The Liz Moody Podcast - Expert Habits For Decluttering & Organizing Every Part Of Your Home (And Life!)

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

We all want to declutter our spaces, and potentially even get systems in place to contain everything we’ve accumulated, but sometimes struggle to reorganize our spaces in practice. Shira Gill has built a career on helping people get organized. She gives us decluttering solutions for everything from living with a disorganized family member or partner to reducing your consumption, and gives her tips and tricks to help you create a calmer space in your home. We break apart issues ranging from staying organized in a small space to trendy decluttering hacks to the reasons that reducing clutter can feel so difficult. As always, you’ll get a ton of actionable tips that you can use to start tackling the mess. 5:41 Managing Your Disorganized Family 14:45 What To Do For Small Spaces 19:26 Tactical Decluttering 22:14 An Exact Plan For Closets 30:11 Reducing Overconsumption 35:32 When Should We Buy New? 42:20 Why Your House Looks Messy 57:00 Making Practical Systems 1:03:56 Car Organization For more from Shira, you can find her on Instagram at @shiragill or online at www.shiragill.com. Check out her Substack, The Life Edit, or grab a copy of her newest book, LifeStyled. Ready to uplevel every part of your life? Order Liz’s book 100 Ways to Change Your Life: The Science of Leveling Up Health, Happiness, Relationships & Success now!  To join The Liz Moody Podcast Club Facebook group, go to www.facebook.com/groups/thelizmoodypodcast. Connect with Liz on Instagram @lizmoody or online at www.lizmoody.com. Subscribe to the substack by visiting https://lizmoody.substack.com/welcome. This episode is sponsored by: LMNT: go to DrinkLMNT.com/LizMoody to get a free LMNT sample pack with any order. The Liz Moody Podcast cover art by Zack. The Liz Moody Podcast music by Alex Ruimy. Formerly the Healthier Together Podcast.  This podcast and website represents the opinions of Liz Moody and her guests to the show. The content here should not be taken as medical advice. The content here is for information purposes only, and because each person is so unique, please consult your healthcare professional for any medical questions. The Liz Moody Podcast Episode 307. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shira, welcome to the podcast. Oh, thank you. Organizing does not require buying anything. It's asking yourself to do the things I want to do, what do I need? As opposed to looking at what do I own and what if I might need it? How do we identify if our home or our life needs a system and then how do we know what system it needs? You have to figure out what you want most before you can make decisions really about anything. Otherwise, it's kind of arbitrary.

Nobody says my big dream in life is to be organized. It's I want to be organized so that I can dot, dot, dot. Are there any other myths about decluttering that you want to bust? Hello, friends, and welcome to the Liz Moody podcast where every week we're sharing real science, real stories, and realistic tools that actually level up every part of your life. I am your host, Liz Moody, and I am a best-selling author and longtime journalist. Today we're welcoming Shira Gill onto the podcast. Shira is an organizing expert, the bestselling author of books like Minimalista and Organized Living,

and a frequent expert on Good Morning America. Her new book is called Lifestyle. It's such a beautiful book. It's such a helpful book. And you can find it wherever books are sold. Shira is going to give us all of the information that we need to start getting our lives organized in the easiest way possible. And yes, I said our whole lives, not just our homes, although we definitely get into our homes

too. This episode has routines and strategies and nitty-gritty questions and tons of solutions for your biggest organizational problems in both your home, but also in your whole life. These things extend so much further than our home. There is a lot of information in this episode. So if you want some key takeaways when you are done listening, head over to lizmoody. Substack.com and sign up for our brand new newsletter. It has action steps for every single episode, as well as bonus interviews, meal plans, workout plans, and more. Shira, welcome to the podcast. Thank you.

I'm so excited to have you here personally, and I think the audience is going to get a lot out of this, but everybody who's listening, who's been listening for a while, knows that, like, I'm a hot mess. And so I'm very excited to have you de-hot messify me. Yes. So let's start off with you have these two rules for life, which very much connect to decluttering and organizing our homes, but also, I think apply much broader than that. So rule one is clarify what's essential and rule two is let the rest go.

Can you tell me how you got to these and how you apply them in your life? Yeah, the second rule is the hard one for people, obviously. I organized people's homes for about 15 years. So I was in people's houses, helping them make decisions, helping them navigate through what to keep, what to toss. And what I realized doing this work is you have to figure out what you want, most before you can make decisions really about anything. Otherwise, it's kind of arbitrary. And so I started asking my clients things like, what do you wish you had more time and space for in your life? What matters the most to you? What are your kind of deepest values that are getting neglected? And what I found is once people really had those kind of core central goals, values, priorities, crystallized in their brain, it then became much easier to release the clutter, the distraction, the hot messness, if you will, that kind of stood in the way of getting those goals. It really informed my work as an organizer, but then I started asking myself those questions

just in life separate from home organizing. What do I care about? What's being neglected? And what's in the way? The big mistake that I see with people is people are always trying to get organized without having like a why. I hear constantly like it's like organizing season. I'm organizing everything. I'm moving everything around. And when I ask people why, why are you getting organized? They often don't know. It's like a should, right? Like, because I'm supposed to. But what I found is you really can't successfully get organized in your home or your life unless you have a meaty, juicy, compelling reason that is motivating to you. What are good whys? You know, I don't want to judge anyone's why, but I can tell you I want an organized life so that I can do the things I love,

which are traveling, hosting dinner parties, having friends over. And for me, what I found is if my house is a cluttered mess, it's really difficult to get anything done, right? And so for me, it's like ease of life and being able to do those things that are enjoyable. But I've had clients who everything from like dating after divorce. I really want to start dating, but I would never bring someone into my home because I'm embarrassed. So that's a real obstacle if you want to form a new intimate relationship. Or I work with a lot of moms who feel like I can't host a play date because my house is a wreck. Everyone's going to judge me. There's so much like self-imposed judgment. But the problem is it's stopping people from living the life they want to lead. I've had many people

who want to work from home. But they're like, my house is such a wreck. How can I feel like a professional? How can I run a business when I'm like drowning in clutter and laundry? It doesn't make me feel like I can show up as a professional. Yeah, feeling the way that I want to feel is what resonates with me the most. I feel like I'm not as motivated by somebody coming to my house. Like there's memes where somebody comes to your house and they like run and check under your bed.

And they're like, aha, you didn't clean under here. Like, I'm not afraid of that. I feel like people know who I am and they're ready for that when they come over. But what I've noticed and what I've found most motivating for myself is that when I'm in a house that feels decluttered, I feel much more expansive and I feel more peaceful and calm in my life. And those are feelings I'm really seeking out intentionally right now. And I'm just beginning to figure out how my house plays into that. Yes. And there's a huge correlation, especially for women, between clutter, anxiety and depression.

So there have been studies done extensively, and it is really weighted towards women, which I find really interesting. Is that because we're the ones who are, like, pressured by society to be responsible for things? I think there's so much more pressure on women to be, like, the owner of the home and the domain and the one who keeps it all together. I'm not a scientist, but I've read these studies. And, I mean, just anecdotally, I can tell you 99% of the people who reach out to hire me, women. So I find that really interesting. It's interesting and it's also frustrating to me in terms of mental load because I'm just like, why are the women, the ones that are taking responsibility for how their space feels when everybody is benefiting from how the space feels? Absolutely. I mean,

100%. And many of the people who hire me, hire me because they're frustrated with other people in their life and they want me to fix that, which is in their home. Yeah. Like what? Tell us. Yeah. I mean, just all the things, right? My husband dumped. and piles everywhere, and I'm always tidying and cleaning and setting up systems, and he doesn't adhere to my systems. It feels so disrespectful. So what do we do about that? Like, if we set up, we're going to get into so many routines and systems and all of that that you can set up in your home if you're listening. But if you set up all these things and everybody else in your home disregards them, it's almost pointless. It's like a waste of work. Totally. Here's the rub is that you can

set up the most beautiful, perfect, flawless systems for you. But if the people that you, cohabitate with, don't care, aren't motivated, it doesn't matter, right? Because they're not going to follow the habits or the systems. Partially, this is a thing about respect, right? And it's a negotiation within each family of like who's dealing with the mental load, the physical load, managing the chores, how are you dividing that labor? But I also think legitimately people have different clutter thresholds. So I'm on one end of the spectrum, right? I'm like, things have to have. to be dialed in or tidy or my brain feels messy, my body feels stressed. That's very extreme. My husband is on the other end of the spectrum. He has ADHD. He doesn't notice a lot of the

things that I notice. They legitimately don't bother him or stress him out. I can put a bag of donations blocking the front door for him to take on his way out and he'll step over it, right? And so... I am your husband. You are. Oh, nice to meet you. And it's definitely like it's a fight. My husband and I have had so many times, which is like, why should I have to be clean to your standard when this is not my standard of clean? Totally. Where do we find where the two shall meet?

