Ologies with Alie Ward - Oikology (DECLUTTERING) with Jamie & Filip Hord + Joe Ferrari

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

Why does clutter happen? How can we get rid of it and how will it affect us psychologically if we do? Buckle up for an episode that will lift your spirits and quite possibly change your life. We all have unfolded piles of laundry, that closet we don’t want to open, a tornado of papers on our desk that seems impossible to sort through. Enter: Oikology, the science of keeping things contained. Alie hunted down world-famous professional organizers, Jamie & Filip Hoard of Horderly to chat about -- FIRST OFF-- their name, plus gender and messes, when to call in a pro to help, the step-by-step process to tackle the entropy in your home and life, what do do about gifts you don’t want, what tools you might need, the KonMari method, how to overcome the emotional attachment to objects, and why decluttering becomes addictive. We also called in the big guns, research psychologist Dr. Joe Ferrari of DePaul university, to share his research on clutter, its psychological causes and effects, if the “spark joy” method works for everyone, when to call a professional organizer and how many pants is too many pants. Also: dispatches from my own front lines. This episode already changed my own life… and closet. Follow Jamie and Filip Hord at Instagram.com/horderly or at horderly.com Listen to Dr. Ferrari in the Volitional Psychology (Procrastination) episode and check out his book, “Still Procrastinating?” A donation went to DressforSuccess.org and challengingdisorganization.org More links at alieward.com/ologies/oikology Transcripts & bleeped episodes at: alieward.com/ologies-extras Become a patron of Ologies for as little as a buck a month: www.Patreon.com/ologies OlogiesMerch.com has hats, shirts, pins, totes and STIIIICKERS! Follow twitter.com/ologies or instagram.com/ologies Follow twitter.com/AlieWard or instagram.com/AlieWard Sound editing by Jarrett Sleeper of MindJam Media & Steven Ray Morris Theme song by Nick ThorburnSupport the show: http://Patreon.com/ologies

Oh, hey, it's the poppy seed bagels you've been enjoying more lately because it doesn't matter now if you have seeds in your teeth. Alleyward, back with another episode of oligies, a beautiful, calming, aesthetically pleasing, orderly episode of oligies. We all need this one. This one will transform our lives, it's going to renew our spirit, it'll be challenging and cathartic and gutting and sentimental but soothing and will usher in a new era. It's going to be dusty, it's going to be broken.

And it's going to end up organized. This one will make you throw out your stained pajamas your ex's mom gave you for Hanukkah. This one has been waiting for you and it's here, you're here. But first, let's thank the folks who make it happen, like everyone at patreon.com slash oligies who spends a dollar or more a month to submit questions and make the show happen. Thanks to everyone who's wearing oligies merch.com stuff and who rates the show and subscribes to keep it up in the science charts and of course, the folks who leave reviews. I promise to read them all and I do and as proof I pick a new one.

And this week, thank you to Inheriton, first-time listener, first-time reviewer, they say. They wrote, after digesting a few episodes and hearing that people in scientific fields talk like me, which I think is normal, it's inspired me to enroll back in school and eventually get a degree in geobiology. I love bar work, but this podcast made me miss my first love, learning. Inheriton, yes, that's amazing. As someone else who lived on tips from behind a bar for many years in Miss Learning, that makes my whole damn day.

Hell yeah, boy howdy. Okay, so, ecology, let's unpack this, shall we? Eucology, it's an obscure but real word. It comes from oikos, the Greek for home or the place where one lives and it means the science of housekeeping. And in this episode, we dipped in to chat with not one, but three oikologists. Now the first two are a married pair of professional organizers who work and live in Manhattan and as soon as I came across their name.

I fell down a gleaming, inspiring rabbit hole that is their Instagram and I begged them to talk to me. And the third is an oligies encore, a returning guest who I roped into chatting because he happens to be one of the leaders in research on the topic of clutter, indeed. So we cover causes of clutter, its psychological effects, mess and gender, ADHD, anxiety and depression, indecision, Konmari and other methods, when to DIY and when calling in a pro might be your next step. Virtual organizing, how many pants is too many pants?

The areas of the house that collect the most clutter, unneeded gifts, how to step by step conquer the monster in the closet, which is made of stuff that you don't need. Also, a dispatch from the front lines of my own battle and the results of the advice that I shamelessly gleaned from these interviews, so roll up your sleeves and get pumped for the wisdom and research of Dr. Joseph Ferrari and fellow oikologists of Horderly, Jamie and Philip Horde. You heard that right. So here's how I found out about you guys.

I was just going through a magazine having a nice leisurely read and I came across this article about organization and I saw a mention of your company Horderly and then I realized that was your last name and I'm so sorry that you get this question probably every single day but you are declutterers with the last name Horde. Is that related at all? Well, you know, when we came up with it, we like to think of the word Horderly more as an orderly rather than like horde-er, so that was actually one of our worries when we first came up with the name which it didn't take us long to come up with the name but that

was one of our worries but our clientele did kind of stray the other way. So Jamie says that they specialize in clutter and organization but their clientele tend not to be folks who horde, lowercase h on the horde. I mean, we work with each other but we work with hordes just not the hording type necessarily but we still have clients that maybe have hoarding tendencies and have issues that way so decluttering is definitely our specialty. And yeah, it works out, the name helps quite a bit. Phillip likes to say I married him for his last name.

It's just the timing worked out perfectly. We got married like I think a month before Jamie kind of found it and Horderly decided that she wanted to be a professional organizer so. Well, it's kind of a beautiful moment because when you look at the name and you realize Oh, Horderly, I'm looking at the word Horderly, that's so exciting. You'd be surprised how many clients we get just because they're like I really just like decided on you guys because I liked your name like with your last name. Brandy Nguyen.

Yeah, Brandy Nguyen. One over. It's perfect. You know, I don't know if you know this but there is an ology. It's called Oecology and it is the study of household's orderliness. Did you know that? I learned that from Allie, from you. Yeah, we learned that from the initial email but it's definitely interesting.

We're going to have to start using it. Yeah. And your Instagram is goals. It's just gorgeous. So if you need some inspiration of what a closet or a pantry can look like, they're instagram.com slash Horderly. It's just tasty. It's so nice.

And for another hashtag that can calm an anxious brain, look up hashtag knolling. It's K-N-O-L-L-I-N-G. This is when you take objects like everything in your purse or a drawer and you arrange them in an orderly fashion at right angles and then take an overhead photo. Oh, it's like chaos calmed. And knolling was coined, side note, in 1987 by Andrew Cromello, who was a janitor in a furniture shop.

And he called it that after the designer knoll, whose furniture is very right angular. So yes, hashtag knolling, which is beautiful but unrelated to Jamie and Philips Instagram, instagram.com slash Horderly. At present, Philip and Jamie have 146,000 followers. Why? Because. Those are real clients too.

That's the thing that people really like about our, I guess our Instagram is because it's very real and like it's not necessarily minimalist. Like we don't really believe in getting rid of everything, you know, and living extremely minimal. But it's real people, real clients, real closets, real kitchens. So that's kind of the, you know, like you said, it's goals, but it's achievable goals. Tell me a little bit about your backstory. I understand, Jamie, that you're a little bit type A, perhaps? Just a little.

Perhaps always a little orderly, right? Yes, yes. So I, I, you could even say, I don't know, you could say I was born this way or I definitely grew up this way. Very meat-free, CoCD organized. And I didn't necessarily realize this myself until, really until like people started saying, like pointing it out and saying like, you're, you're so organized. My first idea of, of organizing was someone said they, I remind them of Marie Kondo.

Mm-hmm. So, and I was like, who's Marie Kondo? So that was, that was kind of my first inspiration of all of this. I was so excited because I love this. And then, so I started organizing on the side of a full-time job. I was working a nine to five Monday through Friday, so I would organize after work, so in the evenings and on weekends. And then it, it wasn't until I, I really started working with these clients and

realizing the way the, I was, I was learning more about myself when I first started. Because I didn't realize I thought, you know, not everyone thinks the same way that I do, you know, about a space or about stuff. If we hadn't been dating for 10 years and I told her how she was many times, working with clients definitely brought it to light. Jamie says that part of becoming a professional organizer means learning not just what works for her, but what works for each client. So different folks might like different levels or types of order.

And Phillip, what's your style like? Are you more free-form? Yeah, I'm just a regular Joe. I'm a collector. I, Jamie would call me a collector. I am not a professional organizer by, like, I wasn't born this way. I'm more of a professional talker than a professional organizer. I'm kind of all over the place and she is very particular.

And, but it's, but it's something people can learn. And that's why we're so, that's why we love explaining our story. Because for the way I would have been without Jamie was very messy, but with Jamie, as, as the way that she is and what she's taught me, I'm an extremely, I'm an extremely organized person now. Like I'm very, even, even particular, I'd say it's, it's kind of not only rubbed off on me, but it shows that it's definitely learnable. And that's kind of what we teach our clients.

