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[00:00:00] Diana Rene: Welcome to another episode of the Decluttered Mom podcast. I am super excited that you guys are here. It is almost the end of January for me right now when you're listening to us to this. It'll be early February, but I think that 2023 is off to a start. , I didn't say a bad start. I didn't say a good start.

[00:00:22] I'm getting over being sick again. It's just, it feels never ending with young kids in school. Right. It's like, I remember our pediatrician one time telling me like, our kids are very lovable, like Petri dishes when they go to school, . That's so true. Because if one of them, if both of them are not sick, then at least one of them is, or I am, it feels like these days.

[00:00:45] But all that to say that the new year is here and gone. It's already almost the second month of the year and. . I want to remind you that anything that we talked about with resolutions with what you're going to [00:01:00] work on this year, you can kind of create your own new fresh start anytime you want to, but I think anytime we hit a new month, that's a great time to do it because.

[00:01:11] Again, we can kind of like trick our brain into thinking like, oh, this is new. This is the beginning. And so it kind of helps us to do like a reset if we are looking for that reset. You're listening to the Decluttered Mom Podcast. A podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Renee, and in 2017 I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in.

[00:01:38] Okay. Not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me over the next 10 months. I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings, and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks, and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show.

[00:02:05] So I took a, like mini social media break over the last like five or six days while I've been sick. Honestly, just because I like basically lost my voice and so it was really hard to show up on social media in a way that I like to, and. I just kind of disappeared for a few days and then last night I was laying in bed and I was kind of just checking in with my dms on Instagram.

[00:02:31] Cause I planned on coming back to Instagram today. And you guys, when I tell you the number of dms I had, With one topic. It was like bananas. Okay, so I had several memes and Instagram stories all related to one subject sent to me over and over and over and over. [00:03:00] Can you guess what that might? , it was the quote from Marie Kdo who, if you're not familiar with Marie Kdo she has she had a book, like one of the most.

[00:03:13] Like, I don't, new Year's, New York time bestseller, like sold the most books. Had a Netflix show made about it all about decluttering and tidying was her big thing is just being tidy. Right? And she is like very much a minimalist and she is very organized and very tidy and not really. We don't really follow the same methods, which I've talked about on here before, but when people think decluttering, they tend to think of Marie Kondo.

[00:03:45] It kind of goes hand in hand. And she had some ki type of quote come out that said basically that she like had given up on tidying after having three kids. And the world went crazy because I got all these messages on Instagram [00:04:00] about it. . Like I was driving in my car yesterday and DJ was talking about it and it was really interesting how people perceived what she had to say and how it was spun to kind of like, I don't know, make ourselves feel better.

[00:04:19] Like, ha she was wrong. Like it wasn't all along, like she didn't know what she was talking about. You know what I mean? and the DJ specifically, and I don't, I don't even remember what radio station it was or who, what her name was or anything like that, but sh and, and this is not an exact quote, but she basically said like the queen of tidying has given up because she has three kids now.

[00:04:43] And so I feel like. Basically validated that when my house, like I can just let my house be messy now because even the queen of tidying can't keep her house clean. And I found this really, really interesting. I think that [00:05:00] when we look at. People, authors, speakers, influencers who have like immaculately tidy homes.

[00:05:09] We wonder, number one, is it really that tidy? Right. Or is it just like a, a like one of those situations where they're like pushing all the stuff out of the way out of this. Frame and just taking pictures of what looks good. B is there, how much help do they have? Do they have people who come to clean their home every few days are, do they have.

[00:05:31] A lot of extra childcare. Do they have a private chef that's cleaning, cooking for them and cleaning up after themselves? Like you, you start to wonder like how much help do they have? How much do they invest in helping them maintain. That, that image of like a perfectly tidy and spotless and museum like home.

[00:05:53] You guys know if you have followed me on Instagram for any point in time, I always say I don't want my [00:06:00] house to look like a museum and I don't want Pinterest. Perfect. Right? I want function, I want functional, and sure, I like things to be pretty if I can, but I would take functional over pretty any day of the week if it meant that I still had my time and it meant that I still had my energy and it meant that I still had my patience because to me there is no, like, there's no price.

[00:06:27] I wanna pay. To have my home looking like a tidy museum. If that means that I am not able to spend time with my kids if I'm not able to do the hobbies that I've created, if I'm not able to cultivate and foster that. That culture in my home that I want to portray to my kids and to my spouse and just the life I want to live, right?

[00:06:54] Like decluttering to me is about getting that time back. It's not about [00:07:00] investing more time and energy into something that is not sustainable. , and that's exactly what I think maybe happened with Marie Condo because she was very, very tidy and organized. Like everything, if you watch any of her shows or if you read her book or anything like that, things are organized on a micro level and clothes are put away in accordion folding and like everything takes time.

[00:07:32] To do, right? So if you have if you do, if it's, say it's Sunday and you do all the laundry for the week for the kids and for yourself, and you're putting clothes away, if you have to sit there and fold it, accordion style, which if you don't know what I'm talking about, just Google, like accordion clothes folding, it'll show you.

[00:07:51] But, or, or some people call it file folding too. That takes time. Does it look beautiful? Absolutely. A hundred [00:08:00] percent. , does it take a lot of time? Absolutely. A hundred percent. Would I rather throw my kids' pants into a drawer without folding them and have it take four seconds versus taking 10 minutes to accordion fold their pants that are gonna get wrinkled anyway, when they go in to grab the first one and then they throw everything around like that's me, right?

