A graphic of a person sitting in a chair feeling overwhelmed by all the clutter that needs to be organised to achieve a clutter free home

Episode 49 – Why is it so difficult to achieve a clutter free home?

In this podcast we go back to basics to discuss guilt, embarrassment, overwhelm, retail therapy, overbuying and some of the key health issues that can impact our ability to declutter. We introduce our Members' Area and explain how we feel it can help.

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Transcript of this podcast episode

Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter hub podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your host professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:26  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 49 of the declutter hub podcast. I'm Ingrid. And I'm Lesley. If you have clutter and want to short it out, this is a show for you. In today's episode, Lesley and I are talking about why some people find it so difficult to achieve a clutter free home. So we are going back to basics and are talking about things that stop us in our tracks. We regularly talk about emotions and habits and personal circumstances. So let's talk through these. Lastly,

Lesley  0:59  
I think it's so important for us to understand before anything else before we started looking at storage and solutions and things like that, to understand the why, why do we feel so stuck? Why do we feel so overwhelmed? What kind of emotions do we have that are stopping is in our tracks. And I think overwhelm then is one of the biggest isn't it? It's just so overwhelming. If the clutter starts to build, it can be fine for a while, but then it just, it kind of builds and builds and builds. And then it gets to a point where you're like, I don't even know where to start. And I don't know how to do that. So I think overwhelm is one of it is certainly in the emails that I get all the correspondence that we get, or the comments that we get on our Facebook group, everything is all about, I just feel so overwhelmed, and I don't know where to start. So it's a big emotion, isn't it?

Ingrid  1:44  
It's almost like I almost see like a weighing scale, actually, it's all kind of almost imbalance. And then it starts to tip a little bit and you see it going and growing and growing the clutter. And suddenly, it just all kind of comes crumbling down. And people are like, I just don't know what to talk anymore. I'm absolutely paralysed by the clutter. I'm so overwhelmed. Everything is too much. And now I don't know what start I don't know what to do. I don't know who to who to ask for help or talk to or it's almost like a vicious circle, then.

Lesley  2:17  
Exactly. And then on top of the overwhelm, you've then got the embarrassment, haven't you. So you've then got the embarrassment of your house having become overwhelmingly cluttered then. And so there's another emotion on top of the other ones you already feel overwhelmed, then you feel embarrassed because you can't take control of it or you don't know how to or you've been you completely stuck. So then you've got embarrassment as well, on top of that there's another emotional layer that isn't there.

Ingrid  2:42  
Yeah. And when I see is when that embarrassment starts to take hold, people find it more and more difficult to let people in your house. So in the beginning, you know, you'll still maybe have your family and your friends come over. But as more the more the clutter grows, you see, almost like the barriers come up and gonna go You can't come to my house anymore. Because the embarrassment is then reached this kind of crisis crisis point, doesn't it? Exactly. So

Lesley  3:12  
then you've got, you know, you've got you're overwhelmed, and you're embarrassed on top of that. So then you stop people coming round, are you willing to like them in certain rooms of your house? Yep. And then on top of that, you say that you've kind of cut a lot of people out of your life already. But then you've got with your own family or the people live at home, you've got guilt. So you've got your own personal guilt. And then you've got you've got the guilt with your family because you don't think you provide him properly. What? And so it's all a kind of cycle, isn't it of him? embarrassment, overwhelmed guilt or wrapped up in this cycle becomes so difficult, and then we just think I'm not doing it. But then people who haven't got clutter in their lives don't understand, do they? They're I mean, you know, even to us as professionals, they're like, what you actually do that as a job, people will actually pay you to come in and help them and why is that a thing? Why can they not just do it themselves? And so again, you know, you've got the kind of embarrassment and guilt, you know, all that kind of thing and judgement, huge amounts of judgement. People who've got clutter, absolutely tend to have been judged regularly or at some point throughout their lives. And that's what's hard. These are hard emotions to deal with judgement, guilt, embarrassment, this can be very debilitating.

Ingrid  4:20  
And I think that really prevents people from taking action into sorting it out because they almost become like paralysed by the indecision about what's the next step now,

Lesley  4:34  
we could go on for days about the emotions wrapped up in clutter, but I think those are the main ones aren't the really that we see. On top of that we you know, we were talking about the kind of barriers and things that stop people from achieving a clutter free home. We've got habits and so not necessarily and they are there's a bit of a link. Is it an emotion is it a habit, but let's call it a habit for ones for better word, things like overbuying.

