br-day2
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Speaker: [00:00:00] Hello. Hello, everyone. How are you? Hello. Hello. Welcome in to day two of the breathing room challenge. I see you all have been Lighting up the chat already, Karen said her favorite food is toast with butter and things she can't eat anymore, like cheese. Dorianne said anything she doesn't have to make.
That definitely does sound good. Anything you don't have to make. But she loves homemade burgers. Chyna said her favorite food is potatoes, prepared in any way. She's Irish on both sides. I'm very Irish on my father's side. Um, my last name is Callahan and I love like all potato things too. I actually don't really have a favorite food.
Um, I would say Mexican, Italian, like fettuccine Alfredo, street tacos, pizza, hamburgers. You know, like those things that like everybody likes. Um, one thing that's probably one of my favorites is avocado toast with egg whites and honey and [00:01:00] cottage cheese. I love that. That's what I have like every morning for breakfast.
So thank you for waiting a couple of minutes.
I'm going to be sharing about 30 45 minutes of high value content, and we will have time for a Q& A session at the end. And also, I would love to hear your takeaways. So you can take a screenshot, Tag me on social media, send me a DM, tell me what your favorite part of today's training session was. Because today you're going to be learning the home overhaul blueprint for overhauling your entire home.
You're also going to learn exactly what to do with the homeless clutter so you never again have to wonder what to do with something that you want to keep. These are a few results that my clients and students and our past challenge participants have been able to achieve in their homes from the methods that I am going to be sharing with you today and throughout this coming week, [00:02:00] just from overhauling tackling the everyday messes.
Dealing with the homeless clutter and clearing away the accumulated clutter. And I wanted to share these screenshots from one of my clients and one of my students all about overhauling. My client Deborah said that overhauling made a huge difference in her home. It was clean and she could find what she needed.
But best of all, she had the time and the capacity to start decluttering her spare room that was filled to the brim. And then one of my students, she had enrolled in, I have a smaller program that's all about overhauling. It's called the Home Overhaul Blueprint. And about a week after enrolling in that program, she had made incredible progress for the first time in a long time.
She could actually access her kitchen counters. So let's go ahead and get started. Drop the word. Let's do this. The phrase, let's do this in the chat. If you're ready to go,[00:03:00]
Karen, I probably sound better. Cause for the first five minutes afternoon, I was like clearing my throat like fully so first I want to go over a quick refresher on what we covered during day one. And that is how doing all the things randomly in your household is just not effective. So if you're cleaning, hiding, decluttering, and organizing every space in every room of your entire house sporadically with no rhyme or reason behind when you're doing any of it, you're going to feel like you're spinning your wheels because you literally are spinning your wheels.
It's not effective. It's not effective because all of those home life solutions were developed to help people feel safe. Maintain their homes and prevent their homes from getting out of hand. Those home life solutions and concepts each work independently of each other, but they were never created to [00:04:00] help someone take their entire household.
They were not created to help someone turn every room of their entire household from messy and cluttered to calm and organized. So if that is something that you want to do, if you want to take your entire home from messy to organized, the truth is there is a lot that needs to be done. And that is why you need a system that unifies all that stuff, that unifies cleaning, tidying, decluttering, and organizing.
That unifies everything you could possibly need to do, like overhauling the messes, purging the excess clutter, learning how to let go, getting the clutter out of your house. Reading it, memorizing it and And the emotional attachments are totally different things. Sentimental items and emotional attachments are two different things.
You can have an item that is sentimental to you and you have an item that you're emotionally attached to. They're two different things. This [00:05:00] also includes unifying how to organize your mind for good. How to simplify your meals and your groceries, streamlining your paperwork, staying on top of your emails and your photos and keeping them from, you know, reaching a million, keeping track of everything that you need to do, getting your partner on board, teaching your kids to help out, and finally refining your own habits and creating a lifestyle change.
So. Where I'm going with this is that you need a system that unifies all of this, everything that I just listed on the last two slides, and this is the reason why tackling your home in phases is such a game changer, because, as we've established, if you're trying to tidy the clutter and organize each space in your home, one at a time, it's not going to make any difference when your entire house is full of things that you want to keep, as well as things that You should be letting go of, but when you can instead [00:06:00] focus on one phase at a time, you're fully mastering each concept, the tightening, decluttering, organizing, maintaining, you're fully mastering each of those home life concepts for each room of your house until you move on to the next phase.
And that is exactly what the Peaceful Home Roadmap is all about. It is a literal roadmap that will take you through all of these phases, starting with the very first phase, the overhaul phase. This is when you're quite literally overhauling and tackling all the messes, the chaos, and the stuff that's left around your house that you want to keep.
Once you've done that, once you've overhauled all the stuff in every room of your house, then you're ready to move on to the declutter phase. During this phase, we all know what decluttering is. It's when you're clearing away the clutter, you're learning how to let go of anything that you no longer need, use, or want.[00:07:00]
And you're doing it one step at a time. You're not starting with the sentimental items. I always use an example of, my mother had these tea cups and these, um, this tea set. And, um, You know, we lived in her house that she had owned, and she had it on this ledge above the kitchen sink, and they were there up until I lost them in a house fire, but they were very, like, one of the most sentimental items that I owned, and, um, there were, like, Norman Rockwell paintings on these plates and teacups and things like that.
I never would have started decluttering those. Like that's not something that you do. You do not start decluttering your home by focusing on the sentimental items. You start with the easier items and you slowly work your way up to the harder, more emotional, more sentimental things. And that's why decluttering, purging your home and letting go of the excess stuff has its own phase because there's a lot that falls underneath that main [00:08:00] category.
So once you've decluttered every room in your house. Then you're ready to move on to the organized phase. And this is when you're organizing your mind, your life, and your home. This is what I call the organized trifecta. And the whole goal in this is so that way you can easily find what you need, make it out the door on time, and stay on top of everything like a pro.
The organizing trifecta, the organized trifecta, is crucial because you can't have one without the other. If you try to organize Your home, but your mind is a disorganized jumble of chaos. Your home is never going to stay organized. If you try to organize your mind, but your life is still chaotic, like I was sharing the other day, and you're still missing bill payments, and forgetting about appointments and struggling to make it out the door on time.
It's not going to matter if your mind is organized because you still can't keep track of everything that you need to do. So that's why we [00:09:00] have the organizing trifecta and this all is something that we focus solely on during the organized phase. And then finally, once you've organized your mind, your life, and your home, and you've set up systems in your home so you can easily find what you need, just like in this photo right here, then you're ready to move on to the maintenance phase.
This maintenance phase is what you will be in for the rest of your life. It's when you're refining your habits and getting your family on board and creating a lifestyle change and, you know, doing maintenance decluttering like you see in this photo, which is when you're decluttering a few times a year to let go of.
The things that your family has acquired over the last 12 months. So you're maintaining your home for the rest of your life. Now, each day of the challenge, we're going to go over one phase of the peaceful home roadmap. So that way, you know exactly what to do to clean up the mess, clear away the clutter and get more breathing room.[00:10:00]
So day one and day two are dedicated to the overhaul phase because overhauling is my unique method. that you're not going to hear about from anyone else. Really, everything that I'm sharing here is unique to me. The Peaceful Home Roadmap, Tackling Your Home in Phases in General. I'm the only one that, the only decluttering and organizing and home expert that talks about this.
So Tackling Your Home in Phases, the Peaceful Home Roadmap, Overhauling Your Home Before You Declutter, as well as the Home Overhaul Blueprint and the Big Three Messes. These are all Unique proprietary methods that I have developed because I have been through the ringer in my own home over the last eight years.
