Ep 34 - 8 Reasons I Love Decluttering & Organizing

Welcome to today's podcast episode where we'll be diving into the eight reasons why I love decluttering and organizing. Now, I know it may seem obvious that I'm interested in this topic since it's my profession and what I talk about all the time. But what you may not know is that I wasn't always an organized person. In fact, I used to be chronically disorganized. However, through practice and learning, I developed the necessary skills to organize my life, and now I want to share my knowledge with you. These skills have made a dramatic, life-changing impact on my life, and I believe they can do the same for you. In this post, I'll share how decluttering and organizing have changed my life and how it can do the same for you. So let's dive in!

You can listen right here, on Apple, Amazon, Spotify or you can read the transcription below. Enjoy!

Welcome, welcome. Today I am talking about eight reasons why I love decluttering and organizing, and I know it's kind of a given that this is something that I'm interested in.

Obviously, that's my profession. It is what I talk about here all the time. But my goal for this episode is to dive into some of the reasons why, because as I've mentioned before if you're new, you may not know this about me. I was not always an organized person, and in fact, I used to be a chronically disorganized person, so for me to have the skillset under my belt and then to teach other people how to do it too is a dramatic shift from how I started and can't, stress is enough not.

This is not anything that comes naturally to me at all. These are all learned skills, but once I learned them, they made amazing shifts in my life that have been so dramatic and so completely life-changing and have made me want to keep this skill set near and dear to my heart.

Keep practicing on it, and is it a perfect practice? No, because perfection is a myth, guys, right? So we're not worrying about perfection, but what we are worrying about is having a toolkit that we can return to again and again, so that when things feel out of whack, we can go to this toolkit and say, okay, how do I do X, Y, Z?

Or what would be the thing that would help me at this moment? Those are the skills that we can return to keep things simplified in our life. So I'm going to talk about some of the reasons why I love it so much, kind of how it has changed my life, and hopefully, it'll be things that may help click on your end to say, oh yeah, I want that, or That's important to me, or that would be a really lovely shift to have in my life. If maybe you've had it and you've kind of fallen off the bandwagon a little bit, maybe this is something that helps you get back on.

number eight - Get that storage space you've been craving.

So, so often I hear from people that are talking about the space that they live in and whether it is a smaller apartment or a bigger house, a lot of times people are frustrated that there's not enough storage space.

And the number one thing that you can do to create more storage space is to start with decluttering because. 9.9%. 9.9 times out of 10. There we go. 9.9 times out of 10. You are going to find that you're going to be able to find the space that you've been craving by letting go of the things that you no longer use, want, need, or love.

If you have heard me talk for any length of time, you know that I am a broken record on this specific tip, but I have found it to be true time and time again. I can't tell you how many times in you know, a cabinet, for instance, and every time this happens, I'm like, just so you know, this happens all the time.

So if this has happened to you or if you started decluttering, and it does happen to you, know that you are not alone. We have found whole cabinets of space just by reexamining what we have been saying to ourselves. Do I give a crap about this? Do I use it? Do I want it? Do I need it? And do I love it?

And it doesn't need to fit. I mean, it just needs to fit like one of those. But it could be a gift that somebody gave you and you've had for 20 years, but you don't care about it. And if I said to you, If I gave you a permission slip to just let this go, guilt-free, would you want to? And if the answer is yes, that's a good item to reexamine.

It could be things like, you know, paper bags or plastic bags. It's not that those things aren't useful, but the quantity can be the thing that needs to be re-examined. So maybe it's good for you to have a few bags on hand. What's the limit there though? Because if you have 200 bags, it may be time to declare bankruptcy on the bags and get your space back.

We have found whole cabinets of. By letting go of plastic bags and paper bags that are all empty from the store, that are just accumulating over time. So when I walk into a space, I'm thinking to myself, I'm walking in thinking that everything is up for grabs. Doesn't mean that I'm trying to convince people to let go of everything, but mentally I'm not assuming that anything needs to stay.

Because time and time again, people have surprised me with the things that it turns out they don't care about. Sometimes I might think somebody might not care about something and they do. And that's important too. But right now we're talking about things like recently one of my clients is ready, ready to let go of an appliance that most people might want to keep, but they don't care about it.

So we're going to let it go. And it's big and it's bulky and it's heavy, and they're going to get some room back. So get that storage space even craving by letting go of things that you don't use, want, need, or love.

Number seven - when things just CLICK… magic happens!

I don't know why this isn't number one. I bet I put something better at number one, but at number seven, when things click, your whole life changes.