But no, I've learned to love organizing and being organized. He's living proof for sure. I liked it. A lot of clients don't believe their husbands can get on board with it. And I'm like, listen, it can happen. I promise. Do you think that there are any gender differences or having done this professionally? Do you see that, that women tend to be more organized or just in couples

that one person is more organized than the other? Not necessarily, you know, within a couple, there's usually one person that's a little more organized, right? But when it comes to gender, it could go either way. I feel like a lot of your, your, yeah, your finance guys that like the, the husbands seem extremely organized or sometimes and, or maybe not organized, but very particular, like don't touch my ties. I know exactly where every single one of them are.

It's usually one way or the other, you know, typically one person's very organized and one person's not, or they think that they're organized. A lot of our, a lot of people think that they're organized, which is completely fine. That, that means that it's half the battle for us. Like, okay, well, all I have to do is really put in the right systems and then, and then you'll keep it maintained. Let's take a little detour from New York to Chicago, where one, Dr. Joseph Ferrari is doing academic research on the topic of clutter.

Okay, hello. Hello. There you are. So you may be familiar with his voice and his other area of expertise. You met this charismatic DePaul University professor in the volitional psychology episode on procrastination, wherein I learned I'm a proc and that done is better than perfect. Now, perhaps after that episode you purchased his book,

Still Procrastinating, which has a permanent residence on my nightstand when I need a pep talk. Anyway, when I interviewed Dr. Ferrari in February, he mentioned he was also researching clutter. So of course I got him on the horn. Now, his colleague is Dr. Catherine Roster, a consumer psychologist and industrial organizational psychologist at University of New Mexico. They partner with ICD, the Institute for Challenging Disorganization, and NAPO, the National Association of Professional Organizers,

to which Jamie, of course, belongs. Now, the hordes say that more women reach out for organizational help than men. So I asked Dr. Ferrari, is one gender neater than the others? Is there a gender difference in clutter? Yes. Now, this I can answer, no. Now, let me tell you what made me prompt to explore that question. When Dr. Roster and I did our national study with clutterers,

we had over 2,000 people who responded to our national survey on clutter. Out of that study, we found only 50 men answered the study. So the first question I asked, the experts, is this a gender thing? Is it that women don't have the clutter problem and men don't? And the experts, the ICD experts said, oh, no, no, no, no. Men have clutter problems, but men don't view it as clutter. Men view it as my toys, my stuff. I have a lot of these baseball knickknacks thing of this stuff.

It's not clutter, it's my toy. It's part of my man cave. Women see it as, and to me, that's fascinating. I think your listeners would like to know that there's a gender difference in how it's perceived, not gender difference in how it exists. Women are more like you go for treatment to make that phone call, email message to the declutterer expert and the man to deal with it. I also asked Dr. Ferrari, why?

Why? Why? Why, why, why, why, why clutter? Why do you exist? Entropy and chaos are the ways of the universe, but why can't we have better control over it? I have a question about kind of cause and effect of clutter. Like, let's talk first about cause. Is it, you know, indecisive tendencies?

Is it a lack of self-esteem? Like, what's causing us to just not be able to open that closet and go through it? I'm talking about myself. Sure, several different kinds of things. Indecision is one of those factors. You mentioned that, we published that, we found, and this is not surprising, this is logical, but it's the first time anybody's shown this, that indecisive people have a hard time getting rid of,

because they don't know what to do with it. Do I keep it or not? Right. To be or not to be, as Hamlet would have said. Do I or don't I? Well, think of Yoda. Do or not do is, there is no try. You know, so either you get rid of it or you're not.

But yes, indecision plays a role with people to do that. One of the major papers we published on home in clutter that got a lot of attention was we found an inverse relationship between life satisfaction and clutter. What does that mean? That means the more clutter you had, the lower your sense of life satisfaction, the less satisfied you are with life. Wow. Can I say that's fascinating in our culture, our disposable culture,

that says, no, buy more, have more. Actually, you're doing yourself, I won't say harm, but you're actually hurting your image, your view of your life. You're going to be less happy is what I'm saying, the more you have. So I think indecision is one of the variables, one of the factors. And then there's emotional attachment. I can't get rid of it because it brings back this memory, because it reminds me of that or this.

It reminds me of the kid. Well, sure, your kid did lots of beautiful artwork when they were a kid and you've saved it all. Did you need to save it all? Maybe you could get rid of some of that. Which, of course, leads to the question, when is it hoarding, though? Now, since 2013, hoarding disorder or HD has been recognized as its own disorder by psychologists, diagnostic and statistical manual,

and it's classified under obsessive compulsive and related disorders. So a few symptoms are persistent difficulty discarding or parting with possessions, regardless of their actual value. And it says this difficulty is due to a perceived need to save the items and to distress associated with discarding them. Now, a few studies have shown some improvement in hoarding disorder with medication, like peroxetine or paxil may be promising,

and the serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor, or SNRI, then lafaxine or afexor showed a decrease in hoarding symptoms in 70% of participants, although the study was really small. Now, ADHD medications can also improve the focus needed to tackle the sometimes distressing process of accumulated stuff, if it gets to the point of hoarding. Now, remember, clutter is not the same as hoarding. There's a number of people who have explored this topic.

We see hoarders on TV, but hoarding is not the same as clutter. Clutter is not considered yet a psychological disorder. The way I conceptualize this is think of your stuff, and a hoarder will have a lot of the same thing. Toilet paper, toilet paper, toilet paper, toilet paper, toilet paper, toilet paper. So think of it as going vertically, right? Where clutter is just a lot of stuff, more horizontally, broadly. I've got too much paper, I've got too many knickknacks,

I've got too many dishes, too many mugs. It's a broader kind of concept. So hoarders are clutterers, but clutterers are not necessarily hoarders. Because there is a tipping point, I think, I think, from clutter to hoarding. There's a tipping point when it becomes too much. When is that tipping point, Dr. Ferrari? I can't tell you, we don't necessarily know. But there's a point where it becomes really interfering with the quality of your life.

We find this in office clutter, a paper we have coming out this year looking at what impact does office clutter have on productivity when you're both into things? And it does impact. Now there are people who say, no, no, no, I know what I've got. Well, it takes you longer to clutter, declutter, and to find that object than if you were organized. Right. I remember there was a famous industrial organizational psychology study

done a number of years ago that found people will spend up to three hours a week finding things on their desk that literally arms the length away. Where are those keys? Where's that thing? Oh, where did I have that paper? It's there, but because the desk is so disorganized, they can't find it. Three hours a week lost on finding something that should be readily available. A graduate student of mine, Trina Dayo, and I just published her master's thesis,

that looked at how it leads to less employee satisfaction, the more office clutter you have. People are less satisfied with their jobs, less productive in their jobs as well. So I think the overload and just having too much because it got out of hand is an issue. But, says Dr. Ferrari, like conquering addictions or starting a new diet, an individual can be led somewhere, but you can't make behavior happen. Sometimes we're just a bunch of unthirsty horses standing over a trough. Pissing our loved ones off. I don't think we can force other people to go through it.

They have to do it at their own time. You'll get what we call in psychology, reactance effect. What is that? Oh, it's called the, oh yeah. I like to climb from New York as you know. Cycles, oh yeah. So people are going to do something, but as soon as you pressure them to do it, they come back, go, oh yeah, well now we're not going to do it.

It's called psychological reactance or sometimes called the, oh yeah effect. Oh yeah, just thought I'm not going to do it. But it's one of the reasons, if I digress for a minute, why please don't posters don't work. It's the thank you for not posters. Oh, you're much more like to get people to do things. If you say thank you for, let's just take smoking because it's not easy.

Thank you for not smoking. People will say, oh, I'll put the cigarette out. But if you say, please don't smoke, people are like to say, oh yeah. I wasn't going to. But just because you told me I can't, I'm going to do it now. The, oh yeah effect. The, oh yeah effect. So people don't like to do this.

So anyway, you can't force people to declutter because then they'll come back and say, just that I'm not going to do it. All right. How dare you? That kind of thing. Oh yeah. So we have to let people do it at their own time, create settings that encourage them to do it, to go through the piles.

And maybe Gail will help. I think that's again where these decluttering experts can really step in and help us. They can teach us some tricks, some toys and technique. I asked the experts, Philip and Jamie Hoard, when that is. What do you think is the tipping point where someone says, you know what, I need some help with this versus just, I'll look at some blog posts or I'll just drink four shots of espresso and, you know, put on some Lizzo and just do my best to power through it.