Everything from moving to a bigger house to organizing every inch to spending all of my time tidying up after my kids, downsizing in my late mother's home, decluttering decades worth of stuff. Then finally understanding how to overhaul the messes and [00:11:00] Maintain a tidy home only to lose everything in a house fire.
So I've literally been through everything that you could possibly experience in your home. And I have extensive experience with a very close family member who her home is is pretty much at. Like, there's. It's, it's what I would, it's like at hoarder level. So I have extensive experience in everything that could possibly come about within your household.
And so because of that, because I've been on this journey for many, many years, and I was raised by a minimalist mother, I've developed a lot of these methods that have changed the game and made it possible, not just for me, but also for my clients and students. So with that said. I wanted to dedicate day one and day two of this challenge to the overhaul phase because you're not going to hear about it from anyone else, but it is so game changing when it comes to getting your house in order, [00:12:00] being able to keep a tidy home, being able to create breathing room so that way you can declutter.
So my goal. is to make sure that you're fully equipped with how to overhaul your home. Now the key to doing that, the key to actually overhauling your entire home is what's called the home overhaul blueprint. It's a four step process that will help you tackle the everyday messes, find a home for the homeless clutter, And stay on top of the laundry and the dishes consistently so you can have a tidy home and breathing room.
Now, each step of the home overhaul blueprint is related to one of the big three messes. The everyday messes, the homeless items, and the accumulated clutter.
The puppy's doing something she's not supposed to. Step one of the home overhaul blueprint is when you're tidying within pension. This is where you're [00:13:00] just tidying up the everyday messes and you're putting them all back where they belong. And good news, you did that yesterday for day one, so you all know exactly how to do that.
When you're following this process, the home overhaul blueprint, you're going to tidy the everyday messes and put them back where they belong for every room in your house. Then once you've done that, then you can move on to step two, which is when you're finding a home for the homeless clutter. And this is all about finding a permanent, dedicated spot where these homeless items can always go back to.
And you're going to do that for every homeless item in every room of your house. Then, You're ready for step three, step three of the home overhaul blueprint is what I call gaining some quick clutter wins. And it is different from like true decluttering because when you're truly decluttering and you're in it and you're.
Purging and [00:14:00] clearing away, you know, decades worth of stuff that is going to look drastically different than what I'm referencing here. These quick clutter wins is when you're tackling and decluttering some common hot spots around your house, like your nightstand, your entryway. Um, I can't think of any of the other ones off the top of my head.
But you know those types of hot spots. It's the hot spots where there's accumulated clutter that is piling up and we're going to be diving into the accumulated clutter tomorrow. But what you need to know is step three of the home overhaul blueprint when you're overhauling your home is you're decluttering these hot spots.
You're, you're doing it very quickly and you're just there. It's quickly gathering up items that you no longer need, use, or want, and you're making a quick decision to get rid of them. So as an example, if your entryway is just a bunch of random stuff there, you [00:15:00] can quickly scan through your entryway and be like, I don't need this broken umbrella anymore, so I'm going to throw it away.
So that's what I mean about the quick clutter wins. And then finally, step four of the home overhaul blueprint is when you're managing the messes. And this is all about developing some quick and easy routines to help you keep the everyday messes picked up and to help you stay on top of the laundry and the dishes consistently.
So that way they stay Put away your you're able to stay on top of them. Now, like I said, you're going to prioritize each step of the home overhaul blueprint for every room in your house until you've completed it. And then you'll move on to the next step. Now, with that said. You can do this however you see fit, however works for you.
Like we were talking about yesterday with the everyday messes, when you're tidying the everyday messes. I call it tidying with intention. [00:16:00] Because when you're tidying up, you could just gather all the stuff on your desk. And try to deal with it. That's just like basic tidying up. But on the other hand, when you're tidying with intention, you're just gathering the everyday messes because those items, you know where they go.
You're gathering them up and you're putting them back where they belong. So what I was saying is when you're tidying with intention for step one of the Home Overhaul Blueprint, You can do it for one room at a time and then the next day move on to the second room, or if you want, you can spend about two hours, maybe one to two hours, depending on your specific household, to tidy the everyday messes from your entire house.
Again, it's going to drastically depend on your lifestyle and your habits, so you can choose how you want to do this in your home. But. The main thing to remember here is that you want to do it for every room. If you, [00:17:00] what came, what came to mind, I saw a comment in the group this morning, if you were to overhaul your bedroom and you did a fantastic job, And then you decided you wanted to to clutter your bedroom, and you let go of a lot of stuff.
But your living room, your bathroom, your kitchen, your dining room, your spare bedroom, your garage. If all that stuff is still messy and cluttered, what's gonna happen to your bedroom? It's just gonna get cluttered all over again. And I actually teach that you do need to have one clutter free space in your home.
But again, it's a process. So that's why we do this for every room in your house, you overhaul every room in your home, then you declutter every room in your house. So that way, You never have to worry that any space in your home will get messy or cluttered ever again, because the reason why they keep getting messy and [00:18:00] cluttered is because, like I was saying with the example, if your bedroom has been overhauled and it's tidy and then you declutter it and it is clutter free and Then one day you have company come over and your living room is just chaotic.
What are you going to do? You're going to gather those items from your living room and you're going to go hide them in your bedroom. And then it's going to get messy and cluttered all over again. And you're going to feel like you're back at square one. So going off on a little tangent here, that's why you do each phase for every room in your house before you move on to the next one.
Now, I wanted to share an approximate three week timeline. And. Really make sure to point out approximate here again, like I keep saying this is going to be different for everyone, depending on your lifestyle, your specific household, your circumstances, your family, your health, your habits, et cetera. With that said.
The home overhaul blueprint and [00:19:00] overhauling your home is meant to be done as quickly as possible. You're not taking your sweet time getting this done, because if you do, it's just going to get messy again. If you overhaul your den in your office, like the room that I'm in right now, and then you take another week to overhaul your living room, Your den is just going to get messy.
Like I was just saying with the clutter example. So you want to do this as quickly as possible, as quickly as is feasible for you. So. You'll start by tidying the everyday messes from every room in your house with intention. And again, you can do one room at a time or you can just knock it all out in two days.
I wanted to put days one to four approximately because even if your house is filled to the brim with messes and clutter, it should not take you more than four days to max to gather the everyday messes from [00:20:00] every room and put them all back where they belong. Then once you do that, days, maybe 5 to 10 again.
Approximately. You're finding a home for all the homeless items from there. You will gain some quick clutter wins and that could take you about 3 to 4 days. Give or take. There are six areas that I Recommend that you focus on for these quick clutter wins the six hot spots and you can knock them out in like 20 minutes.
So this could be 1 day. It could be about 3 to 4 days. And then finally. The last phase or the last little bit of this timeline is when you're managing the messes. This is the fourth step of overhauling your home. And this is the longest because it takes time to get in the habit of practicing new routines to keep the messes picked up and to stay on top of the laundry and the dishes [00:21:00] consistently.
Now, the beautiful thing about this is that the home overhaul blueprint is meant to be followed anytime. For the rest of your life, that your house is ever a disaster ever again. So if at the end of this year, after the holidays, your house is trashed all over again, because I'll tell you, my house is always trashed after Christmas, you can follow this same home overhaul blueprint to overhaul the chaos and get your house back.
Back in order. And the reason why this is so game changing is because, as I keep saying, the random tidying, cluttering, and organizing, they don't work when you're doing it all randomly and you're trying to put all these pieces together. And I forgot what I was going to say. It just slipped my mind. Um, oh, oh, okay.
