Episode 405 – What your clutter is doing to your mental health

Ingrid: In today's episode, we're diving into something that so many of you will recognise but might not have been able to fully articulate how clutter impacts your mental health and how your mental health can in turn impact your ability to deal with clutter. If you've ever felt overwhelmed just looking around your home or stuck in a cycle of wanting to get organized, but not knowing where to start, you are absolutely not alone.

This is not about laziness or lack of willpower. There is a genuine connection between what's going on in your mind and what's happening in your home. And today we're going to explore that together.

Ingrid: Hello and welcome listeners. I'm Ingrid.

Lesley: And I am Lesley. Now, if you are here for the very first time today, or you've been listening in for ages, we want to say a huge thank you we have a little favour to ask.

Ingrid: If you like what you hear, be sure to hit that follow or subscribe button. Share us with your friends or leave us a review. It makes a huge difference to us.

Well, hello Lesley. we have quite the topic for today's podcast episode, right? Because we're going to talk about what clutter can do to people's mental health, and it has a tremendous impact on people, hasn't it?

Lesley Spellman: Yeah, there are a lot of people in our world with poor mental health, for lots and lots of different reasons. This. All, all very complex. Some of them are very, very complex. Right? And that's not what we're gonna go into, but we're gonna talk about what we do know about, which is clutter. And the best way I can sort of describe it, Ingrid, as we were sort of preparing this this morning, is it's a real chicken in an egg situation because you've got what comes first, the meant the poor mental health or the clutter because you've got mental health and that stops you from being able to declutter. Or you've got a clutter that's building and that adds to your poor mental health. And so it is a cycle and we really

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: to try and get out of that. And it can feel impossible. It can feel

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: impossible. Let's put this straight out out here. You are not on your own if you are overwhelmed with your clutter and if it is impacting your mental health. In fact, that is very, very common. And so today we're gonna talk about why. Hopefully you'll have some light bulb moments if you felt quite alone in your mental health journey, your decluttering journey, and felt as if you should be getting it all together, which is what many of us think. we're here to go.

These are the reasons why that might not be happening. But we'd also, of course, like to give you some positive things that you can do, some small steps towards the end of the podcast that you can do to try and fix or to try and improve the cycle. So

Ingrid: Hmm.

Lesley Spellman: get stuck in Ingrid.

Ingrid: Yeah, well you know what, Lesley, I want to come clean a little bit first and, and know from my own experience that it's really hard to do things when you struggle with your end mental health. You, you know, I think several, many of our listeners know that over the last couple of years, there have been a couple of times when I felt very burned out for lots of different reasons, and I can imagine feeling.

Just really overwhelmed and tired and not able to get outta bed for a couple of weeks and just really struggling to kind of. S you know, how, how do you, how do you move on from that overwhelmed feeling and that just poor mental health in that moment. And luckily, luckily I have, my daughter was still at home, at the time and my husband is really helpful and does a lot and, and really picks up a lot of things when, when I'm not feeling really great.

So I'm very lucky. And thankfully I think of all this time I was thinking, I'm really glad that my house doesn't have a lot of clutter because. I would have that to deal with as well. It would've been really, really hard. So I'm really glad we're talking about this and are open about this because I think it's so important that when you're struggling with mental health, that your house supports you and that you feel safe, and that you feel calm and that you feel, I don't have all these things.

I can really focus on me and what do I need to do to. Feel better, and which more steps can I take and not kind of look or look around and go, oh my goodness, I'm not feeling like getting up today. But even when I look around, I don't even want to get going. You know what I mean? Because clutter, I think we know impacts people so much.

Lesley Spellman: Absolutely. And you know, you know, thank you so much for sharing that. I mean, it's something that we've talked about a little bit before on the podcast, you

Ingrid: Hmm.

Lesley Spellman: and. Poor mental health has got lots of different levels to it. But you know,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: if it's impacting you today, even if you feel it's on a small scale, then it's an issue.

You know, I think I've shared

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: somebody, One of my sort of friends back in the day, and we're going back 20, 30 years, one day said to me, problems come in all different shapes and sizes, Lesley. And that resonated with me so much because we think, oh, we are not that bad compared to that person.

