Your clutter is holding you back

Summary

---

Podcast Summary: Today, Explained

Episode: "Your clutter is holding you back"

Date: March 8, 2026
Host: Jon Gillen Hill (JQ)
Guests: Emily Stewart (Senior Correspondent, Business Insider), Randall O’Reilly (Psychology Professor, UC Davis), Mary Dozier (Clinical Psychologist, Mississippi State University), and others.

---

Overview

This episode dives into America’s complicated relationship with “stuff”—why we accumulate clutter, the emotional and psychological reasons it’s hard to let go, and how social and generational forces have shaped our habits. The hosts explore the paradox between the cultural ideal of minimalism and our very messy reality, with expert insight into our brains’ resistance to decluttering. They also discuss practical strategies for managing possessions and ask whether it’s possible to be a “happy maximalist."

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Clutter Paradox: We Buy, But Can’t Let Go

• Couple Dynamics: The recurring trope: one partner is a saver, the other a tosser.
  • JQ: “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but it seems like every couple is made up of this exact combination. Someone who throws stuff away, and someone who holds on to it for dear life.” [01:25]
• Small Spaces, Big Clutter: Space constraints (like a 600-square-foot NYC apartment) force tough compromises.

2. Why Do We Have So Much Stuff?

• Generational Accumulation:
  • Emily Stewart points out that baby boomers especially amassed lots of items—china sets, furniture, heirlooms—that no one wants now. [03:25]
  • "Whoever dies with the most toys wins" was once a legitimate cultural saying.
• Mass Consumption’s Roots:
  • Mass production started in the 1920s, paused during the Depression, then “really ramps up” in the 1950s with suburbanization, advertising, and catalogs (like Sears). [05:07]
  • Keeping up with the Joneses (and now, the Instagrams): Consumption as status, amplified by TV and now the internet. [06:01]

3. Clutter & Minimalism: Competing Aesthetics

• Trends Come and Go:
  • Millennials ushered in the “minimalist gray,” while Gen Z is embracing a more maximalist, lived-in look. “Millennial gray…everything from Ikea,” but “you might walk into a Gen Z’s apartment, and they have, like, a lot more stuff.” [07:49, 08:26]
• Virtue Signaling vs. Reality:
  • Many claim minimalism while Amazon packages pile up weekly.
    • Emily: “It’s become sort of this, like, virtue signal thing…how many of us are actually that is an open question.” [08:59]

---

4. The Science: Why Cleaning Is So Hard

a) Motivation and Decision Fatigue

• Our Brains are Wired to Avoid Hard Choices:
  • Randall O’Reilly: The ancient motivational centers (tied to dopamine) dictate that, faced with a hard or uncertain decision, we’d rather procrastinate or do something else. “These decisions really weigh down your brain and you can just feel it, right? …Your brain is going to say, ah, let’s postpone that decision and just go have something delicious to eat.” [11:19–12:50]
• Sentimental Attachments:
  • Items cue emotional memories via the hippocampus: “It really is like cutting off part of yourself.” [13:53]

b) Regret & Loss Aversion

• Fear of Wanting It Later:
  • “That feeling, that negative feeling is weighted much more strongly than the little cost of just keeping it around.” [15:19]
  • Our brains remember loss more deeply (“a much richer map in your brain of all the negative things”). [15:58]

c) Personal Differences in Letting Go

• Decisive vs. Indecisive Types:
  • Some find it easy (“whatever, I’m just going to toss it”), others agonize and default to keeping. “It really, I think, is very strongly correlated.” [16:22]
• You Can’t Change Over Night:
  • “You’re never going to take somebody…who likes to hold on to things…turn them into this overnight minimalist. Not a realistic expectation.” [17:08]

---

5. Practical Tips & Tricks

• Make Decluttering a Game:
  • “Treat your spring cleaning like a video game…give yourself points, break it down into levels…”—the dopamine boost builds momentum. [18:59]
• First Pass Strategy:
  • Rapid sort into piles—editing a draft is easier than writing from scratch. [17:17]
• Work in Small Chunks:
  • Just organize your socks; starting small helps build psychological momentum. [17:42]
• Photographic Memories:
  • Randall: “Take pictures…seeing the pictures…activates those memories and I feel good. …A picture is a lot less space than the actual thing.” [14:18]