Like when does it become professional? It's usually that. I tried to, I tried to do a glass of wine with my girlfriend and we just ended up drinking the bottle of wine and never ended up doing it. We lost three more. Yeah. But I'd say tipping point of when people reach out is life events. It's when something's happening.

It's either they're about to have a second child or they have a growing family or they're moving is a huge amount of people. Like I do not want to deal with boxes because last time I moved, there was 10 boxes that lived under the stairs for the whole time I lived in that apartment or that home. So I'm not dealing with it. And then there's the, the clients that, you know, their high schooler is going to college.

So they're, or they're downsizing. It's always like a life event. It's less so people that just hire us out of nowhere. Unless they've struck, you know, found out that professional organizing is a thing because of the mindful movement that is going through the world. Like it's a new type of mindfulness. Maybe they haven't had friends over in four years and because they're ashamed or such. Yeah.

So getting organized is definitely the answer for a lot of people. Did the life changing magic of tidying up, did that help your cause too? Because people started to realize like, oh, I can maybe find more peace or more calm or less anxiety by changing my environment. Like, hey, we can all live a little better. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was Marie Kondo's first book that brought it to my attention.

So yeah, definitely. I mean, the show came out what last January and it was massive. We're very involved in partnership with the container store as well. And they said like their numbers, our numbers, our followers, our clientele. We had the high, we had the quadruple war team and it is life changing. Our actual mission for Horderly is that we want to change our clients' lives through organizing. And it is very life changing. And she definitely has her methods and where Horderly may be different and professional

organizers may be different. I know that the book is even called tidying up, but it is not tidying. I mean, getting organized takes work and hours and days. It's the funny thing about the Marie Kondo show is that she checks in and tells them what to do. And then it comes a month later. It's not because she's busy, of course she is, but it's because it takes a month for this family to actually do the work.

So Marie Kondo, an adored and now celebrity organizer from Japan, is a global icon of just excited, loving, and non-judgmental organization and decluttering who has changed so many lives. And I asked Dr. Ferrari how her methods stack up to the academic research. This concept that you may be hearing, touch it and see if it gives you joy. Keep it. If it gives you joy, it's really a myth. It's really inaccurate.

Oh, okay. And that's why I wanted to explain why is that inaccurate. Okay, so touch it to see if you're going to keep it. Well, what industrial organizational psychology, consumer psychologists will show you, like Dr. Roster have found, is that if you go to the store and you touch something in the store, you're much more likely to buy it and keep it. So this idea of touch it and see if it gives you joy. Well, that's right there.

You've biased yourself to keep it. So that's what the research shows. The ICD experts have said the same thing. What they've said, and I thought this was a good example, is that if you go to your closet, because there's three target areas. I've learned where people have the most clutter in the kitchen, in the closet, and books. Oh, okay. These seem to be the big three areas.

So what the ICD members say is you don't start going through and go and buy containers of a container store and start putting stuff in there. No, no, no. You organize first and you're looking and you say, my God, I've got 12 spatulas. Really neat, 12 spatulas. Holy cow, there's 18 pairs of blue pants. Wow, I've got a dozen of that beige blouse. So what they want you to do is organize first and then you bring in the expert or friend

and have them touch the item and say, do you need this? Because if you organize and then touch it, you're more likely to keep it. Wow. So I find that interesting that we're told, touch it and see if it gives you joy. Well, the research and the experts in the field are saying, no, don't touch it. You're going to keep it. Now let's look at the word joy. Touch it and give you joy.

When there was a national attention on all of this last year, the New York Times, USA, today, a bunch of newspapers contacted me and Dr. Ron Strupp, because we have the only studies on home and clutter and said, hey, what do you think of this new campaign, these new Netflix shows and other kinds of things? And I said, you know, I don't think joy is the right word. Joy is not what's being talked about. Talking about happiness doesn't make you happy. And happiness is a very different emotion than joy.

Really? Joy? Oh, yes. The victim of translation. So maybe have a friend or a pro hold things up for you instead. Also, I love Marie Kondo. I want to be her friend. I want to hug her for a prolonged period of time.

Joy is a much deeper emotion. The Christmas carol that we sing doesn't say let's have happiness to the world. It's joy to the world, because there's a difference in that word. Joy is a deeper, much more stable. A happiness is a transient, if you would, temporary state emotion. It's not the same. And I was interviewed by a Japanese reporter who was interested. And this reporter, I remember clearly saying, you know, you're right.

The translation of the word is not, does it give you joy, but does it give you happiness? Oh, wow. Oh, that's interesting. It's a translation error that's come up. And then the reporter said, but, and I like what they said, of course, joy will sell more books. Okay, quick side note. So I looked this up and he's right. And that the Japanese word Marie Kondo actually uses is Tokimeku,

which translates in English to flutter or throb or palpitate. Kind of like finding what gives you little butterflies. So does something spark visceral Lepidoptera, which is probably not going to move any books either. But her Konmari method advises you to hold or touch the item and then just feel if it gives you like an emotional boner or if it bums you out. And in looking this up, I learned that this is in part inspired by the Shinto religion in which organizing is a spiritual cleansing practice.

Now, if you've ever heard that cleanliness is next to godliness, you can thank 1700s Methodist minister John Wesley for that little nugget that everyone's elders may have uttered at some point. Just a little personal history. My own grandparents used to have this fun little game called inspection where every time they visited, our rooms had to be perfectly clean. And they would give my eldest sister Celeste a roll of quarters and my middle sister Janelle a roll of dimes.

And then me, the youngest, the least pay. I got a roll of nickels. And then my grandpa would inspect our rooms with a white glove checking for like any dust on windowsills or shelves and making sure their beds were made to military standards. And we would get docked a coin for every imperfection. I was six. I've talked to so many therapists about it over the years.

So just never do this to children. Now, luckily my parents, they were sweet, they were chill. They had a very practical philosophy of have a place for everything, then just put everything in this place. Anyway, speaking of methods, while Jamie was inspired by Kondo, she has her own way of doing things. What is the orderly approach like? Like what is your methodology that you would try to tell someone?

Here's where you got to start. Do you have to get into a mindset first, like an athlete? Or do you just have to get in there and do the work? Yeah, I mean, you definitely have to get into a mindset first. The clients that we work with, they have to be on board and want this. We don't work with someone who is trying to force their parents to get organized. We need to talk to the client first and make sure they understand what they're about, what we're about to take them through, and they have to be on board.

But at Horderly, we've created an 11-step process that we take all of our clients through. It was 12 steps, but we had to take a step off just for business reasons. Yeah, but most of those steps are, we give these steps to clients or anyone that wants to tackle space on their own, this works. But when we go through these steps with a client, we only need them there for a few of the steps, which is at the beginning, the middle, and the end. So basically the whole time. But we do kind of the dirty work. We make it super easy for them to edit. And I'll just take you through some of our steps.

Yeah, bring it on. But the first step we need them there for is to give us a tour of the space. And we need to talk to them about helping them prioritize. Because most people, as much as they want to get the whole house done, it definitely takes time. Organizing a space definitely takes longer than most people think. And then we do the full pull out of the space. And we like to pull everything out, because it's easiest to start with a blank space. And also when you're pulling everything out, you really touch on everything through our editing process, which is our fourth step.

But a lot of people will try to edit their clothes just hanging in their closet as is. And that's not as effective, because you're so used to your clothes hanging that way, that you're just kind of seeing them as you see them every day. And it's not going to really make you consider each item. So it's so important to pull everything out. And then sort everything. So, you know, put all your genes in one pile, because your genes might be spread all over the place. So once you have those items all together, you're going to be able to really realize how much you have. And then really consider how much you actually need. Okay, so I just went around the house and I counted. And I

have four pairs of genes hanging in two separate closets, eight folded in the linen cabinet that serves as a dresser. Don't ask me about it. Two in the laundry and then one on my body. Fifteen pairs. Just an army of neglected denim hiding in dark spaces ready to choke me. Ferrari echoing in my mind. Eighteen pairs of blue pants. And that doesn't count the seven pairs of black and brown pants. And the one pair of white jeans I bought, still adorned with tags because I'm too afraid to wear them and immediately smear them with mustard or Dorito dust. So okay, Jamie and Phillip and Dr. Ferrari all say pull everything out and organize it into piles. So what next? And then you edit. So when we do the full pull out and sort, this makes it super easy for the

client to just walk through with us and make those decisions. And if you're someone that really struggles with editing and letting things go and making those decisions, it's so much helpful to have someone or a professional there kind of asking you the right questions to make your decision easier. But also to hold you accountable, really. Yeah, and hold you accountable. We have lots of clients that say, oh, we've already edited everything. No, we have a lot of clients. Every one of our clients is like, oh, I've gone through everything. Don't make me get rid of anything. Okay, to recap their steps, they walk through the space and then they organize items by arranging them into like piles. And then what are the next steps? And can you skip any? Are there any negotiable