I love that. I do my notes and then I'll let a few days go by and then I'll do the recording. So the next thing I put in my notes is that this is only lower on the list because I wanted to talk about it early. And Yes, that's true. That is why I put it. Thank you, past me. So there is this point that comes in the decluttering and organizing process where you are ready to make a change, and I see this all the time. It can feel really, really hard, and then things click and you're on fire and you're saying goodbye to things left and right. You're making space in your home and you're making decisions, and you're making decisions at a much faster pace than you ever before. It's like magic. And when you reach that point, I swear to you, your whole life will never be the same. And it's because, on the back end, you've reached that magic moment where you are looking at things that could potentially come into your house as possible future clutter. And that is really like the click and the change when you are realizing the organization is only going to take you so far. There's only so much that you can do with organizing, and if you are feeling overwhelmed with too much stuff, the answer isn't going to be organizing as the first step. The answer as first step is going to be reducing the amount of stuff in your home.

That's a really hard pill to swallow. I realize that, and I know that you might be listening. And saying that like I'm, I'm casually saying it, and it's not. I understand the gravity of the situation. It's really, really hard, and getting to the place where you can let go of things quickly.

It's tough and it takes, it takes some, some muscle to get there. And what I mean by that is the decluttering process, that decision-making process, it's like a muscle, like when you go to the gym, when you go day one, day one sucks, sucks. Day two sucks. Day three sucks. But when you catch someone who's been going to the gym for three weeks in a row, I'm not saying this has, this momentum lasts forever. You might catch 'em five months in and they're just, they're, they skipped the gym and you found them, you know, at the milkshake store. That's where you'll find me sometimes.

That's, you know, that's fine. We all need a milkshake now and then, but, When you catch someone and they're like three weeks into going to the gym consistently, they're on fire. They're, they're telling you there's no place that they love more than the gym, and they are, they're in it and they are doing it.

It doesn't mean it's going to be a perfect practice from here on out, but it does mean that they have found the fire and that it's clicked for them and they know how to get into that zone. When you get into that, Nothing can stop you. And I promise you, even if your practice isn't perfect from there on out, you've got the skills.

You know what you want and you know how to get there. And that is, that's when it clicks. And I'm, when people reach that moment like I could not, I literally will never be more thrilled for you because your whole life is going to change and it's not going to be over. But you've got this man, you have got this.

And I am stoked. When people reach that moment, it's the only thing I ever want for them. If you're feeling that, let me know. If you're almost there, let me know. Let's talk about it.

Number six - you find your keys

People might listen to this and think, this is personal. This is not about you.

I promise. This has been coming up a lot lately. A lot. I've had folks lose their keys, you know, for an hour, for a day, for months. It could be a set of keys they don't use very often. It could be a set of keys they use every day. The point is, when you lose your keys in your home, it is incredibly infuriating.

Nothing, nothing can bring you down faster, and it's been coming up a lot. So again, this isn't personal because it's been happening left and right, and it's real. It's, I hate losing your keys if you declutter and organize just so that you know you have a spot for your keys and you know where they are so you can stop losing your damn keys. That's all I ever want for you, honestly.

Number five- You can breathe easier

Let me tell you about dust bunnies. Dust bunnies hide in the corners. Dust bunnies hide on the surfaces. Dust bunnies are hard to see because the clutter hides them. And so many times as we are decluttering rooms or what we call what we like to call Doom Rooms. I didn't come up with this acronym, you'll hear me say this, but I can't take credit for it.

Doom piles. It can be a doom bag, a doom bin, and a lot of times it's a doom room. And I love helping people in rooms that have become essentially unusable because it's the place where you've just been throwing crap in closing the door and walking away. I get it.

If that's a place in your home, you are not alone at all. I love helping people sort through those rooms and use them for the things that light them up. For creating a guest room, for creating a craft room, for creating a side hustle, for doing just their hobbies. For just reducing the stress.

I love clearing out those rooms with people. And along the way, we're going to get rid of those dust bunnies because they're hiding in the corners. They're hiding between boxes. They're hiding in the crevices. And if things like allergies are really tough in your life, then I would love to have decluttering and organization be like, To have you be especially motivated to declutter and get organized so that you can find these, these families of dust bunnies in your house and get 'em on out of there so that you can literally breathe easier.

Number four - save time

So once you have decluttered and organized a space, you can reset it versus starting from scratch. When you go to Tidy up, what this means is that you're not having to deal with the clutter as far as making decisions like does it stay or go? Where is its home? Once you've decluttered and organized the things that are staying, they're staying and you've created homes, they just need to be put back, and that takes a hell of a lot less brain power than that initial purging and system creation.

