I Lived in an Empty House for 2 Months…This Changed Me

I've been living in an empty house for 2 months now. And this isn't anything new. I've been a minimalist for 10 years, but this has been so different than anything I've experienced before. So, let me tell you right away. I'm not going to make you wait. What I've learned from living in this empty house, why I'm really hesitant to go back. Why you might be feeling defensive about your stuff when I say I'm living in an empty house. It actually, uh, neurologically makes a lot of sense. So, why don't we unravel that together?

But even living in an empty house, this was the scene this morning after the kids left. So, while I tell you the benefits of living in an empty house, I'm going to, uh, tidy this up real quick. So, here's what I've discovered. Living in a near-empty house, I feel less stressed, less anxious, less overwhelmed. I feel like this house naturally wants to stay clean. I think there's a tipping point where homes either want to stay messy and clutter attracts clutter, and we never get on top, or there's a tipping point where it actually becomes very easy and natural to clean. I want to keep it clean. I always want to restore the sense of peace that is here. I found that I'm more patient with the kids. I feel like I'm more drawn to nature and I often find myself just wanting to sit and look out the window, especially now here in Minnesota when things are turning green. There's like some really cool wildlife around us. I mean, we're still in a development, right? I'm not in a nature preserve, but I'm finding myself drawn to wanting to be outside and to be around nature. I feel much more creative. And creativity comes in many forms. It can mean doing creative things, but also creative problem-solving. I feel like I'm better able to handle the different problems or stressors that come my way. We waste way less food. We have very low food inventory right now. And I also waste less money. I don't find myself doing impulse buys or buying things just to feel better. And again, I know that the natural reaction when we hear these things often is, "Wait, but..." and we we want to defend the stuff that we have in our home, right? And so that's very natural. So I think we should unpack that today. What is causing us to resist against this? But wait, Don, your house isn't cozy. You don't have memory stuff. I don't have any memory stuff out right now. But I like that because I get to choose when I go down memory lane. I'm not being assaulted by these things when I'm not in the mood or the mindset for it. Also, some could say that, oh, well, this is a privilege to get to live this way. Oh, wouldn't that be nice just to get rid of all your stuff and then you'll just buy it again when you need it. And I don't think that's at all accurate either. So, we can definitely talk about that, too. Oh, and also, that only took 2 and a half minutes to clean up. Uh, yes, if the kids were still here, I would have definitely made them do that. It's much easier to get kids to help too when your house is highly simplified. But anyways, I'll stop now.