So we're constantly comparing our mental health with somebody else's, aren't we? And so not everybody's gonna get to that burnout stage that you got, Ingrid, and thankfully you were able to pick yourself up and get back on the, on the sort of, on the right track. But you recognise it and it's important to

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: as well, but some people are not even at that stage or they're trying to hide it.

And that's what we, we, we are here really to say today. It's okay. So

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: about. The one side of things, which is trying to declutter why it's so hard to declutter when you are not in the right head space or when your mental

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: failing you or is poor, or is low, or you wanna say that. Now, for some people, this is every day. This doesn't go away. It's not

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: up and down. It might go up and down with medication. And sometimes you can have good days and bad days, and so for some people this is there all of the time, you know? But for others it

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: and goes and so, but

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: it so difficult when your mental health is low, is letting you down, let's call it that.

I.

Ingrid: Yeah. Well, I think first of all, as it's because of course decluttering and Organising and kind of tidying and getting back on top of things or whatever kind of words you use. Requires a lot of decisions, and when you're already struggling with overwhelm, that decision fatigue is real. You know what I mean?

Because of course, it's not just never just one thing, it's, it's loads of things that need to be, make decisions upon. Starting as simple as, am I keeping this or is this going? But then if it's going, where is it going? Is it recycling? Is it rubbish? Is it back to my friend? Is it donating to the charity shop?

Can I give it away on an app? So one thing, so it starts with a, oh, I'm just gonna keep it, or am I gonna let it go? But then the both of them, and if you're going to keep it. Okay. I'm deciding I want to keep it, but where am I gonna put it? Where does it make sense? Where am I gonna place it? So just one item, if it's really kind of chaotic everywhere can cause a lot of.

Wow. One simple question, then there's like 12 follow up questions on the one thing. So the decision fatigue is, can be like a real thing, or if you're like, well, actually I'm okay with that, but. Ingrid is not one thing. I've got 500 things that I need to look at because it's everywhere is clutter and everything is a bit everything outta place and I'm not sure what the right thing is.

So you might start like woo-hoo and thinking, okay, I've got a good day today, but then a couple of items, 10 items in 20 items in 30, you might go, wow, I did not, you know, expect it to be like this draining, this draining.

Lesley Spellman: You know, and, and Ingrid, we've not even scratched, you know, we've not even scratched the surface of it. So the, the, the scenario that you've just painted is one where actually you've got a good handle as to what you wanna do, and then it's the follow on tasks as associated with it. But of course, as we all

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: podcasts in every decision is.

Not easy. It's difficult so that, so you might not even get to the stage. You might be second guessing yourself. Am I making the right decision? Is somebody gonna be upset with me for making this decision? Am I gonna have regret? So we've got all of those things that we talk about a lot in these podcasts as well.

So yes, you've got the basic level decisions to make about whether it's staying or going. You've got the decisions about where you're gonna put it. How are you gonna, it out of your home. But then you've got the deeper decisions, which were even more overwhelming, that are difficult decisions. So decision fatigue is a

Ingrid: Hmm.

Lesley Spellman: and that is very hard when your mind and your body and your energy is not in the right head space.

And so we want to go straight in a decision fatigue. It's a very, very real thing. And I think of

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: there a little bit Ingrid about energy and you know.

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Lesley Spellman: know that we are, you know, you need to have the right level of energy. Really, you need to understand your own energy levels, really, to be able to declutter. Now, some people will say, well, I've never got any energy, so, so therefore you need to try and find a way around. That is really difficult. You know, you need to really break it down into those sort of five minute chunks and stuff like that. But it's recognizing it and recognizing that poor mental health or physical health as well result in reduced energy.

We don't feel like it feels exhausting and that impacts our motivation. So even sometimes even. The smallest task to, to somebody else, which feels like something that's really simple and quick can feel huge if you've got that reduced energy. And consequently, you've got that reduced motivation. So you know it impacts your body and how you are feeling as well, doesn't it?

When you've got poor mental health.

Ingrid: Yeah, for sure. And I think because then we, I think we, we, we start berating ourselves as well, right? Because we're like, well, why, why, why can't we not do this? This, everybody else seems to have everything together, but me, I'm, and then we can do this whole negative. Thinking cycle of, and now I can't even let go of my clutter either.