So what I have found works best is I would be a bazillionaire if I had, you know, the answer to like, how do we change other people and get them to do what we want, which I think like really that's what people want me to do is like, I don't like how these people are behaving. Can you make it better? Can you make them listen to me? I cannot. But I think there can be like a very respectful negotiation, which I've had with my husband. And we live in a very small 100-year-old house with two teenagers and a dog. And we both work from home. And we've had to figure out how do we make this work with like really opposing standards? What our family has come to is our common shared living spaces, living room, dining room, kitchen are going to be at a baseline that we've all agreed to that's really geared towards my standards of cleanliness and tidiness and minimalism. And that's because I've made it very easy. We don't own a ton of stuff. So it's pretty easy

to maintain for everyone. And then each one of them, so my two teenagers and my husband, they each have their own domain that they get to do whatever they want with. So my kids' rooms are certainly not to my standards or what would make me feel good. But I've said, you know what, this is your thing. You got to feel good in your space. So if that's laundry on the floor and dirty smoothie cups or whatever, okay, I'm not going to judge you. I'm not going to stand in your way. With my husband, we ended up building a little freestanding shed like a workspace. And I go in there and literally my brain explodes. But for him, he feels more relaxed there because he has stuff everywhere, books everywhere, stacks of papers on the floor. And he's like, I can just exhale here.

whereas in the home, he feels like I've got to be on my best behavior. And then our bedroom is very minimal, very serene. It's literally like a bed and two nightstands. So we've kind of found that to be the solution for us. And I've helped many other families find their own version of that. Where's the minimal room? Where's the maximal room? If people are really on opposite ends of the spectrum?

Or like, how do we carve out boundaries? I get to be me here, you get to be you there, and then we're going to have this common ground in the middle. It makes me think of Eve Rodsky talks about she's the author of Fair Play and the creator of that whole system. She talks about one of the most important things being figuring out what the minimum standard is, like what does complete look like? What does clean look like in this room?

Because if you don't agree on that, if you and your husband and your kids and it agree, this is what a clean living room looks like, then you are always the one taking a. responsibility for them not living up to your standard. So I do think that communication element is really important. So I'd love, first of all, your advice for communicating that, for figuring out, like, this is what clean looks like in this kitchen. Because I think if you don't have that conversation, often the woman is the one who ends up taking on that load. Totally. So I think it's as simple as like sitting down and having a little family meeting. And that could be like just you and a roommate. It could be you and your partner, you and your kids. But basically saying like, what is our

baseline for our shared spaces. What does that look like? And there can be some negotiation there, right? Because probably not everyone's going to be perfectly aligned in our house because everybody has skin in the game because they want to be able to have friends over or entertain or cook with ease or not deal with other people's crap. Our kind of minimum baseline for those spaces is no dirty dishes, no laundry, and things that belong in your room, stay in your room. Because, you know, I said we have a really small home. So our dining room functions is like my office, where the kids do homework, where I record podcasts. Like, it's everything.

Where we host and entertain. And so our standard is literally a clean table. Like, nothing goes there. Yeah. So no mail, no bills, no homework. And that's something we just all agreed to. Part two of that is where do those things go, right? And so I think as a family deciding even basic things like where do you?

do the papers that come into our home go. Oddly enough, that's like the biggest clutter magnet I've seen is just mail bills paper coming in the front door and just getting kind of dropped and strewn everywhere. Well, it's like the in transition stuff. I don't want to put it in the trash because there might be something valuable there, but I don't have time to go through it right now. But I don't want to put it really away because then I won't be reminded to deal with it in the future. So where is the best place for that type of stuff? So I call it an inbox. For us, it's like just a big open basket. We don't have a proper entryway. So you walk into our house, you're in our living room. So we have a credenza. I put this big open basket. And literally everyone in

my family knows, like any paper that needs to be looked at dealt with in any way processed just gets dumped in this basket. It's not organized. It's not really tended to. It's a once-a-week review on Sunday. Wait, that's really interesting. You not only have the basket, you have a routine that goes with the basket of we are going through the basket every Sunday. Do you feel like that's something many of us are missing? I feel like that's like a huge unlock for me. It's don't just get the basket.

Get the time to go through what is in the basket. Yeah, that's everything, right? Because it's like you can have the system, but if you don't have any habit, the system's kind of rendered useless. Then it just becomes like another dumping ground, review it every day. It's not realistic. me. And so for me, I was like Sunday reset. Like, I want to start the week feeling solid. So I have, like, a little mini imposed family meeting on Sunday to just review the week. What are we doing? Where are we

going? What are we eating? Who needs rides? Who needs whatever? Great. Now we go through the mail. Correct. Now we go through the mail and we divide and conquer, right? So what's been great about it for me is that as the person that everybody asks for everything from, I can now say, if it needs my attention, put it in the inbox, I deal with it on Sunday. Whereas my kids used to constantly be like, I need you to look at this, or could you sign this? Or my husband would be like, are we going to this thing I need to respond to? Now we have this very simple system. dump it in this one thing. It could be any vessel that you use. But I think having one place to centralize all of that and then a review period that makes sense to you. I think weekly is great. And I love that the review

isn't just, it sounds like physical items that come in. It's also like, can you sign this thing? Or like the little things people are tugging on you all day long for you've created a time container in addition to this physical container of like you can come and tug on me during this time. Yes, the tug time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like the taking care of business. Right. It's like a gift to your future self because it feels like such a burden to constantly be dealing with like the of life. And so for me, it's like, if I just say Sunday's my taking care of business day, the rest of the week I can just relax and do my thing and know I've set myself up with, for us, it's like rides, logistics. I mean, for me, meal planning is my nightmare. I know you're

good at that. But yeah, like just what are we eating? Yeah. How was the food getting into our house? You. Like, I also think when we're talking about mental load, by you having a meeting where everybody is coming and everybody is working on this, it's not on you, the mom, to say, say, what are we eating all week? You're all deciding it together. Exactly. Because we kind of look holistically at like what needs to be done this week. And then as opposed to it all being dumped in my lap, it's like, you take this, you take this, I'll take this. Hallelujah. I think that's so, so great. Okay. The other two things I heard you mention are decluttering. So you don't have that much stuff in your house in the first place. So there's less to negotiate in terms of what's left out.

We're going to get into decluttering like a lot. Okay. But then the third thing was everybody has kind of their own space to put things. I heard from a lot of listeners who have very small spaces. I lived in a 500 square foot apartment for a long time. If somebody can't have like a room of their own, a shed in the backyard, how do you recommend they navigate that if one person's messy and one person's clean? Yeah. A zone. Like a desk or something like that. Literally a chair, like just a moment. So like we need us messy people, just need a place to like explode. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I shared a studio with my husband in Chicago, and we made it work. Again, for me, it was like my deal breakers or I can't be surrounded by paper or dirty laundry or dirty dishes. But if you want to have a dumping

chair, that's fine. Like, I can turn away from that. So I think it's like carving out zones where you can and finding little compromises. Okay. So let's get into decluttering. And we'll start with tiny space decluttering. People who are like, I know. I know. everything needs a place to go, but I literally don't have enough places to have homes for everything because my space is so small. What do I do? You have less stuff. It really, I know, it's such an annoying answer, but like it really is just math. If you have too much stuff in a tiny space, unless you're going to start building storage systems and cubbies everywhere, and to me, I would feel like I was drowning, you probably can get away with owning less volume. I promise.

