transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Welcome to Wannabe Clutter Free, the podcast for ambitious moms who are ready to ditch the mess and stress for good. Let's simplify, organize, and create life you actually love waking up to. Are you ready? Let's do this.

Speaker 2:
[00:13] Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue. No, instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with Kayak and get your trip right.

Speaker 1:
[00:36] Bad advice? You talking to me?

Speaker 2:
[00:38] Kayak got that right.

Speaker 1:
[00:42] If you've ever started decluttering, felt amazing for about a week, and then poof, life got busy, motivation faded, and the clutter crept right back in, I want you to know that you are definitely not alone, because there is something that nobody will tell you about the decluttering process, but I'm going to do it. I'm going to tell you what it is. There is a moment, usually within the first week, right around the end of that first week, maybe even sometimes day 10, where your brain is going to do something really sneaky. You are going to wake up, you're going to look around your house, and even though bags have gone out the door, you have seen the bags go out the door, you have loaded up your car, you have gone to the donation center, you know you've decluttered, you've put in a lot of work, even though you've done that work. Your house is going to feel like it is still cluttered. Maybe not as bad as the day you started, because you are going to have some visible progress, but you are going to wonder, gosh, I put in so much effort, it should feel better than this. This is where most people quit, not because they're lazy. Trust me, it is not because you are lazy. You have already proved you are not lazy by doing the work, not because you don't care. You clearly care. You are listening to a podcast about decluttering and getting organized. You decided you were going to do it, you started, you actually did the work. It is because your brain is telling you a lie. And if you don't know that that lie is coming, it will stop you dead in your tracks. And I call this the motivation cliff. And in this episode, I am going to explain exactly what is happening in your brain, why you hit it, why it happens to literally everyone in some degree, and I'm going to give you three tools to help you move past it so you don't become another person who just decluttered for a week and then gave up. All right, let's get into it. But before we do, I'm Deanna Yates. I'm your Clutter Free cheerleader. You are listening to the Wannabe Clutter Free podcast, and this is episode 306. You can get show notes for today in any podcast player that you're listening to, or if you go to wannabeclutterfree.com/306, you will have all the links and more information there. So let's explain what's actually happening, because I think once you understand it, it's going to make a lot of sense. It's going to lose its power over you. You're going to be able to move past it, and you're going to be able to say like, now that I know, right, knowledge is power, now that I know, it's not going to be so bad. I know what to expect. That means I can move past it. When you start decluttering, you are running on what I call the burst effect. And it is just this tiny spark of energy that gets you moving. You decided to do the thing. You started, you are getting those quick wins, right? Because it's pretty easy if you have never decluttered before, it's been a while and the clutter is kind of piling up, to do a flat surface and feel really good about it, right? That is a quick win. You see the counter clearing, you feel the bags going out the door. There is a dopamine hit every time you finish a drawer or a shelf, and it feels amazing. So days one through three, that's novelty dopamine, like that is so fun. Like your brain loves the new thing. Day four through six, that's momentum. You're starting to be like, okay, I got this. It's getting to be a new habit. It's starting to feel good. You are in a groove. You are proving to yourself that you can do this. And it feels really, really good. Like that's what we all want. We all want that little hit, like that little hit of dopamine. But then around day seven, your brain is going to do something that feels like betrayal. It recalibrates your brain. Its job, its goal, its entire essence of being is to keep you safe. And generally, safe means status quo. So whatever you have done in the past, you've already proved to yourself that this will keep me alive. It's fine. I'm still alive. It sustained me. It's okay. I, if I just keep doing this thing, I will be safe. I will be alive. I will be okay. But okay isn't the life we're after, right? We want a life of happiness. We want a life of joy. We want a life that we are excited to wake up for in the morning, or at least, now we don't dread getting out of bed for in the morning, right? And so your brain is recalibrating to be safe, the calm, what it knows. So here's what I mean by that. It's constantly scanning your environment, adjusting to what's normal. And so when