You know, of all the things. Something that looks so easy. Everybody says it's so easy to declutter. Why am I finding it so hard? Well, no wonder.

Lesley Spellman: Exactly, and I think, you know, I think as well when we're going through this. Feeling that, let's call it feeling as, as we, you know, we obviously want to say that this is every day for a lot of people. we, the, our perception of what is in front of us can be distorted. And it doesn't mean to say that everything feels bigger than it should, should do.

Sometimes things feel smaller than they should do as well. So we don't know what's coming. We haven't got that right perception of what a task entails, probably 'cause we've not done the planning for it and. Study and we need to look retrospectively back and things like that. sometimes we think things are, are gonna be quicker than they actually are and sometimes we think they're gonna take an eternity. Both of those perceptions of tasks are very relevant and we get it a lot Ingrid, don't we, with clients, you know? So we will go to a consultation with a client we've got. A client that will think that we can do a five bedroom house in a day and we've got other clients who think it's gonna take us a year every single day to get there because it's felt so overwhelming to them. So when this is

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: you're not used to, you don't have the right, a realistic perception of how long something's gonna take, and that's exhausting

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: Isn't.

Ingrid: Yeah, I think it's because when we think about something that we have to do, it somehow becomes bigger and bigger in our minds. And then when we actually then end up doing it, we see it all the time right in our inner hub as well, in our membership. And we help so many people all over the world with their decluttering and Organising.

We, we talk a lot about, Our members start to recognise that time is such a kind of like a weird concept because in their heads sometimes things take longer, but when they actually do it, it takes shorter than they thought. But because they've thought about it so many times, they thought it would take much longer than it actually did.

So that's why we talk a lot about just time yourself, especially with some of your daily tasks to get a far better handle on. Okay. How does time take away? And that's why we do so many, body doubling and coworking sessions on Zoom and our membership as well, because we have a timer and it's like, okay, now you've got a, you see the timer ticking down and it's like, wow, I'm so surprised and how much I did in this time, I thought it would take much longer than it was, or I did a lot more than I thought I was going to do.

So. There's a better grasp of time, but I think when you worry about something, the problem always gets bigger, doesn't it? The problem shared is really a problem after sometimes when, when you have to do something and you think about it so many times it it in your head, it's going to take hours. Well, in the end it's like, I can't believe this only took me 20 minutes to do.

And we hear that a lot, don't we?

Lesley Spellman: And also conversely then Ingrid come into terms with the fact that, say for example, the example you gave there, which is our, success sessions, if you didn't get what you thought you were gonna get done in that 50 minutes, it's about. Being okay with that and going, okay, and

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: again tomorrow. Do you know what I mean?

And things like that. So

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: that, that reality on time-based projects where with decluttering is so, so important and it's something that's very often overlooked. I think we know, we, we've

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: we, we've spoken about the emotional barriers. We've, we talked, you know, going to it a little bit deep, more deeply.

You know, we've got guilt, you know, that, that is such a strong, overwhelming emotion that we feel. Guilt, guilt about money, guilt about people, guilt about landfill, guilt about the environment. All of those things that, that come into play. Really, really important frustration. We've spoke about frustration already where we.

Feel that we're not good enough. All those kind of things. We've got really deep seated emotions as well that come from clutter, which are things like, shame. People feel incredible, shame about their clutter. That's why we've got people that are not opening

Ingrid: Yep.

Lesley Spellman: not inviting people in. Not enjoying the social life that they deserve because they feel ashamed, because they've been judged and all of that kind of stuff.

And that's not an easy one to fix. It involves a process to get yourself to a place where you are, where you, you don't feel ashamed or judged by other people. 'cause the two go hand in hand. You feel ashamed 'cause you've been judged. And all, and all. It is just all, all of these emotions are so closely interwoven, you know, it's complex.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: know, and that's why, that's why we've done 400 episodes. That's why we've got a membership. Because it's kind of like, know, it's not as simple as throwing something in a bin bag. Many, for many people it is. But for people who struggle with all of the things that we spoke about, physical health, mental health, just attachment to stuff, grief, curve balls, life's things that have got in the way.