What are the areas that many of us have room to get rid of some of that volume? Like, what are some of the areas that we might be over indexing on volume? Key culprits are kitchen things, like kitchen gadgets, pots and pans, food storage, wild. Wild amounts of food storage. Walk me through some of those. So, like, kitchen gadgets, how are we deciding what kitchen gadgets were keeping? Just for legitimacy, because I just told you I don't cooking or meal prepping. But my brother is a chef.

I talked to him, he's also a minimalist, oddly. I talked to him a lot about like, what are the essentials that you need to be able to just functionally be a good chef, right? And the thing he told me that kind of blew my mind was like, you only need three knives. You need, you know, a pairing knife, a chef knife, and a serrated bread knife. I used to have like that huge knife block with all the knives and I didn't know what to do with them. Furthermore, he was like, and by the way, a knife can do the job of most kitchen gadgets, pit a

cherry. You can pit an avocado. You don't need all of these kind of customized gadgets. So I think looking at how do you operate as a chef in your kitchen, if you were to kind of like wipe the slate clean and build a kitchen from scratch and you think of just like what are the recipes I'm always making? Like if it's smoothies every morning, of course you need your blender. But what are the things you can get away with not having? We cook every night. My husband loves to cook and my daughters love baking, but we probably have a fraction of the stuff in our kitchen than like 99% of the kitchens I've seen. What about I have a waffle maker.

Yeah. I've never used it. Oh. But I will occasionally see like a reel or a TikTok where they're doing really genius stuff with the waffle maker. And I'm like, someday a Saturday is going to come along. Right. I'm going to want to make tater tots in my waffle maker.

Yeah, you are. And it's going to be amazing. So I don't get rid of it. And it was also not cheap to buy, but I've also never used it. And I feel like many of our kitchens are filled with stuff like that, something that we have a dream of a future version of us using, something that was not so cheap that we could just throw it away. Right. How are we approaching these things? Yeah.

So it's an aspirational gadget, right? And I think the question, it's like the stuff versus space calculus. Would I rather have the thing just in case? and is it okay with me that it's taking up space in my cabinet? For you, it sounds like maybe that's fine because it sounds fun to do something with a waffle maker one day. For me, I would be like, I just want a spacious cabinet. If I'm going to have a waffle party one day, I can borrow a waffle maker from my neighbor

or my friend. So that would like simplify the decision for me. But I think like a good question for people when in doubt, would I rather have the thing and like the possibility that I might use it or the space that it's taking up. I find decluttering so hard. Can you just zoom us out on decluttering? Do you have like a tactical approach to it? Yeah. Decluttering's really hard because decision making is hard and draining, right? And it's decluttering is just one decision after the next forever. So I love it because I'm very decisive and I'm very impatient. For my personality, decluttering really revs me up and makes me feel

super accomplished. But I have found for the average human, it is very draining, it is exhausting, it can be paralyzing. So the things that I do to try to make it less so are one microspace at a time. So we're not editing your kitchen, we're editing one drawer in your kitchen or we're just looking at your gadgets. So make it micro. That's like tip number one. the tinier the better so that your brain can just focus and not get overwhelmed. I love to take things out of their normal environment. What I've found just from years of doing this is like if you open a drawer and say to someone, what do you want to get rid of in this drawer?

They'll scan it and go like, it's all fine. We use all of this. However, if you take everything out of that drawer and you take it to a different room, so say you empty your junk drawer in your kitchen and you put it on your dining room table, all of a sudden you're seeing it with fresh. eyes because it's not in its normal environment and your brain is not processing it in the same way. So now it's like new and fresh and you can kind of analyze it in a new way. So that's a little trick. Likewise with closets, I find women will scan the closet and just go like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm good.

I wear all of this. But if I take it all out and I put it on their bed, they'll get rid of half of it. Oh, that's so interesting. Yeah, it's fascinating. Closets I find the hardest because trend cycles happen so quickly now. And I don't adhere to trends with how I dress. However, I think we're all susceptible to we like what's familiar to us. That's just how our brains work. So if we're seeing a lot of a certain type of clothing online, out and about, we're going to like it more. That's just like, that's true. That's how we're all subject to trends, even if we don't try to dress in a trendy way. So I feel like trend cycles are happening so fast. I'll be like, oh, I don't like that shirt. But then I'll be like, oh, I don't want to get rid of it because in three months, maybe I will like it,

even though I haven't worn it. Do you have any specific tips for clothing? Yeah. I mean, clothing's my favorite. Let me at your closet. Clothing relates a lot to identity, which is what makes it so fun and interesting, is how we dress is like how we express ourselves to the world, right? I think I'm particularly anti-trend because I'm like pro, you have your own unique personality and identity. And clothing is all about how does it make you feel and do you feel good in it? And that's the only actual metric I care about is like, do you want to put this on your body right now? Right now, right now. And what if it was really expensive? And I feel I'll like it on my body in like six months when my body maybe looks different. Yeah. That like transitional wardrobe for women particularly

because our bodies transition so often throughout time, I think it can be so easy to justify keeping anything. What if I gain or lose or this happens or that happens? But what I find is it makes women feel really bad to open a closet and have to scan through for what can I put on my body now if they're having to look at things that are tight or don't work or make them feel bad. And so my real rule for setting up your closet is anything you touch you should be able to put on your body and have it fit and flatter and feel good. And if that's like 10 things right now, that's better

than having 150 things that you have to navigate through and try on and feel bad. The way I make it less overwhelming for people with closet is I just do one category at a time. So we'll just look at sweatshirts. And if you feel overwhelmed looking at your closet, just pick one broad category. And it's really nice to centralize it because you'll also gain clarity. Like for me, it's like my whole wardrobe is white blouses and jeans. Which you are wearing which I am really walking the walk, right? I realized like I used to own a lot of black stuff and it just sat there. And I was like, okay, I guess I don't wear black. But do I also need 25 identical white blouses? No. And if they're sitting in a pile on my bed and I have to kind of reckon with that, I can say,

How many is reasonable for me to own? And I love setting up a closet that looks like a curated boutique. So space between hangers, sometimes color-coded, and making it feel really inviting. I think that's why I love the closet so much because it's this small microspace, but it's so powerful. We engage with it every single day. If you open your closet and everything looks beautiful and it's like merchandise like a boutique, and you can know any top and bottom my grab is going to fit my body and make me feel good. Like you just start your day feeling so much more confident and happy.

You've done all that guesswork in advance for yourself. I would say for women, like think about how do I want to feel in my clothes? And that answer is really drastically different. When I ask someone, somebody could say sexy, somebody could say studious, somebody could say confident, somebody could say confident, somebody could say feminine. Oh, wait, this is interesting. So I feel like there's a difference here between figuring out what your style is. Like, I'm bohemian. I'm classic, whatever. And you're saying, no, figure out the word for how you want to feel in your clothes and then put your clothes on your body and see if you feel that word. That's right. Do you think that's more important than I'm a modern style?

