonderful few years and then you know yeah I feel like every age is difficult just in different ways exactly in different ways when I first became a mom I think that's That's when I, I mean, had to start my decluttering journey too because little humans have an obnoxious amount of stuff. Yes.

And so I was already very cluttered. And then I added humans, little baby humans with all their baby things on top of that. And just the pressures of being a mom were you feeling like I felt very suffocated, which surprised me as a new parent. wasn't like sunshine and rainbows and like television and media for me my personal experience. I'd love to hear your experience. Very similar, felt very overwhelmed, suffered from postpartum depression. It was a transition that I was not at all prepared for. I mean, I thought I was prepared for it, but I don't think anything can actually prepare

you for it. So I had always been very independent, had always kind of done my own thing, and then to somehow be beholden to this little tiny thing who, as you say, came with all of this stuff, I was not ready for that. I thought I had my life figured out and then I did not. I realized I did not. Yeah. And were you working at the time or were you doing like the stay at home? mom thing. I started working full time. So I was a lawyer at the time. And when I got pregnant, I started reducing my caseload significantly. So I still worked a little bit after she was born, just kind of finishing up cases that I had that were ongoing, then transitioned to being a stay-at-home mother. But that was not, I just was not prepared for that at all. I thought it would

be all sunshine and roses and, you know, what you see online and baking and play dates. of crafting, but that's just not who I am. So that was a struggle for me. Yeah. So I, before I became a mom, I was running a charity and I was working multiple jobs. And I felt like I was really good at, not great at the adulting thing because my house was a disaster, but that I could multitask very well. And so when I became a stay-at-home mom, I thought this should be easier. I don't know why I thought that. How hard can it be to take care of a human and, you know, bake cookies and and clean the house? But I just could not get it together. And I didn't, I don't know. I was like, this isn't rocket science. You're a lawyer. And you struggled. This makes me feel so much better. Yeah, I,

it's, it's just a very different experience. And it's, to me, was not a pleasant one. It was very eye-opening. And And obviously I have put kind of systems and things in place since that I've helped, but the decluttering was definitely necessary for me. Yeah, it was necessary for me too. And my family, my kids were really little when I started the decluttering journey, but my husband was definitely not on board. Oh, yeah. So he sees everything for kind of the dollar amount, what it would cost to replace it. He thinks it's very wasteful. And so it's been a struggle to get him on board.

And he's coming on board now. And I think a lot of it is, I mean, this is my channel. And it's my career and he has no other choice. But also he sees the benefits. But it took him a while to get there. Did you have this? Are you having the same experience? Yes, except he's still not there yet.

He kind of just believes that if you have space for something, why would you get rid of it? Like if you can just leave it on a shelf somewhere, why would you bother getting rid of it? And then we'll be the first one to complain, you know, when we're running out of space and when we don't have available shelves for all of the new stuff that's coming in. And I think some of it is just the way we were brought up. You know, like we have different baggage, I guess, that we each bring. So it's learned behaviors in a lot of ways. But it's been a struggle for me. the one thing that has helped has been texting him.

If I'm in the middle of decluttering, I will text him a photograph of things that I want to get rid of and then just get a yes or no from him because it just removes him kind of emotionally, physically, from the situation and I can get a much more, you know, rational, I guess, decision from him. That has really helped me. That's so smart.

I love that. What we do in this house is all of the declutter stuff Joe goes through after. So I let him kind of, I guess, make the final yes, no decision. And he always pulls things out of the boxes to keep always. But not everything. Yes. And that's the same thing. Like I would just send a picture of things that I want to get rid of.

And I would say, this is what I'm ready to get rid of. And he will just say, well, I want to keep, you know, X, Y, Z. But it's easier because I have done all the hard work for him. You know, if I ask him to declutter something, that's work for him. Whereas if I do it and I say, hey, these are the things that I think we could part with. It's much easier for him to give a yes to that. But again, I let him have the final decision if it's stuff that affects both of us. Sometimes I do get a little frustrated because I know that we don't need something and I know it isn't, you know, useful.

And it's almost a little resentful because I'm the one who has to manage this stuff. Yes. So I'm like, listen, you don't even tell. it or even you didn't even know we had it. So why are you so attached to it? It does get very frustrating. But it's all about compromise and marriage. And I, Joe is, I feel like he's there, 90% of the way there, but it took 12 years.

I need to know what you are doing to get him to that stage because mine, I don't know if he'll ever be at that stage, but I just try and remind myself that he has many other qualities, decluttering not one of them, but many other qualities. many other qualities that I can utilize, you know, he can look after our daughter while I am decluttering. He can prepare meals while I'm decluttering. So yeah, I just have to try and focus on that. I would say I've probably decluttered 70 or to 75% of our belongings. Have you decluttered a large amount? Were you ever at a point where you really struggled with too much stuff? Let me know your decluttering journey and what that looks like. I would say 70% would probably be quite accurate for me also, but I think we have a reaccumulated a lot of stuff. So when we lived in Ireland,

we shared a smallish space, you know, housing in Ireland is not exactly expensive. So it was kind of by necessity to dig my way out of spaces that I, you know, when you're when you have to cross a floor and you're like stepping on clothes and things, that's a bit of an eye opening moment. But then, you know, we move to the states. Our home is so much bigger and it just becomes easier to overlook clutter because it's not as in your face and it's not having as immediate an impact. So it's been tricky. I think you just have to kind of keep on top of it because otherwise you will get to a stage where you get back to that, you know, not being able to walk across the floor. But, It will just, if I let it go, it will get to a stage where it's much more difficult to manage.