All of those things contribute to this being difficult for some people. Not everybody, but some people. And that's okay,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: I think we also, I. Avoid, don't we? If we've got poor mental health, we, we avoid 'cause that feels comfortable. So if we are feeling very low, we are safe in our comfort zone, which might be sitting, watching the tv, just going out for whatever your comfort zone is and you'll know what that is for some people that'll be staying in bed, not facing the world, all of those kind of things. to avoid the world outside, even if that's your, the world outside or the world, world inside, like your clutter that's waiting for you. It's a coping mechanism, isn't it? It's a, it feels safer, it feels more comfortable to do that. So you're not lazy, which is what a lot of people will think. It's just that that's your way of feeling safe and and that's important. But of course, you know, we're gonna talk a little bit more after the break about how to get yourself kickstarted. 'cause we know it's so important to your wellbeing to have a home that supports you.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: ideally, we need to get out of bed. We need to push ourselves slightly out of our comfort zone and find a way around it so that ultimately we can have a home that supports us.

Ingrid: Yeah, definitely. Well, Lesley, let's go for a break and let's talk about what this clutter is doing to your mental health after. So we're gonna see you soon.

Hi everyone. Welcome back. We are talking about how clutter is impacting your mental health, but also how your mental health. Is impacted by your clutter. Unfortunately, it's never the one thing, right? It's kind of like one thing leads to the other, and the other thing leads to, back to the first thing.

You're in a kind of a vicious cycle because when you've got a lot of clutter around. It can, it can make you feel not really good either. So yeah. So if you don't have bad mental health, but if you've got a lot of clutter, that doesn't help either. So having less clutter can really help people feel better.

Lesley Spellman: It's hard, isn't it? It's just getting you old ways, isn't it? You know, the answer to this,

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: just, just the spoiler alert, the answer to this is having less clutter. So that's a good thing 'cause we're here talking

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: it. but it's not that simple. So we wanna talk about. What is clutter doing to your mental health?

And I think a lot of you will have these feelings. Whether or not you recognise them, whether or not you can articulate them, a different matter. So let's go through them step by step. I think it is, clutter is a constant visual noise. It is there. All the time going sort me out,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: pick me up, put me away, buy me, chuck, me, whatever that is.

It's just a constant visual noise, and that's what we want to get away

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: when, you know, we see it, of course we are in, we are looking of to be in a situation where we see. We see people who have been stuck with this visual noise and they get to the end stage of that and we see how it lifts their mood, lifts their mental health, and allows them to go on and do many more positive things in their life.

And actually, retrospectively, people are looking back and going. how much it has impacted their general mood every day.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: and

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: consider ourselves to be so lucky. That's the reason why we do it. We do it for the, we do it of course to help people, but we, we stick with it because we see the results of these transformations and it's so impactful, isn't it, Ingrid?

We absolutely love seeing

Ingrid: yeah,

Lesley Spellman: out of the doldrums and seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. It's so nice. But

Ingrid: yeah.

Lesley Spellman: That, that constant visual noise gives you a lack of mental calm, and we want to be calm. We want to be calm in our homes. You know, that's the, that's the basic requirement for us, isn't it?

To allow ourselves at certain points, sometimes we can't be calm. We, there are times when calmness is not a thing, but in general, we want to know that at certain points in our day, in our week, in our month, in

Ingrid: Yeah,

Lesley Spellman: we can be calm.

Ingrid: yeah, yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize that how much clutter there is at some point, but they know it.

Let, let me explain this a little bit. What we hear a lot is that, people say, gosh, once they start decluttering, they say, I had not realized how much clutter it was because you do get clutter blind to some of the clutter. When there's a lot of clutter, you kind of stop seeing it, but just be and be. But because you stop seeing it doesn't mean you don't know it's there and that it, IM massively impact you and weighs on you.

So you do see the visual clutter and the noise and the, the visual noise. Even if you're clutter blind, but you know it's there and it's all the things. It's the, the hundreds of. Almost like tabs open in your brain of I need to do that. I haven't finished that. I need to return that. I feel so guilty about that.

I shouldn't have accepted that. I need to move that on to other people. I haven't given that present to that person, and that was three Christmases ago. Why is there so Christmas decorations while they should be up in my attic? It is the, but my sink is full. My bin are overflowing. I have to feed the cat.

It's like hundreds and hundreds of things, and that creates a mental clutter that is just immensely weighing on your head, and then your body and then your mental health.