Yeah, yeah. I think it's more helpful. I mean, I also, I'm such a visual person. I also think it can be helpful to just do, whether it's Pinterest or scrapbooking or your method of choice, have something that embodies like, this is how I want to look. For me, I had this whole Pinterest board before I had figured out my style. And it was actually a girlfriend of mine looked at it and was like, all of these women are in monochrome. They're all in denim. There's no color. There's no pattern. And I was like, oh. So you can kind of study what you like. So just like go on a pin spray, pin, a bunch of things that just just appeal to you. You don't even need to know why. And then kind of pattern hunt within that. Yeah, like play detective for your style. Because I had no idea that I loved monochrome until I saw

like 50 pinned women, like literally in like all white or all denim. That's interesting. And then I realized I actually had all of those components in my closet and I didn't even have to buy anything. It was just completely reimagining how I got dressed. For some women, it's like realizing everything they're pinning is like big accessories. Like, oh, okay, I want to go big in on that. So yeah, I think it's a combo of like figuring out your kind of aspirational style for yourself coupled with the metric of how do I want to feel. And that obviously will change. Today I wanted to feel professional and confident. But if I'm picking up my kids from school, maybe I just want to feel comfortable and relaxed. So it's something you can actually ask yourself every morning when you go to your closet. How do I want to feel today?

based on what you're doing, where you are, who you're seeing. This is maybe silly, but what are we doing with the stuff that we're decluttering? Like, I know that you can take them to goodwill and stuff, but I've heard that a lot of those places just throw them away now and they end up in landfill anyway. And so that's a hesitancy I have with getting rid of stuff now. Totally. I love a clothing swap. So if you have stuff that's like, this is perfectly good, maybe it has tags on, maybe it's

just gently used. I love hosting a clothing swap for my girlfriends. I just say, take all the things in your closet. that you feel kind of bad that you spent money on because it's nice, but you're not going to wear it. And then it's like everyone gets to go shopping and everyone goes home with something new for free. So that I love. I love using neighborhood groups. You can just put on, I don't use next door, but like there's Facebook marketplace.

There's all of these kind of like locally organized sources where you can say, I have a bag of clothes size, blah, blah, blah, professional who wants it. And somebody will be like, that's exactly what I need and you can just feel good that it's going to the right person. I mean, you can get creative and donate to like your local theater company. You know, for costumes, you can do dress for success. There's a million things, but I think where people really get stuck is the sunk cost syndrome of like, I spent so much money on this. It never quite worked, but it's painful. And now if I sell it on the real real, I'm going to get $3, which is why I think the like keeping it in your community is the way to go.

Yeah. Yeah. You can maybe see a neighbor walking down the street. Totally. Yeah. And it's so easy. I mean, you can literally just invite, I think like eight to ten people is ideal for this type of thing. Although then if you're swapping, don't you just end up with as much stuff as you were trying to give away?

Well, yeah. It's not a method for lightning the load. But it is a feel good way to depart, you know, from those things. and then get a handful of new things without spending any money. Yeah. Well, and I do think that's one of my biggest issues is when I like a piece, but I have not worn it for six months for a year. I have not worn it since I bought it, but I'm like, wait, I like that. I like that.

I like that. Yeah. So I feel like giving it to a friend or something like that is a nice thing to do with that. It feels great. Yeah. And sometimes I can say like just being really generous feels amazing. I sometimes like giving away very high value things to somebody and just being like, no stream. attached, like this didn't work out, and just seeing them be delighted. That feels great instead of, like, haggling to recover a tiny fraction of what you paid six years ago. The mattress that you sleep on

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about it because it has happened so quickly and it's become so pervasive. Like I remember, I'm probably going to sound old, but I remember when H&M like came to the United States. Yeah. But it was not that long ago. And yet now with online shopping and all of that, it's changed how we by completely. So on the other side, how can we stop with the overconsumption that leads to us having cluttered closets in the first place? Yeah. And that's the most important piece of this, honestly, being the gatekeeper of your home, your closet, your stuff. The thing you touched on is that there's no friction anymore. Yeah. So you used to have to get in your car and drive somewhere and park and go look and take out your credit card, right, and pay and buy something and physically have it.

And now click of a button, auto pay. There's no friction. So one of the things I do is I try to create friction. That can be actually like taking out your credit card from sites like Amazon where your face. I know because it's so easy and effortless and that's what we love about it. But if you want to slow your role with consumption, finding ways of adding friction, only paying for things in cash. Huge friction, right? you have to go to the bank, you have to get out money, you have to manage the money.

It feels very different to take out $300. And the idea is that friction does not mean you won't be shopping. It means that you will be significantly more intentional about the purchases you're making. Exactly. Right. Making a list. Like if I go shopping, I have a little list on the notes app of my phone. Like these are pieces that are gaps in my closet, say, that I've already decided in advance with my prefrontal cortex that I want.

that I want and that I can justify. So then I'm filtering through with that as opposed to what's on sale, what's being merchandised in a beautiful way. I have to look at my list and if it's not on the list, I know I don't need it. I don't know if you have a solution for this, but I feel like a lot of the reason for the fast fashion shopping is I feel a little sad today. I don't have control over a lot of my life, but I can get this quick dopamine hit. from hitting by on this $20 top that will make me briefly feel like I can be the person that I want to be.

Yeah. What do we do about that? No, it's a million percent a numbing agent. And I think – so what we do about that is we do a one-month purchase pause where we say for one month, I'm going to experiment with not buying anything non-essential, right? So other than like food, groceries, those things, I'm going to just press pause, use and enjoy what I have. if I want something, I'm going to write it down. And at the end of those four weeks, which is really nothing, like people used to go so long without buying something new. And what really happens is

you increase the awareness of your shopping triggers. For me, it's absolutely, I'm bored, I'm sad, I'm anxious. I want a quick dopamine hit. And it forces you to find alternatives to shopping. So I've had many, many clients who would classify themselves as addicted to shopping, right? And the way we broke that pattern was by saying, let's take a pause where you don't buy, but you have to feel your feelings. And it's excruciating, right? It's like taking away any numbing agent like drinking or eating. We have so many different methods for avoidance. And shopping, it's one of the biggest ones I see in my work, obviously. And I think it's, If you allow yourself to feel the discomfort, you can actually identify, what's the root cause here?

Am I lonely? Do I need to call a friend? Am I craving a dopamine hit? Can I go work out or get some fresh air or listen to a podcast? What are the other tools in my toolkit that are not shopping? And for me, it's like exercise or community or connection. Those things actually fulfill me on a deep level. whereas like buying a new handbag is three seconds and then I'm back where I started.

And I feel like this method would sort of lift the veil that like the handbag isn't going to make people see you or treat you any differently. Yeah. Like we kind of have this little niggling false belief that if I dress this way or if I had this thing, then maybe people would perceive me the way that I want to be perceived. And that doesn't happen. Nobody's like, oh my God. That's always so cool.

She had a Dior handbag and now I want to be her best friend. Right. But what a D or handbag can do for people is make them think different thoughts about themselves, which in turn makes them feel more confident. So it's not about the handbag. It's about how you engage with a handbag essentially. Yeah. It's about what you think about yourself as a result of having the handbag, right? Which could go two ways with the DOR handbag. It could go, I'm a fraud. I need validation. I need people to think I'm cool. I hope this handbag gets me there. Or it could be I reach these pinnacles. my business that I've always wanted to. I'm a power woman. I was able to get this for myself.

Like, it's not about the handbag. You could go any way with it. You could think anything about it, right? And what's really cool is say there's a thing you want to buy because you feel like, oh, I would feel this way. Then you can ask yourself kind of like a hack, how can I feel that way now without buying the thing, right? If I want to feel more confident, what could I do that's not buying a handbag to feel more confident, to think of myself, how do I find evidence that I already am a successful career woman, a competent mom, a whatever that fill in the blank. I love that. So wait, how do we know when and if we should buy stuff? Let's say we do the spending freeze for a month. How do we start bringing purchases back into our lives? For me, it's about if you catch yourself

feeling panicked or in a rush to buy something, it's a real red flag. We're not like panicked to buy milk. We just need milk. A way of kind of gauging like, is this something that I need and want? have thought about. Like, you should feel calm. You should feel grounded. You should feel like I know and like my reasons. I think when we make shopping mishaps, it's always out of this kind of panicked, rushed, frantic feeling. So it's really just like a gut check. Do you have any advice for having blinders to social media? I feel like we see, first of all, social media advertises to you exactly what you want to buy. They're very, very good at that. They are. But then second of all, you're watching all of these like influencers do their new handbag unboxing, have new outfits every day.

And it's really, really hard to say, no, no, like, I don't need that. I can be happy without that. How do we avoid falling in that trap? I try to avoid looking at those as much as possible because they're so successful. So that's one tip is like stop watching. Yeah, yeah. I am always kind of like who's watching, especially the like haul videos. I will not watch a hall.