So overhauling is essentially what you think you're doing when you're trying to tidy, declutter, and [00:22:00] organize Your dining room table, for example. So without going off on another tangent here, because of our different language patterns, and because people can say that a bunch of stuff on a table is clutter.
I said this yesterday, you end up trying to declutter it and then you're sorting everything into piles and then you're trying to arrange everything by straightening these piles up and then you, you might relocate items and try to organize it. So it's a jumbled mess of some combination of tidying, decluttering and organizing.
And that's really what overhauling is. And that's why it's so game changing because the overhaul process is what needs to be done to get your house back. To where it needs to be because, as I've said, it doesn't matter. You could be a minimalist. I lost all my stuff in a house fire and I still my house still gets messy because it's [00:23:00] these things are just stuff that's getting left out.
So you can clear away all the clutter and become a minimalist and you may still need to overhaul your home. But the good news is that you can follow this home overhaul blueprint. For the rest of your life, even for, you know, 30 years down the line, anytime your house gets trashed. And I'll tell you, I do this same thing in my home.
All the time. Sometimes I do it for my entire house. Sometimes I do it for one room. I had an angiogram on May 14th because they found out that my arteries have 75 percent blockage in my legs. And my stepmom was coming in town because I was scared. I was scared that I was gonna wake up and Have a stint, you know, and I'm 39 years old.
Like this kind of thing shouldn't be happening to me at this age. So my step mom and my dad were going to come into town and this house that we're staying in belongs to my step mom's sister, my step aunt. And so I wanted to show that I was respectful of their house and not just letting stuff, you know, be left all over the place.
[00:24:00] But because of. the dog fight that happened at the beginning of May and having to euthanize my dog and because of this wound on my foot and having a new puppy and all these life circumstances that are happening to us, my house had got a little bit trashed over the last two months. So with that said, before my angiogram, I overhauled.
My entire house. It took me about three days. I did it on a Saturday and Sunday and a Monday. And I, it felt so amazing. It felt so amazing. I will say I spent about one and a half hours each day and. The beautiful thing about it is that once I was done, it was so easy to just be able to keep it tidy consistently.
And that way, if like I was sharing the other day, yesterday morning, you know, the internet guy came and my kids were starting summer school and we have this challenge and my dishes were piling up and it's easy to get back into [00:25:00] the swing of those things. Because I overhauled my house a few weeks ago.
And there's no homeless clutter. There's no piles piling up in places. I took care of all of that. And I'll tell you, it doesn't really have anything to do with decluttering. I did declutter a few hot spots, but it's not crude decluttering. And so that's why this overhaul phase is Is the key to giving you breathing room and best of all about the home overhaul blueprint and overhauling your home is it's always going to end with you prioritizing your routines like I was just talking about a second ago with, you know, the dishes, it's going to end with you focusing on these routines to help you manage the messes and keep them picked up and stay on top of the laundry and the dishes.
Because going forward, Once you've overhauled your home, the only reason that your house will ever need to be overhauled again is if you have [00:26:00] accidentally fallen off track from your routines. I just said this. Because of life circumstances, I fell off track from my routines and therefore my house was getting trashed off and it needed to be overhauled.
So that's why step four of the home overhaul blueprint. Is there to guide you and help you develop these routines to keep the messes from coming back because you can find you can tidy the everyday messes and you can find a home for the homeless clutter, but they're just going to creep back out all over again.
If you're not consistent with keeping your house manageable on a day to day basis. So let me know in the comments if this, if the home overhaul blueprint sounds doable to you. You can type I got this in the chat if you feel like you can. overhaul your entire home over the next couple of weeks.[00:27:00]
Now, yesterday for day one, you learned step one of the home overhaul blueprint, which is tidying the everyday messes with intention. And here's some examples of everyday messes. Here's a photo of what they might look like. Essentially, everyday messes is any item that has a dedicated spot where it belongs.
It's just not getting put there. Today for day two, we're going to cover step two of the home overhaul blueprint, which is all about finding a home for the homeless items. Now, homeless items, homeless clutter, homeless stuff is any item that does not have a permanent spot where it belongs. And so some examples of what this might be, this could be a charging cord that keeps getting left out.
You keep leaving it on your kitchen counters because you don't have anywhere to put it. Homeless [00:28:00] items could be random stuff that's shoved in places, because if you're shoving things somewhere, it's because you don't know where to put it, right? It could be gifts that are still sitting in their gift bags.
This is a perfect example. Every year after Christmas, we'd come home from my dad's, and I leave all these gift bags full of random gifts. And I'm so grateful for them, but you know, like the, the bath and body sets and the foot massager, all those things, they just sit in the bags. for a couple of weeks because they're homeless because I don't know where to put them because I need to find a home for them.
Come here Carly. Stop it. Stop that. Another example could be papers that are left on a table. Now this is kind of a hard example to explain because you might have papers on a table. Because you need to put them away, or you might also have papers on a table because you don't know where to put them. So the key to remember is that homeless items, [00:29:00] homeless clutter is going to be any item that's left out because you don't know where to put it, because you don't have room for it.
So I want you guys to look around the room that you're in right now and tell us one homeless item you spot, or one category of homeless items that you can spot. Right next to you
and Sue that may very well be the case that it might take you more than a couple of weeks the whole Goal is for you to keep at it I mean, this is a drastic example, but it could take you two months to overhaul your house. You just keep doing it Don't let yourself fall off track.
See yes Dorian. I think that was you it's scrolled away. Yes exactly with the gifts You know what? That's so funny. I have solar pathway lights in a bag [00:30:00] too, in my room right now. They're homeless items. My, um, my oldest son's grandma gave them to me for my birthday on May 11th. Um,
papers. Yes. Rose said her husband and her spent two weeks going through 30 years of stuff and packed every piece and sold it at an auction. Thought I would miss those things, but I haven't. Yes, exactly. That's why the cluttering is so freeing. Buttered dish with a cover.
Yes, those are all great examples of homeless clutter. So the key to overhauling the homeless items is to find every single one of these items a permanent dedicated home where they can always go back to. So let's go over some examples. Now, when I was [00:31:00] creating these slides last night, I was looking around trying to find some examples because after losing all of our things in a house fire, We don't have a lot of stuff.
I keep saying that this photo right here is our kitchen, my poor kitchen. My childhood home that I lost in the fire. So beautiful. I didn't like it at first, but you know, after a few years of living there after inheriting it from my mother, I started to really get it to a place where I enjoyed it. These are the teacups and plates that I was just talking about up here.
So anyways, I sat there last night creating these slides and I looked around my house and really found some homeless item examples that I could share with you. So one of them is my son's broken iPad that's sitting on my nightstand. And if you follow me on social media, you know that this is the second time he's broke his iPad in the last six months, but that's a story for another day.
So that iPad, we, we have Apple care. My son's not getting a new one, [00:32:00] but I'm still going to fix it because I'm paying for Apple care, but I just don't know where to put the iPad right now because it's kind of like in limbo, like in a purgatory phase, you know, it's not usable. But I'm not going to the Apple store yet.
So it's just sitting on my nightstand and hence it's homeless. Another example is a handful of sunglasses. There's like six of them that a friend gave us. It's also a bunch of toys that my younger two kids don't really play with anymore, and they're just sitting next to my bed. They're actually sitting next to my bed because when I overhauled before my angiogram, I gathered up those toys I knew they weren't playing with anymore, and I decided to move them next to my bed with the Plan to declutter them, but I kind of stopped midway again.