you first declutter, that change is obvious because the before and the after are so different. But after a week of progress, your brain is going to go like, okay, this is the new normal. Okay, this is it. This is my new normal. And then suddenly that room doesn't feel as good as it did, or so much better than it did three days ago. It just looks like your room, and it doesn't feel special anymore. This is why when you get a new car and you notice everyone else now has that same car, you kind of go, you kind of have a little whomp whomp moment, right? If you get a haircut, you get a new haircut, it's totally different style, and everybody is like, wow. When you first have the haircut and you go out there like, wow, you look amazing. That's so great. Well, those compliments don't go on forever, right? Because everybody adjusts to the new normal, the new look. And this is what is happening in your home. The progress becomes invisible to you now because your brain absorbed it. We have just recalibrated to this new level. And I like to call this the recalibration dip. And it is the single biggest reason that people quit decluttering. It is not the physical work. It is a lot of physical work, but we can do hard things. It's not the sentimental stuff that we talked about in the last episode, because we all can sit with that moment and say, OK, I can get past this. I can create a plan and do it. But this, this invisible brain trick that makes you feel like you have done nothing when you've actually done a lot, that is what is going to stop you dead in your tracks. Because you think, well, if I'm going to put in all this effort, and it's not going to feel like I put in all this effort, and I'm not going to feel great about all this effort that I put in, then maybe I shouldn't be putting in all this effort, right? I just want to go buy something new. I just want to feel good. I just want to do the things. I want that dopamine hit back. Well, we're going to move past it. Because how many of us have been here? You're doing great. You're on a roll. And then one morning you look around and you just want to give up because it feels like nothing has changed. That's the dip. And here is the most important thing that I want you to hear. Please, please listen to this next part. It is real. You are not imagining it. It is not something you are not alone when you feel this way, when you think, gosh, why does all the work that I put in feel like nothing actually happened? Like I'm sitting right here in my office and right outside is our backyard. That's the word I'm looking for. It's our backyard. We actually did a lot of work on one of the planters in our backyard recently, and I loved it. It was a ton of work. I mean, we spent all day. I was sore for days after digging in the dirt because we live in California and we have this really hard clay and it's really hard to get into. But we dug it all out, we got all the rocks out and all the weeds out, we've got the new soil and we've planted some plants, and they're pretty and I forgot to water them for a couple of days. But that's a whole other thing. That's the maintenance part. Then it looks beautiful, it looked beautiful. And then the sun comes out and it dries out the mulch a little bit, so it doesn't look quite as beautiful, right? You come home and you just put stuff on your counter, and now it's a little cluttered, but it's not really like the clutter, it's just the stuff you have to clean up from your regular daily mess, like your regular daily life. But it does feel a little lackluster, and that's a little how my garden feels right now. Like the side yard feels a little lackluster now. It was gorgeous right after we finished it. But I have to maintain it, and I have to keep that up in order for it to continue to look pretty. And I want us to think about our home that way, right? The progress is real. I have beautiful plants now in my planter bed that I did not have two weeks ago. Your home has been decluttered. It is so much better, and it's gonna be so much better for you going forward. But you're going to have to maintain it, and we have to understand that there's just gonna be this moment where now I look at my garden bed and it doesn't wow me as much as it did before. We look around our house after we've decluttered, it doesn't wow us as much as it did before. That's why in one of my reels this week, I talked about before and after photos. It's really important for you to be able to look back at those photos and say, I actually did do a lot of work because your brain is gonna forget all the effort you put in and all of that change that actually happened. And so that feeling that it disappeared is the lie. And I want you to hear that, that you are not alone if you're feeling this way. So now that you know what it is, how do we get past it? I'm gonna give you three tools and they are simple, like embarrassingly simple. But isn't that great? Like don't we want them to be super easy because the easier they are, the more we will do them, the more we will use them and simple that works. Yes, please. Let's do it.

