A graphic of ingrid and lesley with the words 10 decluttering tips you can't live without part 1
Episode 300 – Decluttering tips you can’t live without – Part 1

Today we’re celebrating almost 6 years and 300 episodes of The Declutter Hub podcast. Because we’re so excited we passed the reins over to you lovely listeners to ask us your burning decluttering and organising questions. So today it’s all about you and we can’t wait to dig in.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
00:00
Today we're celebrating almost six years and 300 episodes of The declutter hub podcast. Because we're so excited, we pass the reins over to you, our lovely listeners to ask us your burning decluttering and organizing questions. So today's all about you and we can't wait to dig in.

00:30
You're listening to the declutter on podcast, bringing you tried and tested no nonsense tips and advice from the leading experts in decluttering and organizing your home. Now here are your hosts, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

00:53
Hello, and welcome, listeners. I'm Ingrid. And I'm Lesley. If you're new to the declutter hub podcast, you're so welcome. What you'll find is that we try and find a fun factor in the serious business of decluttering. And if you've been here for a while, you know exactly what we mean. So thank you so much for listening. If you'd

01:13
like to get involved in conversations related to this podcast, it all takes place in our Facebook group. So come and join our lovely, warm, supportive community. To find the Facebook group go to declutter hub.com forward slash group to find out more, or you can search for the declutter hub community on Facebook. Lesley,

01:32
can you ash, I know we said every kind of milestone episode both guests but it's like 300 episodes, six years, we've been recording. We've never even done a revisited podcast, we have done 300 original podcasts

01:55
we have, we're proud of ourselves. I

01:58
know. I'm gonna you know, it's interesting when we're the podcast show, even people were a little bit blown away that we've done 300 episodes where they were like, it's quiet girls, I might Yeah, we know it. And we feel it. It's a good job. We weren't videoing ourselves back in the day. Because if we compared all the wrinkles on our face, compared to what we looked like six years ago, I'm sure it wouldn't be that good. But no, it's amazing is it you know, was we're delighted. And it's really all about you guys, isn't it? You know, yes, Ingrid. And I turn up and we plan and we think about what you might want to listen to. But really, the exciting part about it is being able to share our knowledge and our expertise, and then get all this lovely feedback about the progress that you guys are making. That's what makes it all worth while isn't it Ingrid?

02:42
Absolutely. And talking about feedback. Lesley, we got a lovely review in as well. It was like perfect time and we got five stars. And the title was fabulous podcast. So we don't let

02:55
anybody do anything less than five stars. If anybody gave us four stars, we wouldn't read it our

03:01
Well, thank you, Kelly, Jane 22. She said, I discovered this great podcast three weeks ago, and I'm now binge listening from the beginning. Lesley and Ingrid are such genuine, normal, real people who just want the best for everyone sharing their knowledge, experience previous clients and guests with us. I love it. Well, we love it to Kellyanne Kelly, Jane 22 Because we're still here six years later. Now

03:30
Ingrid, do we think Kelly Jane is actually 22 years old?

03:33
I don't know. But how lovely would that be? Although, you know, with age comes experience, blah, blah, blah. Every cloud has a server for lighting, that kind of thing.

03:43
Yeah. 22 is not a normal demographic to be fair, but it would be lovely if we were if we were attracted to the Gen Z as you know what I mean, but hey, there's a couple of things that I wanted to mention in that because as as Kelly Jane said, we just want the best for everyone very true. sharing their knowledge experience and previous guests and clients so it's not just about Ingrid and I we've had some incredible guests on since episode one we started straight away with episode like four or five with a guest and they've been coming on every single month since then we want to really honor as well our lovely members and clients who come on to give us their stories because those are so impactful. We know that you absolutely love them. And obviously we'll have more of that coming soon. So what's today all about talking of listeners Ingrid we were like okay, we need to do something a little bit different to celebrate our 300th episode Don't wait.