They're like in a purgatory phase because This is a whole like advanced topic, but you know, my youngest two kids are seven and nine They're at the end of the [00:33:00] road with the toys and we lost all their other toys and our fire so I'm kind of at this spot where I'm like I don't really want to let those toys go because I want to save some of them.
Uh, so that's why they're kind of just sitting by my bed because they're homeless right now. Another example is bobby pins and hair ties, artwork that my kids have brought home from school this year, and then a bunch of random stuff that my husband keeps bringing over from the house that we lost in the fire.
And this stuff, it still needs to be restored and so it stinks, it smells like smoke damage. So for every single homeless item that is on that list, I need to find every single one of them a dedicated permanent spot. Where they can belong where they can always go back to because once each item, once every one of these homeless items have a permanent spot where they belong, [00:34:00] it will be put away.
And then if it ever gets left out again, it will be an everyday mess. You see how this is all like streamlining together. Once you find these homeless items, a home and they get left out. They're no longer homeless because you know where to put them. They just need to be put back where they belong. And that means that you can always do that.
You can always put them back where they belong during your daily reset. So one to two times a day when you're tidying with intention, when you're gathering the everyday messes and putting them all back where they go, that same homeless item like the um, the butter dish for example, you will know where to put it.
Because it has a home and therefore it's no longer homeless. So once you find the homeless items a home, they're obviously no longer going to be homeless. And this is [00:35:00] why finding every one of them a permanent dedicated home will make such an incredible difference in your household. Because before now, these items have been left out because you didn't know where to put them.
But once you have somewhere to put them consistently, if you or your family ever leaves them out ever again, You can just pick them up and put them all away once a day. Now, I want to acknowledge the elephant in the room. I know that finding a home for these items sounds easier said than done, because if it was that simple, you would have done it before now, right?
But the good news is that there is a simple way to do this. And I also want to remind you that the reason why you have been unable to deal with these homeless items before now is because. It is very common to look around your house. and group all of your things [00:36:00] together in your mind. Unless you're very strategic, which is how I ended up coming up with these methods, because I'm very strategic in type A, you're not going to look at a jumbled table and be like, well, that's an item that I don't know what to do with.
And that is something that I do know where it goes. You're never going to see all of your stuff like that. It's actually normal, the way that our brains work to see a pile of stuff. And try to deal with it all at once. So, with that said, the reason I'm pointing this all out to you is because I know that it seems like you could have been doing this all along, but you didn't even know, you likely didn't even know that's what these items were.
But I'm going to share with you how simple this can be. The simple way to find these items a home is to contain them. That's the key. You want to contain them. [00:37:00] So let's go over some examples. The examples that I just went through from my own house. So the broken iPad on my nightstand. What I can do is find A shelf or a cabinet and a drawer or a drawer for all electronics going forward, whether they're broken or not, they would all go in this drawer.
And that's what I'm thinking about doing. And we had something like this in our house that we don't have in our current house. So that's why this broken iPad is just in limbo on my nightstand. But, um, my dresser, I can, I actually have an empty drawer. But, you know, in your case, if you don't have any empty drawers inside of your dresser, you can clean one out.
And be like, you know what, this is. Our electronic drawer going forward, it's going to house all iPads, phones, chargers, keyboards, mouses, et cetera. And then every single item is contained within that drawer. The handful of sunglasses. [00:38:00] What a way that I could contain these is with a basket or a bin for all outdoor items.
Again, we had one of these in our house that we lost. I bought this cute little basket at Hobby Lobby like Seven years ago and hung it right by our sliding glass door when my kids were much younger because they needed their sunglasses to go in the backyard and their place for their bubbles and the sunscreen and the bug spray and the chalk and all that stuff.
Now we don't have that anymore. And so therefore the outdoor things are just getting left around my house. They're homeless, but I can get a little basket and set it right by our back door and voila, I'll have a little outdoor station for all of our sunglasses. Now regarding the toys that my kids don't play with anymore that I said I kind of can't really decide if I want to let them go or not.
That's a whole nother story. But for you, if you're just decluttering basic toys, the solution to [00:39:00] contain those items is to put them in a donation box. Whether that's in your den, your garage, your basement, or on the side of your curb. You want to put them in a donation box or the trash bag. That's how you're going to contain the items that your kids don't, the toys that your kids don't play with anymore.
Bobby pins and hair ties. An easy way to contain these items is with a hair caddy. And on that note, if when you, when you're containing these things. You don't have to go buy new products. However, if you want to, you can always go to the dollar store and buy a little caddy for a dollar and then put all your hair stuff in there, all your daughter's hair things, their bobby pins and hair ties and bows and brushes and detangler, all that stuff is all of a sudden contained.
We don't have one because again, we lost it in the fire. So the, the hair ties are getting. Stuck on doorknobs and the bobby pins are just left on every counter and [00:40:00] table all throughout our house So I need to get a little caddy to contain these items and then the bobby pins and hair ties won't be homeless anymore if and when There's ever one left out.
I can easily pick it up and say, this Bobby pin goes in the hair caddy, and then I go put it back where it belongs. Now I know that's a small, tiny little, like a looking for a needle in a haystack in your home. A Bobby pin isn't going to really make that much of a difference, but my goal here is to really help you understand the gravity of how you can do this for every single item in your house.
Some other examples, um, artwork that my kids have brought home. I actually have a paper organizer down here that I plan to use for like a memento memory box for now. I just, that's my goal this summer is to organize the artwork that I want to save because again, we lost all their artwork in the fire. So some of my examples are going to be vastly different from yours because of our [00:41:00] house fire.
I'm going to save much more artwork than I normally would have. Other examples I wanted to put on here. One of these is one of my favorites for explaining this is loose drink flavoring mixed packets. This was something that we used to struggle with a lot. You know, like those little powdered, I don't even know what they're called, like the lemonade packets and stuff like that, that you can add in water.
They would just get left all over our kitchen counter. So I got a little mason jar and I left, I put it in the corner of our counter and all of a sudden they all had it home. So that was a way to contain those items. And then another example is anything small, like a broken toy, a screw, a battery. You can contain those items with a small little dish on your microwave, or your dresser, or your desk, or a shelf on your wall.
Just a small little thing. And it can be something so small and insignificant, but it's still creating a [00:42:00] home. If you have one little small dish, and you always put your bobby pins in there. It doesn't matter, you know, two years from now, you can find a bobby pin on the floor and you'll know where it goes.
It goes in that dish on your microwave. And it just makes it so much easier to know where to put these things. So for each of these homeless items, you're going to ask yourself, Where should this item belong? Where do I want to put this? How can I give it a home by containing it?
Inside of my program, Flutter to Calm, which the doors are opening tomorrow, by the way, we have an entire lesson that is devoted to helping you do this. So that way you can easily find a dedicated home for all of your homeless items. And there is also a list of numerous examples with the links to the products.
So it's kind of cut off on this photo right here, [00:43:00] but you can see here at the bottom, phase one is the overhaul phase. And this is the lesson right here, Step 2, Finding a Home for the Homeless Clutter. Throughout this lesson, we go over specific examples, again, with links to products for how, with links to products, if you desire to purchase products to help you find a home for these items.
But for now, just remember that you can find every single one of these items at home by containing them in something. So let me know if you're ready to overhaul the homeless items in your home. You can drop a yes in the chat. Debbie said, the homeless item she sees is the electronic luggage scale. Yes, and you know, right off the top of my head, where do you store your luggage?
That would be a great place to put that scale.