When you live in a small space, you notice it much quicker. When you live in a larger space, you don't notice as quickly. And by the time you do, it's just got really out of hand. So I try to stay on top of it as much as I can. Yeah, that's, I think, what people don't always understand about the decluttering process. It isn't a project. It's a process. It's a process, right?

Because it's forever. We always are accumulating. new things and we grow to our fishbowls. So the bigger house we have, the more we fill up. And because we don't notice it, it can be an overwhelming amount of stuff, but it doesn't look like an overwhelming stuff. Yes, exactly.

It's like a purse, you know, like the larger your purse, the more stuff you're going to squash into it until someday you're looking for a receipt or a pen or your phone or your keys or something. And then it becomes a problem. But it's very easy to overlook those small little clutter creeps, I try and break it down by space in my home. So every now and again, I will tackle, you know, like the bathroom drawers. And then I will tackle a bookcase. And it just means

that I'm kind of doing everything on rotation. So no one area is getting out of hand, except my husband's office. That's his own domain. And I just leave him to it, which I think is important too, like letting someone, if they're not on board, letting them have space where they can feel like, you know, it's their little fortress where they don't have to worry about, you know, stuff going missing or anything like that. Yeah. They can just have their own space. Yeah, that's how they want it to be. I love that. My husband and I, that is our ongoing joke in our house is he's, I'm always moving his stuff. I'm always tidying his stuff. We have very different organizing styles. So I don't want to see anything. And he also likes things behind closed doors, except if he's still using it or not done. with it or hasn't had the time to make the perfect home yet, he will leave his piles everywhere. And I get really sick of them and I hide his piles away. And then it's this vicious like, where's my XYZ? And we hunt for it. So he has the garage, which I do not touch. It is a

holy disaster. But that's okay. Because it's his domain. Yeah. It really makes a difference. When you have space that you feel safe in, it makes it easier than for you to kind of let go in other areas, knowing that you can retreat to this safe space for yourself. I want to talk to you for a second about your health journey. So I have an autoimmune disease. I have Hashimoto's and I don't talk about it a lot, but I'm just now getting to the, I'm dipping my toe in that I want to get healthier water. Okay. It's scary. It's a scary place. But I'd love to know a little bit about your journey, your health journey. And if you feel like the decluttering has helped improve your health. My journey is slightly different in the sense that I have suffered from chronic pain for many, many years since my daughter was born and have never been able to get to the bottom of it.

And then two years ago then, my father was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. So I went to get myself tested and my blood levels are abnormal, but nothing specific is showing up. So they believe it's the beginnings of an autoimmune disease. But like you have been suffering from at least the symptoms of autoimmune diseases and just trying to get to the bottom of that and trying to figure out, you know, what is helping, what is not helping, looking for a diagnosis essentially. Yeah. And so you haven't got a diagnosis at this time. Not yet, but I am fighting for it. I am.

And this is something that I learned, you know, after I had my daughter, So her birth was a slight emergency situation. And I really felt completely out of control at the time. I felt like I had no agency over the situation. And I think now that I have, you know, something going on, I am much more proactive about it. You know, I would speak up for myself. I will advocate for myself.

And if a doctor, you know, tells me, you know, we'll just keep an eye and I'll come back in six to 12 months. I'm at a place now where I can say, no, I want this investigated further and I want it done now. And that's been a really important part of the journey for me, learning to speak up and learning to advocate for myself and my needs and, you know, just knowing my body and knowing what is best for me. It sounds like we actually have a very similar story.

So when I was pregnant with Milo, I started having my blood wouldn't claw and other strange things that my pediatrician like my gynecologist I mean said it's an autoimmune like your your immune system's going crazy and then after he was born my hair started falling out I was very exhausted I felt like just I've been hit by a truck and everyone says well you just had a baby and I said I had two other babies and I didn't feel this way something is wrong and I kept going back to the doctor saying something is wrong and I was severely anemic and they said oh that's why you just need blood transfusions and it took two years before I finally got the diagnosis of Hashimoto's which was for some reason my immune system attacking my

thyroid gland but also I no longer absorbed iron and just my body was wonked and I saw a specialist who just said well this happens sometimes after you have a baby like that that that that was it so helpful. Sometimes when you have a baby, your immune system just goes bonkers after. So I've been taking medication to sort of solve the problem, but not self the problem, but like as a band-aid so that my hair stops falling out and I'm not freezing and I'm not exhausted all the time. But the underlying thing is still there. And that's exactly what I've said to my doctor. Like I'm not happy to just take medication for this. I want to get to the root cause and that is what is so important. You can stick a band-out on things, you know, for years and years, but if you can actually treat the root cause, you don't want to