04:39
Yes so what we did is we did a shout out to to our on our on our podcast but it shattered and a Facebook was said submit your questions and send us a video with your question that people didn't want to do that Lesley they did not want to send us videos did they? know

04:56
they absolutely didn't want to do a video but they did have a question. Questions, which is a good thing. So what we've decided to do is pick our 10. Well, then our 10 favorite question, because all the questions were amazing, but the ones that we think will resonate most with, with our listeners, we split them into two podcasts, or we're going to do some this week, we're gonna do some next week. And we're going to keep everything completely anonymous. So there's no hassle. I think people didn't want the video didn't want to say what their name was. And I completely get that. And we're all about confidentiality and privacy here. So these are some fabulous questions. Thank you so much, if you recognize your question that we use submitted, and thank you to all of the rest of you who have submitted a question that we've not done this time we may pull out early today, right? Yes,

05:38
exactly. Exactly. And we we've shorted all the questions in as well, because otherwise, I think we will be here for hours and hours. So yes, Lesley, let's get started with question number one. We shorted them in a little bit, because people send some lovely long questions, but we've got a lot to cover. So let's do it. Question number one. When life gets in the way, how do I get back on track with decluttering? And

06:04
good as the million dollar question, isn't it real? But I think the important thing to know is that you know, people do you seem to like what we talked about here in the declutter, because we do keep it quite real. And we are all about breaking things down. And so we're kind of slow and steady rather than Fast and Furious is our kind of mantra really. So because it's important when you're on a decluttering journey, it is as important to know how you do it when things are when you feel it in top form. But equally how you get yourself back on track when things go don't go according to plan. Because you show me a person who can go for a month, six weeks, six months, whatever that might be, without any curveballs come in their way. It just doesn't happen. Life is not linear is it life has got ups and downs all the time. And if we're really going to be successful at decluttering, we need to learn to get ourselves back in the saddle. Once something goes awry, we need to give ourselves grace and go, that's fine. Something happened that's more important than decluttering at the moment. But I need to keep that in the back of my mind to make sure that I pick up where I left off last week, right?

07:14
I think as well as the I think it's so important that indeed it's it's life is a bit of a roller coaster ride, you've got ups and downs, you've got busy days, you've got quiet days, unexpected things happen. And it can be something small from when you're in the middle of your decluttering of a friend ringing or the doorbell ringing or anything like that, too. Oh, my gosh, my child has fallen over at school and scrapes their knee and needs to go and see a doctor because he's bleeding bit more than we expected to mum or dad has had a fall at home and it has to go to the hospital, you know. So there's different things that we have to contend with. And I think when we are busy and stressed and overwhelmed, which happens a lot when there's a lot of clutter, even the smallest thing can really throw us off course, while when you're actually a bit calmer and a little bit more organized and not have so much clutter around, you're often more easily able to kind of navigate that curveball that comes your way. So I think it's really important that when when life is not hectic and crazy, or when it is you still need to make time for the decluttering and organizing because it will pay back over time you will not see that difference within a day or within two days. It's with every habit you see the results appearing after a few days after a few weeks. And then you can kind of go Ah, now I see what I'm doing. But I think when we constantly let curveballs take her off of track, then I think it's really, really hard. We have to I think really try to choose ourselves. Because sometimes we get involved in other people's drama all the time. And it's like, well hold on a minute. I need to also do what I've got to do here. Yeah,

09:07
exactly, I think. And I think there is a difference as well between what we need to do as well. We need to do a bit of analysis about what a curveball might be. And that's all about being realistic. So we talk a lot about realism in the declutter hub. And so there are some things you can pretty much preempt. And so you know, the kind of instances that Ingrid was talking about where somebody has a fool a child has a fool, somebody knocks on the door, you know, those kinds of things that take you off take you off track. But then there are also days when you want to set yourself up for success in the morning and you hope for a good day. But actually the reality of your day is that there are ups and downs with every day with energy, with mood with mental health, physical health, those kinds of things are probably more that are likely to happen. And they need to be factored into your journey as well. So it's There are things that we're not expecting. And there are things that we probably are expected. And it's understanding the difference between those two. So I think if it is something that happens all the time, you know, regularly, then we need to plan that factor that into our planning, because planning and preparation is everything when it comes to a decluttering journey. So we need to make goals like mini achievable goals that are suitable for our energy levels and the way our lives go up and down. If it's just a curveball, we need to just be committed to getting back on track, I think it's a slightly different thing, isn't it Ingrid. But ultimately, whatever it is, it's about it's about having a done the planning and preparation for what you're about to do and thought about it. And it's about having control as well as to where you're up to. So for example, when we work when we're working with a client, we might have all the best intentions in the world to do a kind of four hour session and to get to the end of it and to get the room done. But something might happen during the course of the day, which means that we have to break off before we're completely finished. And it's so so important, isn't it Ingrid to sort of almost document and label things to show where you're at. Because you might think, you know, I'm gonna get back onto that tomorrow. You know, even if you're working on your own, if you're working as a professional organizer, however you work and you might, you might have all good intentions to return to that tomorrow. But tomorrow might not happen either. And if that happens to be another 456 weeks away, before you get back to that, you don't want to go back to square one. So the best thing you can do is try and put some kind of control as you're working on things. And so if you can get if you started to get to the gather in like with like scenario, start to label these things go this one is decluttered, but not organized. Yeah, this one is categorized, and it's what this is what's in it. This is the shredding paperwork, this one has been sorted through, those kinds of things are really going to set you up for success long term. If something happens, that is that curveball that you're not expecting, right, Ingrid? Yeah,