Speaker 3:
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Speaker 1:
[09:58] I tell people to buy less for a living, so why am I about to tell you to buy something? Because here's what I actually believe. The goal is never to own nothing. The goal is to stop filling your home with stuff that doesn't earn its spot. Quince is one of those rare brands where what they're doing actually lines up with that. I own their Turkish Cotton Bath Towels and they're stupidly good. Thick, plush, the kind where you get out of the shower and you're like, okay, this is a spa now. I have their Cotton Cashmere Dolmen Sweater in Heather Oatmeal, and I'm about to grab it in Mountain Spring Blue because it's the perfect lightweight layer that goes with everything in my closet. One sweater, a dozen outfits. That's the whole point. Quince makes home essentials and clothing with European linen, Turkish cotton, real craftsmanship, and they're priced 50 to 60 percent less than similar brands because they work directly with ethical factories and skip the metalman. So you're getting a beautiful quality without the markup. Fewer things, better things, and great prices to boot. That's what I'm here for. Refresh your home with Quince. Go to quince.com/wannabe for free shipping and 365 day returns. Now, available in Canada too. Go to quince.com/wannabe for free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com/wannabe. Okay, tool number one is to stop measuring by how your home looks and start counting items out the door. This is the biggest shift and it's the one that changed everything for me because we as humans are wired to measure by look and feel, right? We want to declutter and we want to look around the room and measure our success by how it looks. Does it look better? Does it feel different? That is exactly the metric that your brain will recalibrate on. It will absorb that visual change and it will make it invisible to you. We need a metric that your brain can't absorb, a number. We need something concrete. We need something that is absolutely irrefutable. Instead of asking, does my house look better, which to be honest is fantastic, but you can ask that and you can also count, right? So of course, we're decluttering because we want it to feel better. We're not decluttering just for the sake of getting rid of things, for the sake of getting rid of things. The underlying thing is we do want it to feel better. So I don't want you to mistake that when I say this. But in order to avoid the motivation cliff, you need to count. We need to have concrete numbers. So I want you to count how many items have left your home. That is your scoreboard, not how the room looks, not how it feels, how many things walked out the door. Of course, like I just said, you're going to still get those benefits. It's going to look better. It's going to feel better. You are going to feel so much more free when you walk into the space. But how many items walked out the door? And I'm telling you that when you see that number, it will change everything because your brain cannot recalibrate around a number. If it's 47 items that have left your home, that's 47 items, period, end, done. You can't wake up the next morning and feel like it didn't happen because that number is staring right back at you. Now, the average American home has over 300,000 items in it. This was a study that was done, I believe it was in the LA Times. And I actually did the math one time because I am a nerd like that. 500 items out of 300,000 is less than two-tenths of a percent of the stuff you own. So you might think that's not going to make a big difference if I think about it from those number standpoints. And yet 500 items is about 20 grocery bags of stuff. Can you imagine 20 grocery bags of stuff leaving your home? You would absolutely feel that. So even a small percentage is going to make a massive difference. And you know how I know it's going to make a difference? Because I'm going to put a picture up right now of 500 items behind me that I decluttered recently. I think it was in December that I decluttered these things. So less than six months ago, I have been decluttering and on this minimalism-ish journey for a long time. And I have moved a ton, like 20 times. Okay, not 20 times, actually 16 times since college. So I have moved a lot, which means I've gotten rid of a lot of stuff. I talk about this all the time. I don't want a lot of stuff in my life. And yet I was able to find 500 items to get rid of. So check out the picture. I'll link to a video where I talked about what I learned. And I'm actually still in the process of putting together the video. I know it took me way too long, of actually showing you what left my house. Now I also have a tracker for this. So if you love the idea of what you've seen here, and you can see this little picture I'm holding up, has all these circles colored in, it's part of the 500 item declutter challenge that I have in my 19 for 19 ultimate decluttering bundle. So you color in the circles as you go, you watch the numbers fill up. And I'm telling you, your brain tries to tell