steps? This is kind of a non-negotiable, our steps are kind of non-negotiable. So we do still touch on everything with the client. You know, even if they don't get rid of anything, that's fine. But we still want to touch on everything with them. And if it is a client that said I've already edited, it's so funny because they'll still be, you know, like five bags of donations after we go through it. And they'll be like, oh, that's so funny. Like I just edited. But for some reason, you know, going through this process with you, I got rid of so much. So that happens every time. And it's funny. Is it difficult sentimentally for people to get rid of things? Like how do you deal with the psychology of I don't want to get rid of this because I feel bad because it was a gift or I

don't want to get rid of this because and then I'm saying goodbye to an era or it's a waste if I get rid of it. Like, oh, yeah, how much do you have to put on your psychologist hat when you're dealing with these edits? Yeah, it's it's definitely hard for some people. And that might be this the sole kind of more of the sole reason that they're calling us. But then again, like some clients are super fast going through the editing process, they don't have like attachments anything. And they'll just be like, taught, taught, donate, donate, like keep super fast. The clients that do struggle, we like to really dive deep and ask them, you know, understand why, because we don't have the personal attachment that they do to their items, you know, you know, if it's a, if it's a

old telephone, and they start to get emotional, like we don't understand that, right? So really getting to know you really get to know your client, the clients through the editing. But just diving deep and understanding why it's meaningful to them. We're not forcing our clients to get rid of anything. People might be holding on to things for the wrong reason. It might bring, you know, sad or bad memories. And we want to help them get past that. We like to explain to our clients that like, now is the time like, to, to let go working with us, you know, you've made this big step to go through this process with us. And like, now is the time to not feel any guilt, not feel bad because you paid however much money for the, for a certain item, like it's, it's gonna feel so much

better on the other side. It's all about asking the right questions. It's, if they just purchase something, you know, that is expensive, and they don't want to get rid of it, or it was a gift, it's like, when was the last time you wore this? When was the last time you used this? And if they say two years ago, you know, we can make up rules with our clients, like, okay, the rule now is a year or longer, or two years or longer, five years, whatever the rule may be. But let's make up a rule now together, and, you know, figure out how long it's been since you've used it. If you used it, like, two months ago, then obviously, go ahead, keep it, and we'll come back, we'll circle back later to see how many black t-shirts you actually have, you know, and that's kind of the point.

But then it, the way to, the way to really start, if you're going to be organizing yourself and trying to help yourself get organized and declutter and detach from certain things, the biggest recommendation would be to start with simple things. Start, start small, start easy, don't go straight to old photographs and memorabilia and jewelry. Start with, yeah, no, but work, work on it, work on your detachment and your decluttering in that psychology thing, you know. So by the time you get to those memorabilia things, it's, you're like in the letting go mood. Keep the best of the best is something you can really tell yourself throughout the thing, is like, you don't have to keep every single card that was written to you, but you don't have to keep every, you know, card from your mom, keep

five of your favorites, or, you know, and so on. And another thing for, for like letting go of things, a lot of people are, wow, that was a gift. Oh my gosh, that was, they spent so much money. I spent so much money on this, or this is so important to me because of this, but I don't even like it, which happens a lot. Just say, okay, well, we're going to donate it to a good cause, first of all, so feel good about that. And second of all, someone else is going to receive this on the, and on the receiving end, they may love it, like absolutely love it. So it kind of helps people just by hearing that from someone, whether a professional or a friend, it helps them let go. Like, okay, this is, this may be good for a good cause. Someone's going to love this really ugly

sweater. The movement toward organizing seems to have swept America, but is that because of our capitalist vibes of excess? What is happening? I asked Dr. Ferrari. What about culturally between, say, Swedish folks in some studies and Americans and perhaps Japanese culture? Are Americans worse with clutter? Yeah, the short answer is we don't know. Okay. You have to understand that the studies that you have, the handful, the less than the handle, are really the only psychology studies we've ever done. The Americans they found have $33 billion worth of used old technology in their house. Wow. Well, not just their house, all the old cords, all the old laptops, desktops of phones, as I said before, people have on average

three phones. I mean, that's interesting to me. And so we wanted to see what's, why is it? That's the big question. Why are people holding on to their clutter? And I've given a number of motivational talks and perhaps your listeners will invite me locally looking at these kind of things. I tell people the problem is not abundance. We are a nation with abundance. We have a lot of stuff. Yes. The problem is attachment to that abundance. Right. We can't get rid of it. And when I've given these talks, one of the big things I will hear from people, they'll say, yes, I'd love to get rid of it, but I don't know what to do with it. I don't know where to place it. So he says, contact an ICD expert at the Institute for Challenging Disorganization or a member of

NaPo, the National Association of Professional Organizers, like the Horts. So you can easily sell things online locally. You can donate them. You can contact local donation centers to see which are open and how they're handling donations amid COVID-19 restrictions. And just yesterday, Jared put up a posting for a chair we didn't need, and we were going to put it in the garage, more on all of this in a minute, and put it online saying it was free. Within an hour, we had 40 people who really wanted it. So I'm all about exchanging goods. It's just part of the reuse, reduce, recycle, edict. And just like you have molecules in your body that were once a frog or a cloud or a chicken, what better way to give life to an object than to let it become part of

someone else's life, right? So aside from apps and just determination, maybe caffeine, what else do we need? And what tools would you say are essential if you, let's say hypothetically, let's say your name's Allie Ward, you host a podcast and you have a closet. Since you moved in a year ago, that is still just absolute like a war zone. Like, what tools does a person need? Is it about a playlist? Is it about a label maker? Do you need some good containers? Like, what are the essentials? Do you just need a bunch of hefty bags for donations? Like, what tools do you need to get ready for this? Jamie just got excited when you said she had a closet. I started like tapping. I'm like, I want to go organize. I was imagining it in my head. And I was like, oh,

I was like imagining the after. Jamie's drooling over just the description of this messy closet. It's so funny. It is a disaster. I will send you a picture. It's one of those things where like, like things fall out of it when I open it. It's in my office. My master bedroom is in my office. And it's just like, wow, there's like record, all the recording equipment in there. There's books I haven't read, like gift wrap stuff. Just if there were a bowling ball, it would fall off a shelf and definitely give me a kick. It's one of those. Oh, no. I will bravely post before photos and after photos on Instagram.com slash allergies. And I'm sorry. And you are welcome. Yeah, tools. I mean, there's so many different tools, like crank up the music if that's your

thing, if that's going to keep you going for sure. Before we work with someone, there's no preparation needed because we want to see the spaces is but we do like trash bags ready for like your donations. That way you can toss your donations straight into the bag. Black trash bags. Don't look back. Yeah. Cleaning products, you know, to wipe down the space after you fully pull it out. The biggest tool is having enough time. It's going to take you all day and just just understanding that it's going to take you all day. So if you need music, if you need booze, if you need whatever you need, you definitely need some trash bags. And the funny thing is

if you're tackling it yourself, pull everything out like the steps that were the first couple steps for Hortley's process, pull everything out. And you're going to have to put it back at some point. Just don't give up halfway through. So pull everything out. And yeah, I think trash bags would be the first step. Then I mean, that's so true that that yeah, giving yourself time is the biggest tool if we can count that as a tool. But and and putting it in your schedule, like putting in your calendar, like I'm organizing my closet this day and hold that that'll hold yourself more accountable. Because otherwise, you're going to say, oh, I need to organize my closet and continuously think about that. And then just feel guilty that you're not getting to it.

