180// What I Relearned About Clutter From Moving

Packing up my whole life, living in chaos for four months and literally sorting through every item I own, has been a huge reminder. I'm sharing my reflections on the whole process.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:05

Do you feel overwhelmed by clutter when you walk through the door? Are you tired all the time and stuck just getting by? With each day being a carbon copy of the next and no time or space for yourself? Hi, I'm Sarah, and I was you, so I understand. You're a busy mom, whether at home or working full-time, feeling like you're in survival mode. There isn't time for more because you're just putting out fires, overwhelmed by all the stuff, and aching for something more. That's what the Simple Intentional Podcast is here for. To support you. Whether it's to clear clutter, ditch the overwhelming, and create ease and simplicity, figure out how to be more intentional in your life, or inspire you into action. Each week I'll share things like practical and actionable tips you can start using immediately. To start living more intentionally and create your life, as well as interviews with people that will inspire and educate you. I'm a full-time working mom, wife, and lover of all things simple. After a stage four cancer diagnosis in 2014, I started on a path to change how I was living. And I'm sharing with you everything that has helped me move from a stressed out, people-pleasing perfectionists, to calm, in control, and feeling like the best version of myself. So grab your earbuds, a cup of tea, and join me to start making powerful shifts in your life today. This is about so much more than stuff. Hello, welcome back to the Simple and Intentional Podcast. I'm back this week with some reflections on clutter that I've had over the course of moving from the packing stage, the sorting stage, the actual moving, the unpacking, and what I've noticed over the past, let's say I really started packing in May. So let's say over the past four months, what I've noticed about clutter, what I've been reminded of, and what I want to share with you today. As soon as I knew when I would be moving, I started packing. And that's just the type of person I am. And I think that comes across in my philosophy and my teaching is that I really believe in chipping away at things slowly, giving yourself the extra time and space, and just doing it a little bit at a time. So packing a box a day or a couple of boxes a day doesn't feel like an overwhelming task. But what I started to notice because I did do it over maybe an extended period of time, maybe for some people that's not an extended period of time, but because I did it over this extended period, what started to happen is the boxes slowly filled the space over time. And as I started packing more and more, our space got smaller and smaller. And so I started to see the impact it was having on my habits, on my mind, my mental state, and my focus, especially. It was like getting thrown back into the deep end of cluttered living and re-experiencing it again. And I've had a few of these experiences over the last couple of years between my mom passing away and dealing with her house, the rodent mite infestation that I've shared about, these types of things. So it's just a reminder over and over again how important it is to curate your space, make it work for you, and give yourself that breathing room. So here are some of my habits that were deeply impacted by living in a cluttered space. Number one, my exercise routine. I get up every morning, I work out first thing, and that is a pretty ingrained habit for me. And as my space shrank, as more boxes filled it up, and my living room became more and more challenging to do that in, I stopped exercising. I just became overwhelmed by the space, it felt too hard, it was too cluttered, it was too difficult. And so I really infrequently was exercising. And by the time I moved, I think it had been about a month and a half with no exercise, which is very, very unusual for me. And I definitely started to feel it, especially lifting all the boxes and moving the furniture. I felt my weakness. So it reminded me that I wanted to get back to working out right away. The other thing I really noticed was impacted by living in a cluttered space with all the boxes was my focus. It was all over the place. I felt overwhelmed all the time. It was difficult to find things. It took me longer to do things, it took me longer to think through things. I couldn't stay focused on what I was doing. I would jump around all the time because everywhere I looked, it felt like there was something to do. And this is what happens with clutter in our regular lives. When we have piles of things lying around, I mean, I'm still feeling this now because I'm not completely unpacked. I'm still figuring out my space. I had to buy a ton of furniture and I still need to buy a few more pieces of furniture to be able to fully put things away and baskets, that kind of thing. And because I'm trying to intentionally buy things and choose the things I really love, also finding baskets that fit a certain size space is a real challenge. It's either like $200 for the perfect basket, or I'm biding my time going to Home Sense, which I think is like the equivalent of home goods in the States, and waiting to find the right basket. So it's taking me some time to fully put things away. And I'm feeling that. I'm feeling that because when I look around, I can see, oh, you still need to put that away. Oh, you haven't finished that. And it just feels like this constant to-do list. So I've been living in that mode for about four months where I just find it difficult to rest because there's always something to do. And it's it's essentially everything I teach people about getting rid of clutter. I am reliving right now, over and