12:05
I think it's really, really important. And I think it's also really realizing that you need to put yourself first and that you need to carve out time in your diary. I think I had I had a conversation with with a client. And she said, Oh, yeah, my diary is really, really busy. And I'm out of the house all the time that said, but if you want things to change in your house, you're going to have to make sure that you're actually at home and put it in your diary that you're going to do something, how can you get back on track, if you're never there, if you're always outside, running errands, doing stuff for other people all the time, you know, you need to be at home to make that change.

12:49
You can't go on a transformational journey without carving out time to devote to it. Whatever it is, it's going to need focus. And we don't want that focus to be, you know, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, far from it. That's where we want the realism to kick in and go, Okay, I do have quite a busy life. But on a Saturday morning, I've got two hours that I can devote to this. Or I can do 50 minutes at 730 at night, or do you know what, before everybody gets up in the morning, I'm just going to do a really small 50 minute tasks and see, see where that takes me. This is what's incredible. So this morning, Ingrid, I was at a success session, which is one of our membership, sort of accountability sessions, isn't it? It's a kind of an action. So implementation session, 50 minutes and the amount of stuff that can get done in 15 minutes. We've got people you know, doing price comparisons on insurance claims, we've got people resetting the whole bedroom, we've got people doing cleaning staff, we've got people doing all of the washing up, we've got people decluttering a cupboard. You know, there's so many things that you can do in 50 minutes. It always astounds us, doesn't it just hammer at us and everybody else, just how much you can get done in less than an hour. And so, you know, it doesn't need to be this huge burst of like 567 hours of decluttering just break it down and look at what's reasonable for you. And if you set your mind to do in, you know, 50 minutes a day, then that's how many hours a week and in three quarters. We are so bad at math.

14:26
We must be able to sell 50 minutes, five days

14:31
or 715 minutes. 15 minutes. 10

14:34
minutes. Yeah, an hour and 45 Yeah, and

14:40
I think at a at a level maths, which is like astonishing to me. I mean, would I ever have to do anything to do with maths? It's like,

14:47
I was like 50 minutes and I was like, Oh, now you're really like that's 350 minutes. There's 60 minutes in the hour and then I got all tangled up like like nearly 76 What

14:58
do you do? 15 minutes. Okay. 50 minutes, yeah, it's gonna really mount up and it's really gonna make a huge difference. So those are some of the kinds kinds of things to think about when you feel like life is throwing curveballs in your path and stopping you from making changes in your home. Ultimately, it's down to you to do the planning, the preparation, and to be realistic about what's unfolding. So

15:20
I hope that's helpful. And thank you so much for submitting this question. Let's go to question number two. What zones would you have in a living room? My living room gets thrown a lot at it during the course of the day, because my house is quite small. How do you suggest I get started in organizing it? Now, we love this question, because living rooms are actually quite notoriously tricky to do. Because I know that every one's house is different, right? I mean, Lesley is lucky enough, she's got a kind of a sitting room. And she's got a kitchen dining room and kind of she's got a larger house. So she's got more space. But I have a living room, which is the place where we watch TV, it has a desk, it's where we eat, sometimes it holds lots of stuff, I mean, all tidied away in cupboards and organized but my living room has to work hard because I don't have a separate TV room over a separate dining room or a separate, I don't even have a separate office, I can't make maybe, maybe I will have an office of my own one day, let's sleep

16:32
on my heart bleeds on this slide is not like a sympathy thing with you perfectly fine. But you've just got a few bits in your living room. A nice house with plenty of space in it. And it's all organized, but I hate where you're coming from your living room is multi purpose, and it needs to be multi zoned. And I think that's that's the point, as are many, many people's living rooms, right across the world, right? And really, it's, we say all the time, it's about you have to work with the house that you've got, there's no point in, you know, Ingrid, even though she does lament that I will no less boobs, just monitoring just to tidy, right?

17:10
I know, I don't want to clean them all. But

17:15
I think it's really important for us all to be realistic about the space that we've got. And we have to make different choices. And we have to do different things based on the space. And what are life throws at our living room. So Ingrid, you're the one with all the zones. So you tell us what, what how you think you should zone it?