[00:08:27] So I have a different perspective. Than I have seen in a lot of true minimalist accounts and true minimalist influencers and authors because my goal is not to make my home really, really pretty and perfect. it is to make it organized. Yes. But I do that in a very like macro way and I do it in a way that does not require more time out of me.

[00:08:54] So the close is just kind of an example, right? But I think that when we see influencers [00:09:00] or authors that do live this like perfectly tidy life, we do wonder, right? And that, I think that's human nature. And then I think we look around at our own home and we wonder. Well, like, what the heck is wrong with me?

[00:09:15] Why can't my home be like that? Why can't I figure out how to. , the things that Marie Kondo is doing or any other minimalist influencer, why can't my home be like that? What is wrong with me? And I think we tend to like internalize that. And I think we do that with everything, not just home stuff, but like fitness influencers and, and like financial influencers.

[00:09:40] We look at what they excel at, like what is their life's passion and career. . And since we don't have that at the same level, we internalize it and we think what is wrong with. and that's like a story for another day where, where we just can't do that. We can't hold [00:10:00] ourselves accountable to the level of someone who is like doing that for their career.

[00:10:06] But I think with Marie Kondo and Tidying Up, we had a lot of people, we had like an entire generation of women that were home with their kids and are drowning in their home, and they see this. This, this perfect way of living in their home. And they were internalizing like, what is wrong with me? And then for her to come out and say like, I've given up on tidying up after I've had three kids.

[00:10:33] I think there is some validation in that. And I think it is like one of those things where it's like, yeah, like see, I wasn't like so bad after all, or I wasn't so messy after all. Or like I just. Kids prior to she did so, like I just knew it before she did. And I think that's okay. I think it's okay to feel that way, but I also think that like the, the pendulum has swung to the other end of it where it's like now we get to be messy.

[00:10:59] [00:11:00] And like, I think that consumer culture. Has always been there, but I think social media has like, just put it on steroids. And I think also like the, the invention of like mom influencers on social media that like Amazon influencers and target influencers and people that are showing you the things that you can buy every single day.

[00:11:23] That that has increased and, and also, What's the word? It has aided our ability to consume even more. And when we are consuming even more, we're just, we're making our lives harder. We, we like buy all these things to make our lives easier, and we think they're gonna make our lives easier. They're gonna make our lives happier, or we're gonna be more content.

[00:11:48] But in reality, we are. overloading our system. , we are bringing more things in than we can handle. And then we wonder why [00:12:00] our home is messy and why we feel overwhelmed. Because we just have too much. We have too much, right? Something I noticed in one of the articles that I read about Marie Condo's comments, and I wanna preface this too.

[00:12:14] I've said this on other podcasts where I've talked about other, other minimalist influencers or authors that Marie Kondo has changed millions of people's lives and her methods have worked for millions of people and they have helped so many people. So I am in no way putting her down or her methods down.

[00:12:35] We just have different methods and we, there's probably 8,000 different reasons for that. . I just want it to be clear that I'm not putting her down. I don't, I don't do that. I think she, I don't know her personally, , but she seems to be a wonderful person and I, she has clearly, she's passionate about what she does and she has clearly changed people's lives.

[00:12:57] And so just know that that I would never [00:13:00] do that. But this is, this is something interesting that in one of the articles I. She said, my home is messy, but the way I am spending my time is the right way for me at this stage of my life. But I want to to like take a second and pause because what is messy, right?

[00:13:20] Messy to me is probably different than it is to her. Messy to you is probably different than it is to her because she is someone who has lived in. A hundred percent pristine condition for years and wrote a book about it and became an expert in it and lived, breathed, ate, and slept tidying, right? So messy to her is probably still very, very tidy or clean to most people.

[00:13:55] Like for example, it says that she still cleans the bottom of her [00:14:00] shoes daily. Let that soak in , like she comes in from her home and she cleans the bottom of her shoes. So what messy to her may mean like leaving a water bottle on the counter. I don't know. I don't, I'm not in her home, so I don't know. But.

[00:14:18] Her, her definition of messy is probably very different than most people's mess, definition of messy. So I don't think that she has like fallen out of her systems and hasn't stayed true to her message. I think that she maybe has just relaxed, relaxed the intensity maybe, and she's still likely has a very, very tidy home.

[00:14:42] it just isn't tidy to her standards of like a hundred percent pristine excellence. Right? So, I don't know. Lots of thoughts here. And I just think it's interesting how now all of the Instagram posts that I've been [00:15:00] seeing are like, ha, I was right. Like I am going to live in my messy home. Now the other thing is, is that sometimes, or a lot of times we equate like messy and clean and those are our only two options.

[00:15:15] I have a messy home, like I have messes in my home. Why? Because I live in my home. Why? Because I have kids in my home that are living their lives in their home. My home is not a museum. My home is not tidy all the time. My home is not pristine. I have never portrayed it that way because it's important to me to be real on social media and what I show because I, I think people hear decluttering and they think.

[00:15:44] They think Marie Condo, they think pristine. They think file folding all of your underwear like . And that's not me, you guys. My message is that if we can just live with less, if we can get rid of the excess, then [00:16:00] life becomes easier. And that doesn't mean that we don't ever have messes. It doesn't mean that we don't have to do the dishes.

[00:16:07] It just means that we are giving ourselves a gift. of not always having to do extra to maintain the excess. Right. I'm curious what your thoughts are about this entire Marie Condo situation, how you perceived what she was saying or what the memes are all saying. Because I think it's a fascinating discussion and I'm sure we'll come back to it at some point, but I just wanted to kind of go through my thoughts on it and hopefully this was helpful to you in some way.

[00:16:40] Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories. And if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow [email protected] and send me a DM to say [00:17:00] hi.

[00:17:00] I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.