It's not like you've, it's so interesting for me because my background is as an editor. And so we get sent all the PR, but then we go through it all, find the most useful things. We edit the selection and then say, hey, this is what you should get out of these thousands of things. These three things are the best. And the PR halls now, they're just like, here's everything I got set. I'm like, what is the point of this? Other than just to show off that you have a million things. Like, I don't get it.

It's just like ego and excess. Yeah. Yeah. So those videos are so repeal. to me. I really don't watch them. So maybe I get fed less of them. Okay. So that's one tip. One tip. Try not to look at them. But, you know, they're everywhere. Again, back to the clarify what you want. What do you want in your life? Do you want more packages? Nobody would say that, right? Nobody would be like, my life goal is to have more shopping bags in my hallway. Yeah. What's great for my relationship is a pile of

cardboard boxes that I'm waiting for my husband to break down. Exactly. So, I think it's like identifying some sort of North Star vision of your life. Here's how I want to feel. Here's how I want to spend my time. These are the relationships I want to invest in. For me, I always like to have like one big goal a year. It's typically professional for me. I want to write a book. So if I want to write a book and publish a book, then watching Hall videos is getting me further away from that very compelling goal. Or if you want to take like a vacation, yes. Is spending the money on this stuff, taking you further away from that goal. Identifying a goal that feels so juicy and motivating that haul videos really just feel like

mental clutter, like, and you can just dismiss them. Okay. I love that. Delete. Yeah, I love that. Okay. Any other closet tips? I always like doing that stuff versus space calculus.

So depending on the size of your closet, I share a three foot by six foot closet with my husband. We have to be so curated and edited if we want to have space between hangers. So I would say to people, figure out how many hangers fit in your space. You know, it doesn't matter the number. It's just like get the right amount. Space them out so they feel good. And then that can be your baseline for the maximum of what you own. Oh, I love that.

Right. My rule is kind of like we're not going to have piles on the floor. So like if you don't have a shelf for more shoes, then you shouldn't buy more shoes or you've got to practice the one in, one out rule. I have a question for you. what about the in-between clothes chair? Are you into that? Like that I wore it. Okay, so what are we doing with the, I wore it for a little bit. It's not quite dirty, but if I do the laundry, I probably should wash it. So I don't want to just like put it fully back in my closet where I will forget that it should probably be washed. But it could probably be worn again. So it shouldn't technically go in my laundry. Yeah, this is a hot topic. And very controversial. So I think in black and white, right? So I'm like, you have to decide. If it's clean enough, to wear, then it's clean. Put it in your closet. If it's not clean enough to wear, it belongs in your laundry hamper. Why do I have such a strong reaction to that? No, I know. It's like this weird

universal thing where people are like, but you don't get it. It's like, it's a maybe. I just don't believe in maybes because I think maybys are mentally draining. Like that extends to everything. That's so interesting. Okay. So literally just like, if it's clean enough to wear, it goes back in the closet. Yeah. If it's not clean enough to wear it goes in the hamper. You set it. That's right. That might be revolutionary and it might be infuriating and I can't decide. I love that. I know for the people that are really stubborn about it, I give them a hook in their closet and just one hook. So it can't get excessive. Yeah. So you can like put those few things that you really can't make up your mind about. I know one more quick and dirty that I learned from you, which is just get rid of any underwear that is not like deeply flattering, deeply comfortable. We all have like the old underwear, the old socks, just like get rid of it.

Old underwear and socks are really depressing and they don't make you feel good. And they're like your base layer. Yeah. Yeah. I also like only buying the same socks. They all match, right? You never have to match things. I'm famous for never wearing matching socks.

Oh, that's amazing. I went to this really big podcast and they didn't tell me that it was going to be like a shoes off podcast. And I showed up and I had like my whole cute little. outfit on with like my cute little shoes and showed up and they were like, oh, can you please take your shoes off? Which I'm a shoes off house. Like I get it, but I don't have my podcast guests take their shoes off because of the scarring experience that I had. Amazing. So I showed up and I take my shoes off and I'm wearing unmatched socks and I had worn them on a hike the day before. So they were like coated in dust. Amazing. Yeah, I bet you felt really professional. And it was so embarrassing. And I was

like the whole interview I was like trying to like hide my feet on camera. That's hysterical. It's awful. But I think, I mean, I could have solved one of those. I should have just brought more socks, too. But like I could have one of those problems if I just always had all my socks be the same. I just like finding a staple and investing in it. It's just like a life simplifier. My underwear is all the same and I have nude and black. And then my socks are all the same. And so it looks really nice in the drawer. I never really folder organize it. It's just dumped in, but it looks good. Oh, I love that. Okay. Moving on to the rest of the house. What are reasons other than clutter that our house looks messy? that we might not be thinking about. Having utilitarian items out on display instead of concealed. We all have the things in our home that we need to have, right? Like batteries, light bulbs, charging cords. Anything that's on open shelving or out on display should be something that to you is aesthetically pleasing. So even in my kitchen, like we have open shelving and we have cabinets. So the open shelving is like my pretty heath ceramics and like water pitchers. or vases or serving bowls.

So they all look nice and they're kind of cohesive. Kitchen gadgets are in a drawer. Appliances are in a cabinet behind closed doors. I'm always surprised because it's such an easy hack, but if you just think about display versus conceal. What if you're like, I use that every day and it's so annoying to like haul it in, haul it out? Then it might be worth it, right?

Okay. For functionality. Like I think a lot of people have like a KitchenAid mixer out because it's just too heavy and cumbersome, fine, all good. But if you kind of model that rule in the rest of your house, I see it a lot in living rooms with like open shelving, and there will literally be like charging cords, socks, diapers, like shoved in there. And you're like, this should be like your gallery, art, photography, books, objects. It's kind of thinking of your home as like your own gallery. Curate it so it's easy on the eyes. And then for all of that utilitarian.

stuff, figure out, especially in a small home, which I'm in, how do you tuck away the dog leash? How do you? We walk right into our living room, right? We used to have a pile of backpacks and shoes, and it was like the bane of my existence, but there was nowhere to put it. So I ended up measuring, I think I figured out we had 36 inches, like from the door to the window frame. I hired a handyman to build like a little storage locker, but you could also hack this with an IKEA Billy bookshelf with the cabinet doors. Designers love the IKEA Billy. They love the

Billy. I know. It's a game changer. Is it just because it's so like very slim? So it works really well. Like the depth is really narrow. It's like a good San Francisco or New York like small space hack. And the people that I know that live in old homes that just don't have the closets or the built-ins, it's a really easy way to make like a utility cabinet or an entry cabinet where you don't have one. We, with 36 inches, now have this cabinet that we come in. The girls drop their backpacks. Dirty shoes go in there. I have a basket that has the dog leash, the dog harness, the gross balls, the poop bags, right?

So it's like stuff we need, but now nobody's staring at it in our living room. Is this the whole secret to having a chic home is like baskets in the right places? All you need to know is baskets. It does feel that like all the decluttering people come in and they're like, we're I put it, which is also something I struggle with because there's this whole category of online video where they're like, we're going to organize your home. And then they buy like 17 plastic things and they're transferring one thing from its original container to another container and putting a label on it. So like how do we get the things we need to organize what we need in our life without adding more

shit to our house? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. So I have a process. It's very simple. Outlined in my first book, Minimalista, and it's based on what I realized I was doing, again and again, every house, every situation. Step one is you clarify, which we've talked about. Why am I doing this? What's the goal? Do I feel motivated? Step two is the editing. So usually people skip from I want to get organized to I'm going to go buy a million containers. That's actually the last step and it's optional. So step two after you've clarified is you edit ruthlessly, not recklessly, but really as ruthlessly as you can. People who work with me typically, get rid of 30 to 50% of any given space.