you that you haven't made progress, but you'll see the progress. And then you'll look at these numbers, these circles filled in and you go, oh my goodness, I can't believe I found that many things to declutter in my house. Like it is amazing because you actually have the proof right there, your progress becomes your proof. And that proof is the best motivator there is. It also is a little helpful when you're like, okay, I've colored in all of the circles except for the 24th circle. So I need to find 24 items and it just really helps you compete against yourself to go find the things that you don't need and gives you the motivation and the inspiration to find those things. So I'll leave a link for that in the show notes if you are interested. And it's available for you. I loved that one. That was, it's super helpful to be able to declutter and have the proof and have this little tracker to help you along the way. All right, so that's tool number one. Tool number two is joy during the process, not after it. Okay, look, we've all heard we need to find happiness and joy on the journey, right? And then I think a lot of us go, ha ha ha, that's cute. But this one is really important. And the thing that I think the entire decluttering industry gets backwards. Most people treat decluttering like a punishment. Like it's something you have to suffer through so that you can enjoy your home later. Suffer now, enjoy later. So puritanical of us. Work hard now so that you can retire and, you know, then just faff about. And I get why. Because that's how every challenge and every program and every method frames it. And I still come up against this because programming is hard to overcome, right? And so I get it. But if we just, you know, the idea is if we grind through, if we push through, if we power through, then we'll get the reward at the end. But the problem with that is that if the process feels miserable, you will never sustain it. This is why diets fail. This is why you can't just stop eating fast food and lose weight without the idea that you're having to make a complete lifestyle change. We want to be eating healthier foods. We want to be healthy. We don't just want to lose weight because that's why we all fail in the diet culture. So we can't just get rid of all the stuff in our home without dealing with the underlying problem of incoming things, of like appreciating the things we have, of seeing them for what they helped us with and how we have grown as a person. Do we actually need this and how is it going to benefit our lives and those kinds of things? Because we won't sustain it. We will just go out and buy new stuff. The idea that people will just declutter for the sake of just buying new stuff is really hurts me deep down inside because we live on a planet that is not unlimited. It's not unlimited. We have limited resources, we have limited space. We have so many people on this planet that I really want us to live with less for the sustainable reasons as well as the emotional and physical and mental benefits that it brings us. Like why can't we be nice to ourselves and the planet at the same time? So I don't want us just to declutter just to buy new, and I don't want us to just declutter for the sake of pushing for this end result. Because I think there is so many rewarding things that happen as you are going through your things, as you are looking at the life you have created for yourself. And I want us to have compassion for ourselves, because I know there can be a lot of shame in the things that we are letting go of, or a lot of hurt, or just disappointment in ourselves if we thought we were going to be someone, or do something, or achieve something, because we're having to face those things with our stuff. But it is an amazing process, because I think you can learn so much about yourself along the way. But back to the topic at hand with the motivation cliff. Because again, go back to if it's sustainable, right? If we're not making it sustainable, you will hit that motivation cliff within the first week, and you will have zero reason to keep going because all you're doing is suffering. Your brain is telling you that it's not working, and it's not fun, and you're not enjoying the process, and it is drudgery, so you will quit. So I want you to flip it. I want you to think about joy is the fuel, it's not the reward. You have to enjoy the process or you won't sustain it. And it doesn't need to be drudgery. So let's look at what it looks like practically. I want you to put on a playlist of songs that you love. I will link to a playlist that I created in Spotify, and it's all about breakup songs. So if you're kind of in that energy of like, I just want this stuff out of my house, it's a really fun playlist, because think of it like breaking up with your stuff. Think about it as breaking up with this idea of who you thought you had to be, or how you had to show up in the world, or the stuff you had to buy in order to fit in or be a certain way or fit the mold. Think about it that way, right? Think about it as getting into your true inner self, and make