---

6. Is It Bad to Keep Stuff?

• Memories Matter:
  • “If you have more cues around, you can remind yourself…give you a different perspective relative to what you’re feeling right now.” [19:22]

---

7. Clutter, Identity, and Wellbeing: Clinical Insights

a) Trauma of Forced Minimalism

• Extreme Cleanouts Are Traumatic:
  • “It’s the same level, kind of a PTSD response as if you lost your home in a tornado because in essence you did.” [22:41]
• Clutter Connects To Identity:
  • “Keeping the things around us that help us feel like who we are…is that external way that we present the world.” [22:56]

b) The Marie Kondo Question

• It’s Not Just About Joy:
  • Mary Dozier: “Anything in the moment can spark joy…But is it value consistent is what I always come back to. …There’s a difference between happiness and fulfillment.” [24:04]
  • Decide what to keep based on core values, not fleeting feelings.

c) Gifts, Guilt, and Letting Go

• Don’t Keep Out of Obligation:
  • “You don’t have to hold on to something out of guilt…That guilt and shoulds just, I guess, shouldn’t be part of why you’re holding onto things.” [25:08]

d) Practical Steps for Inherited Stuff

• Swedish Death Cleaning:
  • Boomers are encouraged to clear out before passing so others don’t inherit their clutter.
  • “The second half [of life] should be about starting to shed the worldly possessions…at the end someone will have to deal with it.” [27:32]

---

8. Maximalism Can Be Happy

• It’s Subjective:
  • “If your home is filled to the brim, but you’re living a healthy, happy life in that environment, that’s absolutely okay, right? …Just because there might be a current cultural norm for minimalism…what’s your truth of how you like your space to be?” [28:34]

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote/Context | |-----------|---------|---------------| | 01:25 | Jon Gillen Hill | “It seems like every couple is made up of this exact combination. Someone who throws stuff away, and someone who holds on...for dear life.” | | 03:25 | Emily Stewart | “A lot of baby boomers...really liked stuff. In the 80s, there was this saying that was like, whoever dies with the most toys wins.” | | 05:07 | Emily Stewart | “Mass production starts to hit…in the 1950s, it really ramps up, right?...You have…Sears catalog that comes to your house.” | | 08:59 | Emily Stewart | “Minimalism...has become sort of this virtue signal thing of, like, ‘I’m a minimalist.’ How many of us are actually? That is an open question.” | | 12:50 | Randall O'Reilly | “Anytime you have uncertainty…should I keep it? Should I toss it?...All these kinds of decisions really weigh down your brain and you can just feel it, right? You just feel tired.” | | 13:53 | Randall O’Reilly | “When you see some knickknack…you’re like, ah, I remember this…How can I throw out this memory?...It really is like cutting off part of yourself.” | | 15:19 | Randall O’Reilly | “That negative feeling [of regretting letting go] is Weighted much more strongly than the little cost of just keeping it around.” | | 22:41 | Mary Dozier | “It’s the same level, kind of a PTSD response as if you lost your home in a tornado because in essence you did.” | | 24:04 | Mary Dozier | “Anything in the moment can spark joy…But is it value consistent is what I always come back to…There’s a difference between happiness and fulfillment.” | | 28:34 | Mary Dozier | “If your home is filled to the brim, but you’re living a healthy, happy life in that environment, that’s absolutely okay.” |

---

Important Timestamps

• Clutter in relationships and generational challenges: [01:03–05:02]
• History of American consumption: [05:07–06:42]
• Minimalism and trends: [07:05–09:25]
• Brain science of decluttering: [11:19–15:58]
• Psychological techniques and tips: [17:08–18:59]
• Clinical perspectives on hoarding, guilt, and joy: [22:06–27:48]
• Maximalism, identity, and personal standards: [28:22–29:29]

---

Conclusion

“Your clutter is holding you back” offers a nuanced exploration of why we accumulate so much and why it’s so emotionally and cognitively hard to pare down—even in a culture that increasingly idolizes minimalist living. The episode emphasizes that there’s no universal right way to manage stuff; what matters most is intentionality and authenticity about what you keep, why you keep it, and whether your environment is healthy for you.