over again. So I've been really working hard to balance between doing some work on my space, getting it in order, resting, you know, giving the time and space to my daughter while we move through this transition, and also coming back to doing this work, which is so purposeful for me. And I really missed doing it. So that's another thing that I noticed is that my energy and my ability to show up to all the things that I was doing before was really wiped out. And that's part of the story that I share is that when I decluttered, I suddenly had the time and space to do this work that I didn't have before. And it's so interesting to dive back in to essentially where I started this all from at this point where I am restarting my life and, you know, really embracing a new season and shifting my identity and starting again. Quite an interesting turn. But like I was saying, is that I found I was suddenly struggling to do all these things that I've been doing before. And I had really great routines and systems that enabled me to do that. And when my space shifted, I found it really difficult to uphold all these systems and routines that I had had in place. You know, I was more fatigued. I was having a hard time waking up in the morning, which is not usually a problem for me at all. And so I just decided I needed to lean into a little bit. I needed to give myself some more rest. I just needed to acknowledge all I was coping with and do the best I could to ride through that period of time, recognizing that it was going to be a small window of time. I was going to get to the other side, I was going to start to settle into a new space, and that I was going to be able to make that environment work for me in a way that my last home could not. And my last home could not for a number of reasons, including my relationship. But I knew that there were so many factors about this new space and my new life that were going to enable me to work so much better with so much more clarity. So I embraced the season. And that's a piece of advice I pass on to you as well. You know, we can have goals, we can have things we're striving to do and change, but we also need to acknowledge the things that we're coping with. And I'm not always the best at that. I can admit that, that, you know, this has been a seriously full plate for the last couple of years with some heavy emotional work. And I have kept going and kept going. And part of that is I really have built the emotional capacity and resilience to do that. And it's not just that I'm striving or pushing and, you know, blind to what I'm coping with, but part of it also was, you know, I really did need to just keep putting one foot in front of the other, get to the finish line, and then be able to start to shift things in a really meaningful way. So I share this with you because if you are in a season where you are dealing with really hard things, allow yourself some grace. Give yourself the time and space to rest a little bit more, to let go of the things that you can put down. And if you're really committed to them and they really matter to you, you're gonna come back to them. But that, you know, a month or two months out of the span of your lifetime is not a huge amount of time. And it is okay to say, I can't do this right now. So I think from sharing with you how impacted I was by the clutter that I was experiencing from moving, that I can reiterate to you how important it is that you clear clutter from your environment. Clearing clutter is gonna enable you to build better habits and be able to show up to them the way that you want to be showing up to them consistently and energetically. It's gonna enable you to focus so you're not wasting your physical and mental energy on the things that are draining you, which is, you know, the visual to-do list. It's like looking around and saying, Oh, I need to find a place for that. I need to clean that, I need to fix that, I need to take that to so-and-so, that needs to go to with the kids to school, I need to go to the doctor. The infinite to-do list that lives in your head, that mental load can really manifest itself physically in our spaces. And clearing that, making decisions about things, letting go of things enables you to be lighter, to focus on what matters to you. And it actually opens up space, like I said, for you to pursue purpose, whatever that looks like for you. Whether it's leaning into self-care, whether it's building community or friendships, whether it's focusing on your home and beautifying your space, it's a new hobby, it's pursuing a long-term goal, you know, it's leaning into your relationships with your kids and your family. Whatever it is, I guarantee that if you get rid of some clutter, you will have more time, more space, and more energy for those things. And I am a huge, huge believer, and this is not to minimize mental health at all, but I am a huge believer that dealing with your environment and your space will impact your mental health in a really positive way. Now, I want to preface this by saying that I don't think that you have struggles with your mental health because of your environment. However, that is true for some people. And those struggles with your mental health are made worse by a cluttered and chaotic environment. And I also truly believe that finding purpose in your life really alleviates anxiety and depression. And that is, again, it is not to say that if you struggle with anxiety and depression, that you find purpose that will cure that for you. I'm not saying that, but it also might, because sometimes our minds are too idle or they're too heavily weighed down by our struggles, that when we can clear space and we can put ourselves in an environment that nurtures us, supports us, makes us feel worthy, it really opens doors in a way that I can't even fully describe. But I just know that your