Now there is one more thing that I want to [00:44:00] share with you about finding a home for the homeless items. This puppy, man, she's still not taking a nap. She's bothering me. Come on Carly, it's time to go lay down. She's chewing on this chair that I'm sitting on. Here's the last thing I want to share with you about finding a home for these items.
If you truly don't have anywhere to put these items, I know that will be the case for some of you. If you don't have any room, if these items are left out and piling up on your tables because you have no room to put them anywhere else, then the only solution First, let me say you must find them home regardless.
That's the, that's the only thing that you can do. If you do not find these items at home, you will be stuck where you are forever. I know, because again, I have a family member whose house is like this. There's a lot of things that. She wants to keep which they're homeless and she doesn't know what to do with and she says she can't declutter because she doesn't know where to start because [00:45:00] she doesn't have room for the things she wants to keep.
So the only solution is to put all these homeless items in a big extra large moving box. and push it out of the way somewhere. You can label it temporary home for homeless clutter, and then put it in the corner of your living room, your garage, your basement, etc. That's the only solution. If your house is literally bursting at the seams, and you have no room to put, um, let me think of a bigger, like a physically bigger example.
Um,
I can't. Uh, Um, here's an example. One of those, uh, Dog treat puzzles. You know what I'm talking about where they can like move the thing around with their noses. We have one that's just like shoved over there. Like I said, and [00:46:00] homeless item. An example is they're shoved in places because you don't know where to put it.
So that's a physically bigger item. If you literally don't have room to put that somewhere, like if you don't have room to shove it in your shelves because your shelves are already bursting at the seams, the only solution to take this dog treat puzzle is to put it in a box. And put the box in the corner of your room.
And then every single time you come across a homeless item, you will put all of them in that same box. And then once you finish the second phase, the decluttering phase, you will have a lot more space in your home. And then you could pull out this temporary box of homeless items, and you can find every one of those things a box.
permanent home. So the only solution is to create a temporary home for them with a box. That's literally the only [00:47:00] thing that you can do. So let me know if you're ready to have more breathing room in less than 20 minutes.
What just happened? Where'd my slides go? I lost my slides. There they are. Dorianne said she hates dealing with the tedious little things, but it's true that once they have a home, she won't have to deal with them this way again. Yes, yes, yes. And um,
If they're, you know, I, the examples I was giving, and again, I did my best to come up with examples from my own home, because it's much easier for me to riff on them, and to talk about them, like the bobby pins and the hair ties, but for most of you, the bobby pins and the hair ties are not bothering you. I realize that.
I know that that's not stressing you out and making you feel like your house is safe. It's cluttered and messy. It's the bigger [00:48:00] items like the dog treat puzzle or the stacks of papers. And with that said,
you're, it's absolutely feasible to group these items together. You don't have to do this like, uh, what's the word I'm looking for? Um, Oh, it's on the tip of my tongue. I can't think of it, but like, you don't have to take it to the nitty gritty and, and do each individual. That's pretty cool. item like I broke down.
I just broke down those examples so that way you had a full understanding of how you can contain these items. What I would really recommend doing is kind of doing the best you can in categories. So, uh, let me think of our house that we lost in the fire because we always had so much homeless clutter there.
Um, and it's because we had way more stuff. Uh,[00:49:00]
so library books were always a big homeless clutter item for us. They would get piled up in our living room. The solution to contain those is to get a big basket and just dump them in there. Or to even just find one spot. It can be on your cube shelf, but if you always put the library books there. That's their home.
That's that's a home piling them up in the same spot. And then, you know, that nothing else goes there. That's the little spot for the library books or as another example, um, people were talking about gift bags and stuff like that. Like, yeah, those are like, uh, A, uh, a tedious little thing, like if you have a bunch of solar lights that are going to go on your front walkway or, um, you know, like bath and body sets and stuff, yeah, it's really [00:50:00] annoying and tedious to find those little things at home, but sometimes it could just be easier to just.
gather a big bag and put all the gifts in there and say this is their home for now. This is where all or like the example somebody gave about Christmas gifts that they're buying for this coming holiday season. Just put them all in a bag and that's their home. That's containing them. It's just giving them somewhere to go so that way they're not piling up and then you can shove that bag.
In the back of your closet for now, because as I hope you're seeing here, once you go through the phases of the peaceful home roadmap, your house will become more tidy. It will become more clutter free and more spacious. And then it will be so much easier to find all of these items, a permanent long term home.
So your day [00:51:00] two action step is to choose one space in your home that has homeless clutter. And then you're going to gather them all up and you're going to find a permanent home for all of them. This is a photo of our dining room in the house we lost in the fire several years ago. Um, there's a lot going on in this photo.
And I usually share this photo when I'm teaching about the big three messes because you can see there's homeless clutter, there's everyday messes, everyday messes right here. These were Christmas things that needed to be put away. Homeless clutter is, uh, Just like right in here kind of and then accumulated clutter was this stuff that was piling up back here So I just wanted to give you this photo to show you that I know exactly what it's like to have Every room in your house just be piling up with stuff So your action step for today for day two is to choose one space in your home [00:52:00] That has homeless clutter, gather them all up and find a permanent home for each of them.
And then just like yesterday, you can share a before and after photo for a chance to win for 40 points. And you can add your photos underneath the post as a comment. Underneath the post that looks just like this, or you can always create your own post right here in the group. So let's go over what you've learned so far today.
You've learned how to overhaul your home using the four step home overhaul blueprint. You've learned an approximately, an approximate three week timeline to overhaul your entire household. You've learned the easiest way to find a home for your homeless items by containing them. And you learned what to do if you can't find a home for something, if you don't have room for anything.
So all that's left is for you to go take action by finding a permanent, dedicated home [00:53:00] for your homeless items. Now let's get into our Q& A session, and I'm going to read through these comments I just missed. I don't have to go pick up my kids today. One of my friends, he's like an uncle to them, he's gonna pick them up.
Cause I have to work tonight anyways.
Carol, you had two kitchen cabinets moved. What do you mean moved?
You emptied them into a big box and don't want to keep everything. So it's just sitting in my dining room. They're all in a temporary box right now. Yes. Carol, that's a great example of homeless clutter. And what I would encourage you to ask yourself is, is that temporary box working for you? If so, then great.
You can leave it as it is. You don't have to take the items out of that temporary box and put them somewhere else because [00:54:00] having them in that temporary box, they're already contained. Dorian said, I need a bin labeled things to return to the store because that is a lot of the homeless stuff in my office.
Yes. That sounds like a plan. We live out in the country. Yes. So I can't just run to the store and I keep forgetting. I've always wondered how people who live in a country do this. And that's why I have always said I will never live in the country because I go to Walgreens like all the time lately because of the wound on my foot, but I feel like I'm going to Walgreens like multiple times every single week and it would drive me crazy to.
Not be able to run to the store when I need it, but that's because I've been doing it my whole life. So that sounds like a great plan, Dorian, that you can have a little bin. It could be like a little wire basket you can buy at the dollar store or something that you already have. Or you could even like get a box, like an Amazon box and [00:55:00] just use that for now.
You don't have to spend any money on this if you don't want to. You can get a little box and just put Items to return and you can put it in your entryway. Rose said, if we don't just start, then we make no progress. Yes. Yes. That is so correct. Yes, Debbie. I'm sorry about that. The, um, the technical difficulties there will definitely be the replay will be available for several, for a couple of weeks.
Oh, that makes sense, Carol, that you had to expose it then. So Dorianne said she's afraid that if she puts everything in a big box or a bag for temporary items, she will never get to it in the future. That's one of my problems. There are three boxes of stuff that in my office that I've had for years. The boxes of stuff in your office, are they all items you want to keep?