Hello. Good morning. It's so good to see you today. I'm excited to talk about this topic. Uh, living in an empty house for 2 months has been, it's taken my minimalism to a whole another level, but in like such a good way. And I know I already know what all the comments are going to be of how, but what about this and what about that? And so I really want to visit with you about that today because I understand it and those are the exact things that hang us up. And so probably my theme for today is that, here we go. Stuff is easy to come by in our world today. Peace is not. In this crazy, wild, busy world we live in. Stuff is easy to come by today and peace is not. But our brains have not caught up. Our brains are still living in olden, I said olden, the olden days recently. Our, our, our brains have not caught up with the abundance around us right now. But probably, I would say the reason that it's so different now than even when we grew up or even probably 10 years ago is this. I've been showing my, uh, my capacity cup, my bandwidth cup. There were a few questions about like, when you say bandwidth, what do you mean? Capacity, our ability to get things done, do the things we need to do on a day-in and day-out, uh, basis. And it's not measured by time. It is not measured by the free time we have. It's measured by the emotional energy or the capacity that we have to do the things that we need to get done. And so when we have a full glass of bandwidth or capacity, I think we can have more stuff around us. And Dana from A Slob Comes Clean calls it clutter threshold. I've been calling it the easy line. Now, I think it adjusts and the amount of stuff we can have around us adjusts based on how much capacity. And so, if you're dealing with a full glass, um, I, I do think you can probably manage a little bit more stuff. I think it, you're still managing way too much stuff. All of us are. But then as it goes down and down, what I have found is that when we have really low capacity, meaning there's just things in our life that are taking all of our energy, whether it's health challenges, caring for loved ones, um, relational stress, work stress, a combination of all of it, right? I mean, having teenagers, the things we are navigating now is just like incredible to me. And so I think when we are working with low bandwidth, I think everything around us reads as clutter. And there's science to back it up. Our brain is constantly scanning our surroundings for threats. And those threats look different today. In the past, it was like wild animals or different things like that, right? But now it is threats in the form of the Amazon return, the disconnect notice from the electric company, the RSVP we forgot to send back so the kids don't get to go to the birthday party or whatever, right? And so the threats look different these days, but your brain is constantly scanning. And I know I've been talking about that a lot recently, so I don't, I don't want to continue to necessarily go down that path too far, but everything around us reads clutter. And so, like I said, I've lived as a minimalist for 10 years now. And so, I significantly decluttered our townhouse. That was the first house where I found minimalism and we were in. It didn't go this far as this house I've been in for a couple months now. But it went pretty far and I got to experience it then. My fear was people walking in and saying, "You look weird. Uh, you're depriving your kids." But it never actually happened. And so, I got a taste for that freedom, for that peace. And I never wanted to go back. Then, uh, we moved in with my parents again for a little bit. We lived in their basement and so again, very small square footage. Had to have really low inventory. Then we moved into our farmhouse. And, uh, if you've been following me for a while, you saw in there I had more inventory. I love home decor. I love color, right? I was like, I don't want to be a boring minimalist. Even in this house, I'm like, just so you know, I'm not boring, right? But now, uh, and so we had real low inventory in our, in our farmhouse. I, I think I would have said at that point, we've got rid of 85% of my stuff. I don't miss it, right? And now come to this house and it also coincided when we moved in here two months ago. I was, you know, I'm working on writing this book. And so I just knew I don't mean to be, uh, writing a book. It has been, it has just been quite. I'm not a writer. Like I can't, I need to talk with my hands, right? Uh, it's good. I will keep you in the loop. There's no changes to it right now. I don't know when it's coming out. Anyways, thank you for your support. But when I moved in here, I knew I was like in the midst of that. And so I'm like, nothing extra. I just knew like, I, I can't handle anything extra. So we only moved over from my parents the bare minimum. And it was wonderful. And that, that's a rare opportunity. I understand that. My life seems like a rare opportunity. I don't know how I got here, right? But we moved in the bare minimum. And I have been living with just that for the last two months. I've run in a little bit more now. I needed like some spring clothes, but even so little inventory when we moved in. And then I thought like, I, I'll get the book manuscript turned in, which I did. And then we we'll start to bring in some more stuff, you know, maybe some decor. Again, I love home decor. And I haven't, I'm just like, I can't. I like, I am just keeping up right now with our house. My kids are, as I have four kids, ages 11 through 16. The boys are 11 and 13. The girls are 14 and 16. Like, how, like I can't bring anything more in. Are you kidding me? Like, we are just breaking even right now. I can just stay on top of it how it is. How could I possibly bring more stuff in? But the big thing is, is I don't want to disrupt the peace in here. Life is still lifey. There's still a lot of stuff going on. I, I feel like even with the kids now, um, now the dust has settled a little more. There's a lot of big questions coming up and it, I, I want to have the space to help navigate that with them and the bandwidth to do this season well. Not perfectly. I know better than that, but to be present and to be able to have like, to think about things and be like, I'm going to get back to you on that one, right? And so I like this feeling right now of not feeling behind, of not feeling like I'm drowning, not feeling like I'm always missing things and forgetting to do things and, oh, you know, apologizing for things. I really like that right now. And so I don't feel like it's possible to have both. To have all the stuff in the house that I would have in the past and also to experience this peace and freedom that I've been experiencing. But again, our brain will fight us. And I expect there to be a lot of defensive comments about this, right? You know, but does it feel welcoming? And I have been surprised because I would have thought an empty house, especially an all-white house, would feel cold, that it would feel empty, that I, it would be a real trade-off. Like, okay, I understand like this is the, the cost of just having a really easy house right now. It doesn't feel like that at all. And I mentioned the memory stuff too that, you know, I, I do have a value for the past and everything and I've thought like, oh, I should get some, you know, pictures of the kids in here and like fun pictures and I want it to feel happy and, uh, I do have a few things from the past that I enjoy and even that I just feel right now I want to choose when I go down memory lane. I shared my most recent video was the, um, boxes of stuff. Like five boxes from my past showed up. I can link to it. And it was anything from kitchen stuff to my grandma's milk glass. So, memory stuff, my other grandma's red tablecloth that I, I really wanted. I treasure that I wanted to have. But this surprised me. So, I had recorded the video and then it was like a week later when I was coming back to edit it and whatever, smooth it out, right? So, I can put it out. And when I was editing, I'm like looking at myself here. I'm like, "Oh my goodness, I don't even want to touch that." Right? And I was talking about toxic clutter and things from the past and how we have to be so aware that this stuff around us, everything around us, it, it has an energy to it. It has a vibe. It's telling us something. And how when this kitchen stuff from my past house and everything came in and it was a wedding gift and all, all the things that were attached to it, how I didn't even want to touch it. I also appreciated the comments. Some of you were like, "You didn't have to touch it for us, right?" And so you're so kind. Um, I will link to that video. Um, I, I got way more emotional in it than I was even expecting. I'm like, I'm a pro. I've decluttered thousands of items, right? I've helped thousands of women declutter their yucky stuff, too. And it still caught me off guard the emotion that I was feeling from those items. But I think often what happens when we have all of this like swirling around us and we're feeling a little off and unsettled, we don't trust our emotions around things. We think like, well, I'm just feeling stressed right now. I have too much going on. And so we, we're not even aware that a lot of this stuff around us is giving us these yuck vibes, is bringing down the morale in our house. It's sending gross messages, you know, telling us we're not good at things. We suck at being a housekeeper. We suck at being a mom. We suck at being a wife. All, all of this. And we're always just turning it back on ourselves. Well, it's because I'm behind. Because I don't keep up. I don't do the dishes at night. I don't, whatever, right? And so we're not even aware of how our environment is completely sabotaging us because it's a lot to sort out. You know, I was really fortunate. I got to bring these boxes into a blank slate, blank canvas, and so I really could actually be aware of what each item was telling me. These were yuck. And then I found my grandma's red tablecloth, which I had wanted to get and was so grateful for. And then that I was like, "Oh, yeah. Still love this. Still want this, whatever." But I, I could tell the difference in that moment because I didn't have a lot of other stuff around me.

