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If you've ever looked around and thought, I know what I'm supposed to do, I just don't know how to do it, this is the episode for you. If you have ADHD or you're just overwhelmed, maybe you have chronic illness, maybe you just can't find motivation. There's nothing wrong with you. You're just in survival mode. Your body is telling you no more. This episode is all about removing shame and instead using leverage. Because shame's not going to clean your kitchen. Okay, Sh. Shame is not going to fold your laundry. Shame is not going to tackle the dirt and the mess. Shame is not going to make your house feel like a place you're proud of. Shame just makes you avoid the space or avoid getting started. And that is what we're going to change right now. But first, before we get started, did you know that I have a segment called Talk to Cass? It's usually at the end of this podcast where you call in and ask questions or share amazing tips, and we have a little chat right here on the podcast.

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Hey, cast, my name is Emily. I live in New Orleans, and.

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Okay, Emily, I cannot wait to hear what you say. But again, we gotta wait till the end of this podcast to the Talk to Cast segment to find out. So just like always, you are not allowed to just listen to this podcast unless you're driving. Please, please, just keep driving and don't do something while you're driving. But for the rest of us, let's take action. Let's do something today to make our home and our lives easier. And a perfect thing to do is to get in your bathroom. Take me with you. Whatever device you're watching or listening on, let's go in the bathroom and tackle that space. I want you to open up your drawers and your cabinets and look, I know you have face cream that you don't like that stings your eyes. I definitely do. I know you have old toothbrushes and toothpaste tubes that are completely empty that are still in there for some reason. I know you have things that are expired medication and vitamins, and all of these things are creating friction. So what if you took just a few minutes while listening to this podcast and you became a warrior in your bathroom? This is not about completely reorganizing. You are not buying new things. You are eliminating all those little things that are just getting in the way. The stuff you rarely use. That red lipstick, Taylor Swift can pull it off. We cannot. Why do you still have it? All of these things are making your life harder. Let's say goodbye. And and the best part is we can't donate used makeup and face products, so we are putting it all in the trash. Don't you dare think about washing out and recycling that bottle. It goes in the trash today because you're amazing and we're being fast. Ruthless house cleaning, Badass bosses. My favorite thing last week was reading all of your comments on the podcast. So many of you took the clear counter challenge and you put in the comments like how much better your counters look. So I want you to do the same thing this week. Let me know in the comments how much you let go of. You don't have to count the numbers in the bathroom, but like, did you make a difference? Is your bathroom cleaner and easier and just better? Let me know in the comments below. Together as a clutterbug community, we are taking back control of our home and all of your comments inspire other people. So make sure you put that in the comments below. And let's jump into today's podcast. I started last week's podcast with my usual cassism. You are not messy, you just organize differently. But there's also another layer that I don't talk about a lot, and we're really going to dive deep into that today so we have more understanding about what is actually going on in our home and what the mess is actually saying to us. And this is called teleology. I'm using big sciency words, but I'm going to make it easy. And sometimes we just need to look at things differently to actually make a real change. Change. Don't worry, okay? You do not need a psychology degree. I'm obviously not a doctor. And you can totally forget the word teleology as soon as I tell you what it means. Basically, instead of asking, why, like, what is causing this? Why is this happening? We're gonna say, what purpose is this serving? Like, what is the reason? What is it doing? What is it giving? And we're gonna use this specifically about the mess and the clutter in our house. So if we look at a big pile or a mess and we ask, what caused this? It may be that we're using a system that doesn't work for our brain. It may be that we just have excess. But what if we reframe that and ask, what purpose is this pile serving? That's a different way of looking at it. Maybe if we're asking, what is it actually giving or how is it serving? What's its purpose? We can find something that could serve us better. We could find Something that will fulfill that purpose, that isn't like a pile of junk. What if we actually realize that clutter is doing a job for us? It is. It's doing something for us. What if we find a new employee? What if we look at our clutter differently and hire someone better to do its job? Someone that also doesn't make you miserable? I know for a really