The magic is in the resets. I have a blog post where that's the title. The magic is in the resets. Taking that, taking that time, setting your timer for the 15-minute calls, 15-minute Tidy, set that timer, put things back in their home that can, that's just absolutely life-changing. Magic. Thank you Marie Kondo for that phrase too.

Because Things are just going back, you're not making those decisions again. It's not to say that clutter will never enter your home, or potential clutter never comes in through the door because it is, but you have the skill set to decide more quickly over time. Does it stay or does it go? And once the systems are in play, Does it belong to an existing system or do we need to create a new home?

But all in all the resets are just so much easier. Like when you have a mail system in place and you're deciding what happens to today's mail and it's six items or less, it's a hell of a lot easier than going through 300 pieces of mail and deciding what stays and what goes and what has an action item, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

So it's time on the front end. Yep. You save time on the back end because you're not having to reinvent the wheel. You're not having to do that. That clutter shuffle, which is where you're taking those doom piles and moving 'em from, you know, the kitchen to the bedroom, to the living room, and back again.

Things have a home and you know what stays and what goes. So it's the reset.

Number three - These are skills that you can take anywhere.

So it's not just you learning how to work the current space that you're in, but how to utilize space in general so that when you enter a new space, you can look at it and say, okay, what space is being unused?

How is this helping? How is this system serving me or not serving me? What can I do to tweak it? What can I try? How can I change things? These are skills that you'll use in any home you ever live in. They're skills you can use to help a friend with their space. They're skills you can take to the office. They're skills you can teach your children. They're just skills that you take anywhere.

Number two- save money

And that brings us to number two. You're going to save. Because you're not rebuying things that you couldn't find. This has been a huge game changer for me, and I would add to this also. You're not buying things that can potentially end up.

As clutter in six months, you're more strategic about what you allow in your home. You're more thoughtful about your purchasing versus mindless spending. I say that as somebody who used to mindlessly spend a lot. This is not a judgment on anyone. Except for myself because, and I've said this before, when I went through my decluttering and organizing journey, a lot of it went hand in hand with the financial journey because I needed to, I needed to get everything in my life under control.

And what I found when I started implementing a budget that really went hand in hand with my decluttering is that I found a lot of money was going out the door at three places. That I could walk to from my office. Those places were Starbucks, Taco Bell, and Walgreens. So again, this is all firsthand stuff, but was I buying a crap ton of lip glosses and nail polish from Walgreens that I didn't use because I already had 20 of each?

Was a ton of my money just going away in the form of coffee and baked goods from Starbucks? Yes, absolutely. Am I obsessed with Taco Bell? Maybe. Maybe. But when you Are having more foresight before purchasing something. And when you're not having to buy things because you can't find an item because it's lost in your home, those two things will help you save money over time and those two things will change your life.

And I say that as someone whose life has been changed a hundred percent. Yeah.

Number One - Reduce Stress

And finally, the number one reason why we declutter and why we organize is to reduce our stress because clutter is tied to cortisol. If it ever feels that way, it's because it is, it's backed by science. They have done a study on it.

I will make sure to link the study in the show notes. They have linked stress levels to cortisol levels, which are the stress hormone to the clutter levels in your home. And so if you feel like clutter stressing you out is because it is. And stress can be, they call it the silent killer, right?

It's not, it's not a joke. It's not. A thing that's no big deal. It's not just incredibly difficult to deal with. It affects our health, it affects our mental health, it affects our physical health, it affects our blood pressure, it affects everything. So if nothing l nothing else, let's go on this journey to reduce our stress levels and have our homes be.

A source of peace, a source of calm, a source of relaxation, and joy, a place where we can do the things that we love, where we can spend time with the people that we love, our pets. More time for snuggles. More time for enjoying food together, and breaking bread. More time for just relaxing and less time looking at piles of crap, feeling frustrated.

So I am here for you, friend. I am here for you on this journey. I am sending you lots and lots of love along the way, and I will talk to you more very, very soon.

We would love to make sure that your questions are answered for a question of the week or a future episode. So we love to hear from you. DM (on Instagram) or you can always email me, carly@tidyrevival.com. We love hearing from you. We love hearing your thoughts about the pod, and thank you so much for hanging out.

If you wanna learn more about how I can help you, feel free to head over to tidyrevival.com to learn how I work with people one-on-one or in our private community. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe so you'll always have access to the latest episode.

We would also love to hear your takeaways. Feel free to tag us on Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok. The Tidy Revival podcast is written and hosted by me, Carly Adams, and edited by Brittany McLean. Title Song Maverick is by Dresden The Flamingo.

and until next time, remember that…