And so today, honestly, I just want to give you permission to go further than you think with decluttering. And again, I know then the other thing we start to bump up against is like, oh, well, must be nice. You can just get rid of all your stuff and you don't have to worry about it, you know? Oh, you'll probably just go buy it again if you need it. And I don't think that's it at all. Um, recently we were doing a live in the Take Your House Back course, which by the way, our next all-day declutter is on Saturday. So if you've been a member of the course, uh, maybe you've been disconnected or not, you can renew your membership for just $10 and join us in the all-day declutter. But I'll put details in the description about that. Um, but this isn't a commercial today, I promise. Promise. Thank you. Swear. Um, but Cass was talking about, you know, scarcity mindset, the, the feeling like we need to stock up. That's very natural. Our brain equates stuff with security. Our brain says if you have extra food, you have extra stuff, uh, blankets, clothing, whatever, batteries, water, then, then you'll be safe. And the case she was making is that in the world we live in today, that, that we don't, stuff does not actually create security. It's a very false sense of, of security. What actually gives us security is having a little extra money in the bank. Doesn't even have to be tons and tons of money, right? But knowing that if something happened, we would have a little bit of extra means to handle it. And often we get caught spending our resources on stocking up or thinking we can't get rid of stuff because we did spend money on it and then that's being wasteful. So, we need to keep this stuff just in case we would need it. We, the money's already spent, so we might as well just keep it so that we're prepared and we don't have to buy it again. But that's not actually how it works out. And I, I believe you've experienced this too, that when my house is cluttered, I can't find the stuff I need. I, I buy it again. That all hell breaking loose situation very rarely happens. And so now I have stuff going bad in my basement. We got a little water in my basement. Now stuff is getting, uh, wet and ruined. It's not the right stuff I need when something comes up. So then I'm still ending up buying something else. And that, it never actually works out. It doesn't work out. And I've been talking with my sister about this a little bit more recently because another side effect of living in an empty house, I felt like, is feeling more generous, more open-handed. I'm like, it's so weird. I have so little and yet I, I'm just like, here, have it. Take it. I don't. And I feel like it's this idea that we can be very open-handed when we don't have a lot of stuff. And that I believe, I don't think it matters what your spiritual beliefs are. Even my sister and I don't have all the same spiritual beliefs anymore. I don't think I don't think they align exactly anymore. But no matter what you believe, I don't think the universe, the world operates like this. I don't think that's how it works. And if we ever think back to any time we tried to keep for ourselves, to take, to hide, don't let anybody know I have this, to stock up, to hoard, to somehow prepare for everything that could happen down the road, it does not work. It doesn't work. But when we're like this and we share and we can very freely give to those around us and not even in the, the form of stuff all the time, just even our time, our energy, our presence. We live in a world where everyone is drowning in stuff and is desperate for human connection, right? So another thing with my empty house is people can come in at any point. I feel like I can sit on the porch and meet the neighbors and be open and present. Um, and so it's not even stuff that I think we're wanting to share with the world right now. I think it is, it's our, it's our focus. It's our time, our energy, whether that's with our kids, our close family, our loved ones, or the others that we encounter every day around us. And so, I don't think storing up for ourselves, I don't think it works. I, I think we've all experienced that and very few talk about it and give us the, the permission to let this go, stuff go, trusting. Uh, there's a quote by Fumio Sasaki, um, that says, "The stuff we need will find us when we need it." I'm butchering it, but it's something to the effect. And he's the one that came up with the idea of the silent to-do list, which is so profound, that everything in our house is telling us something that we have to do. And he ca, he, you know, presented this idea that the stuff we need will find us when we need it. And isn't that just so cool? And even recently, I was, uh, I've been wanting to get a stand mixer. Again, I don't use it all that often, but I use it for shredding chicken and making bun cakes, right? And every time I looked at the price, I'm like, I don't want to spend that much money. And marketplace are not that much cheaper. And wouldn't you know, my aunt stopped by the other day and, uh, she was, they're getting ready to, uh, move into an RV and go RVing, which is so cool for them, and I'm excited for them. And she's like, you know, I have my stand mixer. Uh, I was going to just put it into storage. Like, would you want to use it? I'm like, absolutely. If you come back and move into a house again, you can have it back, whatever. But yeah, if I could just use it for now, um, that would be awesome, right? We don't live like that anymore. We go online, we click, click, click, we buy it, right? And so it's, it's definitely a different way to live. Uh, it's very countercultural. It's very anti how our brain is wired to stock up. Um, and I've, I've actually been writing about this in my book, too, that we, it used to be we had to stock up. I still, you know, my parents will talk about when they moved into their farmhouse, it had a root cellar. That's where you kept the canned goods and the vegetables and whatnot to get you through the winter. And then you would, uh, work through the summer to stock up again, use it up during the winter. And that, I mean, until I mean, many of you can remember that, right? Like that was not that long ago. We stock up, use up, stock up again. Now all we do is stock up. There is never a use-up phase. We just stock, stock, stock. And there's so much around us just saying, stock up more. You need more. You need this. You don't have the right thing. You need that, right? And so it's just again, how quickly things have changed where stuff is easy to come by, peace is not. Stuff is easy to come by and peace is not. There's, okay, Corbin's got it. I was like, the doorbell's working. Um, stuff is easy to come by, peace is not. And that's where I feel like this is actually very safe that we can systematically declutter our house, move out stuff that we are not using right now. I'm not against a little extra food storage or emergency storage, but the right amount, knowing where it is. Some of my favorite comments, I know, uh, you know, there's been different things that have come up over the last couple years, hurricanes in Georgia, floods in Texas, things that are actually, you know, fairly unexpected. And some of my favorite comments were those who said, "I actually knew where the emergency storage stuff was this time, or I didn't need it for myself, but because I knew where it was and it was organized, I could share it with others." And I'm like, "That is so cool." That feels like how it should be, right? Now, on the other hand, if you just have this basement or garage just full with stuff, you're not going to, in a pant, invite people in like, "Oh, hey, I have these extension cords or I have this for you or whatnot." You're gonna be horrified, right? And so, thanks, buddy. All right. Um, and, and so again, it's counterintuitive, but if we will systematically simplify and declutter, how much freedom and peace is on the other side? Okay, I want to step down off of my soapbox now for a minute. I love this opportunity to be live with you, too. Uh, because I get to answer your questions. And so, any questions that you have, I'm whether it's around this topic or anything else. Uh, right now. If you put a question mark in front of it, it makes it a little bit easier for me to see your question. So, go ahead. Or if you've posted one, I didn't catch it. If you want to post it again, uh, that would be awesome. Terry says, "I just wish you were my neighbor, Don. I could listen to you all day. I love your laugh and your authenticity." Thank you, Terry. I really appreciate that. Excuse me. All right. Um, let's see. Yeah, I just think I'm seeing comments about generosity, too. Isn't that, uh, you know, I grew up with, one sec. You know, I've shared before, we grew up on a farm. My parents both worked full-time, farmed full-time. My mom would often do, uh, extra bookkeeping jobs in the evening to help, you know, make extra money to make ends meet. And still, they were the most generous people that I know. You know, I've told the story of my mom. You know, we had, we had hardly enough for groceries and everything and on a Thanksgiving, she was getting groceries and bringing them to another family. Um, anyone knew that if they needed something, something broke, needed to be fixed, anything like that, they could stop in at our farm