long time myself, and maybe you can relate to this. We would look at problems in our home or things that weren't working, like the mess, the piles, the inevitable ability to want to clean. And we'll look for reasons, right? So I don't love cleaning because my mom was such a clean freak. I don't want to tackle this big pile because it's so overwhelming and I'm bad at organizing. I have this issue over here, like, all the clothes don't fit in my closet because I have a need to epically shop. All of these are, you know, they're causes. But, but let's look at it different. If we're using teleology to see, like, what is this serving and how is this serving a purpose? We can look at the bursting closet and say, when I'm at the store and I'm shopping, it's fulfilling my need of self love. It's a gift to myself. When I'm looking at the cleaning and like, I want to avoid that. We're trying to avoid failure. We're trying to avoid working our butts off and for it just to look the same way the next day. This is failure. This is like that, that, that feeling of we're trying to avoid the feeling of defeat. So instead of us asking what's wrong with me? What if we reframe and ask, what is this doing for me? Like, what is the positive here? What is the, the real solution that even the negative bad stuff is solving? Because everything is solving something. I just want to share my own example of how I really saw this kind of manifest in my own life. And that was I avoided cleaning like it was a full time paying gig. I didn't. It was like I hated it. I dreaded it to the point where the idea of vacuuming, mopping, even doing dishes, tidying, it was like, ugh, I had to force myself. And usually I didn't. I would do anything. But. And it was always like I was looking for the cause of that, which is, well, you're just lazy. You've always been lazy. Or the cause of, well, my mom was like obsessed with cleaning. And then therefore I don't want to be obsessed with cleaning, but when I dug deeper, okay, well, what does that actually mean? You're lazy and you don't want to end up like your mother. It was like, well, I don't want to dedicate hours of my life to doing something that I don't enjoy. Well, what does that mean? I think cleaning has to be done and take hours and be this really long thing. And the more I walked down and just kept breaking this apart and reevaluating and getting to, well, what is my avoidance of cleaning? Actually, solving it was to save me time. It was to. I didn't want to exert any huge amount of effort at this. And I think this is where my do it shitty shortcuts years ago kind of came from. It was because I stopped. I stopped looking at the fact that I hated housework and the why do I hate housework? And I started saying like, well, how is this improving my life? And it was improving my life. It was solving well. It was saving me time, right? Except it really wasn't because. Because my house was dirty. I was like wasting time in all these other areas. But. But the solution was, well, how can I do things as quickly as possible? What shortcuts can I take? Actually, it wasn't actually about the time at all. It was about the energy. I felt like I would rather do the fun things. I didn't want to give all my energy to something that didn't make me happy. Yes, maybe the clean house made me happy, but it didn't feel worth it for the amount of effort and energy I had to expend. So what if I could do it with the least amount of energy possible, right? What if I could find little hacks and shortcuts? What if I could take what I was actually trying to solve? The purpose was like, conserving my energy and saving it for the good stuff and use that as a tool to get the housework done and to still have. Have. What I was hoping for was a clean and tidy house without having to, like, focus on the cause anymore. And I don't want to treat you my listener as a therapist right now, but let's. Let's keep going and getting real deep for a second. Because what I actually found was, I think also part of me was avoiding the cleaning because, yes, I was like, I don't want to be a crazy, neurotic person, but also a big part of me didn't think I deserved it. I didn't feel like I was maybe like, that was for the good People who have their lives together, the people who like get up at 5am and run. And I'm like, and I can't be that. But what's so bonkers to me is when I started almost embracing like okay, you're kind of lazy, but like let's, let's not see that with shame and instead like let's use that as a tool and try to do these little things as quickly and as crappily as possible. But still getting done, that started to actually energize me because even though I was trying to conserve energy, what I realized all along is like self love and self pride and accomplishment is actually energizing. It actually gave me that boost that, that I, that I thought I was conserving by avoiding the task. So let's talk about decluttering for a second and what I think, I mean again, not a doctor, but I've worked with a lot of people and oftentimes I think people are living in really cluttered and full spaces and they're struggling to let go. And there's all these causes of like why decluttering is hard. But at the, at the root of it, the solution of not decluttering is, is like you don't have to make hard decisions. You