Are they all homeless items?[00:56:00]
Because, uh, the first thing that's coming to mind, Dorianne, is that it sounds like you move those items. Into the box into the boxes over the last three years
kind of like as a way like what we're describing here as a way to store these items that you wanted to keep, but you didn't know what to do with. However, the reason why you've never got to them what I'm assuming is because you have not fully decluttered your house and therefore you don't have room for any of those items.
So, on the one hand, I 100 percent understand where you're [00:57:00] coming from. Some people, first of all, you have incredible awareness to recognize that you feel like you won't be able to get to them. Um, And that very well may be the case for you. I do want to remind you that when you clear away the clutter, and you're able to have a lot more space in your home, you will eventually get to those boxes.
Now, the second thing that's coming to mind is, do those boxes, are they items that you're missing? Like, do you feel like you need to know what's in there? Are they things that you would use? If you knew what they were, or, um, are they things that you don't really need to access right now? Because if they are things that you don't really need to [00:58:00] access, then it's okay.
They can stay there for 10 years. That's kind of an over exaggeration, but they can stay there for as long as you need. Now, the last thing that I want to say is that you don't have to follow that method if you don't want to. If you don't want to put things in a temporary box because you feel like you will never get to them, then you definitely don't have to do that.
But I do, I do want to say that it might be. A fear coming up that you feel guilty that you never got to the previous boxes. And so it's kind of like a limiting belief where you're worried that the same thing is going to happen again. But you can commit and decide at any given time to just be like, you know what, I'm going to go through these boxes right now.
And I'm going to deal with these boxes. So that way I can put all our, my current homeless [00:59:00] clutter in its own box.
Okay, so Dorian. Yes, the kids school photos and mail and such. I have been there. My gosh, have I been there. We had my youngest child. I think it was her 2nd birthday and I was like, you know, trying to, like, get my house in order, which is I later learned is really the overhaul process trying to get my house in order.
And I just took, like, piles of paper and shoved them in a laundry basket. And I shoved it in the back of my master closet. And then I couldn't find my birth certificate. For years, and I'm not even from Oklahoma. So I had to call Michigan and get my birth certificate and spend 50 bucks and wait for it to be mailed.
And it was just a pain in the ass. I know. And especially when it's kids artwork and stuff, I know that it can be really frustrating. So on that note, let me remind you that.[01:00:00]
The way those items got put in those other boxes, the kids artwork and papers and mail and stuff like that was likely in the same way that I just mentioned. Kind of like in a rush, not really know, knowing what to do, you were frustrating, you were trying, you were frustrated, you were trying to clean up an area and you just put things in a box to put them out of the way for the time being.
And therefore, it was a bunch of just random stuff, but that won't happen now because you know that kids artwork and the mail and the papers. Those are not the types of homeless items that you need to put in a box. You can always find room for kids artwork and mail and papers. You cannot find room for a big dog treat puzzle, if that makes sense.
So for a kid's artwork and mail and papers, I would recommend going and getting a magazine file [01:01:00] sorter thingy, or a clipboard or a binder or something. Another way to contain those items and putting it on a bookshelf in your office, for example, and then you can label it kids artwork. And that way in the future, you know, My kids artworks there.
You can do the same thing with a birth certificate. So you don't ever lose your birth certificate. You can do the same thing with unopened mail and paperwork. So the putting items in boxes as a temporary solution. I'm forgive me if I didn't say this earlier, it should never be just a bunch of random jumbled stuff.
You're not just like gathering up items and just kind of like shoving them in a box. It's when it's a last resort. When you don't know what else to do with something.
Sue said she can do 20 minutes a day, like eating an elephant one bite at a time. Yes, I love it. [01:02:00] Mary Lou said she's inundated with paper to shred or mark out personal info. I've been there too. And I ultimately put it all in a bag and had my husband burn it. Which I didn't want to do, but, my God, it was like, You remember that store, um, Bye Bye Baby, like B U Y Bye Bye Baby.
They had these huge bags and I think I had, it was like when I was pregnant with my youngest child and I'd had, went and bought like a whole bunch of baby stuff, like this huge giant. Grocery bag was filled to the brim overflowing with papers that I needed to shred and there was no way that I could sit there one at a time with the shredder.
Like, I was like, I'm never going to do this. So I just had him take it in the backyard and burn it. But nowadays, there are services that can do that for you and you could also [01:03:00] recycle it. at a recycling plant. So instead of putting it in your recycling bin because you never know who's going to find that, you can literally go to a recycling plant and watch it get put into the thing because you know that nobody's going to get in there if that makes sense.
Carol said, how do you decide how to let go of stuff? So that's what we're going to be getting into tomorrow during day three when we're talking about accumulated clutter. Like I was sharing earlier, it's a process. It's not something that you can just dive right in and be good at. Decluttering is all about making decisions.
That's really what it comes down to. Deciding what to let go of. And there are many methods and systems and processes that I can share with you, uh, that will help you do this. But what I'll say now is,
like I said, there's so many I can choose from. [01:04:00] Um, The best thing that I want to, that I feel called to share right now is some people are more like, like go with their gut kind of people, you know, like you will feel a feeling in the pit of your stomach, whereas some people are more like analytical in their head thinkers.
If that makes sense, I am. I'm not an analytical person, like I have a really hard time connecting with my body in any way, or even feeling any kind of feeling in my gut. So, the reason I point that out is because you will likely know which one you are. With that said, I recommend just two, just asking yourself one simple question with two possible answers.
Do I want to keep this or do I want to let this go? When you ask yourself that question, Carol, and then you tune into your gut or your mind. You will always know the [01:05:00] answer. Always. It will be either a resounding yes, or a resounding no. And if you're not sure, then the solution is to keep it for now. That is the easiest way to declutter because I'm going to try not to say much more after this because that's what day three is 100 percent dedicated to is decluttering.
But the, um, the traditional way that we're taught to declutter from Marie Kondo and HomeEdit and other decluttering experts, they teach us to just sort all our things into Dozens of different piles. Keep, donate, trash, relocate, maybe, sell, shred, blah, blah, blah. And then what happens? You're left with all these piles and you're overwhelmed and you're confused and you're frustrated and you've made a huge mess and you're running out of time and it is not effective.
But instead, if you just narrow it [01:06:00] down to two possible answers, these are the things I want to keep and these are the things I want to let go. It is so much easier. So you can go up to a pile of stuff. in your closet and you can pull out a sweater and say, do I want to keep this? And just ask yourself and you'll know if it's a yes or a no.
Now, um, another simple way, Carol, is to let go of any item that you no longer need, use or want. So
this will really come down to asking yourself if something is important to you. If something's important to you, then you keep it. If it's not important to you, then you don't need to keep it.
Yes, Dorian, that's what I was saying. Cleaning off the counters when company was coming over, Christmas, etc. So she doesn't even know what's in the boxes. Yes, exactly. [01:07:00] So, remember, that won't happen now, Dorian, because you're not going to be just cleaning off the counters and dumping everything in a box.
You did that in the past. I did that in the past looks like multiple people have done that before because we didn't know better because like I said, it's common to just deal with all of your belongings as a whole, but now that's why we differentiate our things and really prioritize the big three messes.
So you're just putting the everyday messes back where they belong, and then you're finding a home for the homeless clutter.
Yes, Debbie. And on that note, I recommend keeping them, or let me rephrase that. Keeping them. If you want to, I will never ever tell anybody to declutter anything that they don't want to, because I believe that we should have boundaries in place for the things that we want to keep. I [01:08:00] decided a long time ago that I was going to keep my kids, baby and toddler toys.