17:32
Well, I think first of all, when you are looking around your living room, and you're thinking to yourself, what is happening here? I think you first have to think what is happening here? What are we doing? Are we actually eating in this room? Are we just watching TV? is in the craft area? Do the kids do their homework? Is there a desk in here? Is this the place where we do board games, you know, what kind of activities and things do you do in your living room? Because I think once you got that kind of firmly in your head, then you can decide, okay, so what kind of stuff is involved with those activities? And what kind of stuff is in this living room that has nothing to do with any of those activities and actually should live in another place? Because things end up right in in rooms. It just happens over time. And we kind of don't see them anymore, we kind of get blind to them. But it's like, if there's musical instruments, for example, in a living room, but you always play somewhere else in your house, whether it's a bedroom or the conservatory or whatever the whatever it is, does it make sense to move those items? So think about what happens in this living room? What kind of activities and what kind of stuff goes with it? And then you can go right, okay, how am I going to work it out, because what you don't want to do is have staff on one side of the room while you actually do the activity on the other side of the room because then it becomes chaotic. And also, when you then finish with a certain activity, it's harder to tidy up because it's not right there. Even in a small room, right, it's easy to tie it up to next to where you're sitting. For example, we do board games and guard games in our house. So we have a sideboard where they live next to our table. So when we're finished, we put it back in the box and it goes back in the cupboard and we don't leave it out because that cupboard is easily accessible. We have a desk with a printer and stationery and file folders. Next to that there's a cupboard next to the desks where those type of things live. Because then you create kind of a work homework zone. There is this side of the room where we have the TV and the sofa and that's Were the we still have a Wii in our house, we occasionally do bowling and tennis and Mario Kart. So that's what is there where the TV is, because then it's easy to take out and easy to put back. And that's what we mean with zoning a living room, it needs to make sense. And everything that doesn't belong in that room and is not being done in that room needs to be put somewhere else, if possible.

20:26
Yeah, I think it's really interesting, this got the kind of zoning idea in first of all, if you, if your living room is having a lot thrown at it, it's really important to really pare down. So to really declutter what you don't need, you know, you could have some overflow somewhere else as well. So if there are, you need certain elements of it, but you don't need everything in your quiet town space, in the living room, you've got a little bit of scope elsewhere, there's a possibility to put some overflow somewhere else, if you've got something like that, I think he really needs to compromise as well. So it's not uncommon for people have to put things underneath the sofa, at the back of the sofa. But choose carefully what kinds of things that you are putting behind the sofa, you know, things like wrapping paper, stuff like that, that you use infrequently, those are the ideal kinds of things that with the right kind of storage can be just slotted underneath the sofa, if necessary. So think about things like that. So but quite often in a living room, you know, you will have an area for books. If you're still using anything digitally, people will use CDs and DVDs often go in there, you've got things like batteries, light bulbs, so they need his own of their own stationery is often in a living room craft, as Ingrid said, is there. And you've really got to think about what deserves its space in this room of my home. Because ultimately that multipurpose room, we want to be able to relax in it. The real problem with a lot of living rooms is toys, because that's when it really takes over the space. And you've got to think you've got to really think carefully about how you're going to do that. And the best way to do that in a living room with anything, whether its toes or anything else is to have things that are covered over so to use things like Calix units where you can put things away rather than them or be on display. Now if you're neurodivergent, sometimes it's a little bit more tricky, because actually putting things away doesn't help you. And so you've got to find that balance, you've really got to tap into that real realism and work out what's more important to you having a pared down living room that you can relax and or having everything to hand, there's no kind of answer to this, because it's completely different in everybody's house, isn't it. But it is all about visibility of what you've got, it's about accessibility of the things that you need to be able to take out and put away. That's what Ingrid was talking about before, like half the things close to where you need them if at all possible. Because that means that there's no barrier to putting them away, the further away or the more awkward they are to put away, the less chances that you that you do that. And so that's why you know, putting things behind surface on the surface, it's not ideal because it's a bit of a faff to put them away. But if that's what's required, and that means that it's got a home, that it's important to do that. So just think about that in your living room. Everybody's living rooms are completely different. Some people have got study, some people have got craft rooms, some people got separate dining rooms, some people don't, some people have got their living room in their kitchen, some people have got no storage in there. And so everybody's, everybody's living room is completely different. And you need to take it back to basics and work out what's gonna work for you.