Like really just put it in your schedule and schedule out enough time to complete it. This had been on my mind for a year. And this Saturday, I had this whole episode to research and write, but there was an internet outage in our area. And I stood in front of the closet. And I thought of Jamie and Philip and Dr. Ferrari and Marie Kondo. And I thought, I love mess. Let's dive the fuck in. So put on lo-fi chill beats on Spotify. We got to work. I recorded part of the process. Okay, this is a diary like check in. Jared and I are finally cleaning the office closet. We're in it. We're so deep in it. Jared, how does it feel? It's a thrill. We're like mile seven, mile 10 of a marathon. Like it's starting to hurt and there's

no end in sight. But I'm happier already. And I even said to myself, while I was looking through a box of gift wrap, I said to myself, this hurts. This hurts me. So it's not fun, but it's thrilling. And I already feel less depressed. Okay, it's just a quick check in. Jared and I pulled everything out. We started sorting it into piles and y'all, we did it. We did it. While each item did not spark what I would call joy, getting rid of garbage and donating to a good cause and getting rid of that chair and turning the closet into a recording booth instead of talking to my laundry pile, which is I'm in the recording booth. This is the first episode ever recorded in it. All of that served as like a kindling for what I would call a joy bonfire in my heart. So why did I wait so

long? Why did I do it? So I'm here from your future to tell you, organize the mess that you don't want to. It feels so, so, so, so good. So good. But other than an internet outage, what else would Phillip and Jamie say that you need? And besides that, Jamie would say a label maker. I know she would. Yeah, I saw your Instagram. I was like, oh, I bet she's got a label maker that she likes. Do you have one that you like more than others? Oh, I don't leave the house without it. It just goes with me everywhere. We use the P touch cube plus. It's a brother. It's a very technical term for a label maker. Yeah. But it's a Bluetooth operated and, you know, it automatically cuts the label as it comes out. Side note, I just purchased one of these for $39. If you make

as many labels as a professional organizer would make you a definitely want this one. Oh, yeah. Otherwise, like any, I think any of the, like the, we typically get like the brother ones or the ones from the container store, they have one, a generic one there, but label maker. And there's reasons. I don't know if you want to dive into why we label everything. Yeah. So it's so helpful for routines and maintenance. It's like, okay, you, so Miss alleyward, you pulled everything out, you want to get an organized closet. I understand. Now you, now you got to put everything back. How are you going to keep it that way? How are you going to keep it organized? And even if, you know, we come in there, putting in the systems would Jamie would say is take 75% of the battle, but the

25% of the battle is keeping it that way and maintaining it. Right. You definitely have to put some work into it after, after it's organized. So yeah, putting in those habits and creating that maintenance. And labels are the biggest helping that. So especially in spaces that are shared like kitchens, maybe you have a housekeeper and nanny or, or, you know, your family or your kids even, they all need to know where everything goes just as much as you do. So labeling is one of our very last steps in our process, label everything, even if you think it's ridiculous and you live alone, label everything. And then once you, you know, 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, once the habits are routine and kick in, go ahead and peel it off. Or if it's a communal space and you

have other people using it, keep it there. Because not only do you know where to find things, but much more importantly, you know where to put things back. And that's what the label, that's what serves the purpose of the labels. In your house, what is the stupidest thing you have labeled? Like what is the most ridiculous, superfluous, but like comforting thing that you have a label on? I don't have much things labeled. Because you got it on lock, right? It's in the, it's in your dome. Yeah, it's, I mean, Phillip and I are really on the same page with, like, say we move or, you know, we're renovating our house right now. So things are, are, you know, landing in new places and

we're really figuring out the new space. If I'm putting something somewhere new, you know, Phillip and I have that conversation so that we're both on the same page. Trust me, we're very tidy people. So labels, of course, is extremely helpful to the majority of the population. And they are helpful for us as well. We do have labels all over the house. Don't let Jamie lie. I'm trying to figure this out. I'm like looking around my office right now. But we don't even have kitchen, our kitchen, we don't even have a kitchen installed right now. So it's really hard to say where labels are. We don't not have a laundry room right now. Like our downstairs is in shambles. So just because of construction and it's on hold during this time.

So like, do you have your label maker labeled? I feel like you should. Okay, quick aside. If you Google image search labeled label maker, you will be rewarded with evidence of many like minded fellow idiots who have done this. Just please trust, I'm going to be labeling mine when it arrives. Also, Google label maker pet and you will find many humans have just gently adhered a sticker to their animal's forehead, bearing words like dog or cat or Bailey. Oh, and remember those old school labels that were kind of raised and you turned a wheel and you punched the letters in and they turned up white? Okay, so those are called Dymo and you can get new versions or the vintage ones super cheap.

Now, what about costs for a pro organizer? Rates vary from 40 to $200 an hour with an average of about a hundred bucks an hour. And how does a person know how much time like they're going to need a professional organizer? Like, do you think people are like, I need only need you for like two hours and you're like, no way dude, this is a 12 hour job. Like how does someone know? Oh, yes. So that's my fun job. Okay. So quotes and things like that. First of all, the client, if they're anywhere near like, I think it's happened one time in the five years where they're like, I think I need like 36 hours and I'm like, wow, I think you, I think you do need 36 hours. That was a good guess. Have you worked

with us before? But no, it's a lot of people think we don't even do less than you typically six hours. We will do four hours, but typically six hours is the minimum because again, our mission is to change our clients lives through organizing and no way in hell you're going to change anyone's life in four hours in organizing because 11 steps of a process, I can't walk you through the 11 steps in four hours. I'd much less pull everything out and have the time to put it back. So it takes some time to and some time to adjust to when we quote because our actual business model is really stupid because we don't want repeat clients. We want to teach you how to get organized and stay organized. So it's not the cheapest service in the world, although it's decently affordable

for most people and it's getting more affordable, the more organizing grows. So the hordes say that average unpacks for a move are 50 to 100 hours with big houses taking about 100 hours. So kind of like a nice couch that you wouldn't want to barf on or kind of a classy bedroom set, hiring professionals is an investment. But that's something that will last them for years and give deliver like actual mental health benefits every single day. It gives them time, so much time. We save clients, I don't know how many hours a year if you want to put it that way and you know time is money. So yeah, the mental clarity of getting organized, we haven't really talked about much of the clarity from being organized or the time you're about to save in your life. But we tell

clients we promise them we're going to save them headaches, which is a given time, which they won't really realize until after the place is organized and money. And then they cocked their head at that one, but we're going to save you money in the long run. You're never going to you don't have four turmerics in your spice cabin when we're through with you. And you won't ever buy four turmerics again. Same goes for black t-shirts and underwear and socks. I think so much too, we buy things thinking that they will make us happy or solve a problem. But the thing that we buy doesn't deliver the mental health benefits we hope. And I imagine that after you declutter and you edit and you go through all this, you probably have a peace of mind that you don't, you're not

trying to fill a chasm with items anymore. Yeah, it's, it's, that's, that's very true. When we do the full pullout of a space, it's very, it can be very daunting to some clients to see everything kind of all at once pulled out and kind of awakening. Yeah. And that can, that can be the start of their, you know, their, of a change of lifestyle when it comes to purchasing things. Wait, side note, did I just buy that label maker to fill a hole? Am I ever even going to use it? What if I don't? Why don't I just write labels on masking tape? Or is that weird for my boyfriend to see everything in the house labeled in my handwriting? That seems kind of passive aggressive. Maybe impartial labeling actually is worthwhile. I don't know, as long as I have a space for

the label maker to live, maybe I should get rid of another item. And then we teach the one in, one out rule, which is like, don't go buying another whatever, unless you're willing to get part with one that you have. And everything's, everything's tidy. Everything has his home. So you know where everything is. It's really, you can focus more on what you love now. And that is like the minimalism goal, right? So you have few things, just what you need. Well, the essentialism goal, which is kind of what we teach our employees and our clients is you have everything that's essential to you and that you love. It's what Marie Kondo preaches. She doesn't necessarily need to get rid of everything either. Of course, that helps. But

it's kind of like that essentialism goal, which I think is just so powerful and knowing what, knowing what you have, but loving what you have. But if you need that coach to check in with you while you're going through either the day or just that one closet or your entire house, having just a few check-ins is extremely valuable just to have that professional opinion like, oh, why don't you put your spices in this cabinet because of this reason? We're in kitchens all day every day. We see, you know, all the products, all the things, all the junk from our clients. We work with all the different client, different personality types. So we know how to organize any space in any situation. And you'll learn so much through going through

this process on your own. You'll learn a lot about yourself. If you're constantly telling yourself, like, why am I not organized? Like, why can't I not say organized? Like, go through this process, do it the right way. And you'll learn through going through the process. And then you'll be addicted. Yeah. And then it's addictive. Because you'll take it to work. You'll take it to your friends. You organize your parents' house. It is truly addictive. And it's a simple pleasure of clarity. And that's like real life Tetris. Yes. Oh, yes, it is. You know, like, oh, that could go there. This could be minimized. I have so many questions from listeners. Can I ask them? Absolutely. Okay, I told them I was interviewing you. You guys specifically, I was like,