---

For further information or to submit your own question, reach the show at [e-mail].

Transcript

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Thirty years ago, blinds.com broke the mold and made custom window treatments easy for everyone. Over 25 million windows later, we're celebrating by giving our customers up to 50% off site wide during our anniversary sale. Whether you DIY it or want a pro to handle everything from measure to install, blinds.com has you covered. Shop online, access real design professionals and get free samples. Thank you for 30amazing years. Shop the anniversary sale now through March 11th and get up to 50% off site [e-mail] this week on Net Worth and chill.

[Mary Dozier]

I'm taking you inside my sold out New York City book tour stop for my brand new book well Endowed. I sat down with the hilarious Heather McMahon for a night of laughs, real money talk and honest financial truths.

[Emily Stewart]

We're getting into everything the book covers

[Mary Dozier]

from how to actually build wealth, how to protect it, and how to stop leaving money on the table.

[Emily Stewart]

Whether you've already grabbed your copy of

[Mary Dozier]

well Endowed or you're still on the

[Emily Stewart]

fence, this episode will show you exactly

[Mary Dozier]

why everyone's talking about it. Listen wherever you get your podcasts or

[Emily Stewart]

watch on YouTube.com YourRichBFF

[Jon Gillen Hill]

so I've always

[Mary Dozier]

been someone who loves, loves, loves, loves junk.

[Emily Stewart]

I wish someone would come in and

[Jon Gillen Hill]

just rob me blind of my stuff so I don't have to do it.

[Mary Dozier]

My wife has a garage full of stuff and I have a garage full of nothing.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

I don't know if you've noticed this, but it seems like every couple is made up of this exact combination. Someone who throws stuff away.

[Mary Dozier]

This is like one of the boxes

[Emily Stewart]

that like I would love to get

[Jon Gillen Hill]

rid of and someone who holds on to it for dear life. Like if I want to ship something,

[Randall O'Reilly]

you know, I can ship it back in this box.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Pranoy Roy and Haley Brochek have found a way to manage their differences because of love, but also because you really don't have a choice when you live in a 600 square foot apartment in New York City.

[Emily Stewart]

We have a very small balcony that

[Mary Dozier]

we are feuding with pigeons over right now.

[Emily Stewart]

So every weekend, yeah, sometimes it'll be I'm just on this kick where I'm getting rid of everything. And he has to say like, wait, you might actually use this. Like this is something that you wear a lot. Like, and I'm like, oh yeah. I didn't even like think about that. I'm just in the mindset of like,

[Mary Dozier]

get rid of, get rid of.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

My goal is to like hold on

[Randall O'Reilly]

to things so I can give it

[Jon Gillen Hill]

to somebody in the future if we have children. If our relatives, our friends, something that kind of pass on to that also

[Randall O'Reilly]

gives them the joy, then I can hold onto it.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Kind of thinking outside of yourself helps,

[Randall O'Reilly]

you know, holding on to things.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

We have so much stuff. In fact, 71% of Americans say they buy things they already have because they can't find the original in all their clutter. At the same time, the minimalist aesthetic is extremely popular, even if for most of us, all those clean lines and clear surfaces are way out of reach. I'm John Gillen Hill, and this week on Explain It To Me from Vox, it's spring cleaning.

[Emily Stewart]

My name is Emily Stewart, and I'm a senior correspondent at Business Insider.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Emily used to work here at Vox, and over the years, she's written a ton about our growing mountain of stuff and why we're so eager to get rid of it.

[Emily Stewart]

A lot of baby boomers, right, are aging, and they are downsizing. Some of them are passing away. And they are notoriously a generation that really liked stuff. I mean, in the 80s, there was this saying that was like, whoever dies with the most toys wins. But I think a lot of people, a lot of families are looking around and saying, oh, my gosh, like, we're looking at mom and Dad's house. They have all of this stuff that they've collected over the years, and they don't just have their stuff, have their parents, stuff that they held onto. And for a lot of Gen Xers, Gen Zs, millennials, we have also left stuff at their houses and have kind of treated them.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Track me.

[Mary Dozier]

Yes.

