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Episode 113 – Decluttering mistakes you need to stop making

In today’s episode we are talking about the decluttering mistakes we see people making over and over again. If you keep making those mistakes you won’t enjoy your decluttering and organising and it will take longer each time to muster up the energy to start a next task or project and the longer it takes in between projects the harder it will be.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
Intro  0:07  
Welcome to today's episode of The declutter of podcast, your channel for super easy, no nonsense advice on how to declutter and organise your home. Please welcome your hosts professional organisers, Ingrid Jansen, and Lesley Spellman.

Ingrid  0:31  
Hello, and welcome listeners to Episode 113 of the developer hub Podcast. I'm Ingrid. And I'm Lesley, if you have clutter and want to sort it out, this is the show for you. In today's episode, Lesley and I are talking about the decluttering mistakes we see people making over and over and over again. And the thing is, if you keep making those mistakes, you won't enjoy decluttering and organising. And it will take you longer each time to muster up the energy to start a next task or projects. And then it takes longer in between projects, the harder it will be. 

Lesley  1:13  
Yes, it was full of energy and vigour today in grid, well, you're so right, people make mistakes over and over and over again. And that's what we here at the declutter hub, are trying to teach you and educate you to not make those same mistakes, as you rightly say, so that you love everything about decluttering and organising. And they all go swimmingly? Well, yes.

Ingrid  1:36  
But you know, the thing is, Lesley, what people say to us, our members in our VIP membership, they keep saying, who knew decluttering can be fun. Because we explain to them what they need to do, how to need to do it, in which order, they need to do things. And we've taken by the hand step by step through the whole process of decluttering and organising. And that decluttering actually can be very enjoyable if you do it, right. And that's what they're all like, oh, Mike, I really enjoyed it. I'm doing so much more than I've ever done before. I've followed other programmes, and I never have gotten this far. Because I really enjoy hanging out with you learning from you. And it is fun, and you're preventing me from making the same mistakes. And all those light bulbs keep going off. And that's a thing. What we're trying to do a little bit in the podcast as well. But in our membership, we really go down to the nitty gritty and the success of our members is speaks for itself, isn't it?

Lesley  2:41  
I think that's the thing. You know, you write really, because it can only ever be fun if you achieve your goals, can't it and if you make mistakes, then you're not going to do the decluttering well, and you're not going to achieve your goal. So therefore it's not fun because you failed and failure is never fun. Is it? bonline never failure. We're not saying it's failure, because everything is a step forward. But if you don't achieve your goals, then in your mind, then you are going to have failed to execute on that task. So what we thought we would do is right, okay, let's get let's dispel some of these things that people think you should do when you declutter, and we're going to say these things don't work. And please don't do them. Because otherwise you're not going to have the success and you're not going to have the fun. And the motivated, inspired, enjoyable feeling of having a decluttered home. So normally, when we look at our listing, we do it in a completely different audits while written down. So let's try and go from number one on what's today show away just for change.

Ingrid  3:34  
Good idea, actually, and I fully still support the one we've written down first. I think the biggest decluttering mistake that people make is they buy storage before they Declutter. So they think to themselves, I want to declutter my house, what do I need to buy to get organised and decluttered? And that's, I think, already the biggest mistake that people do. The thing is, you don't need to buy anything. Before you get declutter, you need to declutter and organise first, and then you go out and possibly buy some storage if you need it for the specific area and material that you need to buy it for.