and my dad would help or more likely my grandparents' farm because that's where he spent a lot of his time, right? And that he would drop everything and he would help them. And so it was very cool that they could have been like this, right? They could have been like, "Guys, we don't even have enough hardly to make ends meet, let alone to be able to share with others." And it was not what they modeled at all. And so I do think in many ways it has made it easier for me to be open-handed with things because I did get to see that and I did get to see how we always had the things that we needed even if it wasn't brand new and even if it wasn't brand name. And I'm, and I'm so grateful for that. And I guess now that I say that too, I do want to circle back to this idea of like, oh, well, it's a privilege thing, uh, maybe to be able to do this. Can we recognize like, if you're watching this video right now, we are all living a very privileged life. And it's easy to think like, oh, well, it's those people, right? Again, if we're watching this right now, we are all living a very privileged life. It just doesn't always feel like it because many of us have kind of overwhelmed ourselves with stuff and and different things. And I do believe this process of decluttering helps us to loosen our grip on stuff. Helps reinforce the pattern of where stuff did not pay off. It did not live up to the hype. It did not make our lives easier. Feeling those yuck feelings of, uh, I wish I could just have the money back for this. Uh, that wasn't a good decision. That was a mistake, right? We always say, no failure, just data. No one has lived in this, this type of world before except us. No one has like seen this huge change from needing a root cellar to get through the winter to same-day delivery on Amazon. So we cannot be too hard on ourselves. No failure, just data. But we can adjust course now and say, "Yeah, that has not paid off." And systematically decluttering our house and going through it, we, it reinforces that the stuff is not the answer, right? It's having people around us. It's having a little extra funds in the bank for the things that come up in life, but mostly it's having people around us, right? All right. Um, see, then I just, I get going again. Um, yeah. Hi from Argentina. I need help with my kids' art supplies and all the hair stuff. Any ideas? So, again, this is where I would say more inventory does not solve the problems. Uh, more art stuff does not make our kids more creative. I have incredibly creative kids. I love it so much. And we had very little craft and art supplies. Mostly they got to, uh, create with the recycling cardboard boxes, plastic things that would come in, uh, masking tape, uh, scissors, and markers. That was the bulk of it. I hate pom-poms and glitter and pipe cleaners and all of that. And so I decided early on, I don't have to manage all of that stuff. And so I like to pair the inventory with what they can maintain and pick up themselves. And this goes from anything from Legos to art supplies to their toys as well. And so we'll often say like in our membership community, if there's an area of your house that's not working, it usually means there's too much inventory. If it's your entryway, if it's your laundry room, if it's kids' stuff and kids' clothing, that almost always means there's too much inventory. And again, we think, "Oh, if my kids love Legos, we need to keep all the Legos." You actually don't. My boys still play with Legos for hours. Do you know how few Legos they actually have here right now? So, we don't need a lot of inventory, even if there's something that we love and and value. Um, I'm struggling with having to get rid of homeschooling curricula now that my daughters are in public school. Yeah. So, there's a lot of grieving that goes along with this, too. But again, I don't want to store it up to go bad in my basement or attic or garage when there's others that could be making use of it. And so, if it's truly special, we want to have a memory box and we put some of the stuff in there. But then otherwise, could you find other families to share it with, to put it on marketplace, uh, for a low cost or no cost? I, to me, that feels way more meaningful than trying to store it up. Um, how does it work on body doubling? Does the coach just talk? Are people's mics on? Do you get in line if you have a question? I don't, I won't do real well throwing stuff away if I'm stuck to a keyboard. Yeah. Uh, so inside of our membership community, we do live decluttering or live body doubling two times a day. And so it has a very set format. It's at 7 or 9:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m. each day. And so it's 10 minutes of talking, uh, setting goals, talking a little bit about the space that we're working in. Often, that the coaches will issue a challenge for the time and then you work for 30 minutes with just music playing, no talking because that's what we found too, uh, that when there's talking, many can't work during the talking, but there is something so powerful about working alongside others. So even though it's just music playing, it's, you'll see on your, on your screen, it's over Zoom, it's very simple to get into people working. You draw on that energy. I can't tell you how many members said, "I just logged in. I was just going to sit there and hang out and then I find myself getting up and getting working." 30 minutes of work time, they come back together for 10 minutes of recapping, answering any questions, um, resetting, another 30 minutes of work time, and then back for 10 more minutes. Often the coaches go longer and stay on and answer more questions and visit more about it. It's so powerful. Um, so that's inside of our membership community. It's on special right now for just $22 a month and your price never goes up if you get in at that. I want to protect the peace of my house. What's the most consistent way to stop the inflow of items so I'm not in a constant declutter cycle? Yes. So, this is huge. I had to unfollow any influencer that sells me stuff. There's the, I, there's this influencer from Minnesota here. I love her so much. She has like a similar Midwest accent. I didn't know I had an accent, right? But then when I'm listening, I'm like, "Oh, yeah. We have an accent a little bit, right?" But I love, like she's local. She's great. Home DIY projects and also she sells stuff all the time. That's how influencers make money. You can always, you know, when Amazon Prime Days are coming up. Also, I just like, I'm on the Wayfair thing too and it's like Wayfair extra commission days and I'm like, crud. Now there's going to be all these influencers talking about all the things that are so great from Wayfair that you just cannot live without. So I had to unfollow influencers. I cannot go on social media at night. Um, I know I will impulse buy, uh, uh, Amazon. I don't look at the things recommended for you. I put stuff in my cart. I let it sit there. So, you have to really start looking at where is this stuff coming in and looking at that data. It's one of the reasons I read fiction at night now before I go to bed. I cannot scroll. I can't be trusted with it. Especially at night when again, our bandwidth drained, like we're none of us are going to make good decisions. There's something wrong with you. They know what they're doing. Marketing, you know, do store pickup. Don't go into Target. They put so much research into knowing exactly what height to place things at, what colors to use, what smell to use to get you to buy stuff. We don't even realize that we are being attacked every day to get to buy stuff. And so, we really have to start being aware where the breakdowns are, where we're still allowing this stuff to come in. Uh, for some, it's going to thrift stores or garage sales. And we have to find other things to do at that time. Go for a walk, call a friend, read fiction. Uh, it's best if we can replace it with something else. I'm doing good on my decluttering journey, but I'm at the point where I'm trying to go through pictures and want to keep some. What are some good storage solutions for physical pictures? I'm not necessarily the most, uh, skilled at this. It really comes down to, um, deciding how do you want to store them. Do you want to store them in physical format and then you can just go as simple as photo boxes. Toss them in. Do you want to do photo albums or do you want to digitize? But no matter what, you want to significantly reduce the inventory first and then decide. For me, I keep digital, digital, and physical, physical. And I just use photo boxes. I'm very selective about what goes into them. I know if I have a lot of photo inventory, I'll never visit them again. What? Denise says, "Since Boxing Day 2025, I've decluttered 5,700 items." You are a rock star. That is so cool. I'm so proud of you, Denise. You get on a roll and it goes from hard to easy and you can't, can't stop you. It's so good. Uh, continued. I need help like now. I'm in the middle of doing all this. Company coming tomorrow. Would love some doubling support. You could literally join our membership community right now and get in. Uh, actually, body doubling is going on right now. Um, Jackie, if she joins right now, there's a link in the description here. Will you make sure she gets in right away? Um, yeah, like