[Emily Stewart]

And so we kind of have treated our parents as storage. You know, the easy answer is just get rid of it. But that's actually like, pretty complicated for a lot of reasons. I mean, you know, there's generations of, like, older women who. They all have china, right? It was a big thing to get wedding china. And now, like, you cannot get rid of it. Nobody wants it. Their K kids don't want it. And it's also just like. I mean, it can be logistically difficult to get rid of things. You know, in reporting on this, one thing I learned was that sometimes even, like, a Goodwill won't take furniture. And that can be really hard. And so you look around, and it's like, you know, I go to my mom's house, and she has all of these big, like, brown wooden hutches, and they're, like, beautiful, but, like, I don't want that. I live in New York City. It doesn't fit here. And even if she were to Want to get rid of it. Like, that's going to be an endeavor for her to undertake or someday, like, my problem.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

When did we become a culture that buys, buys, buys and never gets rid of stuff?

[Emily Stewart]

So I did an interview about this, actually, when I was still at Vox with an academic, and she kind of pinned this back to, like, the 1920s, really. Because that doesn't just, like, mass consumption. It really is about, like, mass production starts to hit. And so it's not just that, like, you're not just buying, like, a dress at the dressmaker down the street. Like, these are being made in, like, a mass scale. And so, of course, like, the Great Depression hits, that kind of goes on pause a little bit. And then in the 1950s, it really ramps up, right? It's people are buying their houses, they're buying their washing machines. Boiling action. That's the secret of really clean clothes. And there's a lot of things available. And you have, you know, the Sears catalog that comes to your house in the mail.

[Randall O'Reilly]

That's a very new Sears catalog at

[Emily Stewart]

Sears, it's the Mad Men era of advertising.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

And you know what happiness is?

[Randall O'Reilly]

Happiness is the smell of a new car.

[Emily Stewart]

And so people are seeing a lot of ads. And there is something, I think, like, social to this as well. Like, we compare ourselves to other people. And whether or not we, like, necessarily realize it, one of the ways we compare ourselves is, like, the things that we have, the things that we buy. Again, maybe in the 50s, it was like your neighbors, right? Like, which washing machine did they have? What car do they have? Well, then all of a sudd, you have, like, the television. And it's like, okay, well, what do the people on friends have? Like, what fashion do they have? New haircut, necklace, dress, boots.

[Mary Dozier]

Boots.

[Randall O'Reilly]

Now they're a little more than I

[Mary Dozier]

usually spend on boots or rent.

[Emily Stewart]

Now we have the Internet. If you think about these, like, micro trends that kind of sweep through, right? Like, was it last year that those mini Trader Joe's bags were all of a sudden trendy?

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Trader Joe's came out with new Easter

[Emily Stewart]

tote bags that everyone' going crazy for.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Am I?

[Emily Stewart]

Every single paycheck I get goes to these bags. And like, not to be rude to the bags, but truly, who cares? Are you kidding me?

[Jon Gillen Hill]

These little micro totes, okay? On the other end of the spectrum, when I think about the kind of luxury home aesthetic we're all supposed to be aspiring to, it's all about minimalism. You know, I think of Kim Kardashian's home tour and it's all beige and open spaces.

[Emily Stewart]

We're in my family kitchen, and everything

[Jon Gillen Hill]

in my house is really minimal.

[Emily Stewart]

I find that there's so much chaos out in the world that when I come home, I want it to be just really quiet, and I want everything to feel calming. I mean, I feel like that is kind of very millennial coded to some extent, right? Like, the millennial gray of everybody has this gray house and everything's from ikea. I mean, I'm sitting on the bikes

[Jon Gillen Hill]

right now as I sit at my IKEA desk.

[Emily Stewart]

So I think, you know, but minimalism, I mean, it's one of those things where it's, like, understandable, right? And this is not a new thing invented now. Like, I think a lot of people have a sense that, like, we live in this very consumerist society and feel kind of a desire and need to, like, push back against that. This feeling that we are inundated with a lot of stuff. Maybe it would be nice to have not so much stuff now. I do sort of think that minimalism can be a thing that we lie to ourselves about. A lot of us fancy ourselves minimalists and then are quite guilty of having an ambulance, Amazon package on the doorstep once a week. And so I do think it's one where it's become sort of this, like, virtue signal thing of, like, I'm a minimalist. How many of us are actually? That is an open question. Lots of people who are in buy nothing groups buy plenty of stuff. But I do think, like, the trends change and generations change. Like, your millennials were very, like, the millennial gray. Your house is, like, has nothing in it. And now, like, you might walk into a Gen Z's apartment, and they have, like, a lot more stuff sitting around in a way that maybe like, your baby boomer mother would like. A lot of this stuff just kind of comes back around. But I do think, you know, overall, we kind of like to see ourselves as somewhat resisting the capitalist machine, even if that's a lot easier said than done.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Why is it so much easier said than done? Up next, this is your brain on spring cleaning.