Lesley  4:22  
Exactly. So going out and buying storage prematurely is wrong for two reasons. A, you might not need the storage in the first place. And if you do a decent enough decluttering job, you won't need extra storage. And be you need to make sure you've got the right storage for the right types of things that you need to store. So there's two problems with that isn't there? So but it's really common, isn't it so common and a bit everyone's like, I do that? I do that? It's like, want to declutter this weekend doing a big project off by Chuck to IKEA to buy some new fancy storage, and it never works. We never when we're working with clients, we never buy Storage in advance unless it's really, really, really obvious what's needed. Because normally people have got more than adequate storage already in their houses. And they've got temporary storage that we can use. It doesn't need to be fancy. It doesn't need to be home Edit Type fancy, an iPhone box, a shoebox, or Tupperware container. These can be types of things that we can containerize things in that are perfectly adequate. And if you think you know what I would like some really nice storage, do it afterwards, do it after once you work out what you need,

Ingrid  5:30  
yes, because then you know, right, this stuff is going to live in this cupboards. And so the amount of storage boxes I need is so many. And this are the sizes that I need. Because what we see a lot as well is that people then buy containers, but they're either by them that are far too big, or they're far too small, or they're the wrong height for the cupboard that they need to live in order from the wrong material. So they buy them either from like fabric when they should have been plastic, or they buy them around instead of rectangular, so they lose lots of space. There's a lot of mistakes that people make when you buy your storage before you actually know where the items that you want to keep need to live. And if you've got a lot of small items, you don't want to buy massive boxes because the stuff is going to get lost. If you have smaller items, you're going to need smaller boxes. And if you've got bigger items, you need to have bigger boxes. And it also depends on the place in your house, where you're going to keep it. If you're going to keep it in your garage, your loft or your basement, you want something with lids, well, if you want to keep it in your living room or in your kitchen or your bathroom, you probably want to have something without lids, big mistake that people make,

Lesley  6:50  
just to sort of reiterate it again as if we've not made it clear enough as it is with our passionate dislike of people buying storage in advance that we made our point very clear. But it is often the last thing that I will do, if I'm working with a client, the last thing I do is get the tape measure out and say so I'll either source storage for a client after I work there, or we'll get the tape measure out and say these are the exact dimensions of box that you need to get. And this is the material that you need to get and we'll write that down. So it's very much as a parting final shot in a decluttering and organising project, I think we've made it clear have a way that we don't like buying storage and advanced somewhere.

Ingrid  7:29  
But you know what I think it is because we really want our listeners to succeed. And we want it to look nice for them. Because of course, you know, if you use shoe boxes and iPhone boxes to containerize, and it's a temporary store, the icing on the cake is sourcing the right books for the right space. And if you kind of haphazardly bought some stuff over time, with the best intentions, then you're never gonna get that all it looks so great. And we want you to do well on your decluttering and organising. So that's why we are so passionate about it. And that's why it's number one on our list. And that's why we spent probably about a good eight or nine minutes talking about it. Because it's so important.

Lesley  8:15  
The problem that I've gotten now and as I look down our list, again, is that we feel equally passionate about all the other things on our list. So we might be here for quite a while. What's the second mistake that we think people make when they're embarking on a decluttering project,

Ingrid  8:30  
they don't prepare properly. So they wake up in the morning and go, right? This is the weekend or this is the day, I'm going to declutter, and they fling up the wardrobe open and they kind of start to chuck stuff on the bed or on the floor or whatever. And they start, actually the starting point is really good. But the thing that's missing is the preparation. There's a couple of things you need to do before you fling open that wardrobe or that kitchen cupboards to have much more success to feel in control of the project. And to be able to finish the projects within our