honestly, grab a black trash bag and start walking around your house. There is so much stuff that is just sitting around hanging out that you don't need. Also grab a crap basket. We've been, uh, talking about that. I have mine right here. Any little random anything like that. Um, just throw it into a basket and time test it and see if you actually need any of it. So, you can clear counters real quick with a black trash bag and a crap basket. Anything you're not quite sure about, throw in the crap basket. Anything else goes into your black trash bag. If it is super important, like a disconnect notice from your electricity company, like put that somewhere else. Don't put important stuff into here. Like, that's, that won't serve you well. That'll be very stressful. But anything inconsequential, throw into a basket. Absolutely. All right. Uh, I have the box my dog's ashes came in, but because it has writing on it, I'm finding it hard to get rid of. Any advice? I still have the box the urn out. Yeah, I mean, it could be one thing could be you're just not quite ready for it yet or, um, you know, is it so special? Like asking ourselves, is it so special that I put it in a memory box or that I would take a photo of it and save it? And if not, that means you've decided it needs to go. But if you're not quite ready for it, just log that data and be like, "Okay, for now I'm gonna keep it and then I'm gonna circle back and see if in a little while I would be, yeah, still have the urn out. Um, then I would be ready to let it go." This kind of stuff's a little bit trickier, right? And so we don't want to be too hard on ourselves or rush the process, but just starting to think through it, um, can often help us know when the time will be right. I am 73 years old. I have four kids and 19 grandkids. That's awesome. I am sentimental with so many items and cards, letters from the past. Any suggestions on how to let go? All the videos are for younger people. Well, yes and no. So, I would say that what we want to do, well, I actually would recommend Matt Paxton's book, Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff, because he talks about creating a legacy list. So I think for any parent or grandparent, the mindset that is very helpful is that I want to curate a special collection of things for my children or grandchildren because if I leave them boxes and boxes of stuff, they're going to feel overwhelmed by it. They're not going to know what's most special and they're just going to get rid of it. Now, if I have a memory box and I very carefully curate the items that are in there, maybe even I attach a note to it or I make a journal that goes along with it that explains the items in there. And it's, I don't have my, like memory box size here, but it's probably not even the size of a full Rubbermaid tote unless you have some like big items, but it is something that is manageable and practical that is a gift that you are giving to your kids. If my grandma Adeline, I adored my grandma Adeline, I'd named my oldest daughter after her. If she would have had this collection of stuff and she had notes with it in her handwriting about this necklace was from this or this photo was this or this is meaningful because of this, I would treasure that so much. I would have it here with me. I would go through it. I would remember her. I would tell my kids about it. That would be a gift. Instead, my grandparents both passed away very unexpectedly. Left their full house of stuff and the siblings were all left to go through it and guess some of the stuff they knew the stories about. Some of the stuff they had emotional connection to. I talk about my grandma's red tablecloth. I remember that being on the table. It's very special to me. But so much of the stuff no one knew, right? And then it just gets donated or thrown away. And so what, what we want to look at this as a gift that we're giving to our kids. Now again, my kids are still in the house and I still look at it that way. Their memory boxes. They each have a memory box. It is a curated collection of some of just the most special fun things that I want them to be able to take with them from their childhood. And we go through it often. It's not overwhelming. It's super fun. It is a gift to them and to their future family as well. And so I think that's the big mindset shift that we need to make around sentimental items is how can I curate it in a way that it is a gift and not a burden. Um, hello. Thank you. Awesome. All right. Um, so the body doubling goes in with our membership and it's $22 a month right now for our spring special. I said I was not going to turn this into a commercial, but we're also, that also when you get in, um, we do challenges and stuff. So coming up in May, uh, it's all flat surfaces and hotspots. We do other things too, but that's like our main focus. And then, uh, coming up over the summer, we're doing Clutter Camp. 90 days through your entire house, decluttering and getting your home management systems in place, like meal planning, um, cleaning routines, managing your calendar, and your to-do list. And so over the summer, we're going to go through your whole entire house. We have really fun, uh, challenges. We'll do a a thousand item challenge. But you will not believe how when you are doing this inside of a supportive community, it multiplies your efforts. You can get through your house, I would say two to four times faster when you are doing it in a system with supportive people around you. And so the body doubling that we do twice a day is just, it's part of our membership. Uh, I do daily videos in there for decluttering support and motivation. And then Saturday mornings, we do home management classes. That's where we go through meal planning, managing our calendar, our to-do list. Um, this weekend we're talking about laundry routines. So that's Saturday morning. We just practice, refine, collect data, do it again. Um, and then we do live decluttering together. I do that with you, too. And then again, the body doubling every single day of the week, including weekends and holidays. 9:00 a.m., 7:00 p.m. You develop friendships. You feel supported. So often, we feel like we're doing this alone. I, I've felt that way. I, well, I did it all alone, right? I'm like guessing and like, I think I don't know. I think this is right. Uh, I, man, to have something like this around me back then, I would have loved it so much. All right. Okay. I'm divorced with two kids. What do I do with all the pictures of the family when I was married? I don't want them, but I'm thinking my kids might want to see them. Yeah. Um, yeah. I'll be really honest. Like, right now, even looking at pictures of my kids when they were little still makes me really sad. Like, anything from that season. And it's so hard. I never want to sound ungrateful or there was a lot of good things that went on too, but there was a lot of not good things, too. And I, like, I feel it and I see it in the photos. And I imagine that'll change over time. Um, and so if you're like, if any of this stuff is still giving yuck vibes and like, I don't even want to touch it, like my photo there. Um, it's okay just to put it in a box, have it clearly labeled and let it be for now. Now, if you're ready to kind of do some sorting, yes, I do think there are photos and stuff your kids would want and so you can just toss them into their memory box. Hopefully, you have a memory box for each member of your family. Um, or if not, you know, again, put them into a container, label it. You know, I've been talking about like categorize and contain. Our brain can handle things when they are categorized and contained. When it's a clear category and I know exactly what's in there. So, if you're up to it, you can sort through them, pick out a few. Again, we're curating a special collection. Um, and if not, it's okay just to toss them all in a box for now and know that you'll probably get to that later down the road. What is the main reason for your minimalism? Is it from your realtor background where you want clean spaces or to have the feeling of more space or to make life easier? That's such a good question, Mary. So, when I started 10 years ago, it was a cleaning tactic. I just wanted to be able to stay on top of my house. I had four kids, ages four and under. My real passion, I was a stay-at-home mom, but my real passion was designing websites, doing graphic design. I had started my first blog, and I was constantly torn. All I wanted to do was sit down at my computer and create. Like, I just love it. It still lights me up to no end. I love designing the challenges in our membership community. I love like this, like doing the Clutter Camp thing. It just made my heart so happy. I felt alive when I was creating and I felt like I sucked at life because my house was a mess. My kids were, you know, I'm like, where are they in the toys? You know, are they in there? Like, whatever. It was just, it was, I was always so torn between what I loved and feeling like, but I'm also sucking it up in these areas. So, it was just a house cleaning tactic. I'm like, maybe if I get rid of a lot of stuff, my house will be easier and then I can do what I love. What I did not expect was that through that process of decluttering and get rid of so much stuff, I would gain so much confidence in myself, I

