#MinimalistStyle, #SimpleLiving, #MinimalDesign

This might be uncomfortable to hear but the truth is most of the stuff in your home is just junk and your life is too short to spend another precious moment on crap that's going to end up in a landfill one day. Some of it sooner rather than later. Just last month I went to an estate sale in our neighborhood and I was floored at just how much stuff there was and at one point I was counting the dishes and china sets and ended up giving up counting when I hit the 20th set and I could tell a good 80 to 90 percent of those dishes and fine china sets had never ever been used a single time and some of them were even still in their original delivery boxes. But not only that I later learned that this house had so much stuff that after the parents died their kids were too overwhelmed to deal with it so they just left it sitting like an abandoned museum for over five years. And at one point I actually heard the people running the estate sale talking about how they had to split the estate sale up into multiple weekends because there was just so much stuff already inside the house and they still had over a hundred boxes to go through in an outside storage unit. And standing there walking through room after room of things that no one had touched or used in years, I had this thought. This is what happens when a home stops being a place to live and slowly becomes a place to store all of the stuff we think we need to live a good life. And believe me, I'm not judging that family or anyone else who lives this way because my family lived the exact same way when I was growing up. We had curio cabinets filled with fine china we never used, a three-car garage and an entire barn overflowing with stuff, and bedrooms full of Barbie dolls, beanie babies, and other collectibles that we weren't even allowed to open or play with. And yet somehow despite owning all of that stuff there still seemed to be this lingering emptiness and things got even worse for me after losing both my parents, most of my grandparents, and my childhood home in my early 20s because after saying goodbye to them the idea of letting go of their things felt like I was going to have to lose them all over again. And before I realized it my home stopped feeling like a home and instead turned into a museum of my past, my memories, and my grief. Back then I thought that keeping all those things was protecting me and keeping me safe but in reality all that hoarding was doing was keeping me stuck. And instead of moving forward I was stuck in the memories of what I had lost, stuck in my grief for a life I could never get back, and stuck in identities that didn't exist anymore. It took me almost 30 years to realize that stuff I was holding onto wasn't protecting me, it was holding me back. And I think that's why going to that estate sale the other day felt like a huge punch in the gut to me because I saw a ton of the same things that my family collected and hoarded all those years back and it reminded me just how many people out there are still living like this. And somehow society has brainwashed us into thinking that more is better and we need all of these things to be happy and that living like this is normal but I can assure you it's not. So if your home feels heavy, overwhelming, or unmanageable, or it's filled with stuff that you can't quite explain why you're keeping, I get it. I've lived it. And after 10 years of minimalism and helping thousands of women declutter their homes, here are five lessons I want to share with you about how clutter quietly turns our homes into a storage unit and why letting go is the path to true happiness and freedom. Lesson number one, more storage is not the solution. The other day I randomly came across this book that was titled I Wish I Had A Bigger Kitchen and Other Lies I Think Will Make Me Happy and it literally stopped me in my tracks because that is exactly how most of us think. We tell ourselves lies like if my kitchen was just bigger my countertops wouldn't be so messy. If I just had a bigger closet I'd have enough room for all of my clothes. If my home were just a little bit bigger I wouldn't have to pay $150 a month to store all of the stuff I inherited. But here's the truth. Shopping has gotten faster and easier. Homes have gotten bigger and storage options have exploded. But people are more overwhelmed than ever because the problem was never that we didn't have enough space. The problem is that we buy and own too much stuff. So we need to stop lying to ourselves that having enough cabinet space for 20 colors of Stanley cups and $40,000 worth of designer shoes is what's going to make us happy. 100 times 400 there's your damn payment. I spent $40,000 on shoes and I have no place to live. And speaking of which that leads me to another harsh lesson I had to learn about clutter and all the hidden ways it's costing us a lot more than we realize. I actually talked about this in one of my recent videos that I'll link up here for you as well as down in the description box below and a phenomenon that I like to call the CMT paradox which is that aha moment that a lot of people get when they look around their home and realize that all the clutter they own used to be money and all that money used to be time. But the hidden cost of clutter doesn't stop there. Clutter also costs you in time that you spend cleaning, organizing, searching for, and maintaining all of your stuff. The energy that stuff drains from you in doing all of those things and the peace of mind that you lose to the mental load from staying on top of all of your stuff and micro choices you have to make about it every single day. I actually get exhausted just talking about it let alone doing it. And not only that but time and time again studies have found that cluttered environments are linked to negative physical and mental health side effects such as increased cortisol that results in higher stress levels that in turn can lead to everything from depression, anxiety, and insomnia to chronic fatigue, weight gain, and an increased risk of stroke or heart attack because your brain is constantly processing everything around you whether you realize it or not. So a cluttered and messy home isn't harmless, it's heavy. And over time that unbearable heaviness has a way of dragging you down physically, mentally, and financially. Lesson three, 90% of clutter is invisible. This is something that most people never realize or talk about which is the fact that clutter isn't just physical it's also emotional and it's also deeply rooted in our psychological habits and patterns of behavior. Clutter and mess are the physical manifestations of things like procrastination, indecisiveness, guilt, fear, and lack of boundaries just to name a few. And that's why decluttering can feel so hard because you're not just dealing with the stuff you're dealing with all of the thoughts and emotions and habits that are attached to it as well. Just like with an iceberg which when you look at it