life opens up. When I think about who I was in 2014 when I started this journey, when I had cancer, and I read that book by the minimalists, and I started to open up my mind to the idea of minimalism and simplifying. And I read Courtney Carver's book, Soulful Simplicity. Those ideas that started this journey and the person I was then versus the person I am now are so incredibly different. I look back on that person I was, and I just want to give her a hug. You know, she was struggling with so much people pleasing and perfectionism, just trying to be good enough all the time, to be kind enough, to be nice enough, to be flexible enough, to be accommodating enough. And she really wasn't thinking about herself very much at all. And that whole idea of self-care and self-love came to me at that time as well, which I mean, it's one of those big ideas that I dismissed, thinking, yeah, I take care of myself, I love myself. But really, once you dive into what those things mean and how they actually manifest in your life, I can say, no, I did not love myself enough. And I was not taking care of myself enough. Sure, I was eating well and exercising and sleeping a million hours and all those things, but at the root of it, I didn't feel enough. And, you know, it led me down the path towards understanding self-worth and digging into that, which again was another big idea that I kind of dismissed in the beginning because it seems like, whoa, of course, I have self-confidence, but this is different. I am a confident person and I do have self-esteem. I do feel good about myself. However, self-worth is like this deep ingrained thing where we don't necessarily see ourselves as deserving it. And that was a deep thing for me that I really had to dig into, and I'm still working on. I'm still working on. But that woman I was in 2014 and the person I became over the journey and the different versions of myself, and the more I've grown, I can see that clearing my clutter, asking myself questions about what I'm keeping, why I'm keeping it, really getting good at making decisions because I got clearer and clearer on what I wanted and what mattered to me. And of course, that shifted and changed over time because this is 12 years later, and coming up on 13 years, I am still curating that, and it still shifts and change, changes. So, what I really want you to take from this episode is this every item you keep matters. That isn't meant to be a heavy statement because the whole process of decluttering and deciding what you keep and what you let go of takes time. And so initially, a lot of things are gonna feel like they matter more, and over time you will become less and less attached to things. So the list of things that you quote unquote need to get rid of right now is shorter than you think, but it will grow over time, but you are gonna do this over time. But I want you to recognize that everything around you is demanding something from you, even if it's that visual clutter that you're looking at and your brain is taking it in and it's feeling like something you need to do, even if it's something you're just looking at. And I want you to make the connection between how your environment is either supporting you or hindering you. It is either enabling you to follow your purpose or reach your goals or feel at peace, or it is taking that away from you. So just decide that you're gonna start to do something about it. You're gonna start to make decision by decision about things that can leave your home. You're gonna start to lighten your load, make it easier to tidy and clean, make it easier to relax, and that you need to matter more than the stuff. And not everything that you own can matter to you because you can't interact with, love, and use the amount of items that are in your home. I guarantee it. I guarantee it as somebody who has decluttered over 12 years that even the things that I packed before I moved, I literally sorted through every single item I owned and made decisions about things and decluttered and packed. And even once I moved, I still got here and as I was unpacking things, started to decide, you know what, this doesn't matter to me as much as having everything fit in that cupboard or having it be easy to put away my clothes. And that's what you're making the decision about. You're making the decision about am I making this easy for myself or am I keeping this thing that's then gonna suddenly make it difficult to reach my mug every morning or to get my favorite dress out of my cupboard or to put away the laundry or to get to the washing machine. Whatever the things that are standing in your way and are causing that friction are, you have to decide if they matter to you more than creating that ease in your life. So this is just an episode that is all about reflection. And I want you to think about some of the things I've said and reflect on them and use it as motivation and inspiration to start to let go of some things because I promise you you probably won't even remember you owned them in six months. Even unpacking some items, I forgot that they existed and I saw them less than two months ago. So I promise you, you're not gonna remember everything, and it's just stuff. You matter more. So thank you for listening. I also would just ask one favor that if you like this podcast and you like listening to it, if you would please leave a review. Every review matters, it really, really helps boost this show and help it reach a wider audience. And I am so, so grateful and so excited to connect with you whenever you have something to share about an episode or something you found really resonated with you, or if you have any ideas for things that you would like to hear more about or learn more about, or guests that you're interested in, let me know. I'm really open to hearing your ideas. So thank you so much for listening.