And these are people who don't think they're going to. But it's that whole trick I told you of like taking it out of its native environment and looking with fresh eyes. So you really make concrete decisions about what am I keeping that actually helps me get closer to my goals, what is just distracting and stressful. Once you've really decluttered, then you organize. Organizing does not require buying anything. So that's like the most common misconception about organizing is that you have to run to the container store to get organized. Organizing is grouping similar

things together and giving each category a designated home. That is it. That's the whole secret of organizing, right? So the analogy I like to use is like Halloween candy, right? Like if you dump it all out. Any kid, you can say, organize this by type, and they're like Eminem's here, Reese's here, Snickers here. That's what you want to do in your home. You want to have all the pens together, all the cords together, centralizing. Then you want to look in your home and see, what do I already have? Do I have a credenza I could use? Do I have a basket I could repurpose? An Apple computer boxes like a super sturdy drawer organizer or the phone cases are like a great little insert for a drawer. Which is something that for some reason all of us have because you cannot throw those out.

I know. Why? They just feel like nice, I think. It's because they're so sturdy. Yeah. Yeah. They're well designed. Yeah.

They're well designed box. Yeah. It's a well designed box people don't want to get rid of. So it's a great drawer organizer for like an office or a junk drawer. Shopping your own home, most people have bins, baskets, Apple boxes. So it's looking at like what do I have that I can repurpose? And then the very last step is elevate. So elevate is now that you have.

edited, you've grouped, you're organized. Do I want to elevate the space by buying specific things for specific needs? So when I go shop for a client, I will have a list on my phone like six 12-inch baskets for pantry. And that's because they didn't have any baskets, right? But I'm not just in a vacuum buying baskets or buying bins. It's very purposeful and intentional. And what I found is most people at the end of doing a big edit, they have so much less to organize. I'm typically buying a handful of products for people not a moving van full of plastic bins. Yeah, it's so crazy to me that like minimalism has been commodified. I know. It's makes me crazy. Yeah, I would imagine. Right, because minimalism to me is about intentionalism. It's not about stuff. It's not even a prescribed

aesthetic. You can be a minimalist and love color. You can be a minimalist and love wallpaper. It's really just about being mindful about what you're consuming and doing it in a way that feels aligned. I love that. So you get rid of 30 to 50 percent of stuff that people have. Yeah. Is there anything else that's like old underwear that we should all just be getting rid of for sure? Pens. People have so many pens and office supplies. And we're in a digital age. But I have found like it's like the office people's drawers. So like, do you use a highlighter? Do you need 25 sharpies? Like, what do you, I have found, like, to run my business, I need a laptop computer, a blank notebook and a pen. But do you ever think, okay, so I don't need this highlighter most days, but someday I'll get sent the manuscript of my book and I'll want to, like, do a highlight session. And I already paid for

this highlighter. So then I won't want to go out and buy a new highlighter. So like, and I do think that's, like, that's the thought process most of us are having. If I know that a manuscript is coming, and I'm going to need a highlighter, I would keep a highlighter. But if I don't even have a book deal, I'm not keeping the highlighter. Okay. Right? Fair. Okay?

So, yeah, it's looking at like for my current position. Is this something I'm going to actually need? And there's like a use case scenario that I can use to justify it. Otherwise, a highlighter is really easy to find if you need one. I heard a tip on a podcast I listened to once that was like, if you can replace it for under $20 and you don't need it now and then get rid of it. Yeah. Do you agree with that? Not necessarily. I mean, I think, again, it's all about being intentional. So it's about looking at like, what do I need to run my ideal life and or business? So for me, it's like you just have to be realistic with yourself. For me, I used to have a home office and my daughter wrote a very compelling essay about why she needed that office for her room. So I gave up my office. And in that process, I realized I didn't actually need an office. I was like, oh, I do. everything on a laptop. And actually I prefer working outside or at a cafe. So I whittled out. I mean,

I had a desk and filing cabinets and sharpies and highlighters and everything. And now I just have a laptop. It's asking yourself, like, to do the things I want to do, what do I need? As opposed to looking at what do I own and what if I might need it? Very different questions. Those are very different questions. What if you have young kids at home? What are we doing with all their stuff? We're buying. More baskets. Well, so my thing with kids is like you've got to limit quantity because it's so overstimulating for kids and parents to have like an endless playroom and it doesn't actually spark creativity. It sparks overwhelm. So my kind of like go-to rule is like no more than five categories out at a time or period. So that could be like we're going to have five.

big matching floor baskets, and that's our boundary. And the kids get to help weigh in on what they're into. So it could be like, one is Lego, one is dress up, one is building blocks. But we're not going to have 25 of those. We're going to have five. And everything else, if you keep more than that, gets tucked away in a closet or a garage. And if your kids getting bored or it's a rainy day and they want something else, you swap. But that just makes it really easy for them to manage, to clean up on their own, to not be over-stimulated. I used to be a preschool teacher in a former life, and the things kids played with more than anything were like the cardboard box, right? Or like literally pens in a piece of white paper. So I just don't think kids need that much. Yeah.

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slash Liz Moody. That's 15% off at Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody, Masterclass.com slash Liz Moody. I is interesting. I have a friend who, like, designs homes and helps with interior design and all of that kind of stuff. And I had her over at my house and I was scrolling online looking for things to try to make my home feel more elevated because I just wanted it to feel shaker. And I asked her about it because I was like, oh, do I need this Ottoman? Do I need this painting, whatever? And she was like, no, you need to declutter.

And getting rid of stuff is what's going to make your home feel really chic. And she helped me do it. And my home feels so much chicer now. And I didn't buy anything. Because I think a lot of us, we look at the homes on Pinterest, we look at the homes in magazines, we look at the homes on Instagram and we're like, why does my home not look like this? Yes. And my home is not that big.

It doesn't have a lot of like the features that you see looking fancy and online homes. Right. But getting rid of stuff made it look so much more like that. It's my number one design hack. I love your designer. It truly is. And when you look at those images on Pinterest, you're not seeing piles of laundry, right? So there is some styling and some like lack of real life that has.

happens. But I think even your laundry basket can be pretty, right? Like it's elevating. That's the elevate staff. Yeah. Like I like to have a beautiful dish soap because I hate doing dishes. I'll treat myself to like a wooden dishbrush instead of a gross moldy sponge and beautiful dish soap in a glass dispenser and like a pretty plant that I get to look at and put good music on. So it's like thinking about those everyday chores and tasks. Likewise, most people could elevate their sheets and towels, which is like... I'm huge on that. Every day we use them.

It makes your life feel like a spa. And also, I'm moving towards making my clothing more eco-friendly, more organic, all those things. But I feel like if you do sheets in comforters and stuff like that, it's like a huge swath. You're in that bed, a third of your life. You know what I mean? It feels like low-hanging fruit. Yeah, it's an easy thing to skimp on because you're like, ah, who cares?

Like, nobody sees it. But I just treated myself to really beautiful organic bedding one set. and one towel per person, like so lovely. And it makes me happy every single day. From what? Koyuchi. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Organic, soft, beautiful, sustainable. I mean, I promise they're not paying me, but I'm obsessed. Yeah, well, and there's a lot of, I have avocado ones that are linen, and I got them a few months ago. And the difference I feel when I get into my bed at night, I feel peaceful, I feel luxurious, I feel calm. And that I do think, like, helps with sleep to have your bedroom feel like this beautiful Zen space. Right. And no synthetic materials on your skin,

all of that. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Is there anything else that helps our homes feel elevated that's not decluttering? Like, yeah, shelf styling tips or, I don't know. Plants or fresh flowers. I mean, I've done some styling and I've worked with some designers and it's really interesting because you'll see a raw space after it's designed. And it's like, it's not quite there yet. And the things that designers and stylists bring in that to me make the biggest difference are beautiful fresh cut flowers, plants, candles, art, and books. I mean, you're kind of, you're really, I'm like looking around, like, it's all happening here. Okay. It's like elevating those utilitarian things like the gross sponge can be a pretty wooden dishbrush. Like looking at what are the things we use every day?

I'm always buying my client's beautiful hand soap and dish soap. I love a beautiful soap. Yes, 100%. Yeah, those little things you engage with every single day. Even like laundry, like we don't have a laundry room, our laundries in our kitchen, but I have like a beautiful glass jar with powder detergent and a wooden scoop. So it just feels more kind of elevated and ritualized instead of just like a big plastic jug of like drippy sticky soap.