started to believe in myself again. I started to feel like I had autonomy. Oh, we can sell our townhouse and move in with my parents in hopes of finding our dream, um, you know, country property. Hey, we can move into this little farmhouse that is only 1300 square feet and two bedrooms. We can remodel it. We can do anything, right?

Um, and even, you know, two years ago, I can make some really hard life decisions, which sucked, right? Um, and so it started as a house cleaning tactic. Now it is, um, confidence, autonomy, peace, uh, feeling like I'm a better mom, feeling more present, more capable, better able to navigate all the things that come our way. And this deep realization that stuff does not make us happy. It only, there's a very small amount of stuff. Please hear me. Like, I never want life to be harder. I keep a microwave, a phone, a computer. I have a washing machine. I'm not making life harder. I'm not roughing it, right? I'm staying in a very nice camper, Airbnb, right, where you have the things you need, but not the extras.

And so, when I found this and experienced this, I'm like, I have to tell other people about it. I never in the past would have started a YouTube channel. I am the happy helper behind the scenes. I want to, I want to make you look good, right? I don't want to be front and center. Like, what are we doing here? And so, but I needed that confidence in myself again to be able to, to like, share this message, right? And so, um, yeah, it started as a house cleaning tactic. Now it is, yeah, a way of life for freedom and peace and, uh, being, yeah, being able to just navigate the things that life throws at us.