[Emily Stewart]

Support for Teexplained comes from Anthropic, the team behind Clawd. Perhaps you want to understand what's going on, not just hear a headline. Claude works that way. It digs into the messy parts of a question and follows the threads. And Anthropic has committed to keeping it ad free, which means your chats with Claude will not be shaped by what an advertiser paid for.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

See why Problem solvers choose Claude as

[Emily Stewart]

their thinking partner and try Claude [e-mail] todayexplained.

[Randall O'Reilly]

Hey everybody, Asted Hernton here. I wanted to let you know that

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Vox Media is returning to south by Southwest in Austin for live tapings of your favorite podcast. Join us from March 13 through March 15 for live tapings of Pivot Teffy Talks, Professor G's Markets.

[Randall O'Reilly]

Where should we begin?

[Jon Gillen Hill]

With Esther Perel and the special live taping of Today Explained, hosted by yours truly. The Vox Media podcast stage will also feature sessions from Brene Brown and Adam Grant, Marcus Brownlee, Keith Lee, Vivian Tu, Robin Arzon and more. Visit voxmedia.com southbysouthwest to pre register and get a special discount on your south by Southwest innovation badge. That's voxmedia.com southbysouthwest Hope to see you there. I'm jq this is Explain it to me. So how do we go from collecting stuff to tossing it out?

[Randall O'Reilly]

One of the things that I think is most interesting and most important about how our brains are organized is how we motivate ourselves to do things that we do.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Randall O'Reilly is a psychology professor at UC Davis, and he uses computers to track how our brains respond to certain tasks.

[Randall O'Reilly]

There's this kind of surprising thing that, like, the parts of our brain that actually do this are really ancient, kind of from an evolutionary perspective, and they're tied up with things like dopamine, which everybody knows about now. And, you know, this gives us a kind of understanding of, you know, what drives our decisions. And it's not kind of like what you think you might want to do. It's actually much more kind of basic and survival driven kind of parts of the brain that are actually in charge. Anytime you have to make a hard decision, your brain, this motivational part of your brain, actually knows that that decision is going to be hard. And there's a lot of studies that show, like, anytime you have uncertainty, like, should I keep it? Should I toss it? What should I do? How many things should I have? All these kinds of decisions really weigh down your brain and you can just feel it, right? You just feel tired. Oh yeah, I don't want to have to make that decision. So, you know, and again, this part of your brain is really kind of like pragmatic. And so if there's anything else you could do, your brain is going to say, ah, let's, let's postpone that decision and just go have something delicious to eat or do some other even maybe not such a great thing. That's at least easier than making these hard choices, right?

[Jon Gillen Hill]

What about our emotional attachment to our things? Why do we form those in the first place?

[Randall O'Reilly]

You know, there's this part of your brain called the hippocampus, which is where these memories live. And that's plugged directly into these core emotional parts of your brain. And so that's such an important part of what, you know, what a person is. You know, I have like an emotional connection to every T shirt I own, even if it's like, really gross or

[Jon Gillen Hill]

has holes in it.

[Emily Stewart]

Those movie ticket stubs, concert tickets, just

[Mary Dozier]

like small trinkets from memories and travel.

[Emily Stewart]

They come from apartment to apartment for years.

[Mary Dozier]

Old records. We literally never use them, but we just cannot get rid of them with a sentimentality of it all.

[Randall O'Reilly]

When you see some knickknack, you know, and you're like, ah, I remember this. This was important. This was meaningful to me. How can I throw out this memory that's so important and central to me? It really is like cutting off part of yourself. I mean, you don't want to do that.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Yeah, it, like, I don't know, it just activates something. All the things just flood back to.