I love that. We talked about some of your systems. earlier on. How do we identify if our home or our life needs a system? And then how do we know what system it needs? So a system is a solution. So you've got to have a problem. In a home, I'm always kind of playing detective. Like, if I see, say, a pile of paper on the kitchen counter, I'll say, is this here because there's no place to put it? And if the answer is, yeah, we just don't know where to put it. So we walk in and we're tired and we dump it here. Okay, great. So we need a system. And then I like to make everything five-year-old proof. So any system I'm setting up,

it's like, could a five-year-old do this? Or could we rent our house out on Airbnb a lot? I've tried to set my house up so nobody will have any questions. You walk in and it's very intuitive where you take your shoes off, where you hang your jacket, where you get a coffee mug, like all of those things if you can set them up in your home. So nobody has to ask you where it is or how do it. But I think in terms of identifying, like, what are the systems? It's where are your clutter culprits? Where do you have piles or build up in your home? Probably it's because there's not a system or there's not a system that's working. Sometimes systems don't work because they're overly complex. What's an example of that? I see a lot of people who have these really elaborate,

color-coded, labeled, alphabetized file systems, but they never file because it's so complicated. Whereas, like, my filing system is, like, a box that has, like, five big files and one says home and one says car and one says business. So I can literally just dump and walk away. Where else? I see a lot of over-organizing in a playroom where it's, like, these meticulous, tiny microcategories that, like, no child is actually going to adhere to. So, again, I would be, like, balls, Lego, big, broad categories. So the kid can like help do it themselves too, which I love. Yeah, they should really be doing it themselves with supervision as opposed to most parents do it for their kid.

You should do it either alongside your child or like in a role where you're almost just in the periphery like watching and supporting. Oh, that's interesting. So you're kind of teaching them. Yeah. You're teaching them independence. You're teaching them boundaries. You're teaching them responsibility. So like in our house, instead of nagging, I always try to.

to be like, we got to just quickly do this one thing so we can get to the fun thing that's next. And so to your original point, make your children see the Y. Correct. Make your partner connect with the Y. Exactly. For my kids, like, they would never want to clean up. It's not fun for them. But if it's the means of getting the play date or getting the sleepover or getting the movie party, they're like, oh, fine, I'll just knock it out in three minutes.

Yeah, I love that. Are there any other systems? Like, I love the male system. with the Sunday meeting associated with it? Are there any other system slash routines that you think most people could benefit from? Yeah, this one's so intuitive, but everybody needs an entry or a landing system. I think most people have like the basics, like a place to put coats and shoes. But where are the other things that get dumped going?

Kid art is a big one. Like, where does that go in your home so that you have a place to process it or deal with it later instead of it just being dumped? What are the things that come and go every day in your home? do you have a landing spot for them? The other big one is an outbox. That's what I call it. So like the inbox and the outbox. The outbox is we always have stuff that's got to see its way out of our home, but is in a transitional state. So that could be the library book, the tepperware you borrowed from your neighbor, the shop return. So those things tend to kind of just clutter up all of our spaces

because it's like, I have to do this, but I don't have time. I like to have a huge vessel. like a big beautiful floor basket could work, a big structured tote bag could work, where anything that has to go out gets dumped in that vessel. And then ideally it's portable so you can just take it with you and knock it out. You mentioned kid art. Is there a way for like displaying kid art or also family photos? I feel like when you see the style stuff online, nobody ever has family photos up. And I want to have like pictures of my friends and my family. Are there ways of displaying that type of sentimental stuff in a way that feels chic? In our kitchen, we mounted a piece of sheet metal, like Florida ceiling that you can just get at like Home Depot. And we use magnets. And it's like

everybody's favorite thing about our home because it changes all the time. Like it used to be kid art when our kids were little. Now it's family photos. We have black and white letters so people will like leave us messages. I think that's super fun or like cork. I actually think cork can be chic, like if you do it in that way where it's not just like a cork board you bought from, you know, the grocery store, but it's like floor to ceiling like a strip of cork on a wall. I have a theory about this, but I feel like big stuff just feels chicer in general. Like big rugs are chicor. You're like, get a big cork, big art.

Like the bigger you can fit something into a space without overwhelming the space, the chicor it will feel is my theory. I think your theory is right. No, I think that checks out because it's scale and it's like drama. You know? I love drama. We love drama. Yeah.

I find a gallery wall very stressful. I feel like it also is a thing where people always just have like a collection of like all of this random art. And they're like, one day I will make the gallery wall, but most people don't do it. So again, I think the reason I like the cork board or the sheet metal is because it's elevated, but it's like changeable. Yeah, it's frictionless. Yeah. I feel like we're learning how much friction is important for all of these different things. Yeah, because we're all overwhelmed and tired.

So we've got to make all of our systems as easy as possible. Well, and this is something I say about wellness, period, is that wellness is a tool. If wellness is making your life worse, it's no longer wellness because wellness is a tool to feel better. So if you are getting stressed trying to feel better, you're not actually feeling better. Yes. And it feels like you're the same where you're like this decluttering, this organizing. It's all a tool to feel better. If it's making you feel worse, then it's not doing its job.

Yes. Thank you for saying that. Organization is not the means to an end. Nobody says, like, my big dream in life is to be organized. It's, I want to be organized so that I can dot, dot, dot. So I think, like, that could be a helpful prompt for people. And I've actually had some clients who don't care. And we've decided to throw in the towel on organizing for certain spaces because, like an artist, for example, I've had artists who are like, well, I want to know where my paint brushes are in my paint. But then I like this kind of mess and chaos and, muck. It makes me feel more creatively stimulated. Whereas for me, if I'm doing something creative, I need it to be like very structured and dialed. So people's brains also work differently. And I think there's a million different ways of being organized. It's not a one-size cookie cutter. You're organized when you have everything in clear labeled bins. Some people don't want to buy plastic.

It's about customizing it for you based on what your big life goal is. Okay, I want to do a few more kind of like problem things that people run into. Cars. My car is a disaster. Okay. What systems can I put into place in my car to make my car feel how I want it to feel? Okay, well, first tell me how is your car a disaster? Like what's going on in there? I'll drink a drink and then I'll leave the drink in there. I have like papers or I'll go hiking and I'll leave my hiking shoes in there, which I actually really like because then I can hike whenever, but then I just kind of have like shoes banging around the car. I'll go hiking. I'll wear a sweatshirt. I'll take the sweatshirt off. Then the sweatshirt stays in the car. I can keep going. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, okay, this is really interesting. So all of those are

habits, the habit of not taking the thing and putting it away when you're done. Yes, that is universal. Yeah. So here's what I would say. If you want your car to be clean and tidy, get a trunk organizer, so which is just kind of almost like an open series of totes with dividers in that you could decide, like what are the grab and go things that I want? Maybe I want. Maybe I want hiking, boots or yoga mat. What are the things that you do want to live in your car? And then with the things like the smoothie cup, you've just got to make a habit of like when I park. I do the one second scan of my car and I take it all into the house. What is, I mean, I don't know if you can answer this, but like what is my resistance to like the dishes in the dishwasher versus the sink, the stuff

going where it should go, taking that one extra step to put stuff where it should go? Well, you tell me, Like when you park the car and you're done with that. I'm tired. I want to get in the house. I want to like move on from that step of my life. Yeah. And does it bother you when it's in the car? Yeah, yeah.

I got my car detailed like three months ago. And I was like, I love this car. Like I love feeling clean. It makes me feel spacious. But in the moment, it's very hard for me to make myself do those things. Right. So your motivation to get on with your day is stronger than your motivation to have pristine car.

Yes. And I would love for somebody to just... It would have to reverse. It would have to... So I could have the clean and move on with my day. So you need a car cleaning robot or a system. Yeah, I would love that. Yeah, I mean, what's interesting, I think for me it's reversed, right?

My motivation to keep my car feeling good is stronger than the desire to get out of my car and keep moving. And so it's like a two-second thing in the brain, but it's like my brain is going like, ding, ding, ding, get these out because we want a clean car. And your brain is going, ding, ding, ding, we got to keep it moving. So I think it's almost like it is kind of a rewiring of your brain. And I think the way you change any habit is by getting consciousness of what the existing habit is, deciding what you want your new habit to be.