it self-reflection, make it fun. Put on a podcast if you like, you could listen to this one. Make a cup of coffee or pour a glass of wine, if that's the kind of declutter session you want. Light a candle, make it an experience that you look forward to in something instead of something that you dread. If you're a social person, invite a friend over. Trust me, they're not going to judge you, they've already been in your house if they're your friend, they already know the kind of stuff you have. So make it social if that's your kind of thing. And just go find the things that are going to keep you excited about the process and looking forward to it. And think about your stuff with curiosity and not with shame. I'm not saying this to be fluffy. I'm saying this because it's the difference between someone who de-clutters for a week and someone who builds a clutter-free home for life. And that is why you're here. I think you are here because you want to live a clutter-free life. You want to have a clutter-free home. You want to feel comfortable in your home. You want to be excited to be in your home. You want to invite people over if that's a motivating factor for you. And so the person who lasts isn't more disciplined than you. They just figured out how to make it enjoyable enough to keep showing up. So if you like audiobooks, put on an audiobook that you can only listen to while you're de-cluttering or put on a show that you can only watch while you're de-cluttering. The problem with those kinds of things is it does take your attention away. So if you have to deal with really difficult stuff, sentimental clutter, I would do less dual purpose, less multitasking and really focus at hand. But if you're just getting rid of garbage or going through your junk drawer or something like that, put on whatever you want and you don't have to wait for motivation to show up. I think that's the most exciting part. You get to decide when to show up. You show up, you show up for yourself, you build momentum and then the motivation comes later. I say this all the time and I will keep saying it because most people have it backwards. They think they need to feel motivated to start. You don't. You need to just start and then the motivation will follow. You don't wait to brush your teeth until you feel like it. Right? At least you don't as an adult, hopefully. You just do it. It's part of who you are. Decluttering can be that simple too. If we just shift our mindset around it. All right. So that's tool number two.

Speaker 4:
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Speaker 1:
[22:14] Introducing the new Best Skin Ever Ultra Slim Precision Concealer from Sephora Collection. It's full coverage with a matte finish and perfect for any look. Whether you're building it up for a full glam moment or targeting correction for a more natural vibe. At only $12, it's great for affordable touch-ups on the go. Get this new must-have concealer at Sephora or at sephora.com today. Tool number three is to finish what you start, even if it's small. Okay, this is the one that honestly changed the most for me personally. So I want to share it with you because I know there are a lot of you that are just like me. I am naturally a starter. I love to start new things. I love the energy that comes with the beginning something. I love the creativity, the excitement, that all in feeling. I might have a little undiagnosed ADHD. It's possible. But finishing, finishing has always been harder for me. And if that is you, then please know that I see you. It doesn't mean you're broken. It just means you need to build finishing into the process. And you need to build up your finishing muscles, right? We don't think that we can go and run a marathon tomorrow. But if running is something you want to do and running a marathon is something you want to do, then you can build up to it. There is that Couch to 5K program. If you want to get into running, you are a couch potato. You never run before. They have a whole program that will get you into your first 5K. You're not jumping up off the couch and running a 5K tomorrow. We need to build the muscle. So here's the rule. Do not move to a new area until the one you are in right now is 100% complete. Now I know you heard that and you thought I was talking about an entire room, didn't you? Your space, the thing, the area you're in could be really small. It can be one drawer, it can be one shelf, it can be just wiping down the flat surface and putting the keepers back. It can be taking the donation back to the car. I just want you to finish whatever task you are working on. So that really for me, like if I were sitting right here right now at my desk, I would say, okay, I'm going to declutter the whole top of my desk and then I'm going to, I can't do anything else until the top is done. Then I might move to the top drawer, then I might move to the second drawer, then the third drawer, then the fourth drawer. But I need to finish each one before I open the next one. Because in the past, I would have been like, okay, I'm going to do my whole desk and then I'm