Lesley  9:07  
membership or we have a roadmap. We have our courses where people will take people step by step. And the very first thing our membership will not allow people to jump in at books are sentimental, we make you do that. We force you to do that before you start course before you do anything else. So that's the way our membership is designed because we know how important it is. Of course, we all want to get to that end goal, don't we? So I actually I do want to do my bedroom or I do want to do my books. But we're saying hold off because you need to learn the basics of decluttering. Before you even get started. You have to understand the way this is going to work. So we kind of guide people down that path to do our course which we call the before you start course which has got this exact thing in it the kinds of things that Ingrid says you need to prepare your body you need to prepare your space You need to prepare your mind, every single course we run in the membership. We have podcasts on it, every challenge we run, that you will be part of preparation will be the first thing that we talk about. Because we realised after all these years of working with people and doing it ourselves and working with our members, that that's one of the biggest mistakes people make people jump in without doing adequate preparation. And so make sure you think about goals, goals are absolutely critical. There's no point in saying I'm going to declutter my bedroom, you need to think about, Okay, I'm going to declutter my bedroom. What do I want it to look like at the end of it? What do I want to achieve? What's the firt? What's the purpose of this? So think about your goals, you need to make sure that you're ready that you're well rested, that you've had adequate food, that your family knows that you're going to do this, they're not going to disturb you every five minutes, you need to make sure it's a good time. What's the weather like? There's 1,000,001 things that you need to do before you even start decluttering. And so number two on our list is prepare, prepare, prepare,

Ingrid  11:03  
yes. And with adequate preparation, you will have a far better chance of succeeding. And it's that's what a member says, Well, they've made those mistakes in the past when they would just kind of throw themselves into a project, and then completely run out of steam and motivation. And they're like, Wow, now going through the course, I have learned so much. And I can see where I've gone wrong. So that's why it is so high up in this podcast as well, isn't it? Right, so let's move on, the less you watch the third one,

Lesley  11:36  
this is a little bit more difficult to explain, isn't it. But I think that one of the things that people, people focus automatically on the items and other stuff and other things, rather than focusing on themselves and their minds and their emotions and their habits. So there's one thing that we say one little phrase that we use regularly within the declutter hook, which is, if you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got. And so preparation is a part of that going out and buying storage prematurely as a part of that, as is focusing on stuff and not emotions. And so our mind automatically takes us to the hardest place. And so when we think about a decluttering project, we think about things like, but I don't want to tackle my mom's china set that passed away, or I don't want to do my books, because that's too hard. Or I don't want to do my kids toys. Because that's really hard, we automatically think about the hardest part of decluttering, we don't think about all the random things that we've got where we've got two parts of Oregon. And actually, we only need one, or one of those parts in Oregon or six months out of date, or whatever. We don't think about the random stuff that gathers together to create clutter. Those are the things that we need to tackle. So before we even start to tackle this stuff, we have to think about the emotions that are holding us back.

Ingrid  12:57  
Yeah, and it's it's also all the thoughts in our own heads that we are competing with, isn't it? Lesley, it's all the people around us or, you know, or ourselves devotion? Or had to say, Oh, well, you didn't do a good job last time. And you're probably not going to do it right? Either. Or, if I can't do it perfectly, I'm not going to do it at all. Or you've always been a messy person. So what why do you think now this time is going to be any difference? It's all those emotions that hold us back. And that's why we focus on the stuff and thinking it's just about the stuff and we know, it's hardly ever about the stuff. It's all the emotions that are involved in decluttering and organising.

Lesley  13:38  
Yeah, exactly. And that's what you know, just talking about a reset your home system. So we have a system, which many of you will have heard of that we use at the declutter hub, called the reset your home system, which has got three parts to it, thought by thought room by room and day by day. And so it's an all of those things are intertwined and cyclical. First and foremost, we need to tackle the thought process that goes behind decluttering. That's where the successes, that's where the change is, the actual decluttering and putting stuff into a bin bag and cutting it off to the charity shop or the tip. That's actually the easy bit. That's almost like the byproducts of decluttering in some ways, isn't it, the stuff that goes out is the byproduct, working through the emotions and habits that hold you back. That's the hard stuff. And that's the thing that people really struggle with. And that's why we have so much success at the declutter hub within the membership, because that's what we tackle all the time. We don't say Oh, well, you know, what do you think about that out of date Foundation, those conversations never happen. The conversations that happen are and what's happened to take you down a path where you've got out of control with your makeup. Does that make sense? And so those are the kinds of things that we teach, you know, decluttering a foundation that's that's out of date is that it's easy. Yeah, but why did you get there in the first place? That's the bit that's not easy. Okay, let's

Ingrid  14:55  
leave so let's move on to the next one then, which is I think one of my favourite things is well, what were the mistakes that we see people making is one of

Lesley  15:04  
your favourite mistakes?

