A (6:25)
So that's part of the frustration is this. I don't see how I could ever get my house under control because what I'm imagining it will take to get my house under control because of the reality of there being stuff everywhere and me being behind. And the only way I've ever made my house any better was these huge weekends set aside and literally working myself to the point of complete exhaustion. And I'm like, I'm already completely exhausted for all the other things. And so the idea of getting my house under control so I can be more productive being the goal just makes me want to cry and just makes me want to give up before I get started. So I'm redefining my house is happy ending here. And this is one of those things that has happened over time as I got my house under control because again, the other big miscommunication is that those of us whose houses are out of control like it that way. That was always the most hurtful thing that someone would say is, well, I guess they must like living that way, or I guess they don't care. I cared. I did not like my house being out of control, but I didn't know what I didn't know. And so I couldn't really argue that because in someone else's mind looking in, they. They thought that the only thing that could cause that would be someone not caring. And I was caring and I was actually working so hard and I never had anything to show for it because I wasn't doing things in the right way. But I didn't know that. I thought I was doing what other people were doing. I thought I was doing what people said to do, and it was not having that result in my home. And so I know you care. I know you are a productive person in so many other areas of your life. But I have the good news to tell you that the beautiful thing about a house that's under control is that actually that is what lets me rest. And the getting of the house under control is actually more possible when I do it in a way that embraces my actual energy instead of the project brain, the project mentality of I've got to tackle it from top to bottom. The small little incremental things that I do, which I'm going to talk about at the end of this podcast, the actual practical how to those things, the small things, the non exhausting things, have had so much more of a positive effect on getting my house under control than working to the point of exhaustion for two to three days ever did. My house never actually improved for the long term with the two and three day exhausting sessions. It improved for the long term with one thing at a time leaving my house, two things at a time leaving my house, whatever. I could get out that day, that moment, if it left my house, my house was better and it made real, actual progress. Okay, so why am I talking about this? Well, I, I don't like to like, name off my own exhaustion, but here we go. I don't, I don't want it to be like, oh, I'm poor me, I've been doing all this stuff. I know you all are doing a lot of things. You have a lot of things that you're involved in. You have your jobs, you have your volunteer things, you have your all kinds of stuff. Right? So I'm. This is not a, this is not a exhaustion Olympics. That's not what we're doing here. I'm not trying to prove how much I've been doing, but for reference, I will just share. I did have seven straight weekends of not being home from September 13 to October 27. I was going, I had, and I think I've shared this in other podcasts, but it's for the purposes of what we're talking about. Again, not exhaustion Olympics, not exhaustion competition. I'm just saying for reference, why I was so grateful for my house being decluttered to the point that it is this past weekend when I had my first weekend, my eighth, you know, I'd had seven weekends in a row with stuff going on, and then I had nothing last weekend. So. So those seven weekends were traveling. We, you know, I already had like speaking engagements maybe four of those weekends. And then the other three were. Or three of those weekends. Yeah. And then I had one during the week. But anyway, I had speaking engagements three weekends. And then before that time period was supposed to start, then a friend of mine was in a play and I, we drove to Mississippi for one day and you know, and then one kid asks, hey, do you want to come visit Me. So, like, at the end of that. And so. And then another kid in between. And then a kid came home for a fall break, which is great, right? But it was just something all the time for seven straight weekends. And so I had a weekend with nothing on the calendar. And my sweet husband, who I definitely miss when he's gone, went camping. And so with my son, which is great, and I love for them to do that. And of course I missed him. But also, I really had nothing to do. I really. And it was. I had big plans. I had plans for all the things I was going to get done. I've still got a couple of videos that need to be done before my son comes up at Christmas. I had big thoughts. There were definitely places. There still are definitely places that I want to tackle. I wanted to tackle. I'll just list off. I was going to straighten my closet because it's gotten super duper wonky. And, like, there are clothes on the floor. And I need to get that figured out because I'm pretty sure some of them are