And then I'm big into a reward system. So like any time you do take the stuff in, you get a treat. whatever that looks like for you. I mean, I do that all through like tax season and all the things I don't like doing. I'm like, if I do this, then I'm going to go get an ice cream. I mean, it doesn't have to be a food-based reward, but like something I enjoy doing that's a little treat. It sounds like your motivation just isn't strong enough. That's interesting. You like the outcome of having a nice car, but you're not committed to having a nice car. That's interesting. So either I need to turn up my appreciation of having a clean car so that becomes motivating or I need to

an external motivation. Exactly. So anybody listening, if they have some sort of hurdle with implementing these systems, they need to either turn up what motivates them about having the system, having the routine, having the decluttered space, or they need to find some sort of motivation to tie to it. Exactly. It's like when I help somebody declutter and organize their home, typically what I hear, which is really interesting, is like we're all maintaining it now because we love how it feels so much. But before when it felt bad, they had no motivation. Because they weren't getting any reward or experience of how nice it was. It was just like, ugh. So I think for you, it's like you've got to remember how good it felt to have your car feel dialed. Okay, a few other

nitpicky things. How are we deciding what to let go of in terms of that? Because I have seen, like, people would be like, oh, just like put the stuff in a drawer. And I'm like, I don't know, people are being like, this table is sentimental to me. You know what I mean? Even though they don't like the table, like big stuff. So sentimental stuff, I think does call for a physical boundary. I'll give a personal example. Like my father died more than 10 years ago. I had to clean out his entire home and make decisions about what to keep. And everything was sentimental because it was my dad's, right? But I live in a small home. I ended up doing kind of an estimate of like, what do we have the capacity to keep in store in our tiny home with no storage? And I bought something like

eight bins, those plastic weather-proof totes. I went through his house with the lens of, does it make the cut to fit in one of my few bins? And that really helped me like that constraint because then it was like, okay, well, obviously I'm not going to just keep like random mugs or housewares. I'm going to keep the things that are irreplaceable, like his letters and his photos. And everything else got donated. And then even now, now that time is past, I've been able to be like, well, even having these things collecting dust in my basement isn't that meaningful. But I pulled out a few things that were the most meaningful and framed them and put them in my home and enjoy them. We've been talking a lot about the California fires and like,

what do you take in a fire? It's like one or two things from my dad that mean everything. And I don't even really know what's in the rest of the bins at this point. So I think the less you keep the more meaning it takes on, the more valuable it feels. So I really like the hack for people of like one from a collection. So say like you inherit an entire China set from your grandma, but you don't use China. And it doesn't really make sense for your life. So maybe you take one teacup and you store your jewelry in it. And then it reminds you of your grandma. But you don't have to have all the stuff that doesn't really mean anything or have functionality. I also love like you were like put your jewelry in the teacup or put the letters on display. Like so many of these

sentimental things just sit in boxes where we don't interact with them and we don't get to feel those feelings, which is ostensibly why we're keeping them. So I love the idea of bringing them into your life. It's like bringing your grandma or your dad into your life today, which I just find so beautiful. Yeah. And people will see like I have a framed, he had a recipe for gourmet mac and cheese that I have framed. And people see it in our kitchen and they ask about it. And like my kids ask about it. And so it is a way of honoring him, whereas we're so used to just shoving things in boxes. And then it's like, it's not really honoring the thing or the person. And we can only do that with so many things. My kids each have like a treasure box, which is like their most meaningful

things. And I limit it to one. So the dream is when they go off to college, I'm like, here's your box of treasures instead of here's your like 32 boxes. Or instead of like when you come home for break and they're like, okay, we want you to clear out your whole room. And you're like, what? I just wanted to hang out and watch TV. Oh, I know. I know. Are there any other myths about decluttering that you want to bust? That you're going to do it once and be done is a myth. Life is not static. Life keeps going. We're never going to not buy anything. We're never going to stop receiving gifts. We're never going to stop changing or evolving as a human. So I think having systems in place for that maintenance so that you never get to a point where things feel truly unmanageable. For me,

it's like a seasonal sweep of our home to do a drop off or we always clean out our kid stuff before our holidays or their birthday because we know they're getting an influxive gift. So kind of having guardrails in place so that you can keep that equilibrium in your home, as opposed to being like, I'm going to do it once and then it's done forever. Sadly, that's not the case, but I can say being on the other end of like decluttering for years and kind of truly getting to my baseline, I don't really feel like I spend much time organizing or decluttering now. I spend more time just being in my home and enjoying it. So I think that's more the goal as opposed to having like some sort of picture perfect, you know, editorial, organizational holy grail.

Can you leave us with just one homework assignment, something that anybody can do as soon as they turn off this podcast to begin to feel some of the benefits of decluttering and organizing in their own lives? I'd love to leave you with a prompt. I would love you to take a piece of paper and make a line down the middle and on one side make a list of things you want more of in your life, maybe things that have been neglected that you're hungry for. And on the other side, write down things you want less of in your life. And that could be as broad as like toxic relationships or it could be as simple as like scrolling the news. But I think starting with that point of clarity before you even think about decluttering or

organizing is really going to set you up for success. I love that. You could even put it like by your computer. So when you're tempted to buy something, how does it line up with the items on that list? Exactly. Yeah. That's amazing. I love it.

Can you tell us a little bit in your own words about your beautiful new book? Oh, yeah. My new book is called Lifestyle and it draws on my experience as an organizer. but it gets into the realm of your entire life. So whereas my first two books were all about the home and how to edit and organize, this is really digging into how do you edit your relationships, your calendar, your career, how do you organize the parts of your life that you really want to tend to, those things you want more of, and how do you let go and kind of release yourself from the clutter,

the mental clutter, and the obligation and the responsibilities that you want less of. So again, I am an impatient person. So it's like all small wins and quick actions for the busy person to take to feel a little mentally lighter and that they have more of the things that they want and they crave actively in their lives. Yeah, it's so interesting. When I heard about your book, I was like, that's an interesting combo. And then I was reading through it and I was like, oh, it totally makes sense that all the principles of organizing, decluttering, making these systems in your home would extend to all of these other parts of your life. and seeing it through that framework and perspective is just such a different way of looking at these things. Yeah, it's, I mean, it took me 15 years to figure it out because I was like, God, I'm really good at editing and organizing my home, but my life feels very cluttered.

And it was this kind of light bulb moment where I had some imposter syndrome around like, I'm an organizing expert, but my life feels kind of frantic. The lightbulb moment was like, well, what if I apply my own tools for the home to my life? So I started looking at everything through that lens of like, is it adding value or is it clutter? Like how many credit cards do I want to have? How many subscriptions do I want to have? And really like auditing my life through that lens, I'm walking the walk because I had to take myself through this whole process. Love it.

Well, thank you so much. It's a great book. And I really appreciated this conversation. Oh, this was so fun. Thank you. Unfortunately, that is all for this episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Waw. If you enjoyed this episode, I would so appreciate if you would share it with somebody that

you think would love it too, whether it's somebody who loves this kind of stuff, loves organizational content routine systems, or somebody who is like me before this episode where they hated it and they were bad at it and perhaps they really need this little introduction into this stuff into their lives. I really appreciate every single person who is out there sharing episodes of the podcast. This is how the podcast grows. this is how we are able to produce amazing content for you. And I just appreciate it so much. So thank you to everybody copying the links and sending them on your group chats and your

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You will never have to miss one. You'll never have to go searching for the podcast anywhere. And also, friendly reminder, you can now watch full video episodes on YouTube and on Spotify, too. And remember to head over to Liz Moody. Substack.com to sign up for our newsletter, the takeaway. You're going to get key action steps for each episode, plus tons. of bonus content that you cannot find anywhere else. You can also come hang out on Instagram. I am at Liz Moody. I share tons of inspiring and always very, very real content and exactly how I

use everything that we learn on the podcast in my real life. Okay, I love you and I will see you on the next episode of the Liz Moody podcast. Oh, just one more thing. It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, a psychotherapist, or any other qualified professional.