Ingrid  15:06  
Yeah, that sounds a bit wrong way around. But that's not how I mean it. But it's like, we see this all the time, people want to do their worst room, the room of doom, the room of terror, the junk room, the spare room that's gotten out of control the dumping ground, all of those names that people give the room, that is the worst. And that's where they want to get started. Because that's the I'm going to do some decluttering. This weekend, I'm gonna do the room of doom. But that's exactly what we're saying you shouldn't do right. And we've, we've done it with our members. We've said to several of our members, because they were like, Oh, I'm in the membership. I'm so happy. I'm going to start this weekend with my room of doom. And we're like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, you can't start there. That's you should start somewhere else. But why do we say that let's you Why can't people start with their room of doom.

Lesley  16:06  
Because the reason why. And again, that's probably the reason why people join us in the membership, because they have got one or two or three of those hideous rooms that they want to tackle. And that's what's getting you down. And that's what's making you feel overwhelmed. And so of course, that's the end point, isn't it. But we're saying there's a whole load of things that you need to do before you start to tackle that. So we call it our decluttering muscle, don't we, which is you need to build up, you need to learn the basics, you can't jump all the way to the toughest thing right at the start, which is what I was saying before, people automatically think about the hardest thing first, because that's the thing that you've struggled to manage, you might have been perfectly fine decluttering your wardrobe, but you're not perfectly fine decluttering, a whole room full of random stuff that's just been dumped there for years and years. Or it's got loads of paperwork in it, or it's got loads of sentimental stuff in it, or it's got stuff from your kids or stuff that you don't know where to go. So what you need to do so logistically, you need to find space for it in your house. And emotionally, you need to work through easiest stuff and easy rooms and build up that decluttering muscle until the point that you are ready to tackle the difficult stuff. You can't. Rome wasn't built in a day, and you have to start easy and build up. And what will happen is that that dumping ground, which is full of stuff that's not got anywhere to live, it still won't have anywhere to live, because you've not created space for it in the rest of your house. And so it's still going to be difficult, which is the reason why people continue to fail. Because if not put the groundwork in place to find homes for the stuff in the dumping ground.

Ingrid  17:41  
It's completely true. And because it's been put in the spare room or in the dumping ground in the first place, because it couldn't go in a cupboards in the place where it's supposed to be going. And that's why we say you need to create other spaces everywhere else. And then the stuff that's in that spare bedroom has somewhere to go. Because otherwise you just keep churning the stuff around in the same room because you're like, oh, yeah, well, I've now I've now maybe you've decluttered it a little bit and organised it a bit, but it's still has nowhere to go. So I still can't make it into a spare bedroom or it's still caught, I still considered my desk and do work in this room, because everything else is still there because it's got no final place to go to. And it just keeps churning and churning and churning around in the same kind of space. And that's why it's so important.

Lesley  18:33  
And you know, leading on from that, you know, the last couple that we've mentioned, and this one that we're going to mention now, again, the same principle again, the mistakes that people make is running before you can walk. And when we're decluttering what we see is that people want to tackle sentimental stuff straight away. Sentimental stuff, by its nature is the hardest thing that you're gonna come across from a decluttering perspective. And it covers everything. So sentimental stuff, and we've got a huge we've got a huge course in our membership about sentimental expands every single room in the house, the loft, the garage, books, kids clothes, kids stuff, toys, everywhere. So sentimental stuff is everywhere in our homes. You look around the room that you're in at the moment and you will undoubtedly see sentimental things on shelves, in boxes, on walls, etc. Sentimental stuff is tricky. It needs to be done as a category on its own. And once again, it needs to be done way down in your decluttering journey towards the end. We tend to want to tackle that too soon.

