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 this episode of the Decluttered Mom podcast. I am at the tail end, knock on wood, let's hope, of a some type of upper respiratory thing. And for most of the week, I have not been able to speak a full sentence without coughing. We are gonna give this a shot. I'm hoping this is gonna work, but you'll probably hear a cough drop, you'll probably hear some coughs. I apologize ahead of time, but I really wanted to make sure that I got this episode episode out to you before Thanksgiving because I know a lot of people wait until after Thanksgiving to decorate for the holidays or for Christmas, or maybe you're already decorating, I don't know.

Either way, I think that this will be very helpful for you because this comes up around Christmas or Thanksgiving, like fall season a lot in my DMs. And so I think the large majority of people don't necessarily like decorate for every single season, but the holidays tend to be a bigger one that more people decorate for. And so I think that's why it comes up so much around now.

But basically, the overall question or the tone of the question that I get in my DMs is like, how do I decorate for Christmas without making it feel like even more cluttered? Right. Like I put up all the stuff, I put up the tree, I put up all the garlands, I put up the like all the random candles and snowmen and Santas, and I put up all the stuff, and then it just makes my house feel really cluttered and really full. And I really want to decorate for the season. I really want it to feel like Christmas cozy, but it just feels really cluttered and full. And how do I like balance that?

And so we're gonna go through five different steps that are gonna help you through this process, and let's just jump in.

Okay, so step number one is to use what you already have first. Okay, and I know you probably don't want to hear that, but before you go shopping, before you run to the store and and look and see what like the newest thing is that you could get this season, pull out the bins and see what's already there. Basically, I want you to shop your own home first.

Um, this is gonna help you number one, save money, which I know we all would love to save money, right? And number two, it helps prevent overbuying because how many times have you like gone out and bought something for a holiday? Um, and then you get home and then you pull all the bins out and you start decorating, and you're like, oh my gosh, I already have like four of these. Why did I buy this? So we don't want to do that. We want to prevent that.

And we also want to remind ourselves that growing up, like I grew up in a home where like my mom didn't really ever buy new Christmas decorations. Like she maybe bought like one new figurine from a gift shop when we were on vacation for the year. And that was like, that's it. The idea of like redoing all of your Christmas decor every year is consumerism at its finest.

And I think that the honestly, like influencer culture of our current like day and age is probably what has influenced that. And I don't know how many like actual real homes are doing this, but if you looked on TikTok or you looked on Instagram, you would never know it. You would think that every single person goes out and buys every new, like does an entirely new theme every year and buys all the garlands and all the ornaments and all like everything new because that's what we see online.

And I again, I don't know that that's really necessarily happening in our homes, but what I do think is happening in our homes is that we feel like we either need to or want to and feel justified because we see those influencers doing that, that yeah, it's totally fine to like go out and get all new decorations or a lot of new decorations and just build off of it.

And I want you to just pause and like consider maybe why we're doing that is going out and dropping like a ton of money and spending all that time and energy on these new things in your home, is that really going to change how you feel throughout the holiday season or compared to if you put up last year's stuff, right? So just consider it. I'm not telling you how to spend your money. If you want to go do that, that's you know, it's your prerogative.

But I do think that it's easy to get caught up in the idea that we need to do that. And I would say it's quite the opposite, right? So by using what you already have first, you're gonna help to keep your decor storage under control also, because you're not just like continuing to buy new, buy new, buy new and not get rid of anything old. And then next thing you know, your entire basement is holiday storage.

But this also is gonna help you to stay realistic about what you actually love and use. Okay, so again, just go through all of the stuff that you already have, see um is there any gaps? Did the lights that you normally put around the railing in your stairwell, did those break last year? And so you do need to get new ones. Like go through and see what you actually need and what you already actually have.

Okay, so for step two, what I recommend doing is keeping bins specific to each holiday or each season. And what I mean by that is having one bin equal one holiday or season. So don't just like throw fall and Christmas and Easter, like don't just throw them all on random bins. Make sure that you have like this bin is only Christmas stuff. This bin is only Halloween stuff and label it clearly.

I like to always label it on top and on the sides because that way no matter how it gets put back, you can obviously very easily see what it is. This might sound really simple, but well, it does sound really simple because it is really simple, but you'd be surprised at when I was working in people's homes helping them declutter how many times I would find random holidays mixed in together or not even in bins, just kind of like stuffed away on shelves in the basement or the attic or the guest room.