things that have fallen to the floor. And so I need to figure out what's clean, what's dirty, all that kind of thing, right? I wanted to clean my ice maker. I hate cleaning my ice maker. I despise it. Kids, don't say hate. But I'm just telling y', all, I despise cleaning my ice maker. It's so unfun. But it has to be done, and it has to be done regularly. And it needed to be done. I wanted to totally clear out the cabinet underneath my ice maker because my dad has discovered that if he uses distilled water, which I'd always heard, it is much easier to clean. And I was like, okay, I want to start doing that. And I thought, well, okay, then this cabinet under my ice maker, I can probably clean it completely out so I can store distilled water there. I don't like the idea of buying distilled water, but if it means it's easier to clean my ice maker, I'll do it. I wanted to straighten my stock room. My stock room is just this storage area where we have paper towels and things like that, and things kind of get thrown in there, and it gets out of control and it won't take me long. And I wanted to do that. I wanted to straighten the dog's room. Another space where things get stuck in the moment when I'm running around like crazy and not. Oh, and also in that seven weeks, I turned in my book manuscript. So, yeah, during that whole time, I'm frantically trying to finish this book that was due. So it has just been very stressful. Well, those are all the things I needed to do. The one thing I did was clean the ice maker. I did that. And I watched TV and I took two naps, and I was okay. This is what I actually realize is the happy ending for a decluttered home. Being able to rest when I need to rest without feeling guilty about resting. That is the happy ending that I didn't even realize how much I needed that or wanted that. But it is the thing that makes me look back and say, all of this work. Every one of those trips to a donation center, every time we just decided, I don't know, so I'm gonna throw it away. Every time that I spent an hour here, two hours there, decluttering, every time I did a dish, every time I got back up out of bed and went, oh, that's right. I've got to go, you know, do those dishes, whatever, because I didn't even think about it every time I did all that. The payoff is not that I can get more done, because I've been getting plenty of stuff done. The payoff is that when I need to rest, I can rest without guilt. And that was the thing that I needed the naturally organized people to be telling me, But I don't think they knew that that was what the deal with. Okay, Because, I mean, I hate to say it here because I know it's not true for us, but, you know, the assumption is that a messy house is the result of laziness and that it's because we have been just resting. But that's not the reason houses get messy. It's because of all these great intentions and great ideas and putting our focus on other things outside of the house or whatever. So I know that your messy house is not a result of laziness. It might be a result of depression. It might be a result of, you know, other mental health things. And so I highly recommend that you seek out a mental health professional if you are just completely stuck and can't, you know, move forward. But for so many of us, that idea that we can be more productive if our house was under control is just not encouraging. So I'm so thankful to be able to rest without guilt. And it was because my visible spaces are under control and my kitchen is under control. We still hosted. We've been hosting a young adult life group at our house on Sunday nights because that was a need that we saw. And so we volunteered to host it at our house and for our church. For those of you who aren't don't know what a life group is, that's a church thing. But that ability to keep on living my life and not be held back by the house and be able to take a weekend to vegetate. Is that a word? Because I needed. I needed rest. And I was able to rest because of the decluttering that I've done. So. So if you're finding that, you know, I know a lot of people are really big on your why. Like, why do you want to get your house under control? And I'm like, you can get a lot if you just know my house out of control, I don't like it. You can get a lot done before you ever actually figure out your why. But this was the why that I'm grateful for, that I didn't even know was the thing I was desperately searching for or that could be achieved through decluttering. I did not know that this episode is sponsored by Better Help. The days being shorter truly does affect so many people in how they feel, and this can lead to isolation. It's more important than ever during this season to reach out and check in with our friends and loved ones to remind one another we're not alone. Give Grandma a call. Write a note to a friend thanking them for brightening your day. Grab lunch with someone you haven't connected with lately. I still have a folder of notes that people have written me. Some from as far back as junior high school, a friend who'd noticed I was having a bad day, notes from my parents, and just people who let me know they were thinking of me. These notes mean so much to me. If you or someone you know might benefit from connecting with a therapist during these darker days, consider better Help. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, serving over 5 million people globally. They have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews this month. Don't wait to reach out. Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com clean. That's better. H E L p.com clean this episode is brought to you by Gab. 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Going straight into the cart is like the ultimate Take it there now done for you. The meals are so good too. Fresh, healthy and totally family approved. Our whole family loves the teriyaki salmon bowls. Seriously, we love them. Prep Dish is offering you two weeks free so you can see how easy it makes dinner. Go to prepdish.com A slob comes clean to sign up. That's prepdish.com A sloB comes clean. It's like having your future self thank you for dinner every night. Guilt free. Rest is, I believe, the biggest perk of decluttering, of having decluttered. It's the reason to declutter. It can be your why. And rest does not have to Equal procrastination. That's the beauty of this. If I have decluttered, I can rest and my house stay at the point that it's at, and I'm fine. All of those spaces that I want to go in and straighten and tackle, they're the obscure places that nobody ever sees. We can live our life. We can have people in our homes. Homes, yeah, our home. We got one. We can have people in our home because of the work, the decluttering work that we've done. We're able to have people over because for me to take a weekend of rest, everything just kind of stays the same. And the same is okay. When I used to have to take a weekend of rest because I was completely exhausted because of whatever I was doing, and my house was a wreck, I was resting, but I wasn't able to fully rest because I had all these things hanging over my head of every minute that I was sitting there doing nothing because my body and my brain needed to sit there and do nothing. I was feeling guilty about all the things that needed to be done, all the things that we couldn't do because of all the things that needed to be done. And so this very needed rest was also procrastination. But that didn't mean the rest was any less needed. I needed the rest. So it was longer that I went without getting the things done that I needed to get done because I also had to stop and rest. So I'm saying, so in those moments when I do have, I'm very thankful that any. That the moments that I had where I had energy, where I did have time, where I did have focus, I followed my process and I got stuff out of my house. And the benefit of that is that now I can take those times to rest when I have to rest. And I don't have a bunch of things that I'm having to put off for the sake of resting. So what is it that's gotten me here? Well, let's just kind of go over some of the basics. This is not going to be new stuff because I talk about this stuff all the time, right? Knowing what has to be done. The visibility rule. The visibility rule is key. Here's what I mean when I say the visibility rule. I came up with the visibility rule for myself because I had to have a way to prioritize. My whole house was a disaster. Every space, every. Any door you entered, I would be embarrassed to have you enter. If you were a stranger in our home, or even a friend or even a relative, I Had to follow the visibility rule as a way to prioritize because I needed a way to prioritize. What am I going to do first when there's so much to be done? Well, I'm going to start in the most visible space. The visibility rule is how I build momentum. How I recommend that you build momentum, how that I got my whole house under control. Starting with the place that people enter if they show up at your house and need to enter your house. Why? Because you got to have a place to start. Declutter there first. The benefit of that over decluttering an obscure closet or drawer that no one ever sees is that you're going to see what you've done. You're going to experience the benefits of decluttering. You're going to see that your house looks better and you're going to notice that it looks better where maybe before you didn't see the mess. You will see the lack of mess. And walking by is going to give you a. That looks so good. Like an increase, a little burst of energy as opposed to the not realizing how your energy is being drained by the pressure of all the things that there are to be done because of all the piles that are sitting around and oh, I've got to do all this. And what if someone rings the doorbell? I'm constantly living in dread of a doorbell and experiencing a doorbell and still feeling the dread. I feel like I'm the Pavlov's dog. Like, oh, no, door. Oh, wait, I'm okay. Every time that happens, it's hugely beneficial for me in encouraging me to keep going. Right. So that increases my decluttering energy as opposed to draining my decluttering energy because I put all this time and effort in. And then I'm still embarrassed to open the front door or the people in my home don't notice that anything's getting better. I don't see that things are getting better. My house still looks frustratingly messy. And even though I know I put a ton of time into it, if I focus on visibility first, then I increase my decluttering