23:31
Yeah, yeah, I think so too. And I'm on a final note that as well really think about how you also display your memories and things like that, because a living room is often a place where we have photographs and knickknacks, and memories from trips and people and everything. But it can become really, really overwhelming. So if you find your living room visually very, very overwhelming and you like see stuff everywhere. just neaten up all those ornaments and and pictures and posters and everything like that as well. Do you need to have everything out? Can you maybe create a little area where you can kind of swap some stuff over? Just all pare it down just a little bit. Because I think if you want to relax in your living room, which a lot of us one to in the evening, or during the day, I think it's really important to also look at that visual clutter. So I hope that was helpful. That was question number two. Let's go for a break. And we'll come back with another couple of listener questions. See you soon. Hi, everyone. Welcome back and for episode 300. And we're doing listeners questions. We did two before the break. And now we've got another couple of very good questions for you. So quickly. Let's move on to question number three. And it says I never seem to get started because I'm waiting for all the stars to align. How do I get over this? Oh, perfectionism. Lastly,

25:02
I know, it definitely rears its head in the decluttering world all the time, doesn't it Ingrid. And it stops people completely in their tracks in, they don't even get started procrastination and perfectionism go hand in hand in a decluttering journey. Really, it's all about doing some preparation, which you absolutely need to do, and planning, but you need to get to that point of implementation or action. It's interesting, because we were having this discussion yesterday in a member session with somebody solo, saying, I love the learning, I love doing all the learning, I love watching the videos and stuff like that. But some, but the action is the thing that I'm kind of missing, which is why things like our success sessions and things like that are amazing for getting into that action stage. Because there's people that love clutter. We also like information, typically, not everybody, but we like stuff. And we'd like information. So we just keep looking at ideas and lightbulb moments and courses and reels on Instagram and things like that for inspiration, but never get around to actually implementing any of these fabulous ideas. So I think it's really important to recognize that in yourself, the first step on perfect on sort of kicking perfectionism to the curb is recognizing that that's your tendency. And that is what's stopping you from doing your decluttering. A lot of people don't relate it to their decluttering journey and go, I know, I'm a perfectionist in so many areas of my life, but I've never really thought about it before in the context of decluttering. Honestly, it's massive. It's a huge thing in the decluttering world, isn't it, Ingrid? So let's talk about some of the preparation, Ingrid that you need to do first, before you launch in and take action.

26:43
I think there's several things that you need to do. Lesley, I think first of all, it's really important to set yourself a goal. What do you want to achieve in this room in this area? How do you want to to look, what's the vision here? And then I think you also need to initiative, write that down. Because when you kind of write it down, you can go okay, that's, that's my endpoint, this is where I want to go to and then you can kind of start to think, okay, how am I going to get there, and what kind of barriers are probably coming into my way. You also need to definitely prepare yourself and and your mindset and your room. You can't just launch yourself in and hope for the best. And I think that's what we see a lot, right? People get fed up and they get a bit like cross with themselves. And they're like, Oh, I just can't, or they've kind of get first get stuck in that I need to buy all the perfect things. And indeed look all the YouTube videos, all the socials, get all the containers and get everything measured and get everything. And then it's like, oh, and now I've completely lost why I was doing this. And now I've bought all this stuff. I spend all this money. And it's still it's not done. Exactly,

27:51
no, I think but I think it's really important as well, we do need to do some preparation and planning. But let's think about how much time you spend on preparation and planning compared to how much time you spend on implementation. Right. So you do need to prepare your body you need to prepare your specialty to have the right beanbags have the right equipment, you need to think about your goal take a before picture. But that was probably half an hour of preparation and planning. And the rest of the time is really going to be trying to tackle your emotions as you go through the decluttering journey. So we can't spend all our time preparing and planning and writing lists and all that kind of stuff, we need to get to a stage where we give it a go. And then we can reset our planning if needs be. So if we realize that we can't do as long as we thought we were going to do or we need to work on a different area that we thought or something is too hard. That's when we need to reset our planning a little bit and sort of start to change things up. But at some point, you've got to get going get stuck in and give it a try. Because that's going to be where you actually where the light bulbs start to go on where you start to understand yourself, where you start to understand your emotional connection to clutter. And ultimately, where you start to let go of things that are going to improve your current life and create you know, a home and stuff around you that is going to be the right thing for your current life. Yeah,