Ingrid  4:57  
That's what we see all the time, isn't it? You can't find and something so you buy it again, because it's buried under some stuff, you don't know exactly where it is. So you buy another one. So at least you know where that is, and you can use it. But the problem is, that gets lost as well amongst the clutter. So you end up buying a mine. And that's how I ended up, you know, in a house which had 23 pairs of scissors, because they did not have a point where they lived. So they kept being put down somewhere. But then when they needed an extra pair of scissors, they couldn't find them. And it this is, this is just an example. I mean, examples galore here, you know, it goes for everything.

Lesley  5:38  
So there's there's a wastefulness there isn't there. You know, and that's about control. It's about organisation it but it's about what knowing where things are. But before you can get to that point of not over buying or not buying things that you don't need. You've got to declutter, and you've got to organise, you've got to know where things are. And so going everything is very cyclical. So decluttering is not a one time thing. This is a permanent thing that you have to do throughout your whole life. You know, this weekend, I mean, I, my house is relatively clutter free. But if I am on one, in terms of decluttering, which i i am with regularity, I can get rid of two, three bags of stuff out, you know, easily because we buy things in this house. We don't overbuy but we buy things. And if you buy things, and we you know, I'm not wanting to say don't buy new clothes, or you want to buy new clothes, you go out there and you buy new clothes, but something has to give in in order for you to host those things. And in your house. You can't just buy and Buy and buy and not Declutter. So this is never about not buying. Although I have to say one of my friends, actually, she sent me she sent me a text saying, please stop advocating not buying things. Not buying new clothes. Your husband and I both work for retail. And I was like, oh, yeah, okay, sorry about that.

Ingrid  6:55  
I think the message we want to give is to buy far more mindfully. Exactly. I mean, I bought new football boots for my son yesterday, because he has outgrown them. And he needs him for school. asking ourselves this question, do you actually need one and love it? Are you going to wear it and all those things that we've discussed in other podcasts, but it's also the combination, if you buy something new, something else has got to go because there's not an infinite kind of space in your house. So the football boots from last year are now already in the charity show bag, because he can't wear them again, I do not have a younger son that they can go to. So they're now in the back for the charity shop. So that's a thing. We're not advocating never ever buying anything ever again. But it's about if you buy something, something else has got to go. And that's why how you keep your level of clutter, far more under control, and you stop losing stuff. So you have to buy it over and over and over again.

Lesley  7:57  
So there's also retail therapy, that little high, temporary high that you get from buying something new as well. So it's not just buying things that you can't find it's buying things because you think it's going to make you feel better. So retail therapy is a big one, isn't it? You know, when we're working with quiet clients, quite often, the doorbell goes two or three times during a session and there's Amazon Parcell coming in. And I'll tell you it, let us tell you, the clients are always like, Oh, no, the professional organiser is saying the Amazon parcels are calm. And this is saying like, it's okay, let's just make sure they take a lot of stuff out to make space for your Amazon parcel. But yeah, retail therapy is a big one. And you almost have to fall in love with having less and having the right things don't you to not need that retail therapy hit I think.

Ingrid  8:43  
And I agree with you, Lesley, a lot of people think that retail therapy is only when you actually go to the shops or go to the shopping centre and buy something. But it's the same as online shopping. You know, just because it arrives to your doorstep still means it's retail therapy. And it still means that you've looked around online, you've put it in your basket, you've clicked it, you pay for it. That high again, and when the doorbell rings is exactly what you're saying so many times. And I'm like, oh, what's coming now? We've just tried to declutter your house, you've got 333 boxes coming in. This is not good.

Lesley  9:18  
And online shopping is so much quicker and easier than then high street shopping, isn't it as well. You can get through things at a rate of knots online, can't you? Yeah, so we talked about emotions. We've talked about habits. There's something that people don't talk about as often. I think in terms of barriers that stop us from achieving what we want to with our homes. There are so many illnesses and disabilities and mental health issues that we could talk about that stop us from achieving a clutter free home, all wrapped up together. Obviously everybody's experience of these things is very different. But let's talk about a couple of the key ones that we see with regularity with our clients then. The first one that I wanted to talk about really was depression. And there's a lot of people, we're quite lucky when we go out there and work with clients. Because quite often, we're seeing people who have maybe hit rock bottom and are on their way up. And the decluttering process is part of that regeneration into a more positive frame of mind, then, so we're quite lucky to see people on that sort of positive path. And decluttering can be a big part of that as well. And then what we see quite often is that decluttering is just the start of it. And then people might move into weight loss, and, you know, things like that. And so, you know, it's positive, but depression is a big thing, you know, embarking on decluttering, your house is hard, you know, it's not something that's easy, you have to be very focused, you have to be very prepared, very committed, you have to have a lot of stamina to do it, if you're going to do it well, and you're going to do it on mass as in IE, your whole house. And that can be overwhelming. And if you're not feeling 100%, then it's not going to be something that's the first priority on your list, there's a and then of course, the depression gets wrapped up in all the other emotions, embarrassment, and guilt and overwhelm. And so again, it's part of that cycle. And so you know, it's difficult, and it's one that we certainly, fully understand and appreciate can be difficult. I also wanted to talk about anxiety as well, when someone is decluttering their house, there is a need to make decision after decision after the decision about what you want to keep and what's going to serve you well in your current life. Those decisions are hard to make. And if you're naturally anxious, that's going to be even more difficult as well, of course, further anxiety as well. So anxiety is a huge one that we see as well, isn't it?