And doing that does not allow you. Number one, you have no idea what you have. Number two, you have no idea where to find it. Um, it feels really overwhelming and it makes the process not fun or magical at all because you're just trying to figure out where everything is. And then you finish Christmas and you go to put stuff away, and you're like, oh gosh, that's where that angel was. And it's frustrating.

So having the bins for each specific season or holiday is really, really helpful.

Okay, step number three. I guess I shouldn't have called these steps because they're not really in order. I guess they're like tips. Let's switch it.

Tip number three if you don't use it this year, let it go. And what I mean by that is when you decorate, notice what stays in the bin. If you're like going through the bin and you're putting things up and you're like, I don't know if I want to put that up, or I don't really have anywhere to put that, or it's like half broken, and I just keep holding on to it, or I don't even really like that, but I feel like it's wasteful to get rid of it.

If you're skipping it, if you're not putting it up for the one sole purpose you own it, which is for the holidays, let it go. Donate it if it's in good condition. If it's not in good condition, toss it. Don't hang on to things just in case, because here's the thing your taste, your home, like you may have moved, or your home layout, or your style, they probably have changed over the time that you started first buying like things that you want to put up at the holidays, and that's okay.

It's okay to change over time your style or the space that you're decorating or anything like that. That's okay. And I think this is like a difference between what I was talking about earlier, where you have you're just wiping the slate clean and buying all new things every year just because this is like, hey, I've been decorating the same thing for 15 years, and I used to really love that like cute cottage-y style, and now I'm really into more like modern decorating, and like that's just not my style anymore, and that's okay.

And you can continue to evolve, of course, over time, but don't hold on to things just because you feel like it might be good for the holidays because this is the ultimate test, right? If you if it's the holidays, you're decorating for the holidays, something stays in the bin because for whatever reason, then it needs to go. It's not like there's no use in it taking up space in your home when it's not even being used for the one thing that it's being saved for.

Okay, tip number four. I want you to add new pieces after you decorate with what you have. So once your existing decor is up, then you can identify what's missing. This way you're going in with intention and not impulse, right?

You're not just like seeing something that you think is cute or you think is pretty. You're actually like seeing, okay, now like this is just kind of like step two from what we were talking about earlier with checking in with your bins and checking in with what you already have. Now that you've actually decorated, you can go in and you can see what things are actually missing and what things you actually do want to add into your home.

Okay, and tip five. I did this in a terrible order. I don't know what I was thinking when I wrote these out. So I apologize. Okay, this is probably my number one tip when it comes to decorating for the holidays.

And the tip is to swap, don't stack. And what I mean by that is to replace your regular decorations with seasonal items. So I think one of the biggest mistakes that people make when they are decorating for the holidays, and and this is why it feels so cluttery, is that we are adding decorations for the season on top of existing home decorations.

So, for example, if you have this like cute little snowman figurine decoration that you want to put on your um TV console, then maybe consider removing the like picture frame that's on there in its place and put it there in place of the picture frame instead of in addition to the picture frame.

And you can very easily just swap the item and then store whatever the regular decorations are in the same seasonal bin. So for example, okay, this is really hard to explain when I can't show you like a visual, but if I'm let's use that same example, right? So I'm I have my holiday bin, I'm going through it, I pull out the snowman figurine, I'm like, oh my gosh, this would look so cute right there in that corner of the TV console.

And so I put it there, there's a picture frame already there. I take the picture frame and I put, I wrap it and I put it in that Christmas bin. That way, when the Christmas season is over and I'm taking down the holiday decorations, all the stuff that I put away is right there in that bin and it's an easy swap again.

So it just makes it really easy and seamless, and it makes it easy to put things exactly like right back where they belong, and you don't have to lose them or think about where you put them or anything like that. But honestly, this tip right here, again, super simple, but it really prevents that holiday clutter feeling that just makes it feel like the entire home is just really, really full and takes away from like the magical calm feeling of the season, right?

So the goal here is not perfection. The goal is just to make when you are decorating, make things a little bit more simple, a little bit more streamlined, a little bit less cluttered. And I hope this is helpful.

Again, I apologize for number one calling them steps. Number two, putting these way out of order. Again, I don't know what I was thinking. This explains how my brain has been thinking this week with not feeling well.

But I hope either way that you were able to get some value out of this. I would love it if you could send me a DM and let me know over on Instagram at the.decluttered.mom. And as always, I'm trying so hard not to cough.

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