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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.

Diana Rene: 0:54

Today, I wanted to talk about a question I received on an Ask Me Anything that I did on Instagram. So every now and then on Instagram, I will put up a question box called ask me anything, and it's exactly what it sounds like. You can literally ask me anything. It doesn't necessarily mean I will answer everything, because I get some interesting questions on there sometimes. You guys usually followed by the block button, but most of the time they are nice questions and they're all over the map. They're about me personally, about my business, about decluttering, about systems, about parenting which I'm 100% not a parenting expert about anything, right? So ask me anything, exactly what it sounds like, and I really love doing them. Number one, just because it's fun it's fun. Number two, because I get to connect with you guys. I get to answer like your direct questions that you are dealing with, what you know, or if you're just interested about something, I'm able to kind of go through and answer those. So it's just a fun thing. But another nice aspect about it is that it gives me ideas for the podcast, because if I start to see like trends in questions and I'm like, hey, that is something that I should just expand on in the podcast, and so today's episode kind of was born from an Ask Me Anything.

Diana Rene: 2:20

So the question was my clutter is all stuff I've recently used. How do I minimize things that are used frequently? And I thought this was a very interesting question because she called her stuff that she uses clutter, and so what I told her in my response is okay, this is such an interesting question and I wish I could ask you several clarifying questions Without knowing the answers to those. I'll have to guess that the reason the items you are using feel like clutter is because they either A don't have a home and so they are out and in your face and space, or B they have a home, but there are other unused items taking up space in their home. It could also be that you are over-consuming, slash, overspending, so you are buying things and using them, so it feels like you are using everything, when in reality you are just buying so often that it's kind of tricking you. So that was my answer and that you know that is one of those things where, like I got the question and I was like, okay, this, like I really wish I could just reply and say, ask her like five different questions to make sure I understood totally, but without having that capability, that's what I wrote. Then I got countless DMs with like the mind blown emoji and like, oh my God, I never thought about it like this, and so I knew that I wanted to talk more about this.

Diana Rene: 3:51

So that first part where I said that I'll have to guess that the reason the items you are feeling like are clutter that you're using it's because they're either they don't have a home, so they are out and in your face and space, or B they have a home, but there are other unused items taking up space in their home. So let's talk about that first one. The don't have a home, so they are out and in your face and space. So if we have too much stuff in our home and even if we don't, if we just have stuff in our home but they don't have their own home and what I mean by that is every physical item that we bring into our homes should have a home. They should have a landing pad where they go. So my dresses go on the bottom hanging shelf in my closet and my tops go on that top hanging shelf in my closet, and my shoes that I don't wear every day go in the floor of my closet and the shoes that I wear, you know, at least once a week, go in the hallway closet downstairs by the door. So everything has a home right.

Diana Rene: 5:06

And if it doesn't, then that's where we can start to run into feeling like our home is out of control or feeling like we have a lot of clutter and we might like we. It might be clutter or it might be out of control, but we also just don't have a home for it and so it makes your. You visually see all this stuff out on the countertops, out on the floor, landing in piles, and it makes your brain like register as clutter or registered as mess, and it kind of like sends the alarm signals like this is messy, this is chaotic, like this is out of control, even if it might not be, even if it just needs to be adjusted, right. So there's that. But then there's also the possibility that there's just way too much stuff and they don't have a home, so, like the shoes don't really have a place to go, so they're kind of by the front door and by the kitchen and by the back door and in the mudroom and in the coat closet and in the bedroom, because they just don't really have like a specific place that they are supposed to land, when they are not being used. And when you combine that with too much stuff, then it does create chaos, right, it does create clutter and it does create that messy feel that just makes you feel like things are out of control. So that was the first thing that I was saying is that if they don't have a home, they're automatically going to feel like clutter. Even if it is not technically air quotes clutter, right, it's going to make you feel like it's clutter. Quotes clutter, right, it's going to make you feel like it's clutter. The second part of that maybe they do have a home, but there are other unused items taking up space in their home and so they're still not landing there.

Diana Rene: 6:52

So what I mean by that is, let's use that shoe example again. Right, so I have space in my closet for the shoes, but there's space for I don't know for the shoes, but there's space for I don't know like 10 pairs of shoes. And if you have 75 pairs of shoes, or even if you have 18 pairs of shoes, there's not enough space. There's something there that's already taking up space, that's limiting your ability to use that system that you set up for yourself by having that landing pad, and so the shoes are still ending up in the bathroom, by the kitchen, by the front door, by the back door, because you just don't really have that ability to put it where it's supposed to go.

Diana Rene: 7:35

You also don't have the system of putting it there, the habit of putting it there, just like when you move into a new house and you have to, like, decide where you're going to put everything right, and you're looking around the kitchen and you're like, shoot, where should I put the plates, where should I put the cups? Where should I put the silverware? Like, which drawer should I use for the utensils that I'm going to use for cooking? And you maybe like try it out for a little bit. You just kind of like wing it and put things where you think they should go. And then you're two months into living there and you're like I just really feel like the silverware drawer needs to go over here, because every time we're making dinner people are bumping into each other because there's not enough room by this drawer. We have the silverware in and we need to move it to this location so people can move more freely and get what they need. And that's driving me nuts at dinnertime when things are already kind of crazy.

Diana Rene: 8:30

So you decide to move it right, but you're like your habit is going to that other drawer. So you find yourself for that first week going automatically to the first drawer, even though you've moved it to this new drawer. That's because you've built that habit, and so same thing back to the shoes example. If we have the space for the shoes, the home for the shoes, and then we don't have too many things for that space, we automatically are going to be more likely to put the shoes where they go. Just take the shoes off and put them where they belong. We're more likely to do that if the space is available to us and then the more we do that because we're more likely to do it every day and we continue to do it every day. That habit is built and so this is not a podcast about shoes. This is just an example, but it's a really great one to keep going back to an example, but it's a really great one to keep going back to. This is for everything in the house. This is everything.