[Randall O'Reilly]

I think that the solution to getting what you theoretically want rationally is to sort of work with your system, right? You can't fight the system, so you just gotta figure out ways around it. And so one thing I do personally is just like, take pictures, right? If I take pictures of a knickknack, and so I do see the pictures, they come up on my screensaver and stuff, it activates those memories and I feel good, right? So I think, you know, as long as you have some kind of cue there, some way to get back to those memories, it's still good. And obviously a picture is a lot less space than the actual things itself.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

There's another category of stuff like the books I'm holding onto because I'll supposedly read them one day, or the clothes that I tell myself I'll fit into again.

[Mary Dozier]

I have very expensive jeans that I used to fit in back in my 20s. I'm 42 now, and I just still have the hope.

[Emily Stewart]

My style is probably outdated. And I still hold onto things because

[Mary Dozier]

I think, you know what?

[Emily Stewart]

I might use this one day.

[Randall O'Reilly]

We have an ideal future self, right? I mean, you can picture it, but the thing that you don't want to experience is that situation where you're like, oh, now I really want to have this thing. And I got rid of it, right? That feeling, that negative feeling is Weighted much more strongly than the little cost of like just keeping it around. And that's, you know, a lot of scientific literature showing that we are much more sensitive to negative outcomes, losses and any kind of negative feeling than we are to sort of positive things.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Why do our brain. Do we. Is there a hypothesis on why the negative is so much more powerful Survival?

[Randall O'Reilly]

Right. Negative is something bad happens to you. Right. Physical pain, some predator, something scary, you know, all these things. And so there's just a much richer kind of map in your brain of all the negative things and it just gets more attention.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

You know, I envy minimalists in that they're able to shed things without having a lot of hangups. Why is it easier for some people than for others?

[Randall O'Reilly]

Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with that decision making process. So if you're somebody who's generally indecisive and you know that like, oh, I don't know, should I keep it? Should I not? And you really go back and forth and you have a hard time making that decision again, your brain knows that you're going to have a hard time making that decision. And so it's going to be really hard to just confront that. But if you're somebody like me who's more impulsive and not troubled by making decisions, I don't have that much difficulty. I'm like, whatever, I'm just going to toss it. Some people again, like my wife for example, is very, very, she has a very, very difficult time making decisions. And guess what? She tends to be someone who holds on to things. Right. And so it really, I think it is very strongly correlated.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Yeah.

[Randall O'Reilly]

And the really tricky question, right? You're never going to take somebody who is sort of has harder time making decisions, likes to hold on to things, has that strong sentimental reaction to things and turn them into this overnight minimalist. I don't think that's a realistic kind of expectation. But on the other hand, if you really want to accomplish something like that, I think there are ways to trick yourself into getting the job done. So one idea is to, instead of making the decision kind of all in one step, you can make a first pass decision that you know is not the final decision, but it's like a, it's a quick first pass decision. And so you just go through everything and you just say really quickly, I'm just going to sort stuff into piles. Right. And then once you've started that now you look at it and you're like, okay, well here's how much stuff is in like The. The really must keep pile, and here's all this other stuff, and it's so much easier to edit something than to write it from scratch. So it's really that same principle. Right. The other one that's classic is to break things down into smaller steps. Right. So instead of thinking about, you know, I'm going to organize my entire closet, you know, just say, I'm just going to work on the socks, you know, and sort of, okay, well, socks. I can do socks. Right. And the trick is that once you get started, there's a process in your brain where it's kind of tracking the progress that you're making towards your goal. And this is a key part of the computer models that I make of the brain. And whenever you make a move towards your goal, you get a little bit of dopamine. And so there's this kind of positive feedback loop. And you feel it. Right. This is also what video games kind of tap into. And then these kind of mechanisms usually will take over and get you, keep you going.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

So I should treat my spring cleaning like a video game?

[Randall O'Reilly]

Yes, absolutely. Give yourself points, break it down into levels, and then you'll be like, huh, well, that wasn't actually as hard as I thought it was going to be. And once you have that feeling, then it kind of keeps that momentum going.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Is there a plus side to keeping stuff like, what does that do for us?