That's what I was talking about earlier. I lost them in the fire. I chose to keep them like they're little rattles. I'm going to cry. But you know what I mean, um, for my own things, like my own toys, I had my stuffed animals. I chose, I wanted to keep those. I decided that I was going to, and I never was going to let them go.
It was never my plan to, I was going to save them for the rest of my life, because that was the boundary that I set. So for your paper dolls and your books, you're allowed to keep them for as long as you want to. So, um, what I would recommend is just finding not just a random big, extra large moving box, but something more, um, what's the word I'm looking for?
Uh, protective. Like a, like a container with a snap on lid or a, uh, like a photo [01:09:00] box and putting the paper dolls in one and then putting all the books like in a big tote. And even if you don't have room to put them anywhere until your lower level is finished, you can still contain those items in a big tote.
In those bins and totes right now. That way, when you do have room after your lower level is finished, you can just move those bins and totes back down there and they're already contained in something. And in the meantime, while you're in this limbo phase with your house being renovated, the paper dolls and the books won't be so messy and visually cluttered to the eye because you will have them in a bin in the corner of your room.
Yes, Carol. That is. It's the simplest, easiest way that you can declutter. And another option is to just ask yourself, like, do I love this item? Do I want this item? Is it, is this item important to me? Uh, [01:10:00] that's a bad example. I don't have anything near me. I don't have anything near me right now. We'll use my phone.
That's a bad example too. Is my phone important? Yes, of course it is. So I'm gonna keep it. Is this, um, ring light important? Yes. So I'm gonna keep it. Is this LOL doll important to me? Hell no it's not. I don't even know why I still have it here. I need to get rid of it. It's my daughter's. But so, as you can see, you can translate this same process to your kids.
When my kids come home I can ask my daughter is this lol doll important to you because it's been sitting on my desk for three days and I'm tired of looking at it and she'll know I'm going to teach her to either say yes or no it's it's one or the other is it important to you if it is We're keeping it.
If it's not, we're letting it go.
Yeah, exactly. And your kids, Karen, they are not going to remember [01:11:00] that stuff. But, um, if it's important to you, then you keep it. And, you know, speaking of, we were talking about the paper dolls and the books and stuff like that, that Debbie had mentioned one thing after losing all of my belongings in a fire, I am so grateful, my trolls, my Polly pockets, and my, my little ponies.
35 years old, my youngest daughter had all of them in her bedroom, and therefore they all survived the fire. And it just brings me so much joy to know that I chose to save those things for all these years. And she's still playing with them. My Barbies I lost. I didn't lose my dad got them stolen out of a storage unit.
Like, 20 years ago, but so my point is, is that choosing to save some of your things. It's, if that's important to you, then you can do that. And whether it's your kids or your grandkids, maybe, [01:12:00] you know, one day down the line, they will play with them. If not, you can save them just because you wanted to. So does anybody have any other questions today?
This was a great Q& A session.
I cannot wait to see your progress. from tackling and overhauling the homeless clutter because this is the, uh, one of the most beneficial things that you can do in your home. It is so impactful. You're welcome, Carol. It is so impactful. So choose one space in your house, excuse me, has homeless clutter. It could be an entire room.
It could be one little area, one little piece of furniture. Anything that works for you, then you're going to find each of those items a [01:13:00] home and share your before and after photos for a chance to win 40 points in some of our, one of our prizes at the end of the week. And I can't wait to hear how it goes for you.
I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Oh yes, Karen, what is your question?
No, Karen, that's everyday messes. So the easy way to remember this is that homeless items is they're homeless. You don't know where to put them. They don't have a home.
Rose said she has to decide if saving things that she cares about is more important. Okay. I was going to mention this earlier in regard to, um, I don't remember somebody's question. Uh,
oh, when Mary was talking about the paper that needs to be shredded or has personal stuff [01:14:00] and I decided I would wait because this kind of comes up with comes. during the decluttering process. Um, what this really comes down to is you must decide and commit to yourself that you are not going to let your home become a dumping ground or a landfill, a landfill.
Um, that's what I was going to share earlier. And so that is why, even though I, in regards to the stack of papers I needed to shred, even though I didn't want to burn them in my backyard, I thought that was so trashy. I came to a crossroad and I was like, this needs taken care of now. Like right now, I'm not holding onto this freaking stack of papers, this bag of papers for one more day.
And so I put my feelings to the side about how trashy it was to burn a bag of papers in a suburban neighborhood. And I went ahead and let my [01:15:00] husband do it so that way I could just be done with it. And it's kind of the same thing as I went through the decluttering process. I first started by decluttering.
Or, when I first started decluttering, I was donating so many things to 20 different places, and it was so tedious and so exhausting, and then about eight, six months into the process, I said, you know what? Screw this shit. I'm gonna throw everything away. And I did. And I made that choice because I realized that it was too stressful for me to try to donate things to, you know, the business clothes here and the kids clothes here and the women's clothes here and the household goods here and, you know, And the, the baby items in the breast pumps, like, no way.
Like what was happening was I wasn't doing it. I wasn't getting any, any of that stuff out of my house because it was too tedious and too drawn out and too [01:16:00] ridiculous, to be honest. So I started throwing it all away and putting all of it on my curb and like these huge piles that said free, because I decided that it was more worth it for me to have peace of mind and.
Sanity and breathing room then to honor my convictions. I didn't like, I'm a huge advocate for our environment and the earth. And I'm literally going to start crying, talking about this, but like, I knew that I could not. Keep that stuff in my house for one more day. I knew that I had to get it out as quickly as possible.
So that way I could have the peace of mind and the sanity in the breathing room to focus on helping our environment in other ways. And if that meant throwing away a handful of boxes of stuff, then so be it. That was the choice that I had to make. So that really kind of [01:17:00] came up in regard to your comment, Rose, because it's a decision.
There's a process. Like you said, you need to decide if saving things that you care about is more important than the stress that it's causing. And When you're faced with that decision, the best thing that you can do is to, let me rephrase that, when you're faced with that decision, the way to make that decision is to just decide, like right then and there, do I want to save this or do I want peace of mind and breathing room?
Is this item that important to me? Is it going to be important to me 20 years from now, or do I want it out of my house right now? Like, I was giving an example with the Polly Pockets and the My Little Ponies and all that stuff. And I will say that I chose to keep those [01:18:00] items because when I first chose to keep them, my house wasn't cluttered.
I was raised by, my mother was pretty much a minimalist, so my house wasn't cluttered. And now I'm obviously keeping them because my daughter uses them. But, um, as another example, uh, let me, let me think of a better example. Uh,
okay, like my high school notes. I don't have them. I lost them in the fire. I'd saved all of them. Every note I'd ever wrote in high school. If my husband came home with a big bag and said, I found all your high school notes, it would come down to, okay, Nicole, you saved all of these notes for the last 20 years.
And you never read them. Do you want to save them now? Or do you want to just be done with them and just get them out of your house? And I would choose the latter. I would choose to just let them go. [01:19:00] And so what you said, Rose, you're going to be the only one that will know that answer. But I encourage you to go within because I'll bet you'll have that answer pretty quick.
About if it's more important to you to save those things. Or if you just want to,
let me rephrase that. You're gonna have the answer pretty quick regarding whether you should keep them or whether you should just let them go. Yes, exactly, Dorian. They just sit there for a long time and it's one donation place, that's Not what I was referring to, like, you know, as a matter of fact, because of that, I ultimately decided to just narrow down my donation options to just two.