Ingrid  19:40  
Yes, and a lot of people think that sentimental items are only like letters and photographs. But then when you actually start to think about sentimental items, the list is quite endless because different people have different kinds of sentimental attachments to things. So for some people it might Kids artwork, well, for somebody else, it's furniture from their grandparents or great grandparents, or a tea set that's been in the family for a long time. Or it can be school books, because they had a fantastic youth and their school books represent a really happy part of their lives. So sentimental is different for everybody. So what we're very tempted to do is to go, I'm going to take all my sentimental, and then we find out that actually, there might be 12 different categories of sentimental items in your home, and you have to break that project down in very small chunks. And because it's the hardest category to do, you need a lot more decluttering muscle to actually do it. And I'm not gonna lie. I mean, photographs is a very tricky one for me as well. And you know, things like cards and letters, I find that not an easy thing to do. So that's why Lesley and I have a really big course in our membership with I think 15 or 20 videos in it alone about sentimental items. So that is something that you need to do one of as one of the last parts in your decluttering journey, you need to start to do the easier stuff first. And then when you kind of got everything start to get everything into place your house, that's when you start to look at sentimental items.

Lesley  21:19  
It's really interesting in group because when people join our Facebook group, one of the questions that we ask is, what's the hardest thing that you find when you're decluttering. And I can absolutely guarantee that eight out of 10 people say sentimental stuff, don't know, it's always sentimental stuff. And so that is hard. But that doesn't need to be the first thing that you tackle. And that's what we're saying, you're gonna get there in the end. But you need to have worked through loads of other stuff first.

Ingrid  21:44  
So Lesley, last but not least, what's our last one, then for our decluttering mistakes you need to stop making,

Lesley  21:52  
don't get distracted by flitting from one room to another, you need to focus on the project that you're working on, on that day or in that hour.

Ingrid  22:03  
Yes. And again, that is something we see all the time, it is very, very connected, a lot of preparation as well. And in print, when you do your preparation properly for your decluttering project, the flitting from one room to the next will become a lot less. And that's why your preparation is so important. Because what do we mean with flitting? You're in your for example, you're in your bedroom. And you're like, right, I'm going to do my wardrobe. Today, I'm at chester drawers. And then you find some glasses on your sunglasses, and some plates front a piece of toast in the morning. Oh, let me just quickly drop that into the kitchen, I'm going to put that away because I want to have a clear space and you think good thinking. And but then you come into the kitchen and you're like, oh, I need to hang up this load of laundry that that's been in there since last night. And I have not hung up yet. So you hang up your load of laundry, then you come there and you're like, oh, there's a piece of clothing that that is next needs to go into the wash bins. So you go to your maybe your bathroom when your washing basket is. And then you go like, Oh, that's an empty toilet rolls that needs to go into the recycler. So you're back down in the kitchen. Before you know it, there's an hour gone or 20 minutes gone. While you only meant to go and drop the plate and the cup that was in the bedroom, into the kitchen and come back. And I think you we lose hours and hours of time by doing this.

Lesley  23:33  
Yeah, and it's hard. And the way you're going to do that is you know, have boxes in a room when you're doing a decluttering project have some boxes dotted around. And if things belong elsewhere in the house, just box them up and do them at the end of the project. That's the best way to do it. And that we really will stop you from flitting around from room to room.