I reached out to kind of a big deal organizers. People are very excited. Okay, before I get to Patron's questions, which you could submit if you support the show, first little as a dollar a month. First, we will hear from sponsors of the show who make it possible for us to donate to a charity each episode. And this week, our psychologists chose Dress4Success.org, which is a global not-for-profit organization that empowers women to achieve economic independence by providing a network of support and professional attire and the development tools to help women thrive in work and life. We made a second donation in Dr. Ferrari's name to ICD, the Institute for Challenging Disorganization and their mission is to provide education, research, and strategies to

benefit people challenged by chronic disorganization. And they say that they understand that brain has a lot to do with the client's ability to be organized and to maintain organizational and productivity systems and brain based challenges, whether congenital or acquired, they say, directly impact organizational skills. And they have free resources, including a 16 page guidebook to assess cluttering versus hoarding that's up at their site at challengingdisorganization.org. And donations were made possible by sponsors of the show who you may hear about now. Okay, your questions, let's pull them out. Okay, I thought this was a great question. Megan C asked, any advice for people with mental blockers like depression or ADHD or anxiety or

executive function and stuff that prevent them from actively organizing? Like if someone is maybe a little bit, you know, scatterbrained, I'll call myself, how would you how do you tackle that? Work with a professional to keep you focused and accountable. Yeah, you need you need accountability. You need somebody there like focusing your attention to doing it to go into the process. Yeah, like be okay with with asking for help. It's, you know, it's it's okay if you can't tackle space on your own. And I imagine once you have a system too, it's this setting up the system more than adhering to it that seems like it would be the problem, you know, lack of a system is usually the problem. We can look at a disorganized space

right away. And that's usually the answer. Yeah, I mean, we can teach kids how to keep their toy room organized just by having the right system in place. Toys won't end up everywhere. You know, and it takes it takes 15 minutes at the end of a session to tell the kids where everything goes. And if the kids can do it, trust me, you can do it too and keep it organized once the system's in place. So side note, some habits and processes can be learned early. And it may be helpful for those struggling with conditions like ADHD. And in one 2010 study called ADHD prevalence and association with hoarding behaviors in childhood onset OCD, it was reported that roughly 42% of the participants with ADHD also had hoarding compared to 29% of participants without ADHD.

So if clutter is something that you have struggled with, and you have a therapist, bring it up, and you may be able to detangle what's happening behind it, because you deserve to feel better, you deserve the time and effort it takes to clean things, and you deserve to get rid of stuff that bums you out. I'm also talking to myself here. Brendon Kaler wants to know, why do I always end up shoving everything in my closet or a drawer rather than not being lazy? Why do we do it? Why do we out of sight out of mind things? Because you don't love the way it looks. If you love the way it looks, you will want to keep it maintained. The same reason that we recommend that you don't share spaces with other people,

other than kitchens and things like that. But if you have your own closet, and you make it look really, really pretty and buy all the nice hangers and the cute bins that you love, and you hang everything and get it organized, you're going to love it, and you will not treat it that way. You can definitely get away with if you're more on budget of kind of shopping the house of what you have, but we love when possible, streamlining the products, using matching bins, really give it that beautiful touch. Functionality is always first, but then kind of mixing in that beauty is important, or we feel is very important. For maintenance, definitely. Yeah, for maintenance. So it's not indulgent to make it pretty. You need that as the reward.

Yeah, a little bit, yes. Absolutely, yeah. But if you do it yourself the right way and spend a little bit more money on the right products, then not only will it last longer and be more sustainable, but you're going to love it, and you're going to keep it that way a lot longer. You're going to get tired of those wire hangers soon enough. It's so much easier on the eye too, like a really just simple good example is, you know, you're hanging clothes on a million different hangers. You could easily have your clothes organized or whatever, but with the hanger was all the same. It's just so much easier on the eye, and it's definitely great. Yeah, easy to shop your closet. No wire hangers ever!

Jessica Chamberlain wants to know any strategies for couples who disagree on what to keep? Not to be repetitive, but work with a professional. We play a couple like therapists every day, and it's so funny to see the couples fighting about something, and then I'm like, you know what, let me work with your husband, just him and I. Jamie says that they usually cooperate easily with a professional. You might get in arguments with your husband about organization. That's normal for a lot of couples. Right. Right outside. I have a really lovely view in my office, and my boyfriend Jared is very athletic, and he chose, literally, right in my eye line to hang like a broken boxing bag.

No! Why don't you own that? Okay, put him on the phone. Let me talk to him. He's since taken it down, and we have replaced it with a lovely hanging chair, but it was one of those things where I was like, oh, it's going to be a discussion. Oh, yes, you're like cool. It was held together with tape, and he used it every once in a while, but I was like, like, when should I bring this up? Okay, I just want you to know that I initially cut that whole story out, but Jared,

who helps with assistant editing, was like, leave it in. I'm not ashamed. So there you go. Now, I don't know. For some reason, broken or faded athletic equipment outdoors just really pushes my sad buttons, but I didn't want to speak up at first because I don't want to offend him, but I did. Now, the bag's out of sight. He puts it up when he wants to use it. It's all good. We're talking about it on a podcast. I thought this was a really good question, Sage. Alexander asked, how do I declutter without losing interest three minutes in and playing with a cool thing that I found? That is one of the biggest problems with not

organizing on your own and not completing it is getting distracted by what you find. Go through the process. Go through the pull. So you pull everything out. I mean, that's the biggest tip right there. Pull everything out. You might get distracted by the little things, but tunnel vision, you got to have a goal and complete it set aside that time. But yeah, getting distracted happens so much all, especially with our clients that we go through things. They're telling us a long story about every single article of clothing. And we're like, I wore that last at this time and this. And it's like, okay, bring it back to center. Here we go. What we do with clients is actually start holding up the next thing to edit.

So they're holding this one piece of clothing or something and distracted by it. And we're like, okay, what about this? No, this. What about this? So you keep the train just moving, moving, moving. Got to keep the train moving. I hate to be redundant with hiring a professional. It's definitely helpful, but there's a reason that people hire therapists and physical trainers and everything else. But yeah, try not to get distracted. I know that's a stupid piece of advice, but yeah. Okay. So I knew this would be of interest to a lot of folks. So I looked up some tips for housekeeping if you have ADHD or are just an alive human who does not want to do this shit. So psychologists say that folks with ADHD prefer to keep their stuff in full view

as reminders to return or repair it. But then that clutter ends up being demotivating. So having a clear bin for stuff to deal with later can help. And other tips I've seen for ADHD and cleaning are setting a timer and seeing if you can beat the clock and then rewarding yourself if you do or taking before and after photos as incentive. I also like to do time blocking when I clean, like telling myself ahead of time that I'll clean the kitchen from 12 to 12.30 and vacuum from 12.30 to 12.45 and so on. So that way I know what task I'm doing and I kind of need to catch the next train to make the schedule. Toot toot all aboard clean house. Anyway, I can tell you from experience, I have known Jarrett for nine years and his room in his old apartment

looked like a law and order episode about a ransacking or like he had been storing the holy grail in his hamper and someone was desperate to find it. One time he forgot he left raw pork on top of his fridge and then the next day he cooked it and ate it to the horror of literally everyone in his life. Now since then he's been clinically diagnosed with ADHD which explained so much. This morning he woke up earlier than me and he cleaned the entire kitchen and he told me that it helps to turn on a TV show on his laptop and listen or watch it via headphones because then as he cleans or does whatever boring chores on his list, his attention wanders to that fun distraction instead of random places. He says it's like if you had to pour water on a table and direct the flow

so you made a channel with another thing to hold your attention. Now I can also tell you from experience, I get so much cleaning done listening to audiobooks or to podcasts. So if you are decluttering while listening to this, I'm right here with you. I'm non-creepily holding your hand. Also donate some of those vases you never use. Oh and you can give those old towels to an animal shelter. They're gonna love it. Okay, onward. To Layla Manson, first time question asked her wants to know why does a clean room feel refreshing to look at? Why do we feel happier when we don't have like a huge pile of clothes on the ground? Ah yes, such a good one. Yeah, I mean tidy, like tidy dust, tidy mind, tidy space, tidy mind. It's like a weight lifted off your

shoulders. You look at a cluttered space or a pile of clutter. It's just like it weighs you down. Yeah, what you see is what you get. It's what happens in your mind. If you have a cluttered home, your mind is cluttered, your family is cluttered, everything's cluttered. So having a clean space and an organized space and a tidy space means your mind is clean, your mind is clutter free, your mind is organized and it's refreshing, absolutely. Okay, so I was curious exactly why and one article in Psychology Today written by psychologist Dr. Sherry Berg Carter outlines eight reasons why mess causes stress and I will paraphrase. So essentially by clearing clutter and getting organized, we're less sensory overloaded and our mind has more space to relax

and be creative and we don't have this nagging feeling of needing to work. We feel less ashamed and more proud of ourselves and then we get things done faster because things don't get lost. So this explains why I can be having what feels like a depressive episode for weeks until I just fold all the laundry that's been sitting on a chair for 15 days and suddenly I'm a new person. So folding underpants, it's like free therapy. I love this question from Rachel Weiss. They asked, what is the easiest thing you think everyone should be doing to declutter their home? Like what's what's step number one? Prioritize is number one. That is especially right now, you know, you sit in your home and you

think of all the things you could do. You could literally organize every space in your home right now. That's going to really weigh you down and overwhelm you and then you're not going to get anything done because you're just going to be super overwhelmed. So prioritize, pick a space and like just focus on that and work on that space until it's done. Don't don't think about the other spaces yet. Just hone in on that one area. Yeah, don't even start with the kitchen. Start with like the pantry in the kitchen or start with the junk drawer. Start with the junk drawer. Yeah. Yeah, the kitchen like kitchen as a whole, like that's a huge project. Start with the junk drawer, then start with the other drawers and then yeah, and then you'll be inspired and like we said,

organizing is addictive. It's because you have that clean feel. So once it's clean, once it's organized, you'll be addicted to it. So you'll have that sense of accomplishment that'll keep you going. And all areas lead into other areas and you'll find that once you tackle that first space, you might have a little pile, you organize your closet, you're going to have a little pile from your closet that actually belongs in your bathroom. You're not going to put that back in your closet. You need to put that in the bathroom, but now, you know, you should probably do the bathroom next. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, back to junk drawers. What does your junk drawer look like? I don't have one. Oh, I don't have a junk drawer. I've never, I've never had one.