don't have to expose yourself to failure making mistakes. You don't have to and in some cases succeed. Because sometimes people are afraid of the good and they accept the suffering because on some weird, gross, sick, deep level that we don't even understand, we think we deserve to suffer. For a lot of us, clutter is quietly protecting us. It's this barrier, it's this wall against all the scary, dark, bad thoughts or experiences that we might have and we're hiding behind it. So here's what we're going to do right now. We are going to identify what your clutter, what the mess is actually doing for you. We're going to find out what its purpose is. We're going to find something else to solve or to give you that same purpose. And then we're going to pick one small action step we can take right now. There are lots of jobs that your clutter is doing and we're going to talk about all of them. And while we're talking about them, I want you to see if one resonates with you. If one makes you think like, ah, yeah, if one makes you feel kind of sweaty and uncomfortable, that probably means it's resonating. And we're going to start with decision freezing. When we pile things till later when we just avoid dealing with something, what we're really avoiding is having to make decisions. And that's really hard for a lot of people. We have to decide what to do with it. If we keep it where it goes, all of that is very overwhelming, especially if you have decision fatigue. So of course you're putting it off till later because you're solving the problem of you just don't want to think and have to make make a choice in this moment right now. So we're getting out of it by pushing it off till later. The next thing that our clutter does is acts as an emotional buffer. And here's what I mean. There are lots of ways that in dealing with the clutter, we're going to feel emotions we don't want to feel. These could be sentimental things. It could be items from people who have passed away. But honestly, what I see quite often are people avoiding dealing with their children's items. Because if you have to go through and declutter the toys your children have outgrown their baby clothes, things like that, you have to deal with the fact that that stage of life has ended, that that is over. And that feels so hard. Anytime we were moving to a next phase, it's normal to mourn the previous one. So whether it's a relationship that ended or just even a vacation that you went on that you loved having to deal. Pile of souvenirs can feel too emotional sometimes, so we just stack it in the corner. The next thing that our clutter really does for us is it is kind of like perfectionism, protection. Especially you bees and crickets who are piling till you can do it later. Because if you start, you could fail. If you don't start yet, there's no potential of failure, right? It we're pushing everything down. Or if you try a system and it's not 100% correct, then that's like, ah, the pain. We're avoiding that by not actually getting started. If you can't choose the perfect system, you can't choose the wrong one either. Sometimes clutter is conflict avoidance. And this is something I really, really struggled with for a long time. So I didn't want to fight with my partner about things that I thought could probably go, but maybe he would want to keep it. I didn't want to nag my family. I didn't want to make them have to do so I didn't want to be that person. You know what I mean? I didn't. So I just was like, well, I'm just going to avoid it altogether. Right? Because I didn't want the conflict that comes with having boundaries, with having rules, and with having to get everybody on board to make our house a priority. So I just did nothing at all. So often clutter is also like identity protection almost, or like preservation. So if you're a crafter and you have all these craft supplies, getting rid of that can feel like you are admitting that you're actually not as crafty as you want to be. Or if you have clothing that no longer fit you, it feels like if you let them go, it's kind of like, oh, well, I'll never. I'll never be that person that could fit into them again. Like, we are still. We're holding on to this best version of ourselves, and that is reinforced with our stuff. And so letting go of the stuff, whether it's the things your children have outgrown, it's like, oh, but I'm a mom, and maybe I'll be a great grandma or maybe I'll have another baby one day. All of this is tied to identity, which is why we. We just don't want to deal with it. Maybe your clutter is a substitute for boundaries. Maybe it is a wall of protection. So if you actually are feeling really nervous about having people over, you don't want to entertain. Maybe your messy home is an excuse, right? Maybe this is, like, what you hide behind. You can't possibly have people over because your house is too messy when it's just that you're afraid to have people over. Or maybe it even goes deeper than that. Like, I can't start my business from home. I can't start my business, or I can't, like, work because my office is so messy. Is that just protecting you from actually doing the scary thing? Right? I can't work out because I don't have a spot to set up my weights. I can't do this. X, Y, Z. I can't have a relationship. I can't date. I can't. All of it kind