Ingrid  23:50  
Yes, because we want the whole idea is it sounds so negative is the big mistakes you need to stop making. But the thing is, we're telling you these because we want you to be successful. And almost maybe catch yourself out when you do it and go, Oh, I do this too and eager to listen, they told me not to do this. Because when you're more aware of your own actions, if you're like sitting in now maybe you're listening to this in the car when you're driving or you're maybe in your shopping trolley in the supermarket, listen to this podcast in thinking I to do this. I flit from one thing to the next and then half my Saturday's gone. And I think to myself, What have I done today? Because there's just there's no plan, and we get distracted so easily. And then we're going on our phone and before we know there's another half an hour gone. And then we think oh I'm thirsty to get a drink and and that's how the days just disappear and you never get around to decluttering and then we keep saying oh we're also busy all the time. Yes, because we're letting ourselves get distracted by not having a plan not having goals. Not Doing preparation, thinking, you know, starting with the worst room, all of those things, and we want success for you.

Lesley  25:07  
It's so interesting, we have seen these mistakes being made by people over and over with the people that we work with one to one and our members over the years as well. And people tell us, you know, we pick things are off the Facebook group all over, we know that people are making these mistakes. And, you know, we're big advocates that you are, every step forward is a good one, for sure. But we just want you to do it a bit more efficiently and effectively. And that's the reason why we have the membership. We try and teach you to do things methodically in the right way. Because what you'll get to, you'll get to a much more effective, efficient process where you actually get the job done. And the big thing for us and the big thing for our members as well, is that and we talked about decluttering being fun, and I'm sure a lot of people are like there's no fun in that. That's not fun at all. But we got an email we get emails, don't we all the time we do we get Thank you. Anybody who ever sent us an email to say we don't get nice emails, Ingrid from people is saying such lovely things all the time. And this is what keeps us going. We love it don't wait. And somebody summarised her thoughts about the membership, didn't she, which was absolutely fantastic. And she said, which I thought was absolutely brilliant, that Ingrid and I like a spoonful of sugar that makes the medicine go down. And I've just thought is brilliant because it is you know, decluttering is like medicine where it's like, I don't want to do it. I don't want to do it. But you know, it's gonna make you feel better. And she said that we're like a spoonful of sugar. That makes that process a little bit easier. I thought that was so nice. Hopefully using that everywhere.

Ingrid  26:42  
You can sing

Lesley  26:43  
it. Why don't you sing it for us, Ingrid? Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Ingrid  26:47  
But in my head, I in my head. So it's a spoonful of sugar. Makes the medicine go down the medicine? Good. I was ready to shake it in my head. And now you're putting me on the spot.

Lesley  26:58  
How did I know that? I could totally get you to sing. She's so gullible. Obviously. We're both in choir, but notice that it's me that never ever does the singing because I can't sing. Anyway.

Ingrid  27:11  
Oh my gosh, people are gonna listen God, Oh, why is she the choir, that's horrible. But in my head, it always sounds really good.

Lesley  27:21  
So anyway, so thank you so much to the person that said, we were like a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. But it's a fantastic way of explaining how decluttering feels to some people. It's a horrendous process that people don't want to go through that you have to do to make things better. And England and I are there to help you through that process and make it be a little bit more fun and light hearted than it has been in the past. So if you want a little bit of that action, come and join us in the members area. It's like worth every penny, even though we do say so ourselves. Ingrid that way? Yes,

Ingrid  27:53  
yes. So if you'd like to know more about our membership, go to members dot declutter hub.com. And just check it out. And if you're like, you know what, I'm not completely sure how this works. You can always book a discovery call with us and ask us any questions. And we'll give you a little tour behind the scenes. So make sure you do that. And we just really, thank you for listening. We appreciate you being here every week. I mean, we can't even believe it ourselves. We're like 113 episodes in so we just appreciate you listening to us because we love doing the podcast. So thank you so much for being here today. And of course, if you'd like some more handy tips and advice you can also join us in the Facebook group called the declutter hub community. And we're also on Instagram, and we have a Facebook page too if you want some more tips and advice. If you don't want to miss our next episode, please subscribe to the podcast and it will pop into your notifications each Friday. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next time.

Outro  28:58  
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of the declutter hub podcast. Check out declutter hub.com for more inspiration, and don't forget to tune in next week.
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