Diana Rene: 9:26

If I need my stapler and my tape dispenser and my whiteout and my paper clips and I need them to be at my desk in my office at home and I don't have the routine of making sure they go back there or my kids borrow them and they don't have the routine of making sure they go back there or my kids, you know, borrow them and they don't have the routine of putting them back there at the home. That causes frustration, right. It causes frustration, it causes irritation and it just makes your day not go nearly as smooth. Time-wise and just energy feeling-wise, right. Time-wise and just energy feeling-wise, right. Okay.

Diana Rene: 10:09

So then we go into the idea that it could be that you are over-consuming, slash, over-spending, so you are buying things and using them so it feels like you are using everything, when in reality you are just buying so often that it's kind of tricking you and you guys. I think this one is very prevalent. We are in a time where, from your phone, with one tap, you can pretty much buy anything. I mean, most websites have things installed on them so that you can use Apple Pay or you can use Google Pay, and you can just type a button or not type a button, but tap a button and it's like ordered, like buy now and you don't have to worry about it. Right, it has never been easier to buy stuff than it is right now, and not only like it's not just on your computer, it's literally in your hands, on your phone, that you're on a lot of the day, Right, and so it's just very easy to overspend and overconsume. Another thing is like there's so many websites now like that you can buy things super, super, super cheap, and so it's easy to overbuy when you can buy like 20 outfits for the same price that maybe you could buy one outfit from a different retailer, and so there's all of these things that make it very easy for us to overconsume. There's a lot of big brands that spend a lot of big money in figuring out how to make it so that someone that sees their website or sees their storefront is going to be more likely to buy more things from them at once. And so when that's happening, when we are just getting Amazon packages daily to our house and because it's so easy to over consume and overspend and we maybe like, get that outfit and we try it on one time and then we wear it like two weeks later one time and then we don't wear it again for a month, it still feels like something that we use. Does that make sense If we like?

Diana Rene: 12:21

I think back to when I was a kid and our family did not have a lot of money and we had like a very set when it was back to school. We had a very set amount of money that we were able to spend on school clothes and shoes. Like, we got one pair of shoes for the school year and it was up to us to make sure that it stayed. It didn't fall apart. The shoes didn't fall apart. We didn't mess them up because we knew that that was like. Those were our shoes for the year.

Diana Rene: 12:52

We went to okay, we went to Mervin's Midwest Are you here, like I'm curious? Actually was Mervin's other places in the Midwest. I don't know if that was just a Midwest thing or if it was just a 90s thing. Don't know if that was just a Midwest thing or if it was just a 90s thing, but we went to Mervin's and JCPenney, which we called Penny's, and that's where we got the majority of our clothes. Like my friends were wearing Abercrombie, I was not Like I was only wearing Abercrombie if it was gifted to me from a friend.

Diana Rene: 13:23

And so we had this limited resource right, and so we bought specific clothing items and we only got enough. We didn't ever get like more than enough, we just got enough. And that's not a criticism of my parents or anything like that, it's just it was what it was right. And so when we got like the set number of outfits and the one pair of shoes at the beginning of the year, we knew exactly what we were going to be using and we were going to be using it all the time. Now it's like if a kid gets all of these outfits and they're going shopping once a month and they're getting new outfits and their mom is ordering them all these new clothes all the time. They might wear something once or twice and so it feels like it's being used.

Diana Rene: 14:14

Is that making sense? Even if we have a smaller number of items that actually are being used all the time, our brain can kind of trick us and make us feel like everything that we bought in the last five months is being another air quotes. I need to really start doing video podcasts so you can see me do my little air quotes. So I think, oh my gosh, now I've totally lost my train of thought. But basically, anytime we bring in something new to our home and we get that like dopamine hit of like ooh, this is new, this is cool, that goes away really fast, right, but the idea or the feeling that this is something we use just because it is like so recently brought into our home sticks. So hopefully that makes sense. Again, maybe I need to like draw a graph, I need to do a video podcast so I can have like a whiteboard and make it make sense.

Diana Rene: 15:07

But the but the main thing I want you to take away from this is that there are many things that can make us feel like we are using our clutter and we just don't have any control over that, right, but there are many, many things that trick our brain into thinking that the things that we are using is clutter, so there's no way, like there's no way that we could get rid of it, right, because we're using it. And so what do you mean? You want me to declutter? What do you mean? I have too much stuff in my home that doesn't make sense because I use it, and a lot of times it's just not true. So hopefully this helps you to just kind of like look around, look at some of the things you have, look at the types of things you're buying and ask yourself, like, number one does everything in my home have a home? That's the number one, most important question. And then, number two if they don't have a home, they need to have a home, right, okay. And then, number two if they have a home, are there unused items or just too many items in that home? So it's impossible to develop the habit or build that habit right. And number three are we overspending, overconsuming, so that it just feels like we're using everything because there's constantly something new coming in. So hopefully this is helpful.

Diana Rene: 16:29

You guys, if any of my podcast episodes have been helpful for you, I would just love it if you could follow me on Apple Podcasts. It's in the top right corner. You just click the little follow button. That tells the algorithm that this is a great podcast and that they should show it to more busy moms who are looking for help in their home and busy mom life. So it would be a huge favor if you could do that and then send me a DM. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to know if this was helpful and we will see you on 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 thedeclutteredmom 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.