need those band-aids anymore. Right. So this is my, I'm just, same as you, I'm starting to look more into it. So I did go into remission when I took out, when I stopped eating sugar and carbohydrates, but that was like awful. Okay, Laura, listen, I don't, I don't want to do that. You're telling me, I've done it. Yeah, not fun. That's one of the things I've done on my health journey as well. So initially, I did a gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free, fat-free. diet as recommended by my doctor and it was it was okay I mean I survived it was just for a month to see if my blood work you know if it changed anything and then after that she had me do a completely clean diet where I was not allowed to consume anything processed so I came off all medication all vitamin

supplements everything like that and just a theme which was basically just vegetables and that was horrendous sounds horrible And did your blood levels improve? They had improved slightly. Not enough that, you know, I would think that it had worked. And they called me and said, you know, there's some improvement on some things. You know, we're going to get you back in another month. So just keep doing what you're doing.

And I just turned around and straight up said, nope. Like this is slowly killing me. I just can't do it. Like I will, of course, you know, try to eat as healthy as I can. But I cannot keep up this clean eating. My body was like shutting down. I was in pain. I was lightheaded.

I thought I was having heart attack. I was getting all these chest pains, dizziness. It was not a fun time. It was not a fun time. That sounds horrible. I know. That sounds horrible. Well, I want to keep following your health journey.

And I feel like this is an important thing to talk about because it's surprising how many women after they've had a baby have this undiagnosed lingering autoimmune disorder. Yes. And it's so important to like that. track your symptoms and keep an eye on everything and, you know, even maybe keep a journal or something so that you have all of this evidence and you have, you know, maybe you can spot patterns and things like that. Like that was one of the things that really helped me knowing what was working, what wasn't working or being able to pinpoint specific times things were happening or going to a doctor and saying, you know, look, this is what has been happening. This is how often it's

been happening. This is how severe it is. This is how it's affecting other areas of my life. I don't I don't know about two, but my memory is terrible, terrible. No, it's awful. It's like a brain damage bad. I don't know. I'm just saying I have no recollection of the, I can watch a movie and like straight afterwards not remember anything from it. So if I don't write things down, it may as well not have happened. So I write everything down now and it just, I have, I have that record. But another thing is just knowing your own body, like noticing certain things. So a very recent example was that, you know, I do breast checks regularly. And recently I found a lump and I went to my physician with it and she felt nothing. She was like, this all seems totally normal to me.

You know, I can't feel anything out of the ordinary. But because I have, you know, like done these breast checks for years and because I know my own body, I was able to say to her, this is not normal. I know this one has not been here before. So she referred me for a mammogram and it showed up a cyst. Now, thankfully it was benign, but it just goes to show that you really have to be in tune with your body. And again, advocate for yourself and just say, you know what, this is not normal. It's not normal for me. And therefore it needs to be investigated further.

And hopefully, you know, nothing will come of it, but you will at least get peace of mind. And if something does come of it, you will then be able to start, hopefully. hopefully on your journey to healing. I love that. Yeah, just stand up for yourself. It can sometimes feel like I've, I've almost felt like doctors think when I go and I'm talking about my symptoms that maybe I'm a hypochondriac. And I've actually had doctors say, stay off WebMD. But it always turns out that there was something wrong. And I would rather, I would rather someone think I was a hypochondriac, you know, rather than ignoring something. There have been so many times when I have had procedures or pushed for something and it has showed up you know something has shown up and that's

you know like I had a colonoscopy a few months ago because we were investigating this potential autoimmune thing and I was like I want all of the procedures done like all of them they're not pleasant but I was like I want to get to the bottom of this yeah no but give them to me yeah and they found like pre-cancerous polyps so apparently there was like a 25% chance that within four years they would have turned cancerous and again had I not not, you know, pushed and advocated and insisted on getting to the root cause of this problem, be living with something that it was too late to change. So again, really, I didn't do that when my daughter was born. So many things that I would go back and change about that whole

delivery and the aftermath. But I've learned a lot of valuable lessons from it. I just love this. I hope those listening know that if you're feeling exhausted, I mean, I still am. I'll never have the same energy levels that I did before. If you feel like you have that mental fog, if you feel aches and pains that you didn't come before, this isn't just aging. This isn't just, oh, I had a baby. Trust yourself in your intuition to look into it, right? And to ask questions and to get blood work because you know your body better than anyone else. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm feeling so inspired and I hope everybody listening is feeling inspired too. You have to check out Laura. You have to follow her.

You're so funny and inspiring and incredible. Let everyone know how they can find you online. Yeah. So I am basically everywhere as how to GYST. You'll find me on YouTube there. You'll find me Instagram, Pinterest, all the places, Facebook. If you put in how to GYST, I will pop up magically. Also, I feel the same way about you. So funny. Like, just so interesting, so relatable. Just wonderful. Wonderful. You're wonderful, cast. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for being on this podcast. I appreciate it. I hope we do this again soon. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, so try and stop me.

Let's do it. Okay. Thank you so much. And we'll see everybody next time.