the part that you see above the water only is 10% of the iceberg and the rest 90% of it or more is lurking underneath the water where it's even more dangerous. When people struggle and get frustrated with decluttering sometimes they start to think that they're messy or lazy or that they just have a stuff problem but often what they really have is a decision-making problem or a guilt problem or a what if I need this someday problem. And once you start to understand that everything clicks. In fact that's actually a huge part of what I teach to my students inside my decluttering course. Not just how to declutter your home but how to master your habits and create systems to keep the clutter away for good. Because clutter isn't the problem it's a symptom and if you don't address the true issues beneath all of the clutter it's just going to keep coming back. And one of my favorite things about being a decluttering coach is when my students have big aha moments about this. So I thought it might be fun to share some of my students recent wins and So here is a mom who says that her daughter goes to spring break next week. I hosted a book club yesterday. It felt so great as I would never have been able to do that at my old home. The house is looking great and this week I'm focused on digital and calendar decluttering. Another one of my rock star students she wrote adding a second child to our family has really highlighted how little time there is to maintain stuff. It's also made clearer than ever that many of the things we own just don't support our current stage of life. Because of that letting go actually felt easier this year than in previous years. And then finally a third student recently wrote to share that she had gotten rid of some vintage fisher price little people collections and other toys that her daughter had long outgrown and made $60 on facebook marketplace and on ebay over 90 days has made over I always love hearing about other people's decluttering journeys so feel free to drop me a comment down in the comment section below if you have any decluttering success stories or tips that you would like to share with me. And if you feel like you could use a helping hand with simplifying your way to a home and a life you love I will also leave a link to my five star rated decluttering course clutter gps which is on sale right now just in time for spring cleaning. And not only will you save $250 off the regular price but you'll also get hundreds of dollars worth of free bonuses including a mini course on how to get rid of your clutter and sell it that can even help you make your money back like that student I showed you earlier as well as my 50 page minimalist budget bundle with a ton of no spend challenges budgeting templates and other intentional spending principles and speaking of which that brings me to lesson four on this list which is how the meaning of a rich life has changed for me over the years since I've decluttered and become a minimalist growing up I was taught that stuff was of the highest value and my dad worked two to three jobs to buy all the stuff that he wanted and I'm sure that he thought he needed more cars and Harley Davidson motorcycles more antiques and collectibles and a brand new barn next to our old barn to hold all of the brand new tools and gadgets like the four-wheeler that he bought that only got written one or two times because he didn't have time and we were too scared to ride it and then ended up just stored in the barn to collect dust for the next decade and my dad wasn't just a workaholic he was also an alcoholic like his father before him was and I'm convinced that all that endless pursuit of money and stuff is one of the main things that contributed to his untimely passing in his early 50s but decluttering and minimalism have taught me that a rich life isn't about owning a lot of stuff it's about having a life that's rich in experiences and freedom it helped our family eliminate 250,000 dollars worth of debt and gave us the freedom to move to Europe for four years as well as be able to buy our dream home not once but twice decluttering changed my life and helped me achieve so many goals and dreams that I never thought would be possible for someone like me and because getting rid of 90% of my stuff and going from hoarder to minimalist was so healing for me it inspired me to create this channel to help others do the same and I can't believe that the ages in life community has grown to almost half a million subscribers and I'm almost pinching myself every day about it be sure to hit the subscribe and I just want to say that I am so so grateful that I get to spend time with you like this every single week and I never expected just how much the decision I made to start decluttering my home 10 years ago would change my life so much to this day which actually leads me to my next and final point which is that every single thing you own comes with a multitude of decisions attached to it I want you to stop and right now take a look around your home wherever you're sitting and notice the things inside of it the things that are surrounding you and I want you to think about how many decisions have gone into every single item that you see you spent time thinking about where to find those things which store to go to to find those things how you were going to get there when you were going to make time to get there you researched what kinds of things you wanted which brand which model and what price you'd be willing to pay for them and then once you get the thing you have to decide where you're going to put it in your home who's going to be responsible for taking care of it not to mention how often you're going to use it and where you're going to get rid of it if you get a case of buyer's remorse and realize you don't use it or need it they say the average home has over 300,000 items inside of it and when you own thousands upon thousands of items that becomes thousands upon thousands of choices that you're making or avoiding every single day and those unmade decisions don't just go away over the years they keep piling up just like the stuff does and I know that this might feel a little morbid to think about but when I was at that estate sale the other day and I was walking through all of the rooms filled with a lifetime of other people's things all I could see were thousands of decisions that couple never made and left behind for someone else to deal with but please keep in mind it doesn't have to be that way because like the saying goes you're always one decision away from a completely different life and sometimes that one micro decision to let go is the one that changes everything and if you're ready to start making those decisions and begin the process of simplifying your way to a happier richer and better life be sure and go check out one of these videos that YouTube thinks that you'll like or join my decluttering course that I've linked on sale right now down below or I'll see you next week until then take care bye-bye