The other thing too, I'll say, like, you know, because I earlier on decluttered a lot of my sewing machine, craft stuff. I loved, I just love creating in any fashion, right? I love, we grew up sewing clothes for four and and whatnot. And I just realized that it was, it just wasn't practical in the season I'm in. And so I got rid of that stuff. But then I really got into gardening. I'm going to get some raised beds here and stuff. And even though I love sewing and that, I actually really love gardening. I love being in the dirt and the seeing the growth and and that kind of creativity, too. And so I'm glad that I don't feel burdened by those hobbies and things from the past either. And that I feel like I, I get to choose now what I want to do and how I get to spend my time.

And so I know a lot of us have spent a lot of money on craft stuff and hobby stuff. Will you allow those tastes to change? Will you not say, "Oh, because I spent money on it. Oh, because I dedicated a whole room to it, now I have to keep doing that." Can you allow your seasons to change, your taste to change, and not drag all that stuff forward just because you spent money on it? Great question. I love it. Yeah.

Okay, this is a good question. I'm Laura says, "I'm not, I'm great at not bringing stuff into my house, but it's hard for me to let go what is here. Everything is emotional to me." Yes. And so, again, I was in this very ideal situation where I got to be very selective about what came in here. I fully recognize that, but that's why we've been talking about, and you know, this is what we talk about in our membership community all the time. And that's where I think things like this and time will tell bins. Time will tell bins are huge. Laura, if you will put stuff into there, it creates some separation. And again, in that video, um, the toxic, uh, clutter video, I, I said in there too, so once things go into a time will tell bin or if things have been in bins, don't touch it. That is only going to increase your emotional attachment to it. But if on the other hand, you can box it up, set it aside, time test it, realize, yep, I didn't miss this stuff. You are going to create separation from it and it is going to be much easier to let that stuff go in the future.

We also had a gal in our community recently and she showed these beautiful pictures of her main level being simplified and decluttered and ready. And she said, uh, you know, we could never do this in the past, but now I could let my kids have friends over and they had a sleepover. And then she said, but, but unfortunately a lot of the stuff ended upstairs in an extra bedroom. And I would be like, "No, no, no, no. That's totally fine. Contain it. Time test it. Create some separation from it. It's part of the process and now you can systematically start to work through it, but it's contained. It's not in your main living spaces. You're getting to feel how good it feels to live with so little in your main living areas. And now, and you're building your decluttering muscles and now when you start to work through that, especially because she's in our membership community and she's going to have the support of all of us around her reminding her why we're doing this and how to work through those things, she's going to be able to get through that stuff. That is not a failure. And I know we'll often hear about like stuff shuffling. I'm going to do a video on that coming up, you know, oh, you know, make a decision now. Don't defer the decisions. Well, in a perfect world, yes, that would be wonderful. It doesn't always work that way. This stuff is complicated, right? A relationship with this stuff is is complicated.

Awesome. Okay. Is your class with, uh, Don, Dana, and Cass worth the price? I'm low on funds and we need and need to save up. I will tell you this. We do have a payment plan. Okay. So, there's two things right now I can help you with. We have our all-day declutter coming up on Saturday in the Take Your House Back course. I do that with Cass and Dana. It's an awesome day. We do eight hours of live decluttering. Like, we are coaching you through it. We do a hosted replay on Sunday. So, if you can't join in on Saturday, it's awesome. Uh, huge quick jump start. You can get a ton done and hope our hope is that momentum then carries you. On the other hand, uh, my membership community is day in, day out support. Right. Again, I'm in there every day except Sundays. We do our classes together. We do live decluttering together. You have the support of the body doubling twice a day. They're both awesome. If you can only choose one, I would probably go with the membership because it's the, the ongoing support and a lot of us need that right now. Uh, most of the members in our membership are also in Take Your House Back, too, because Cass and Dana and I, it's a blast. I mean, well, Cass is, Cass is awesome and it's the only way to get access to Cass like this on a, you know, on a regular basis. We do other lives in there too throughout the year. And so we do the live declutter or the all-day declutters three times a year. And then we, every, every other week we're in there doing live Q&A and whatnot too. You can go back and watch all the past all-day declutters. So they're both awesome. Like it's like picking between children, right? But if you need ongoing support, that is how I tailored my, our membership community. Again, if you join now at $22 a month, it will never go up. You can quit anytime. And I give you a 30-day guarantee. So if you join, you're like, "Nah, it's not quite what I was looking for," or it wasn't quite the right fit, just ask for your money back. No questions asked. We'll just give it to you. And also with the Take Your House Back course, it's on sale for $94 right now. You can do a payment plan into three, one-year money-back guarantee. Um, we want to help you declutter, right? Often you need to invest a little, right? And that helps us to, um, put more effort into it and, and keep up with it. But, um, the main goal is just to stuff out of your house. Get stuff out of your house, right?

Uh, I have 20 cats and clean constantly. I have a decluttered house, but have to keep certain things to manage the cats. But I feel like all I do is clean. I would challenge you to go further with decluttering. So, what I'm trying to teach my kids right now is that everything in life is trade-offs. And so, I love that you have 20 cats and also that would be, that would require a lot of cleaning, right? That's just like if you had 20 kids, it would require a lot of cleaning, right? If you have four kids, it requires, if you have one kid, it requires a lot of cleaning. And so if that's, if, if we're going to, we have that, that's awesome. We have a value for a clean and tidy house, we probably have to go further with decluttering. Like I said, my house is practically bare right now and I'm only just keeping up on the cleaning and the groceries and the meal planning and the activities and all that and working full-time and everything. And so we have to, there's always going to be trade-offs. So, if you want 20 cats in a clean house, you probably have to get rid of more stuff so it's easier to clean. We often don't realize again, the inventory is what's taking away from the ease of being able to do this. So, anything that you choose, right? Like often we have to lower the inventory if we want it to be easy.