What would live in a junk drawer? Batteries, batteries go in the toolkit. What would, pens, pens go in the desk. Right. You know, I don't know what else would go in there. Scissors, scissors go in the desk as well, but we have one pair of scissors with the larger utensils in the kitchen. Well, kitchen scissors. Yeah. So the junk drawer, she's just so amazing. I've always been one to not, yeah. That's amazing. I'm going to make people post photos of their junk drawers for that because I want to see them. You're going to love it, Jamie. You're going to be like, oh, look at all these junk drawers. We organize junk drawers all the time. It's all about containment. So go find the little, the little organizers and bins that go in the drawer to contain your stapler

or your scissors or your pens. It creates structure in that drawer. It needs structure. And you can even, you know, label each little divider, like batteries, like you can really dive deep and have fun with it. That is, that's such a good challenge. That is what I will be doing. There you go. Tonight. Okay, folks. So post a before and after photo with the hashtag oligies junk. And after we finish recording, the hordes said that they do virtual consulting. So I'm going to put up a post on my Instagram this week and we will pick an oligite to win a free session with them. Is that nice? So rather than having the experts come to your physical space, this is an option they were rolling out anyway. And as it turns out, it's perfect for the times at

hand. Also, that junk drawer, once you organize it, you can call it a multi-purpose drawer. That's what some people do because most of the stuff in there is hella functional. So I keep screws and batteries and scissors. I mean, think about it, you probably use that drawer more than any other in the house, maybe even more than the one your toothpaste goes in. Is that weird? Speaking of weird, Laura Darnell wants to know how weird was it when you first started going through other people's stuff? And my follow up is have you ever found anything embarrassing like, oops, there's a box about plugs like what do you do? Oh, we've seen it all. We will know you like the back of your hand when by the time we're done working with you. And, you know, we tell a lot

of clients that especially the clients that are very nervous at first, but like no judgment here. Like that's, it's what we do and we see it all. And we create, you know, we create homes for everything no matter what we find. We'll create a home. If it's a keep, we create a home for it. So there's definitely been some homes or some labels that maybe not labels, but we won't get into too many celebrity stories. Yeah, I'm sure you're like, oh, do I create a label for that? Yeah, yeah. There usually is a question like, I probably shouldn't. Oh my God. I love these questions from Keta Zirandi, Loki and Annie C essentially asked about gifts. Like how long are you supposed to hold on to gifts that are not spot on?

Oh, not at all. Yeah, not at all. Say no to freebies. Say no to freebies. Gifts, you know, a lot of people worry about, you know, oh, when that person comes over, they're going to ask about it. Nah, they won't. They forgot. Like, yeah, don't, don't make that like an excuse to keep it. Like you need like focus on yourself. It took me a little bit of time to be able to get a card from my mom. Sorry, mom. And just throw it right into the trash once I read it. I love it. But I mean, at the end of the day, I don't need to keep that. And she doesn't remember sending it. You know, she's like, where did you get? Did you have your Easter card last I sent that two months ago? No, you know, so it took a little bit of time getting used to that though. But I think I think

just or again, keep the best of the best. I keep a few items in our guest bedroom for that items that were special to me, though, that it might not be like my style for our home or anything. I'm not going to hang it anywhere in our home. That has meaning. Keep it, you know, or but definitely try to enjoy the meaning out of it. Try not to like, you know, just stuff it somewhere. So Dr. Ferrari also touched on this. Every year, we accumulate more stuff. And so older folks may therefore struggle more with this. Another common, common comment I hear, particularly among seniors, is when I want to give it away to my family, but my kids don't want it, my grandkids don't want it. Okay, well, okay, we'll give it to somebody else. All right, sure, your kids, your millennial kids

don't want the fine china. People don't want that anymore. People aren't interstirling silver or they're not into all this cut crystal. But somebody might be and who go to your local habitat for humanity, where they're rebuilding a house for somebody. They'd love to have those dishes. Sure, your family can't use it, but another family could. Look at that house you just saw in the news, where the people lost everything that burned down. Maybe they can use your dishes. Maybe they can use those pots and pans. Maybe they wouldn't mind eight spatulas. You know, so there's ways of giving it away. You leave a legacy. That's what we're called to do. And you know, Ali, that's one of my things. Leave a legacy. What are you doing to make this world a better place? Right. That's

the problem. So remember, it's you that means a lot to people, not what you give them or leave behind. People are going to remember laughing and birthday cakes and hugs and the way that you made them feel loved, not 15 bowls and two butter dishes. And so your family doesn't want it. That's fine. But give it to a new family, a new tradition. My parents, they started decluttering when they were alive. Right. Their point was, we want to give you kids, we have, there's four of us kids, I want to give you the gift of not having to go through all this clutter. Right. And I want to and while we're alive and we're still sane and we're still cognitively there, we want to see you enjoy it. So come take this, come take that. Let me give you this. And, you know, so I can see

you enjoy it. That's a beautiful thing to do. So don't feel like you have to give unwanted gifts or else people will forget you. Now, speaking actually of gifts, when it comes to buying them, I'm the worst. I just freak out and I end up sending things like six months after someone's birthday. Okay. I have terrible gift giving anxiety where I am so afraid of getting people things that they don't want that they then have to deal with that I end up procrastinating on gift buying or I just don't know what to get. Like, what kind of gifts do you give people knowing that you don't want to clutter anyone's house? Do you give gift cards or experience gifts? What do you do? First of all, that's great that you think that way. First, I think that's important

for people to keep in mind, like, you know, especially for those people that get gifts that they don't know what to do with, you know, keep in mind, like, are you gift giving to people and, you know, but like, don't give your clutter to other people. But definitely gift instead of things like gift experiences. You know, like if they have kids, like maybe that's like a fun like trampoline place or something where they can like get out and enjoy experiences together rather than like a thing, like an item. But also, you know, feel free to give a gift and say, you know, don't feel obligated to keep this. You know, donate it if you don't love it. But we don't, I don't give gift cards. I think I grew up not, do you give gift cards? I just grew up not like,

I don't give gifts. Yeah, I'm awful. No, like gift cards. Oh, gift cards. I just feel like a lot of times you might not use them. But it's also like, do you give a, you don't want to give a gift card to, you know, gap, and then they go buy a ton of clothes, like purchasing clothes, more clothes that they might not need. I do think a fun thing to do, especially if you're broke, is to take all of the gift cards and gift certificates and like gift cards that have like $5 on them and just like, you know, back when we can go out again, make a day of just like running through all your gift cards. Yes. You've got $3 on a yogurt land. You're gonna go get yogurt that day. Yes, I love that. Do that. But um, I love this question from Tara McNeigh,

who apparently has been reading my diary. Why can't I put my laundry away after it comes out of the dryer? It sits on the laundry chair capitalized for weeks. What, what happens? Oh, treat laundry like groceries. Nice. Like, you bring groceries into your house, like cold groceries, like they have to go in the fridge, right? So as soon as laundry is done, like just get it all done and do it and fine, then treat it like groceries. Like it's gonna, they're gonna go bad if you don't put them away. Jamie dumps it on our bed. We can't sleep at night when unless we pull the laundry. I mean, that's a great way just getting in the motion of pulling it straight out of the dryer, dumping on the bed. It's like, well, I mean, if you then you got to

have discipline for all of this, it's just like getting the six pack or going and doing a juice cleanse, like you got to have a little bit of discipline. If you can not take the laundry from dumped on the bed and put it on the other chair, like just sweeping it under the rug, you got to have a little bit of discipline, but kind of make restrictions. So if you've ever slept a full night, nestled in clean, unfolded laundry, like a rat, I see you, I am you. Now it occurred to me in the making of this that managing clutter isn't about more frequent marathon cleaning benches. Clutter is just caused simply by a failure to put things away in the first place in the moment. So organizing isn't about these big corrections of mess,