29:14
I think the thing is when people are waiting for all the stars to align that moment will never come. Right. I mean it almost it's almost a bit like the perfect summer's day when it's not too hot. Not too cold. The right kind of breeze, a couple of clouds. The sun is shining. Yeah, it's like, yeah. If we all wait for that, we'll never wear shorts in this country, right? You kind of have to go. I'm just gonna go for it. And I'm going to give it a go. And whatever I can do today is good enough. Because I think we wear ourselves out with having to do everything perfectly. And I think it's far more important to say you know what, I haven't done it perfectly. That's fine, but at least I've moved 123 tiny little steps forward to where I want to go. And I'm proud of that, and that I've done really, really well. So I'm happy with that. And instead of, oh, I just wait for everything till I have a half or a full weekend free when nothing happens. And the dents when the curveballs always happen as well, when you finally have got that weekend free, you know, you've got the planet, you've got to kind of go, Okay, this, I'm gonna take this time out, I'm gonna get this done. And I'm gonna do it to the best of my ability. And it probably needs to, we need to probably look at it another 234 times, but in breaking that down and making that smaller instead of all bigger all the time, that can be really helpful. Break it down. What is it that you want to achieve? What is it that you want to do? How are you going to get there? What would you need for it? And just get started? 510 15 minutes, something little? And then go, I did this. This is fantastic. Let me try another 510 15 minutes. And that's how you get there. Nobody goes to a perfect tidy house overnight. And by the way, no, not a lot of people that I know have a perfect tidy house. You know, I mean, I don't have a perfect tidy house. I mean, it's it's nice, but it's not tidy at perfect at all,

31:18
but we do disappoint me. I can see those books behind you're not perfectly placed.

31:31
And that's fine.

31:34
Exactly. So yeah, so don't don't wait for the stars to align is our advice on this. Just give it a go. You've got to get to that stage of action. If you recognize some of these traits in yourself, then you you need to know that's holding you back on your decluttering journey. Perfectionism leads to procrastination leads to inaction. And so yeah, that's what I had to say about that one. But great question as always, yes,

31:57
definitely. Let's go on to question number four. Lesley. Oh, I love this one as well. I know I have kept too many birthday cards over the years. How do I go about sorting them all out? Ah, I love a birthday card. So

32:17
we've talked about you and your lover birth because so often incredulous way. It's just a card. I don't hate them all though. Do you love getting them but you don't keep them? Do you?

32:27
I've become better and better over the years, Lesley. But yeah, it's I think it's so nice if people take the time out to write a card, but I've become more and more realistic. I mean, in the past, I would have kept every Christmas card as well. I don't do that now either.

32:43
How many cons Have you got then I feel like it's like a sort of like a confession time I've ever spoken about the fact that you've got loads of birth because I got the normally this is where Ingrid says a couple and then it will be like 500

33:02
How many? I couldn't tell you? Yes, you could you oh actually organized

33:07
so you know exactly how many ago I've

33:09
got. I've got so many I got

33:14
Why did you say you love this question? Because I think anything take my own advice, Lesley. Right.

33:20
Well, I'm gonna take this one because clearly you're not qualified to give advice on this.

33:26
But like I said, I've gotten better. I've gotten better. Yeah, baby probably got

33:31
better because people don't send as many causes Yeah. Right. Okay, let's, let's dig into birthday cards. So ultimately, the thing is, with birthday cards, Christmas cards, any kind of celebration cards that you're getting from other people, if it's not having any effects in your home whatsoever, like Ingrid is not having any effect doesn't make a difference to her home at all, she'll have a nice little place where she keeps them all. She'll have them labeled, she knows where they are, she's probably going through them on a regular basis to have a look into sort of sort of sift through them, not causing any problems in her house. So therefore, not an issue that she needs to be spending her time on. If however, you are a person who is overwhelmed with stuff in your home overwhelmed with sentimental items, and you're like, oh, you know, that is stopping me I've got two shelves that I'm giving over two cards or, you know, sentimental cards, that mean that I've got clothes that are on the floor because of it or that I can't fold away. That's when it's a problem. This is the same with any type of clutter. If it's not causing you a problem spatially, don't worry about it. You don't have to It's only when it's when the space when the stuff starts to encroach, encroach too much on the space that it becomes a problem that you need to deal with. They're not saying that you can't fine tune or let go of things along the way just to keep it in order. But in general, the reason why Ingrid has not done this yet because it's not a huge problem, even though I think that actually she needs to pare down but that's by the by But I think it's really important to keep the best it's all about quality over quantity, there will undoubtedly be cards that you receive from people that if you looked back on them 10 years later, you wouldn't even remember who it was that had sent them. There might be cards in there that don't have much sentiment behind them. So as Ingrid said before, she loves it when people take the time to write a nice message on a card. And you know, when you have a nice message in the card, and that's when that card becomes special. That's when it gives you that kind of warm, fuzzy feeling inside that we that all sentimental things should have. Unless you've got an emotional response when you look at a card, then it's not sentimental. Okay. Yeah, that's really important to know. So I think it's about a realizing when that's a problem, and be trying to make tracks to find the quality in the quantity. Because the problem is, if you've got too many, you're never going to find the time to go through them and get that warm, fuzzy feeling from them. Because you can't look at them as a whole, you have to look at them individually to get that warm, fuzzy feeling as a collection of cards that doesn't make you happy. It's the individual cards that make you happy. So you need to pair those doubts that you've got 50 100 However, 20, whatever your number is, that are very special that you can get that feeling from. So I