Lesley Spellman: Yeah, it's like a, it's like unfinished tasks, isn't it? Just like,

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: different tabs that are just all waiting for you to like, do me, do me, sort me, fix me, me, all of

Ingrid: Yeah,

Lesley Spellman: things. And, and so you get, your mental load is so big that you, you don't

Ingrid: yeah,

Lesley Spellman: where to begin.

And so there's things like that and, and that is just gonna lead to a constant state of stress. You know what I mean? You know?

Ingrid: yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: at certain times. This is constant, like low level or even high level stress all of the time. That never, ever, ever goes away. And that leads to you feeling very, very unsettled at home.

You know, just going back to what you were saying there before Ingrid about, you know that you might not see it, but you know it. even if you are not seeing anymore, other people are also. Telling you about it. So we've not just got, so you've got that as well. You've got this constant relationship issue as well with children saying it, mother-in-laws saying it, partners saying it, you know, friends saying it, you know, everyone talking about you behind your back, all those kind of things.

You know it's going on, right? You know that it's a constant, it's that it's a source of stress for other people as well. And they, they, they are well-meaning, like for the most part, these people are well-meaning they want it for you. But it

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Lesley Spellman: the load. It's all about a mental

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: it? And so, yeah, you just feel unsettled all the time.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: I.

Ingrid: Yeah, and I think that stress. It is not only then in you and in the people who live in your house, but it also reflects everything that you do or impacts everything you do outside of your house, right? In your work, in your volunteering, in caring for other people, in relationship with other family members in, in everything in the way you shop and you do your weekly shop and your food and everything then gets.

Completely mugged in your head because it's so, it, it has to think of so many things all the time that it really, old, even the tiniest jobs get hard, you know, because there's no systems in place. There's. So many things are like, look at me. Do do this. I am lost. I'm in the wrong place. And then people around you start asking you things to solve and sort and find for them, and everything gets such hard work.

Then it becomes like when you have to search for things, your energy depletes as well because you're like physically having to just work really hard to keep things taken over.

Lesley Spellman: It. Absolutely. There is also a flip side to that, which also weighs heavily on people that a lot of people do have very distinct ways that they deal with home and work if we're just gonna keep it simple. So they can be

Ingrid: Mm-hmm.

Lesley Spellman: organized at work, they know exactly what they're doing. The output is

Ingrid: Yep.

Lesley Spellman: So at work, they've got it completely nailed, but at home it's complete chaos and that adds to love.

'cause they're like, I can do it there, but I can't do it here.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: same thing where people help other people and they're like, I can do the decluttering, no problem when I go and help my friends, but I can't do it at home. And so we've got this. Which also adds, 'cause people are like, why can I not do it here and I can do it there? interesting as well. So you've got some people where it's general chaos everywhere. And then you've got some people who have this, you know, definite divide, don't they? And they,

Ingrid: Yep.

Lesley Spellman: well sorted out and you see it very much with really. High level. We, you know, we often work with quite high level entrepreneurs and they, they are smashing it from a work perspective, at home it's complete chaos.

And so, you know, it is really, it is really interesting and.

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: has no boundaries or barriers. It affects everybody in very

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: And the the key

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: work out how it's affecting you and finding a strategy that's gonna work for you and you alone. Now there are some key things that are gonna work.

Of course there are, for a lot of people general things that work, but, but it is about that self-awareness. It all starts with that self-awareness, doesn't it?

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: to be kind to yourself to go, right, okay, well, I can't do this very well, but. let me think about how I'm gonna start to make those, initial small steps because we do compare ourselves with others and we have that internalized kind of shame.

We've spoke, we've spoken about shame and it's a really big thing. You know, we don't talk about shame that much, but we get really cross about it, don't we? About shame, about judgment? 'cause it's so negative to our decluttering journey. Other people, judges, we feel ashamed and then you get stuck. You get stuck because you can't move

Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: And so, yeah, so we've got two things. It is not easy to declutter when you've got poor mental health and

Ingrid: Hmm.

Lesley Spellman: you've got clutter, it is really impacting your mental health. So as we've said before, the key is not having any clutter, but how do we get there? Ingrid?