of hiding behind the clutter as an excuse when really it's just protecting us. And last but not least, I feel like sometimes our clutter can be control. And I don't know if this is the right word to describe it, but here's what I mean. We have a whole basement filled with canned goods, right? We have so much food. This is like a sense of safety, but also control. If the world goes to crap, at least I have the food. Like, I feel in control in an uncontrollable situation. I'm using this to. Yeah. To. To help knock down this fear. And we do this not just with food. I, I had a real issue. I. As you know, I was homeless for a lot of years and I didn't have clothing very often. I wasn't naked. Okay, calm down. But I would have, like one outfit that I wore for weeks. And I did not have access to a washing machine or a dryer. So when I started getting my life together, I found had this real obsession with clothing. Gathering just cheap clothing and hoarding clothing because I wanted to make sure that I would never be in a position where I didn't have clothing again. It was a form of control. It was a form of protection and self preservation. And I think whether it all is wrapped up in scarcity mindset, but at the end of the day, it's control so that we don't have to feel fear. So your clutter is solving some problems. Kind of, but not like they're not good. It's not in a good way. This isn't like, yay, let's. Let's celebrate the clutter. It's doing a good job. No, it sucks. It's a crappy employee. So let's try this activity and see if we can replace the clutter so that it's still solving the problem that the clutter is. It's like, we're getting deep here. Okay, friends, we're getting deep. But this could be exactly what you need. Need to break through. So pick a place you're stuck. Maybe it's your kitchen counter. I hope not, because if you listen to last week's podcast, we dealt with that, but now I'm not judging. It could be your kitchen counter. Maybe it's your doom room. Oh, I hope it's not a doom room. But this is super relatable. Maybe it's your entrance way. Maybe it is your closet or your bedroom in general. Pick one spot that's getting on your dang nerves and let's look at it differently. If this one space was solved, if the clutter was gone, what issue would you then have to deal with? Now this is really hard, but I really want you to think. If your kitchen counters were clean, would you. Do you feel like, oh, it'd be a lot of work to maintain this, a lot of effort. Is that what it is? If you didn't have all the stuff in your doom room anymore, do you feel like, oh, I wouldn't feel like a crafter. I wouldn't be able to create if all the baby Stuff was gone. Do you feel like, oh, I wouldn't feel like a mother. I wouldn't feel like I'd be able to have another child or I wouldn't be able to celebrate my children's memories anymore? Like, what is the uncomfortable thing that would happen? And there will be something. If this clutter problem was solved, what is the mess in this area that you've picked? What is the clutter? What is it really solving for you? What is it protecting you from? What do you get to avoid by not getting started yet? Is it you don't have to host a bunch of people at your home? Is it that you don't have to feel failure if you try and it isn't perfect and it didn't work out? Is it that you don't have to feel regret in case you've made a mistake? And all the pain that comes with that of not being smart enough or perfect enough? What are you avoiding by not starting right now? Now we're going to do a weird exercise. Yep. It's just straight up therapy up in here. Okay. Because listen, the Superman pose, this works. It's proven science and stuff. That when you embody it, that when you say it out loud, that when you own something that has power. So let's just go right now. Hands on the hips. I'm keeping this clutter because it helps me avoid. First thing that pops in your mind. It helps me avoid failure. It helps me avoid success. Ooh, that hurts, doesn't it? It helps me avoid effort. It helps me avoid mistakes. What is it? Say it out loud. And now hands on the hips. I keep this clutter because it helps me feel. Whatever pops in here. It helps me feel safe. It helps me feel protected. It helps me feel. What is that word when it's like, we're gonna get to something and it's gonna be amazing one day, but I'm not gonna do it now. But there's a word that it helps. It helps me feel like I have potential. It helps me feel. Just shout it out. Doesn't have to be right. My friends just shout out something weird. I'm thinking about my clothes. It helps me feel optimistic. That is what my clutter used to do. It helped. It did. The craft. Clutter. I was like, I'm gonna make that one day. The clothes that didn't fit. I'm gonna lose weight one day. All of that, like, identity, idealized self. The clutter actually made me feel optimistic about the person I could be. That was a tough one for me. So the point of this little exercise is no shame, okay? We're not. We're not, like, shaming ourselves. We're identifying it so that we can find something else that can serve us in those ways. We can find something else, a new employee to solve those problems that isn't the clutter. So let's talk about, like, we're gonna break them all down. All right? I hope you're still cleaning