36:19
think yeah, I think the thing is, is well, Lesley, I mean, I did do a good project with the kids as well, because I had an easier, I had them all together kind of by age, and then you kind of it's easier to get through them, you know, when they're kind of scattered around everywhere. I think the first thing is, gather them all together and put them in, if you have multiple people in your house, you'll probably have lots and lots of cards, if that's something that you do within your friends in your family use if sending cards is a thing. It is dwindling down. But also because the cards you know, and especially the postage is getting so much more expensive. But still people have lots and lots of cards. So first thing, gather them all together, see if you can kind of categorize an organized and pipe bet per person, maybe per year or birthday or whatever. If other cards have been muddled. You know, I mean, we've got cards for Valentine's Day now and for you know, St. Patrick's Day, and

37:17
you're still getting a Valentine's card. Yes, of course.

37:21
Yeah. And a Father's Day and Mother's Day and Christmas, any I mean, it adds up. So

37:26
I think it's really 300 podcast day, should I send you a card? Did you send me a card?

37:33
No, I did not send you a card, literally. But I think it's really important to kind of go okay, you know, what do I want to achieve here? And how can I dwindle it down? And what kind of system am I going to do? And do we need to keep the cards from everybody? Indeed? Because if it's only like love and Margaret's? Do you need it? And she sent like, every year two or three cards like that? Do you need to keep them all? You know, because there's so much of a good thing that is true. And I do I do have like my cards, but it's not like I've got 1000s and 1000s. But I've got a lot. But I will you know we have dwindled them down over the years, especially like I said, the Christmas cards you know, in the past, it will be so easy just to kind of gather them all up and put a flat elastic band around them and chuck them in a cupboard. And I was like hold on a minute. I only want to keep 123 Perhaps with that are special. And that's it because it's all too much otherwise. Yes,

38:34
I keep very few. I know. You'd be very surprised. I know. I do. I do keep cards to my kids. I keep ones that are very smart. I do I do keep special ones. I do. You know, but I don't think a birthday card. I would keep I keep this Day cards.

38:53
So would you if I send you a card unless you wish you keep it

38:58
depends. Probably not. I see it every day like I don't need it. I get a warm fuzzy feeling every day when I look at you on Zoom. Ingrid, I don't need a card for it. I might depends what it was what it was all about. If you would send me a 300 podcast episode card I definitely would have sent that would have kept that anyway. So we need to move on. Yes. And some point you need to tell us exactly how many cards you've got. Do the counting that you need to write down. It's time to tackle your cards because I think a little bit you know, yeah, no, it's not really practicing what you preach. I

39:33
know. I know. I think I'm very good at other areas but sentimental items. Is is tricky. I'm not gonna lie. I'm not gonna lie. Right. Let's do question number five. In this part, one of the 10 decluttering Tips You can't live without question. Where do I even get started when my whole house needs a serious? Declutter.

39:59
Ooh, Oh,

40:00
I know, I like this question. Because I think sometimes people, you know, might have the impression that we only work with clients who have a little bit of clutter. But we also help a lot of people who have lots of clutter who or who have a whole house that needs decluttering.