It used to be three when my kids were babies and toddlers, [01:20:00] I did have a place to donate their donations. Um, like they're good clothes and stuff like that too. And they're, you know, they're big walkers and bassinets and stuff like that. But now I just donate to the homeless shelter and Goodwill. And if there's anything that doesn't go to one of those places, I don't even donate it at all.
I just throw it away. So where I'm going with this is. If you have one to two places that you donate all of your things to and your stuff, your donation bins are sitting there for a long time. Yeah, that's really annoying and it can be really frustrating, but it's also a simple fix. You can commit to yourself that you're going to put the items in your car and you're going to drive there and go drop them off.
However, if like we were saying earlier, you live out of the country, if you're trying to donate to 20 different places or If you just want to make it easy, [01:21:00] you can just throw the stuff away. It's kind of like, and I really came to this conclusion because of this family friend that I've shared about.
And also along the same lines of, um, like when you watch like the show hoarders or anything like that, they're just throwing the stuff out. They're, they're not donating it. And we get so caught up worrying about. What's going to happen to our belongings when in reality, that's why your house is the way that it is because you're trying to control the outcome of your things and you can't let that happen.
You can't be so worried that a shirt you bought 20 years ago is going to go to a good home. You have to just wash your hands and be done with it and decide like. I don't need this anymore. That means I'm going to throw [01:22:00] it away. Then I'm going to throw it away. Just get it out of your house. And the reason why is because once you make that choice and you decide to just clear the stuff out as easily as possible, even if that means throwing it all away, it's giving you a fresh start.
And then you can decide going forward that you will no longer let your household reach that stage ever again. So yes, Rose, then the things. that you were referring to, it's not important for you to keep them.
Um, and this doesn't have to be a hard and fast rule. Like, you don't have to be like, I want peace of mind, so I'm throwing everything away. Of course, it doesn't have to be like that. There's a happy medium. Uh, and it's always going to come down to, [01:23:00] like, do you have room for stuff? I just looked up, there's these, it's kind of a long explanation.
So again, this is my step aunt's house. When we moved here, there was already a couch here. Then one of my kid's teachers donated us all of her old living room furniture, so we brought all of it into our living room, but the couch that was in the living room doesn't belong to us, and so we had to find somewhere to put it, so we put it in here in the den, because this used to be a garage, it's the only storage space.
However, we have dogs, and we didn't want the dogs getting on the couch, so the couch is upside down. And the pillows, the cushions are just like stacked on top of it. And on the very top of the cushions on top of the couch is a bunch of stuffed animals. Again, I was saying my husband brought a bunch of stuff over from the fire house.
That's what we call it. He washed them in the washer and he put these stuffed animals over there and they're just like literally halfway up the wall staring at me. And some of them are [01:24:00] freaking stupid as like. My kids don't want them. I don't want them. Some of them, they are, like, there's a Yoda, a little baby Yoda, and, uh, a Mandalorian character.
Like, I know my son will want those. But some of the other ones, I could throw them away right now, and he wouldn't give a shit. So, I was saying this because it doesn't have to be a hard and fast rule. You don't have to be like, well, I'm gonna throw all these stuffed animals away. You get to pick and choose which ones are important to you.
And, it's always with the end goal of peace of mind, and sanity, and breathing room. If you get rid of, if you decide to get rid of half the stuffed animals, and you only keep a few of them, that's way less than you had to begin with. And then, it's much easier to make room for three stuffed animals than it is to make room for ten.
Especially, you know, stuffed animals, god, they take up so much space. And, What I really [01:25:00] want you guys to understand is that it is a process. When you go over there and you get rid of three stuffed animals, it might not seem like you're making a drastic difference right now, but in three months, and, and this is something that I teach inside of my course, Cluttered to Calm.
When you reach the declutter phase, you're not just decluttering your house one time, you're passing back through all of the areas multiple times, and you're really peeling back. The clutter, like the layers of an onion, like you're peeling an onion. And the reason why that is, is because the more that you focus on decluttering the stuffed animals, for example, the easier it will be for you to let them go.
So I might go over there when we end this session and go throw away some of those stuffed animals because we don't need them. And then, um, when I buy a new house in a few months and we pack up all our stuff, I'm going to try, I'm going to, I'm going to [01:26:00] prioritize decluttering those stuffed animals again, and I might find that I let go of a few more.
And the reason why that is, is because the more that you declutter, the more that you pass back through the same areas in your home again and again and again, the easier it's going to be for you to let go of items. And that is because decluttering is like a muscle. The more that you do it, the easier it's going to get.
And Best of all, when you come back around to the same areas and you prioritize decluttering them again, you're going to see in your, in your eye, and you're going to note like this stupid stuffed animal has been sitting here for all these months and it didn't even move and nobody cares about it. So obviously that's a sign that nobody wants it.
So that's going to signal to you that like, hey, it's safe to let this go. I hope that made sense. So does anybody have any more questions before we end today?[01:27:00]
And yes, Cameron donation pickups are a great service. I know you've used them in the past. Um, it's very helpful and some people throwing your things out. Like I was mentioning that is not okay with you. And I highly respect that and fully understand. And I'm not saying that you need to do that. What I was saying is that.
You might choose that route as a quick and easy solution to get your house back to square 1 to get your house back in order. So you can start fresh. I never want anybody to do anything that goes against their values and their convictions because
I always want you to declutter in a way that works for you. Decluttering needs to be something that is sustainable long term, not just decluttering but overhauling as well as managing and maintaining your house for the rest of your life. It needs to [01:28:00] be something that you can stick to forever because You're going to live in your home for the rest of your life.
Maybe not this home that you're in right now, but a home unless you end up homeless, which I highly doubt any of you here. I highly doubt that will ever happen to you. I know and I'm fully aware and I have been there myself. I know there are many people in this world that are not blessed to have a house to call their own and I Wish that
and I want to honor those people, but I also want to acknowledge that. We're all blessed to have a house that we can call our own. And therefore, um, you're going to be, you're going to need to manage and maintain your household for the rest of your life. So you want overhauling and managing the messes and doing the laundry and the dishes [01:29:00] and clearing away the clutter and letting go of the things you no longer need use or want and keeping track of the paperwork and Making effective decisions on stuffed animals and toys and bills and and knickknacks and cleaning and tidying.
You want all of that stuff to be sustainable and realistic and manageable so you can do it easily for the rest of your life. But most importantly, so you can. Pass it down to younger generations, to your kids and your grandkids. So that way you can literally have a legacy of a homemaker who is naturally organized.
Like if you think about your favorite grandmother or one of your family members, when you were a kid and you used to go to her house and you know, it was always tidy and she would always make her, you know, your favorite cookies, my grandmother used to always make me this favorite salad of When you think about that stuff.
You want [01:30:00] your grandkids to have those,
to have those same memories. And so that's the goal. I don't know why I'm flying. That's the goal is to pass that down to future generations. So that way, when they think of you, they'll have that same warm feeling and then they can teach their kids. To do the same.
Well, man, that was like, came out of nowhere. I guess that's that's really, um, something that's important to me and I didn't know that till just now, based on, like, the tears that just streamed down my face, like, literally out of, like, out of thin air. Rose, I'm glad it was helpful. Thank you all for being here.
I will, we're going to be back here tomorrow. Same time, same place for [01:31:00] day three, where we're going to be diving into this all about decluttering. So if you have any questions in the meantime, you can always leave a comment in the group. You can create your own post. I'd love to see your progress photos of you finding a home for your homeless clutter.
I can't wait to see the progress that you make. And I will talk to you guys soon.