[Randall O'Reilly]

Yeah, and in general, there's a lot of benefit to having, you know, more memories, more access to your memories. And so if you have more cues around, you can kind of remind yourself, like, you know, if you're feeling depressed or something, and you can go look at your shelf and see this knickknack from some trip you took, and it can kind of remind you of this prior experience that you had. And that kind of gives you a different perspective relative to what you're feeling right now. That's kind of what memory also does for us. Right. In general, is gives us a perspective of how things were at different points in our past. And having better access to those memories is absolutely very important. And that works for me because I actually have a terrible memory. And I don't spend very much time organizing my memory. I'm too impulsive, too much, you know, whatever, living in the present, etc. And so again, my wife is my memory.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Our stuff can be a reminder of these really special moments in our lives. Coming up, how to keep your past from limiting your present. After decapitation strikes against Iran's leadership, what can we expect next in the escalating war.

[Emily Stewart]

The big question is, if there is going to be a next strongman in

[Randall O'Reilly]

Iran, what kind of strongman will that person likely be? I don't think that there's going to be another powerful cleric supreme leader.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

I'm John Finer. And I'm Jake Sullivan. And we're the hosts of the Long

[Randall O'Reilly]

Game, a weekly national security podcast.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

This week we sit down with Kareem Sajapour to discuss what to expect in this next phase of the war against Iran. The episode's out now. Search for and follow the Long Game wherever you get your podcasts. Are Democrats their own biggest problem?

[Randall O'Reilly]

You know, a party becomes defined by who their central figure, who their quarterback becomes. Democrats haven't really anointed a effective quarterback

[Jon Gillen Hill]

since Barack Obama, pretty much.

[Randall O'Reilly]

And this week, the Atlantic staff writer Mark Leibovich joins me to discuss the

[Jon Gillen Hill]

state of the Democratic Party and which races to keep an eye out for this midterm election. The episode is out now. Search and follow. Stay tuned with Preet Wherever you get your podcasts, It's explain it to me. I'm J.Q. mary Dozier has seen how crippling having a bunch of stuff can be up close.

[Mary Dozier]

I'm a clinical psychologist and a professor at Mississippi State University.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

You work with people who hold on to too much stuff in a way that really limits them and impacts their lives in a negative way. But I think a lot of us struggle to manage our stuff. You know, the things we collect or stuff we inherited from our family or just stuff we somehow ended up with. How often is throwing everything out the answer? Like the pasta maker, the dress, the things? Should we just be throwing everything in the garbage?

[Mary Dozier]

Oh, that just I felt my heart rate go up when you said that. And truthfully, one of the things we know is that when people have really, really severe hoarding problems like that, it's not safe for them to be in their home. Sometimes what has to happen is this big massive clean out. But it's an incredibly traumatic thing that it's the same level, kind of a PTSD response as if you lost your home in a tornado because in essence you did right, that a tornado swept through home and took everything away. And I know that there's a broad spectrum of minimalism to maximalism, but I think I'm a fan of keeping the things around us that help us feel like who we are, that it is that external way that we present the world, whether it's through our clothing or our accessories or the clutter that we have in our handbags, right? That I, right before this was digging through my purse, being like, I know I have headphones in here somewhere. But just the things that we choose to keep on ourselves or to keep in our home that signal to the world of who we think that we are.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

I'm curious if things like the Marie Kondo method,

[Emily Stewart]

does it spark joy or

[Jon Gillen Hill]

any of those other kind of minimalist decluttering hacks work for the people that you help, Is it that simple or is there a little more there?

[Mary Dozier]

I think there's more to it. You know, anything in the moment can spark joy, right? If you put a puppy in front of me, I'm gonna say this puppy is sparking some joy right now. Right? But is it value consistent is what I always come back to, right? That there's a difference between happiness and fulfillment. So I always encourage people to just. Whenever you're going to go through your home, go through your clutter and think about what you want to keep and what you want to let go of, starting before you even do that, of what are your values? What do you care about in the world, right? What's important for you on kind of that broader sense. And then as you're going through these items, thinking through, is this item consistent with those values?

[Emily Stewart]

The other day my mom dropped off like everything from my high school, like

[Mary Dozier]

yearbooks, gown, and I started looking through

[Emily Stewart]

it all and I thought, what am I going to do with this stuff? And I took it to the dump and I kept waiting for regret for not hanging onto it. But I live in a 1200 square foot house with a family of four.