your bathroom while you go. If the bat. If the bathroom is tidy, move to another space. Let's go. You're a warrior. Okay, we're starting with decision freezer. So how do we do this? We have to make the decisions that we are going to make really, really tiny. So it's not overwhelming. You are. You are using your clutter as a way to avoid making decisions. So what if we make those decisions ahead of time? This is why I like the. Does it stay or does it go? Yes. No. You don't have to decide what pile things go into. You don't have to decide how to dispose of it. You only have to decide yes or no. Or maybe you come up with rules ahead of time. Like, I can only have 10 mugs, or I can only fit what keeps what. What I can fit on this shelf or in this basket. That eliminates the decision, because you're not the bad guy. The container is. Is the limit and the bad guy. All of these little things that we can do ahead of time, these rules. Setting a timer is another good one. This is going to eliminate that decision fatigue because we've immediately reduced the amount of decisions we have to make. If the solution that your clutter is solving is like, I don't want to fail. I don't want to set up a whole thing and do all this work, and then it just, like, becomes a big fat mess again tomorrow. And, oh, my gosh, it's so much effort. I think this is where knowing your clutterbug method comes in. This is the whole reason why I developed this was because I feel you, babe. And, dudes, I don't want to also waste time and energy and money. So take the Clutterbug quiz, go to clutterbug.com, find out your natural organizing style, and then, like, implement something that you know is going to work, because that's how your brain naturally works. Like, instead of guessing and having that. That fear of failure, you go in with confidence knowing, I got this. Now let's talk about a little bit of a craptacular one, which is our clutter is avoiding conflict. This is tough, especially people pleasers out there. And I'm a people pleaser on steroids, so I feel this. But, like, maybe we can soften this by having the conversations ahead of time. Like little micro conversations. Like, what is our baseline definition of what a clean kitchen looks like? Or what are some rules that as a family we can agree upon not in the moment while we're screaming in the mess, but like at dinner, somewhere nice and calm earlier. So we're never going to go to bed with dirty dishes. And whose job is it to make sure that they're in charge of that? We are going to do a load of laundry a day and actually put it away again, who's in charge of that? And. And like, let's get really clear on each other's boundaries and do all these compromising and little micro conversations. Not while we're raging out and looking at the mess and feeling stressed and feeling naggy. Let's actually set some, some loving ground rules for our home. What if you were avoiding grief and guilt? This is so hard. So whether it is that your children have grown or someone has passed away or a loved one, or you're just worried you're going to forget all the beautiful memories so you don't want to deal with them. You're holding on to them because the idea of letting them go is so painful. And I think this is where actively writing down the stories is so helpful. Taking pictures is so helpful. Capturing what truly matters by journaling, creating a memory bin so that these things can actually go into a home that's safe and protected. This is so important, especially if you are a highly sentimental person, if you have not protected these memories and these things, everything's going to feel important. If your important things are in your. And your special things are mixed in with your bills and your, like, old lunch pail, everything is going to feel special. And I think this is where just grabbing a notebook, grabbing a basket, and giving things the real love that they deserve is critical for overcoming this. I just want to say again, I'm like a huge fan of a memory bin because what it actually provides is relief. In almost every client's home that I've been in, where one of their biggest struggles is this, like, sentimental fear of guilt and shame. And they're going to, like, forget things. As soon as we give a special preserved place, it can literally be a $10 bin from Walmart. Okay, this isn't anything fancy. As soon as we give this and things start to go in there, it's like a Huge weight is lifted off your shoulders and suddenly decluttering doesn't feel as hard because you have a safe, cared for, respectable place for your things to go. And all the fear is almost magically eliminated. So, dudes, get a memory bin Identity. The identity one. This one's really hard, you guys. So if we're holding on to things and I'm calling out you crafters or you book lovers, where you have 50 million thousand books, or again, the, like moms with all the kids stuff, this is tough to let this stuff go because it's part of you. It's a piece of you. So the one thing that I really found helpful for me with identity clutter is telling myself I'm actually a better crafter and a better crafty person if I share the excess with other fellow crafters. I'm actually more of a book lover if I'm sharing my love of reading with other people. I had to do this reframe. I, I am, I'm a better