moving around, none of it ever gets done and then by the time I have to go pick my daughter up from school or I have to do something else, it's time to make dinner, I've made a bigger mess and nothing is ever finished and then I feel bad about myself. So we're going to start finishing things because every time you fully complete a space, you are teaching your brain something really powerful. You are teaching it that you are the kind of person who finishes things and that belief, that identity shift, that you are the person who finishes things, that is powerful, that is worth more than any motivation than you can find, right? Motivation comes and goes, it's fleeting, but that identity shift of I am the person who finishes what I start, that's going to stay and then you start to believe that about yourself and you know now I can finish things, I can do that. And the beautiful part is that completion becomes its own reward. So you start to crave that feeling of being done, not the feeling of starting, right? And stopping, you're not going to start and stop, you're not going to start and stop. You are going to crave the feeling of being done and you're going to become more of a finisher and kind of shift from that start to finish, right? You're going to have more of a balance there. And that is what keeps you going past day seven, past day 14, past the point where most people quit on this decluttering and organization journey. So I always say keep it small and I would rather you finish one drawer completely than start three rooms and leave them all half done. Because that one drawer that is finished is proof to yourself that you can do it. Three half done rooms is just a bigger mess. It triggers all of those unhelpful, shameful feelings that you can't do it. It's going to make you feel more overwhelmed. It's going to make everything feel messier. It's going to make everything feel more difficult in your home because nothing is really put away and nothing is finished. That is exactly the kind of thing that feeds the motivation cliff. We want to move past that. If you are thinking like, okay Deanna, this is great, but I'm going to need someone to walk me through this room by room. I don't have to figure out what is next on my own. That is exactly the kind of stuff that I help you with in Effortless Home. It is a full system. It is room by room. It is step by step. It is built for busy moms who have maybe an hour a week, not an entire weekend, because I know that getting a lot of time to yourself, to do things on your to-do list is very difficult. I will leave a link to that in the show notes as well if you are interested. Again, that's Effortless Home, or you can comment home on my latest Instagram post. My handle is Wannabe Clutter Free and I will send you the link. Now that you have the 15-minute method from episode 304, you have the Joy Anchor for Sentimental Stuff from episode 305, and now you know what the Motivation Cliff is, why it happened and exactly what to do to push through it, you are set up to actually make progress that sticks. And I am so incredibly proud of you for making it this far because most people don't even get to this point. They stop it, I want to declutter, and they never even take the first step. You are already past that. So I want you to give yourself credit for that because I think we oftentimes feel like that beginning those little beginning steps don't deserve a lot of credit. Those are some of the hardest to take. So I'm so incredibly proud of you. But the question that nobody asks, and the one that determines whether this is a one-time project or a lifestyle is what happens after the declutter. Because you can clear your entire home, you can remove 500 items, you can do everything I've taught you in these last three episodes, and then six months from now, it comes back. If you don't have a system for keeping that way, you are going to be right back where you started. So I know this because I did it. I decluttered my entire home, not once, but twice before I figure this part out. Twice. Yes, I know. That's a lot. Now, next week, I am going to be talking with Lydie Klotz about his new book. It's called In a Good Place, and it's how the spaces where we live, work, and play can help us thrive. It is just perfect timing for what we're talking about. So you can see how these environments really do impact our lives and how we show up for ourselves, for our families, and for everyone else. So it's gonna be a really great episode. I think it fits actually really perfectly in this little grouping of podcast episodes that I'm doing. But then the week after that, I'm gonna give you the 10-minute daily routine that keeps Clutter from coming back. And so it's the part that makes all of this permanent instead of temporary. So if you're listening to this a couple weeks in the future, go listen to that one now. But otherwise, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss it. All right, until next time, take care, keep things simple. I'm Deanna Yates, and you've been listening to Wannabe Clutter Free. I'll see you next week. Cheers.