energy. I experience the benefits of having decluttered. And the people in my house start to experience what it's like to live in a space with less stuff and how much easier that is. And just the things I didn't know, I didn't know. They didn't know. They didn't know either because we were so used to living in a messy house. So the visibility rule is that. And then I, I get inspired to declutter Again sooner I get have the energy to declutter again sooner because I've seen the power of what I did. I go back to that same spot. I start there again. But this time it's not decluttering, it's just picking up. Which means the first three steps of the decluttering process. Trash. Easy stuff. Well, really just the first two steps, but maybe obvious donations, that's going to get it back under control. And where maybe it took me two hours the first time. This time it takes me 10 minutes to get it back to there. And then I move to the next most visible space and I work there. And then when I get inspired again because I'm like, my house is starting to really look different, I get inspired again. I go back to that most visible space first. That time it takes me five minutes to get it back under control. The second space takes me 10 minutes. Then I move to the next most visible space. That's how I get all the way through my house and get the whole house decluttered. But even if I don't get to the stockroom, my closet, all those things, those visible spaces being done mean that we can live our life. Do I still get frustrated when I'm like, oh, my word, where is that shirt? Oh, I bet it's in that pile in the closet. Okay, yes, of course. But that is my natural default. But the fact that I have focused in on those visible areas mean that it doesn't grind my whole life to a halt. Visibility rule is key. Knowing what has to be done. What has to be done is my living space needs to be a living space and I need to do the dishes. So I need to do five minute pickup and do the dishes. When I say my living space needs to be a living space, that means making those spaces that we need to be highly functional. The kitchen, the living area, those spaces, decluttering them down to the point where a five minute pickup gets them under control. So I know that I'm under my clutter threshold there. Then that is what allows me to not have to keep working on those spaces all the time, because they have been decluttered down to their true identity and their true function. So another key to redefining the happy ending for my house is to know that it's not really an ending. The happy ending for my home, as far as my desire to get it under control, to get it decluttered, the happy ending is life going on, not being held back by my house. So I had an episode which we're going to Link to here in the show notes. Hopefully we can find it where I did an interview with someone who had previously received team based help for a hoarding situation for hoarding disorder. And like team came in, cleaned it out, blah, blah, blah. You're fixed now, right? It's the idea. But she that had not had lasting success, but she had finally found success with my no mess decluttering method. And she said what? The thing that resonates in my brain like goes around in my brain all the time, is that her best thing, her favorite thing about finally actually making real decluttering progress was that her family members could come to visit and not spend the entire time helping her. She said that what was frustrating to her was that every time her daughter came to visit, her mom came to visit. I don't remember exactly who they would come visit, but they would spend the whole time helping her clean her house, helping her organize her space. But she said as when I can get this stuff out, then they're able to come and we just get to be together. We just get to enjoy being together. And I think about that so much because that is rest, right? I know it can be exhausting when you have guests in and out and stuff, but that is rest. That's rest to think about being able to just enjoy the people in your life, the people who are visiting. I mean, when you have time with people and then you realize, oh, we spent this whole time working on this, then that's where you have regret or resentment or frustration over that, which is all stuff that zaps emotional energy. So instead the fact that these things were done allowed them to spend time together and just enjoy each other. That is huge for me. One of the things I think about a lot is when, you know, we have a property now which there's, there's a lot of work that goes on with a property, which I knew that. Right. But you also get into it and you go, okay, there's a lot to do. But the fact that when I have time, I'm able to move forward as opposed to catching up, that's my favorite thing about having my house under control. And for this past weekend, the moving forward was giving myself permission to rest and just being able to rest without feeling like I'm getting farther and farther behind because I've already got the momentum, everything, you know, we're good. Yes, there are things to do. I'm not saying there's not things to do, but I wasn't getting farther and farther behind by not taking advantage of this time. Because I didn't have to catch up. Like that's. That's huge.