mother. When I teach my children that it's, it's healthy and good to let go of the old to make room for the new, but also sharing with other new mothers and bonding by letting go of the things that my children are no longer using and loving. Instead of hoarding it for my future grandchildren, I'm sharing it with other mothers in need. That makes me feel like the best version of that identity is the sharing component. And when you can do that, when you can say, I have so much yarn, but there are women and men in nursing homes sitting there, you will, you will change their lives by giving them a little bit of yarn so they can sit and knit or crochet. You are improving their life. That makes you feel like even better crafter, right? And a better human. So it sounds weird, but that small reframe can help solve that solution that the clutter is currently solving. And last but not least, if it is a control thing. So fear scarcity mindset therapy. Therapy is super, super helpful because again, not a doctor, but if you're like not wanting therapy, here is something that I will say. Exposure therapy is something you can do. What I mean by this is the control is avoiding fear. And the best way to deal with fear is to feel a little bit of fear in a safe way. So that's why we say start with trash. Just let go of one thing, sit with those uncomfortable, horrible feelings and realize it's not actually going to kill you and then do it again and feel it again. This is how I overcame all of this was like I always call anxiety, like, this little troll in my shoulder. And every time I give into it, like, you're right, that is scary. That gets bigger. You what I mean. And I allow it to grow, and it's when I give it a pop in the face that I can actually shrink it down. So therapy, friends therapy, but also a little exposure therapy goes a long way. Okay, so here's your homework. Here's what we're going to do in the next 24 hours. I want you to pick one spot. Don't overthink it. Look around. Pick the one that's like, ew, that's horrible. Hands on the hips. And I want you to say, this clutter is helping me avoid. Say it. Whatever comes in your mind. This clutter is helping me avoid. Say it. And this clutter is helping me avoid feeling. Say the word. And now pick one of the techniques we discussed to help you kind of solve this. Feel the same way. Right? Don't overthink it. Listen, if you cannot come up with anything, stop it. Move on to something else. But I think you are more creative and problem solving than you actually give yourself credit for. So we're thinking outside the box here. What is this making you avoid feeling? And what else can help you avoid feeling? That exact thing that isn't the pile of clutter. Quick example. If you're looking at the pile and you're like, this pile is helping me avoid making a decision because I don't want to feel overwhelmed and make the wrong decision. Okay, here's a quick solution. What if the decision is only yes, no, and it isn't like a lot of decisions. But if even that feels so hard, what if you ask your child or a friend or the husband to help make the decision? A lot of people are like, hate this so much. But I am. I hate making decisions. Okay? If someone's like, what's for dinner? I'm like, stop it. You better pick. I'll tell you if I like that or not. But I don't want to make the initial decision. I want you to make the decisions because I hate making decisions. And that's okay. And there's nothing wrong with that. So what if you have a friend that makes the initial decision for you, but you can always veto that decision? It's a whole lot easier to. They'll say, that can go. And you're like, actually, I want to keep that. That's easier, friend. So either make that decision, only one, yes, no. Or rope a friend in. Because seriously, so helpful. And also accountability buddies work. It's body doubling on steroids. So maybe send this podcast to the friend that you would love to do this with and together you guys can like combine your forces to be unstoppable. Consistency is the secret, but it does not come from intensity. We can't like force consistency at like going 90 miles an hour all the time. It comes from small, tiny, everyday decisions. It comes from tiptoeing towards our goals, not sprinting. I have to take a second to thank today's podcast sponsor, Caraway. I switched to Caraway cookware years ago because honestly, I had heard that if you had Teflon non stick pans and you scratched them, which I always did, that you were releasing thousands of microtoxins and plastic particles into your foods. And that was like a no time for me to be a healthy grown up. So I switched to Caraway. And I'm so obsessed. I think my favorite thing is like, I can fry in their big, beautiful pans and then finish cooking it in the oven in the same thing. I feel like Chef Boyardee up in here because not only are they beautiful, heavy duty, easy to wash, but they're also non toxic. And if you want to give Caraway a try, you can take an additional 10% off your next purchase. This deal is just for my listeners, so go to caraway home.com clutterbug10 or use the code clutterbug10 at checkout for 10 off caraway non toxic kitchenware made modern. Now it's time for my favorite part of the podcast. Talk to Cass. And now we're actually gonna hear from Emily. The whole thing.