Diana Rene: 0:06
You're listening to the Decluttered Mom Podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene. And in 2017, I had my second daughter, and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home. 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.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Decluttered Mom podcast. My name is Diana Rene, and I am your host. If you have been a longtime listener, I hope you love this episode. If you maybe just stumbled upon this episode, my name is Diana, and I have been helping busy moms now since 2018, which I'm terrible at math, but that's a very long time. Um and I really, really truly love what I do. I am so thankful that I get to do what I do, and I have several courses that can help you, but I'm also here for this free content here on the podcast and over on Instagram.

And so today we're gonna talk a little bit about decluttering burnout. And this is going to be part helpful information, but also part just pep talk because sometimes we just need a pep talk. It's not gonna be a super long episode, but decluttering burnout is real. What is it? Why does it happen? Um, and how do you recover from it, right?

And let's be clear like there's actual like real like burnout in your life. That's very different. This is more like you're just sick and tired of decluttering. You're trying to declutter your house, you're trying to get it back in order, you're trying to feel like you have control over it again, and you just feel like you've hit a brick wall, you can't do anymore, and you're done. Which is a tough spot to be in because you don't want to be done because you're not where you, your house isn't where you want it to be. Like you still don't feel calm in your house, you still don't feel organized, you still feel like you're losing things all the time, you still feel like you are losing patience and yelling at your kids because you're just so sick and tired of the mess constantly.

You're tired of being the only one who not only sees the mess, but does anything about it. And that's real. Those are real feelings. Moms in general typically take on more of the household responsibility, and that's not only the actual physical labor of running the home, but it's all of the mental labor that goes into it as well. It's all of the mental decisions, it's all of the mental fatigue. And it's just a lot. It's a lot. And so I want to say that to you. I want to validate that for you. If you are feeling overwhelmed in your home, if you're feeling like nobody else cares, uh, if you're feeling like it's all on your shoulders, uh, you're not alone. That's so common now. But also it's it's terrible. It's it's not fun and you're not imagining it. Like it's very real in most households, unfortunately.

And so when you're decluttering, it's really easy to get going and get started and feel good. Like you get like a dopamine hit, right? From like clearing a space, even if it's like one drawer, you feel good about it. Have you ever like decluttered a drawer and like you find yourself opening that drawer way more than you ever did for like a year before? But it's just like it's so nice to see it. It feels so good. I want that for you for your whole home.

And that takes time, that takes energy, that takes effort. Unfortunately, I wish it didn't. I wish I could just like wave a magic wand or snap my fingers and have the entire home feel like that magic drawer that you decluttered, but the reality is it is a time-consuming process that is not linear. Like you don't just like start at the beginning and go up, up, up, up, up. It unfortunately, again, unfortunately, is up and down. And you're making progress and someone gets sick, and you're making progress, and the dishwasher breaks, and now you're in like renovation because it flooded. Like I've been there, unfortunately. So there's always going to be something that starts to pull you back down. It's not gonna be where you start and a couple weeks later you finish, and there's never been any issues, and you've just like gone through it seamlessly. Like that that doesn't happen very often.

And so we're also busy. We are also very busy. And so it can be hard to find the time, and it might be taking you longer than you ever wanted it to take. Um, and so you get to a point where like the newness of it has worn off, like it's not as exciting, it doesn't, it's not like as fun in a way. It just isn't, it's just like, ugh, okay. I don't want to do that. And I get that. So it can almost make you like even resent your house and make you hide from like the projects that you want to do because you just it gives you like analysis paralysis where like you don't even know where to begin anymore because you're just you're so over it.

And so there's a couple things at play here normally when you have begun decluttering in your home and you hit this wall, right? You probably have decision fatigue, is the first one. When we're decluttering, we make a lot of decisions. And I read recently, I don't know if this is like if this was scientifically researched, but I read in an article that the average adult makes 35,000 remotely conscious decisions in a day. Now, that does not mean like, should I make a sandwich for lunch or should I make pasta for lunch? It can be like anything that your brain has to decide on, right? Like, do I turn left? Do I turn right? Like there's so many like little tiny decisions that are happening, even if we think of them as being on like auto, like they're not like our brains are still thinking, right? They're still making conscious decisions, even if we're not consciously aware of those decisions we're making.

So I would argue that if that's the average of adult, a mom is making way more because we normally typically are responsible for a lot of things with our kids, with our household, with the family, with all of the above, right? And so that's a lot of decisions. Then you want me to like sit through and sort through a pile of our stuff that I don't know if I should let it go or not, and sit through and like make these hard decisions and like have all of these emotional things come up for me. Like the person that gave this to me has since passed. So, like, aren't I a bad person if I let go of this? Or like, what if I need this later? Or um, this was kind of expensive. So even though we're not using it, like it feels silly to let go of it, and maybe it's gonna go on a landfill, and I feel really guilty about that.

And so it's like heavy decisions constantly when we're decluttering. It's not normally lighthearted decisions, it's normally like there's so much emotion that comes into play when we are looking at our physical items. And so when we already have that baseline of decision fatigue in our daily lives, and then we add in the decision fatigue of decluttering, no wonder you burn out, right? And so knowing how to handle those, those emotional objections that come up within you as you're picking up a sweater and you're trying to decide whether or not you need this or you actually want this in your home, being armed with like how to handle that emotional objection and whether it's really truly something that you need to listen to or it's just something making you scared of letting go. That's important, right? Um, because it's going to cut down on that decision fatigue.

Another hard thing when it comes to decluttering is sometimes we're just kind of all over. We're like squirrel brain, right? Like we start decluttering in the bathroom, cabinet, one of the shelves, and then the next thing we know, we're decluttering in the kitchen and then in the basement, and like we're kind of all over. And because of that, there's no real wins. Like there's no, there's no like true space in our home where we're like, whoa, look at the difference in this room.

And that can really cut down on motivation because if we are working really hard and we're spending a lot of time and energy and we are not seeing the fruition or outcome of our hard work, that's discouraging. And as humans, we need encouragement and motivation to keep us going, especially when it's something with that's that's not something we really even want to be doing in the first place, right?

So, like making sure that we are completing a space before moving to the next one. And if we are able to start in less sentimental areas to begin with, that is going to be a big plus also.

So um, these are just a few things that I see over and over again when people are trying to declutter and they're having a hard time with it. As I said before, I have several courses that can help you because we have we have Minimalish Starts Here, which is my full decluttering course. And it goes through like every single step in your room or in your home, room by room, how to know which room to go through first, how to tackle these emotional obstacles, and much more than that.

But even if you don't go through anything that I have, like my course, know that if you are decluttering and you run into those two very big obstacles, those are things you have to address and you have to figure out. Otherwise, it's just not gonna happen. You're gonna run out, you're gonna burn out, you're gonna hit that wall. Um, and it's just gonna be too difficult to get your home to where you want it to be.

So in the show notes, I have a link to a free video that I have for you. And this is just kind of an intro to my brain and how I think about decluttering and how I can help you through that process also. So feel free to grab that in the show notes.

Um, but again, either way, whether you're doing this with me or on your own, those are some things to make sure you take in mind and you figure out before you even begin so that it doesn't hit you halfway and really discourage you as you are going.

All right, you guys, I hope this was helpful for you. I will see you in next week's episode. 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 me at the.decluttered.mom and send me a DM to say hi. 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.