Ingrid: Well, I think step number one, like you said already is being kind to yourself and recognizing, okay, this isn't, this is not working for me. How am I going to get out of this? And trust us when we say this is not about going in all guns blazing and just going, right. This is the weekends, the sun's shining.

Throw open the curtains, the windows, and get it. Woo. Oh.

Lesley Spellman: Ingrid's throwing, throwing out her headphone, Ingrid's,

Ingrid: I, I know I'm throwing

Lesley Spellman: so passionate

Ingrid: out up.

Lesley Spellman: the weekend declutter that she's smashing herself in the face at this moment in time. For anybody who's

Ingrid: I know.

Lesley Spellman: you'll see it on YouTube. If you wanna go in there, go and have a look. Okay.

Ingrid: I might, I was like, don't.

Lesley Spellman: room

Ingrid: Yeah. I'm back. I'm back. So I need to calm down and say small, manageable chunks. Don't go in with, this weekend is gonna be the weekend when it's all gonna happen. It's five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 50 minutes there a little bit. And because that will not wear you out, because those long weekends with eight hours of decluttering on the plan is gonna feel far too overwhelming.

We don't even do that as professional organizers. So slowly but surely, honestly, just a couple of little bits. And if you have a very poor mental health and very low energy. Then have a break and do a little bit more. Really, really. One shelf, one drawer, one cupboard, one container, one box, one. Little pile, a couple of things.

And then the next thing, it is the key. You want to be a tortoise in and not a hare. And yes, of course there are people who can sprint through it all, but most people it for, it's a marathon, it's not a sprint. So slowly but surely, really, really, really wins the race.

Lesley Spellman: I think it's really hard though, Ingrid. 'cause if you've got poor mental health and you recognise that the clutter is affecting you, you want the end results because you

Ingrid: Yeah.

Lesley Spellman: gonna have positive impacts. And so that's when you fall foul of being a hair and then get

Ingrid: Yep,

Lesley Spellman: of burnt out stage where you've done too much and you don't wanna do it again.

'cause you found it even more exhausting than not doing any decluttering.

Ingrid: yep.

Lesley Spellman: That's the

Ingrid: Yep.

Lesley Spellman: we're in. And so. You know, as we said, start small. That's the key. Build it up, you know, in terms of how to do that. You need, we could be here all day because it's quite, it's quite the job to do it.

So go back, listen, you know, listen to some of those podcasts. We've got podcasts on bathrooms, we've got podcasts on kitchens. Go back to those more practical, practically based podcasts that we've got and li and listen to those and give yourself, you know, have, have us in your ear while you're doing that.

That's what a lot of people do, and a lot of people have success because it's as if you've got a professional organizer right next to you. cheering, you aren't giving you that motivation, giving you that inspiration. We've got so many podcasts that are gonna help you from a practical perspective. but it's important to plan.

It's important to think about it. It's important to really look at what worked before in terms of energy more than anything else. This, a lot of this, when you've got poor mental health is about. Energy is about capacity. It's about pushing yourself a little bit out of your comfort zone if you can, in order to get those results that you really, really want. But being realistic, realism is everything when it, when you've got poor mental health. So we want you to be kind to yourself. We want you to be patient with the process, and we want to you to absolutely work within your capacity. No comparisons here. Don't look at what other people are doing. Look at what you are doing and what you can do.

And if you have sort of gone, gone for hell for leather before in the past and it's not worth, there's a sign there. Learn from that and do something different. If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. And we don't want that for you. Ooh, yes. Mental

Ingrid: I know.

Lesley Spellman: one, isn't it?

And yeah, clutter sits right in the middle of it for a lot of people, which is why we wanted to talk about it today.

Ingrid: Yeah, definitely. So listeners, has this kind of given you the, oh gosh. I had never looked at it from this, this way. I thought the clutter was not, had, not helping my mental health, but actually my mental health was not helping with my clutter or Wow. I mean, this cycle. What am I going to do now? So share with us what is your next small step going to be?

How can you see yourself that you're gonna make a difference and break through this? How can you help yourself improve your mental, mental health by having less clu? We would love to know and hear from you. So leave us a comment in this, in the show notes or, send us an email on support@declutterhub.com if you would like to share.

But for now. We've appreciated you listening in, so thanks so much and we'll see you next week.