so much as it's just about making it easier to put things away so you don't have big cleanups waiting, making it easier to do it as you go. So it doesn't creep up on you. I also see Jamie, if something needs to go upstairs or downstairs, she might not want to run upstairs and run back downstairs and run upstairs, but she'll put it right in the way of the door or like it needs to go out to the trash. It is right. You can't even exit the house without taking it with you. So it's kind of like prepping yourself up for future success. Yeah. And also, yeah, like moving things towards where they need to go. If you can't get it there right away, but always making sure like don't, don't create a pile on your steps, but then

continue passing it like every time you go up the step, if there's something there that you put there early in the day, like take it up, take it closer to where it needs to go. So Dr. Ferrari said that the main areas of clutter are closets, kitchen and books. And a lot of folks asked about the last one, including Don Ewald, bookstore lovin', Brad Delmoons, Poppy Millican, Cata Zirondi, first-time question askers Manuel Gonzalez and Sarah Cooley, and Zoe Buckley and Amelia Hines, who specifically asked this next question. Someone asked, when it comes to bookshelves, alphabetical, topic, color? It's personal preference. I personally love to just organize the books by color at a client's house,

but I always ask them how they would prefer it first before we organize them. Definitely, yeah, personal preference. We actually just organized Phillips. Philip is a book lover, a book collector. Yeah, a quarter of books. We just organized his library style, so an alphabetical by category and within category alphabetical. And this way it actually, I didn't want color coordinated. I didn't need it. So it actually makes it look like it forces you to have different sizes and different colors if you go by either alphabetical or by category. And I made up my own categories. I don't go by the library. I just kind of had like... And did you use a label maker? Yeah, you knew. No, well, they're on like exposed shelves. Oh, okay. So you and you know

what goes where. That's how I did my books too. We did sticky. So we had a sticky note. Sticky notes were out on the... The sticky notes were very alive while we were sorting and putting them up. You got extra books? Patron Loki wrote in and said, quote, you could take the books to a VA. They always take them. A hospital, a nursing home, or a donation center, quote. Although check ahead in time just to see if they're accepting donations right now. You could also consider building a freestanding little library in your neighborhood once I was very sad and lonely. And I happened upon a little library and in it was a book about love and relationships. And I was like, I do have to accept and love myself first. But remember, we're not sure how long SARS-CoV-2

can live on surfaces. But scientists estimate up to 72 hours. So perhaps a little library equipped with a can of Lysol or a good post-vaccine project? Philip and Jamie say that Goodwill in some cities is accepting donations straight out or via prepaid shipping bags. So you can look into that locally too. But don't let that stop you from making those donation piles right now. Just most importantly, when you do make them, make sure you label them, donate so that when the time comes that you can donate those items, you don't fish back through them and start blending things back. What I recommended, we were actually interviewed not too long ago about this donation question. And what I think would be smart and what we have

actually done literally in our car, we're not driving anywhere, or very seldomly at least. So when we can drive somewhere again in the hopefully near future, the donations are in the back of the car. You know, it's not like we need trunk space right now. So I put or Jamie and I put our donations in the back of our car because when we can drive, we'll be able to donate, hopefully. Smart. That's great. Oh, I didn't ask the orichologists about movies or TV shows. Jamie, when you were growing up, did you ever identify with Monica on Friends? And you were like, why does everyone give her a hard time for being so organized? Friends was definitely one of my favorite shows when I was younger. And Monica was always my favorite.

I know. Just like I related a lot to her, not her room, not the room, though, that she hides from everyone. Oh my god. How did you get in there? You're messy. No, you weren't supposed to see this. That was a fun twist to whatever producer through that. That's not how we are. And then last two questions I always ask, what sucks the most about being a professional organizer? What is the hardest thing or what is the most irksome?

What is the one part about your job that... Do you ever get into someone's house and you're like, whoa, dude. I mean, not necessarily. Like I said earlier, we see it all. Nothing really phases us at this point. We just want to help. They're having to haul things in New York down step. That's one of my favorite parts. It's our workout for the day, for sure. See, so this is one of the reasons why an organizer can really be worth the money. Now, Phillip says one thing that they both love is seeing the client's reactions to their newly organized space. It's like the moment at the end of a haircut when a barber styles your hair

and then you just walk out of there confident, feeling transformed. You're like in slow motion on a runway and everyone's like, whoa, what a fox. But instead, that's you thinking that about the shelving in your garage. Just horny for organization. What's the thing you love the most about professional organizing? Like, what is the thing that just gives you butterflies? Tokimiku. Well, just everything about it. I mean, changing our client's lives, of course, in making that difference in their life. My favorite part of organizing in general is

that is the mindfulness of it all, of that kind of that mental clarity after going through the process of understanding what all you have, knowing where it belongs. It's just such a mindful process. One of our employees, her favorite part of organizing is having kind of the control, like being the coach. They said that organizing can scratch an itch that this employee just missed while she was on vacation. She came back from, she was on a 45-day backpacking trip over the globe and she came back and she said, I need to get back into someone's home so I can control them. I need to control a client.

It's kind of like that perfectionist. It's a perfectionist mindset. When we hire our employees, we have the most difficult questions that they have to like, tricky questions like, I have to see this, that you're a perfectionist. You got to be a little crazy to do this because nobody in their right mind wants to schlep 10 bags in a cab across New York City to Goodwill or from the container store. That being said, it's not about perfectionism either. But Jamie jumps in to note perfect in whose eyes. Like it's not about having everything perfect in the way that they say it, you know, whatever that you read or see that it should be. It's about curating your space

in an organized way of what works for you. That's why it's so important to go through these steps. It's so inspiring. It really is. It makes me feel like, okay, I'm not the only person at Chaos Closet in my home. I can do something about it. It's just coming up with a system and that it's doable. So that's very doable. So ask orderly people, disorganize questions because there is no shame in entropy and you deserve peace and beauty should you want it. Maybe you don't. That's AOK too. So you can follow the hordes at instagram.com slash orderly. They have a website at orderly.com. Dr. Joseph Ferrari is a professor at DePaul University. He's on Facebook. I will add links in the show notes to them and to the sponsors and the charities we mentioned. We are

at oligies on Instagram and on Twitter. I'm Allie Ward with 1L on both. Thank you to the family of oligites supporting faithfully on patreon.com slash oligies. You can also join the subreddit oligies podcast or the oligies podcast Facebook group moderated by the wonderful Erin Talbert, who I have known since we were four. I remember once she was not allowed to go outside to play. So I came over to help her clean her room so she could and we organized her colored pencils for like an hour and then we were like, oh, I guess we should tackle the big things first. So Ernie, I just want you to know I think about that moment like at least twice a week. Okay, also thank you to Shannon Feltas and Bonnie Dutch. They are the hilarious hosts of the comedy podcast you are

at and they also help me manage merch orders, which are a little delayed because of COVID but the warehouse is shipping as fast as it can. Thank you to Emily White and all the transcriptionists making the transcripts available. They're free at alleyward.com slash oligies-extras. Thank you Caleb Patton for bleeping episodes to make them kid-friendly. They are also up at that link, which is going to be in the show notes. Thank you Kelly Dwyer for website updates and Noel Dilworth for being my right hand lady. Thank you to assistant editor and truly wonderful boyfriend, Jared Sleeper, who hosts the Mental Health Podcast of a Good Bad Brain. Every Saturday morning, he's live with traumatology guest Dr. Nick Barr taking your questions. And of course,

thank you to the guy with the best dude sticker on his forehead, Stephen Ray Morris, who hosts the Perkass and C Jurassic Wright podcast. He lead edits the episode, had a lot of bits, a lot of pieces, 41 of sides. He stitches it all together with Jared. So Nick Thorburn wrote and performed the theme music. And if you stick around through the credits, I tell you a secret. This week's secret is that I will pull out a book from my embarrassing book box and I will read you the first sentence I thumb through. So this could be a diary. It could be a book that would make me actually literally perish from mortification. Okay, I'm in the closet. I'm gonna give it a go. You ready? Oh boy, what's it gonna be? What's it gonna be? Oh my God. Okay, closing my eyes.

Taking a book. Oh God, please don't be embarrassing. Please don't be embarrassing. What am I doing? Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. It's the book that I got from the little library. No, it's called Love and Awakening, Discovering the Sacred Path of Intimate Relationships. I can't believe I picked this. It's amazing. Okay, it says, perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that needs our love. I send you into the world with that. Thank you, John Wellwood, for putting this book together so that I could find it in a free library from someone who was decluttering. With that, go do it. You're gonna be so happy that you cleaned that thing that you don't want to clean.

Okay, we're not to take a nap. That's also okay. All right, bye-bye. Wouldn't you think I'm the girl, the girl who has everything?