[Mary Dozier]

I have a new baby and I found myself thinking like, I don't want this crap. I guess what I encourage people to think about is you don't have to hold on to something out of guilt, right? That if somebody gives you a present and you don't want it, that's okay. It doesn't say anything about you or your friendship with that person to not keep that item. That guilt and shoulds just, I guess, shouldn't be part of why you're holding onto things.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

In your opinion, what are some of the good reasons not to get rid of stuff?

[Mary Dozier]

Coming back to that sense of what is this item doing for you? Is it that this is the one thing that seeing it gives you that connection to your grandfather, that holding onto this one particular book or this one hat and thinking about like, what is this item doing? And is this the only item you have that's serving that purpose? Right. That I think sometimes people get lost and I'm going to hold on to everything that reminds me of my grandfather. I'm going to hold on to everything that's about this dream. I could be. And so really trying to think through of why are you keeping things and how many of those things do you need to keep? I think it can be helpful to kind of take that step back and think about, okay, if there wasn't anything in this home, what would I want to be in here? Everything that you keep, you're making a decision to keep that. And sometimes people default to that decision because it's hard to think through, could I let this go? But you're still making that choice. That inaction in itself is still an action, which I think is probably one of those broader truths about directions in life. Right. That are you staying in a relationship because you're choosing to be in that relationship every day, or you stayed in the relationship just cause it's what you've been doing? You can kind of think about our relationships with our items.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Yeah. I think as boomers age and we start to get more of this stuff, it's like, what do you do with it? You know, we talked about the burden some people feel when they're faced with their parents stuff. Do you have any advice for that?

[Mary Dozier]

I'll even. I'll kind of circle it another way. There's something called Swedish death cleaning. I don't know if you've come across it, but it's this idea that basically it's putting the responsibility on the baby boomers, that they're the ones that should be going through their things before we're inheriting it. It's this idea of like cleaning out your things before you die.

[Emily Stewart]

The first half of our life is really about accumulating things, and the second half should be about starting to shed the worldly possessions. And this really is such a realistic and truthful motivator for minimalism and not keeping stuff you don't need. Because at the end someone will have to deal with it.

[Mary Dozier]

It's actually, it's something that I deal with with a lot of my patients that I've treated of these older adults who will say, could get rid of these things, but I want to make sure it goes somewhere where it's going to be appreciated. And they're like, I want my daughter to say, inherit my wedding china or something like that. But I know that right now she doesn't want it. And so they're like, so I'm holding onto it. I have this responsibility for it. And so I guess kind of coming back to the idea of you don't have to be responsible for the items. What's our responsibility to people, but not necessarily to the things.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

Is it possible to be a happy maximalist? Because I don't know, I love the color, I love the things everywhere. As long as there's a place for it.

[Mary Dozier]

Yeah, absolutely. It comes back to is it dysfunctional or not? Right? But if your home is filled to the brim, but you're living a healthy, happy life in that environment, that's absolutely okay, right? That it's. It's all about the subjectivity of it, of just. Just because there might be a current cultural norm for minimalism or. I know cottagecore was in for a while. I don't know if that's still a thing, but just these trends come and go. But kind of thinking about what's your truth of how you like your space to be? Right. Are you someone who likes a completely blank wall or do you want it to be. What is it called, gallery style where you have all of the whole wall is filled with paintings? I think just whatever somebody's truth is good, right? If it's. If you're healthy, if you're happy, if it's not hurting anyone.

[Jon Gillen Hill]

That's it for this week. Special thanks to Haley and Pranoy for welcoming us into their home. Is there something you want us to explain to you? Tell us what it is. Give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email askvoxox.com if you enjoyed this episode. Consider becoming a Vox member. Membership comes with a ton of awesome perks like access to our Patreon. There you'll find a Q and a I recently hosted about podcast bros and Politics. Go to Vox.com members to sign up. This episode was produced by Arianna Aspuru with Avishai Artsy. It was edited by Jenny Lawton, fact checked by Melissa Hirsch and engineered by David Tadashore. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy. I'm your host, Jon Glen Hill. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you soon. Bye.