40:17
Yeah, I think, where do you even get started? And this is like the, again, another million dollar question, really, when you're faced with so much overwhelming work to do in front of you? How do you then get to a stage where you can break that down into something that's sensible? I think it's so important to you know, we've talked about planning and preparation before and that needs to be done. And you need to think about what's common as well, you need to think about the emotional connection that you have, if you're if you're, if by your admission, your whole house needs a serious declutter, that means that you have got a serious emotional connection to that clutter. So it's important to start to have a think about what it is that is making you connect irrationally, in some cases, to your clutter or to the detriment of your home. What is it about you means that you are favoring the stuff over the space, or the stuff over the money, or the stuff over having less stress in your life? All of those things are important, and you have to sort of switch on to why is this so important to me. So it's important to as Ingrid said before, and one of the other questions is important to have your big picture goal, because if your goal is not strong enough, if you can't see how your life is going to be different, after you have seriously decluttered your entire house, then you're probably going to struggle along the way needs to be a real yearning for change. That's what that's about. So first things first, you need to really take it take a step back and go Why do I want to do this? And is it is it really important to me because without that, it's not going to happen. So I think a goal is first up and then we need to start thinking about you know, we've just been talking about cards. If your kitchen is in disarray, on your work surfaces are in in disarray, or your clothing, you can't get into your cupboards or whatever. Forget about the cards that comes way down the line, you know, that's more the icing on the cake. Once you get down to sentimental, that's where you're really starting to pare down. So it's important for you to start in a room or in an area that is easy to a emotionally deal with and be break down into small manageable chunks. And so for us, in all of our teaching and our membership, we have a very structured roadmap, which takes people step by step through the whole house because we realized that this is one of the million dollar questions, how do you do it when you've got so much to do? We a we break it down and B we start in the place that's least emotional first. And for us, that is undoubtedly the kitchen. We're not saying there's no emotions in a kitchen because there are, but you can take it one cupboard at a time. Let me do the glasses and see how I get on with that. And then if I feel inspired, I'll do the mugs next, and then I'll do the water bottles next and then we'll move on to the place or the baking or whatever and you can just break it down, then you can start to see solid progress, you can see things start to go out. But it's not overwhelming. So to take the overwhelming wave of big house, you have to break it down and you have to go slow and steady and build up your decluttering muscle.

43:24
Yeah, I think one of the dangers in a whole house declutter is that a lot of people start to then jump from one area to the other to the other to the other. They flit around, we call it flitting around, because they get sidetracked by something where they're working, they see something Oh, that needs to go into another room, then they walk off to the other room and that they see something there. And then before you know it, there's almost like a trail of everywhere they've been and then they feel they've accomplished nothing because they got completely sidetracked. So if you've got a whole house you want to do, you want to do to do, it's really important to say I'm going to commit to this one area, this one row, and that's where I'm going to be working in today, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, next week until I see that change happening. And then I'm going to move on to the next section because otherwise, if you're just going to be jumping back and forward, it you won't see enough difference and I think it's really important to see that change and to know that change and what we hear a lot less you don't work with people either when they do a challenge with us or two people are in a membership. They say I've done that cupboard and I keep returning to that cupboard opening that door in the kitchen and god it looks so nice and close to the door again of that kitchen cupboard because it's the positive energy that you get from doing one small area and seeing that little change and go I want some more of that. Let me do another cupboard today later today or Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, but let me just keep up that positive boost that I'm giving myself, instead of going here, there and everywhere, and just for my feeling, getting nothing done.

45:13
And just jumping back to what we were talking about before about perfectionism and grid, it's really important that each of those areas that you tackle, they may not be perfect at this stage, but it will be enough to motivate you forwards to do the next area. So we're not looking for perfection here, we're looking for we're looking for progress, it's really important to recognize that. So it is hard, it is overwhelming, and it will take some time. But if you kind of start to break it down into something that becomes that seems more manageable. And if you commit to doing one room at a time, because one of the things is we get bored when we're working in things like kitchens and bedrooms. As we start, we started to see all the things that look more appealing to declutter. And that's why we do the flitting. So yeah, you know, it's a difficult question, because there's a lot to it in terms of how do you break down your whole house? You know, we have a whole membership about it, don't we? But I think, you know, in a nutshell, prepare, think about your goals, and break it down into something that's manageable and don't look for perfection look for progress.

46:18
Yes, absolutely. Okay, well, listeners, these were the first five questions that we have answered that you submitted. This is part one of the 10 decluttering Tips You can't live without. And next week, we'll be talking through the other five questions that have been submitted by our lovely listeners. So we hope you've enjoyed this podcast. And if you do, let us know if you're like, oh, my gosh, I did not know I could submit a question. I love this. I want to submit a question too, to listen, Ingrid, send us an email on support at Declutter. hub.com. And if we get a lot more questions in maybe we do this on a more regular basis, Lesley? Absolutely. All right. Well, thanks so much for being here, and we'll look forward to seeing you next week for part number two.

47:11
Thanks so much for listening to the declutter hop podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to us in your podcast player, so you don't miss an episode. And we'll see you next week.
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Episode 377 – Photographs, memories and decluttering with member Sabine

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