I'm decluttering kids and choice crafts. How do you deal with kids that might remember something you got rid of? I can't have them part of the process. Yeah. Uh, or they will want to keep everything, ages five and seven. So, instead of saying like, "Well, then we just have to keep everything because they're going to remember it." What I do, um, I mean, I threw away a book of gauges that he really liked a lot, right? Um, and to, and so I said, "Buddy, how do you want me to make this up? Should we go for a walk together? Do you want to make cookies?" Whatever. I always offer like time together instead of the thing. Nine out of ten times, and with any of the other kids that would have worked with this particular book that was from Five and Below, he wanted that book back. I went there, they didn't still have it. I found one on Amazon, had to pay $15 instead of $5 for it, but I got it. That is the only time I've had to replace anything of the kids. And so, what I want to model them is that we don't need to be perfect, but if we would accidentally get rid of something that's really special to you, I'll own up to it and I'll ask you what I can do to make it right. And again, I'm always offering doing something together because again, usually our kids actually just want time with us and our attention and not the stuff. Um, and so I'll be like, "Oh, hey, you know, I noticed you weren't using it, so I thought it was okay to get rid of it or to share it with others, but I'm sorry." And, you know, maybe in the future I'll ask you, maybe I won't. I don't want to offer that unless I'm going to follow through with that. But I want to model to them that, hey, I'm doing the best I can. I believe we all do better in a simplified space, and if I mess up, I can own up to it.

Yeah, I love this. You know, struggling parting with homeschool curricula as it represents sadness to me, 1,000%. I had to stop due to developing chronic health condition. Yeah. And so I don't want to keep anything in my house that makes me feel sad. And so pick out a few things that are when you're able to re-engage it. It's totally okay to stop if we're just like too much. Can't do it right now. Don't have the bandwidth for it. Going through sentimental stuff or emotionally loaded stuff takes a lot of extra energy and so totally okay to stop and back burner it, right? So, nothing wrong with that. When you're ready to re-engage it, what is really helpful is to have a memory bin, a container, a safe spot where most special memories go and say, go in with the mindset, I'm going to pick out a few very special things that are going in my memory box and then the goal is for the rest of the stuff to go. I get it though why that would bring up, you know, sadness. Absolutely.

Um, as a YouTuber, how do you balance wanting to get stuff out of your house like yesterday and also wanting to document it for making content or the process? That's my current struggle. Yeah, I'll tell you what. Um, you know, some were like, "Don, thank you for doing that. You didn't have to do that for us. Whatever." It's not about me. I feel so strongly that everyone right now would thrive in a simplified house. Again, stuff is easy to come by. Peace is not. That I, I mean, I would, I would do much worse than that to help, uh, inspire anyone to move stuff out. What I'm currently struggling with is knowing that the all-day declutter is on Saturday. We're starting out in storage spaces. I need to show how to declutter a storage space and so like moving the stuff into the basement and I have a few other things down there that I'll show too, but wanting to be able to show this. And so I am intentionally, like I have a bin of bathroom clutter. I have extra clothes that I'll use like to show decluttering. So that is my only real struggle is I do like to be able to show it like real stuff, real time. But now I would get all of that stuff out of my house and I, but I'm like, I got to have some clutter to show and, you know, having variety is good. So, but I'll do like, that's not, I mean, it's not like a burden. Like what an honor that this is what I get to do and so if I have to keep some extra bins of crap to show it, like I will do that all day long, right? But yeah, I was balancing having extra clutter around versus just getting it out.

So, um, how much does the declutter camp cost? So, again, it just goes on inside of our membership. So, if you join our membership at the price of $22 a month, you're in. There's no extra cost for any of the stuff that we do inside of our membership community. It just all takes place in there. Uh, we just know that, um, as humans, we actually get bored very quickly. And so we need novelty. We need new. We need different spins on things. We need different challenges often to go further than we think with decluttering. Every time we do our thousand item challenge, so many women say, "I didn't think I was going to do it." We have like a tracking sheet. I, I was just, we can say you can shoot for 100, 500. You don't have to go for a thousand, right? Hands down, we see all these like thousand sheets come in. They're like, "I didn't think I could do it. I could do it." Right? And so, we need people to push us, to remind us how capable we actually are. We disqualify ourselves, especially as women, uh, so quick and easily. And it's, it's really unfortunate to me because we are capable of so much, but again, I think our environment is sabotaging us. It just keeps telling us, you suck, you suck, you suck. Right? And it's not true. We are smart and we are brilliant and we are good problem solvers and we are tough, right? We have gone through really hard things, a lot harder things than homeschool curriculum or photos, right? But we get into it and we get turned around and we second guess ourselves and we don't want to make a mistake and will I survive making a mistake? Yes, you will survive making a mistake and we will be here to remind you of that and it's totally okay and probably it wasn't even actually a mistake and probably it won't even happen again very soon, right? Um, like we can survive it. And so I, I just want to keep telling you that like go further than you think. Go further than you think. What is on the other side is so much better than any of this stuff than this false promise, this false security, this false hope of this stuff that we've been keeping. I know it's emotionally loaded. I know it takes time. I know it takes energy. And not all of us have a lot of physical energy either. I know. I understand. I've, I've gotten to walk aside, thou, alongside thousands of women now to go through this process. I know like we know all of the things that are going to come up during the process and we're like, I got you. This is how we do this. Do this instead. Get a time will tell bin. Jump on. I'm so sorry our internet went out, but I think it was a sign that I'm supposed to stop now. So, I love you. I hope you have a really good day and I'll see you again soon.