Ingrid  11:33  
Also, I've also worked with a client who's got MS. So she found it really, really difficult to declutter, because her body was tired.

Lesley  11:42  
Yeah, I think with MS, there's two, two different ways that it kind of manifests itself, often this is sort of physical side of it. And then there's a cognitive side of it as well. So both have a huge impact on the way that you can declutter and organise your home talking about those cognitive type things. I mean, honestly, there are so many different things that people have have to deal with every day that are going to impact on their ability, or desire, or execution of decluttering. And these are just a few of the reasonable common ones that come up with our clients. Talking about cognitive issues, ADD and ADHD, people need to be very organised with a DD and ADHD. And so the decluttering, which comes obviously before the Organising is really important, as well, same, you know, recently worked with someone with dementia as well. And so I think, you know, that that high level of organisation is absolutely critical, so that people can manage their lives more effectively. So we've talked about emotions, habits, disabilities, illnesses, and other factors that impact on people's ability to have the clutter free home that they really want. You and I have been really lucky over the last 10 years to be able to kind of get through some of these barriers and work one to one with people in their homes, to get through sort of some of these things and work side by side with them through the process. But what we realised is that not everybody can do this, whether it's financial, geographical, some of it is the emotions and the guilt, the embarrassment, people are just not ready to have someone come into their home. And so what we wanted to do then was we wanted to kind of spread our knowledge a little bit further. So that's why we created the podcasts.

Ingrid  13:19  
Yeah. And we of course, we also then, are now running the our very successful Facebook group community, which we absolutely love as well. And we show our tips and our hints on and we do Facebook Lives. But we realised that there was a thirst for more knowledge from our followers, and people want to know more about how to declutter and how to organise and which checklist to use and where to start. So that's one lesson, I got together again, and decided to start writing online courses.

Lesley  13:50  
And these online courses are massively massively in depth. So you and I have got together, you know, we do things quite differently. Sometimes, you know, we're very aligned in a lot of things. But we also do things differently. We commit things, we commit things at a different angle. And so what we've done is literally, we sit there, we brainstorm everything that we can possibly think about, and put it into a nice user friendly format. So the technology is there on the online courses, it's not cumbersome, it's fantastic technology as well, which is brilliant. And we literally talk about everything that you need to know we talk about preparation, we go into detail about the emotions that you might feel when you're decluttering certain things we've talked about guilt and embarrassment. Today, we talk about very specific things. What kind of emotions do you have when you close for example? Then we talk about preparing to declutter. We talk about categorization, we talk about decluttering, and we talk about the simple questions for decluttering. We need to have much more probing questions and that's what we can do as professional organisers. Those are all in the courses. We talk about storage solutions, we do videos on how to fold things up. There's so much stuff in there and we literally, we've loved writing the courses haven't went and we've they are jam packed with information,

Ingrid  15:02  
and also included in the courses or guidelines and checklists and cheat sheets and worksheets and everything together to make sure that you get the most out of each course. And that you actually successfully declutter and organise a certain area in your home because we've actually broken it down to smaller chunks. We don't say just declutter a whole room, though, we actually say, look at your books, or look at your hanging clothes, or look at your makeup. So we've really broken it down in small chunks. So it's really easy for you to follow the system and we share exactly with you how you can do it to have the best result at home. And one of the key things

Lesley  15:45  
that we also knew and this is where we held off on this for so long didn't were thinking, how can we? How can we replicate that kind of personal touch that we get one to one where we're working in homes? And so how do we do that? Obviously, we've got the Facebook group that we're chatting to people. So I hope that people already feel on the podcasts and the Facebook group that they kind of know us and know what makes us tick. What's the normal. So again, within the members area, we've got a community and it's like the Facebook group, but it's got so much more to it. You can add photographs, you can add videos, you can add Facebook links, you can add everything. So their communities like the Facebook group on steroids, really the best way to talk about it. And obviously Ingrid and I are going to be in there all the time chipping in obviously, a lot of it is going to come from fellow members. But Ingrid and I are going to be in there adding our expertise when that's when that's sensible to do. So. I think one of the biggest things that we've got within the members area is we've got fortnightly q&a sessions. And so that's where you can go in, you can submit a question to us, you can say, I'm really struggling in the bedroom course, because I've got a really weird drawer that blah, blah, blah, how am I going to get over that and what suggestions if you got so things that are very specific to you and your home, we want to do is take away from those magazine stalla in 15 out and not that will take away from the magazines. But it's just too simplistic. And we know that decluttering is hard, it's not as simple as going to draw, take it out as whether you love it, need it or use it and put it back. It's not you know, life is not as simple as that. There are so many more factors. And that's what we're trying to cover. We tried to cover it in the courses. And then we're going to have the live q&a As if there is something very specific in your home that you want to ask. It might be that you're having a tough time you want to talk about that. It might be it could be anything you know, so those Q and A's are there to get that personal input from Ingrid and I.

Ingrid  17:34  
So Lesley, if people are interested in our membership site, what do they need to do?

Lesley  17:41  
So you can find out everything about the membership site by going to member start declutter hub.com Or you can link in from the standard declutter hub.com website, which is a place where all the podcasts and blogs are. We have a monthly membership and we have an annual membership. And what we'd really love is for all you lovely people who've been following our podcast and in our Facebook group for the past, what is it a year? Yeah. So we've got a founder member at half price for the first year membership. So go and check that out. If there's anything you're not happy with, we have a 30 day money back guarantee. So there's no risk involved.

Ingrid  18:15  
You know what listeners we are so excited about a membership we've been working so hard to bring you a fantastic products. And we are loving our courses. And we're so delighted that we have created these for you and we can't wait for you to join us. So do come and check out a members that declutter hub.com If you are thinking about going on a decluttering journey and really would like some of our help. Let's see. Is there anything else we want to say to our listeners? Or is that it for this episode?

Lesley  18:45  
Am I allowed to be excited again? I'm so sad. I'm like, yeah, let me let me open the doors. This is so exciting. Just we just want people we just want people on board because we we really are personally invested in people's we love decluttering we love that the bus that it gives people when they have a clutter free home. And that's what this is all about, isn't it? You know, we just if we can help anybody can help one person. It's an it's an absolute bonus. And so it's a privilege for us to be able to do this. And we hope that you come on board and we hope that you like it.

Ingrid  19:17  
So listeners go and check out members. Dot declutter hub.com and have a look around and see if you want to join our fabulous programme. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen today. If you'd like to get more tips and advice, please follow us on social media. We're still there. We're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, as at Declutter. hub.com And of course, we've got a lovely Facebook group community where we chat all things clutter, and we'd love to see you there. If you don't want to miss the next weekly episode. Don't forget to subscribe to the podcast on Apple podcasts, Spotify and Stitcher and it will pop into your notifications each Friday. See you next time.

Outro  19:58  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of The declutter hub podcast. Check out declutterhub.com For more inspiration. Don't forget to tune in next week

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Episode 383 – Don’t Buy, Ask Why – How to Break the Black Friday Cycle

Episode 382 – The Power of Journaling – Clear Your Mind and Find Your Focus

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Nancy H says:

4 April 2025 at 4:36 PM

Decluttering is more than just tidying up; it's a powerful act of self-care that can significantly ease stress and depression. By creating a clutter-free environment, we invite a sense of calm and order into our lives, which can positively impact our mental well-being. Transitioning to a clutter-free home was nothing short of transformative. At first, I didn't realize how much the chaos in my surroundings was affecting my mood and stress levels. But once I began systematically decluttering each room, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. Not only did my physical space become more inviting and serene, but my mind also felt clearer and more focused.

Reply
1. Ingrid Jansen says:
  
  11 April 2025 at 11:24 AM
  
  Completely agree Nancy and thank you for sharing how positive decluttering and organising has been for you.
  
  Reply

Episode 49 – Why is it so difficult to achieve a clutter free home?

Episode 383 – Don’t Buy, Ask Why – How to Break the Black Friday Cycle

Episode 382 – The Power of Journaling – Clear Your Mind and Find Your Focus

Episode 380 – Home, Life & You – How NOT to declutter your home

Episode 379 -The Scary Truth of Why You Can’t Let Go

Episode 376 – Countdown to Christmas – prep early, stress less

Episode 371 – 10 Areas of Your Home Where the 80/20 Principle of Decluttering is Holding You Back

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