Getting Rid of Clutter Part 1- Blog Post

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You are listening to episode 6 of the Busy Mom’s Survival Guide.

Welcome to the Busy Mom’s Survival Guide where we discuss making the most of your family’s health, time and money. I’m your host PJ Jonas and I’m here to help you make the most of each day despite your busy schedule.

Welcome back, I am very excited about today’s special episode. I’ve asked my friend Lori Lynch to join me today to talk with me about the subject of clutter. I think this is a really important topic because so many moms and women live their lives in a constant state of being overwhelmed, and I think a major cause of this is the fact that we are surrounded by too much stuff, it’s everywhere.

Right now, I am joined by my good friend Lori Lynch, and she is a survivor of the tornadoes that just went through here that you guys have heard me talk about and I’ve asked her to join me today because pretty much in an instant everything that she had was gone and I figure that she’s got a really unique perspective on what clutter is and what’s truly important to her life.

PJ Jonas: Hi Lori.

Lori Lynch: Hello PJ thank you so much for letting me join you here and I just want to say thank you to everyone that’s listening, that just helped in any way during this traumatic experience that we had. We had people ship clothes in, gift cards, cash, we even had farm fresh eggs, one of the 21 year old choose not to have her birthday gifts and she put together a toiletry bags for us and which we are still using right now in our rental house. So we really appreciate all that help. Thank you so much.

PJ Jonas: It was amazing to us the response from people. People really just wanted to do something practical and it is so nice to hear how much that had actually helped.

Lori Lynch: It was wonderful because that first few days you don’t have clothes, you don’t shoes, you don’t have socks, you don’t have underwear, you don’t have belts, you don’t have gloves, and anything like that, that you needed. Tell you what, clothes came in quickly so then we just had to grab and sort through and figure out what each child can wear for the day and got the ball rolling.

PJ Jonas: Yeah it was amazing and we weren’t even directly affected, and it was amazing to watch. You’ve got in your hand your journal and you want to tell everybody what you did a couple of days ago?

Lori Lynch: Yea, I’ve been journaling little bits by little bits after the tornado and of course the first couple of weeks was such a whirlwind I didn’t get, whirlwind that’s kind of funny. I didn’t get a chance to write too much, but I’ve written a little bit here and there and on the month date, the anniversary date of the tornado, that morning, early in the morning I could not sleep. It reminded me a lot of that first, the night after the tornado when I had not seen the house yet, my husband and 20 year old had gone over there to see it, and I’m just imagining, I’m laying there in bed just imagining what it was going to look like, my stuff was thrown all over the field, what was left of it. We are going to have 75 people there picking through my stuff the next day and I wanted to get there so quickly so that I could just take it all in before everybody else got there to help. So a month after when I was not sleeping well, so I decided to write a little bit about the whole thing.

So I entitled this More of What Matters, Less of What Doesn’t: “In my mind’s eye, I see myself walking through certain areas of my home a month and a day ago, opening up cabinets or looking into bookshelves and asking myself, what in here is really, really, really important to me? When compared with the quantity of stuff that I had and the quantity of stuff that most people have, very few items met the criteria and thus got packed. I had journals for each child in which I had written letters to them and jotted down weights, heights and other memorable events and I grabbed baby books; a tote of pictures still on the back porch that we had just been looking through recently and it hadn’t gotten to the barn yet. I packed some family videos David had put together but not all of them. After all we packed up and gone to mom and dad’s before because of the threat of a tornado, we had no basement but they do, only to bring everything back and put it back into place. I had someone get the computer’s brain, I don’t know what exactly that’s called, I got my Bible, an extra set of clothing for each child, and Dave and I, I’ve got a special bracelet that Dave got for me, and I saved my favorite pair of shoes that mom and dad had got me from Pacers and Racers Running Store for my last few birthdays. I made sure the little boys had a special stuffed animal or blanket, I got the case of CD’s that are backed up copies of most of our digital pictures from the last 8 years or so. I got our bills and some important paper work. I got a small pile together of favorite home school stuff which I think I must have left on the bed because I haven’t found it yet. There are more things I would have grabbed had I known that this was not just a fire drill.”

“But over the 4 or 5 hours, I had to leisurely walk through my house, it produced very few physical items I viewed as really important, God was preparing me for that Friday even earlier that week. I went to the barn which contained many blue Rubbermade totes all neat and labeled on steady shelving Dave and the boys made for me a few years back, only to look at the tote of Arby’s Christmas glasses I bought for a dollar a piece at least 25 or 30 years ago but have not been used in about 10 years because I would forget about them and thought, Why am I keeping these?” Another day, it was the three totes of Christmas decorations, I thought to myself, “I’ll ask Dave if we can get rid of these, because a lot of these pieces are broken, ornaments and…” The morning of the 2^nd, I was putting away miscellaneous books that were laying in the barn into totes and my daughter Whitney came out to see what I was doing. We both laughed after I said, “I’m getting this books all nice in totes so when the tornado comes, they’ll be neat as they tumble in the wind”. Little did I know what would actually happen. People question our family several times, “How can you be so lighthearted and joke about all this?” You see I’m getting to play out what I already knew but didn’t have the confidence to do myself, clear the clutter, the things that didn’t really matter out of my life. To me it feels like a good spring cleaning, for my physical house, yes, but more importantly for my emotional and spiritual parts. Why do we want more and more of the stuff that doesn’t give you that “ahh” feeling, that stuff that robs us so much of our life, our times, our finances, even our relationships with God and others. They give us no peace of mind, no joy, no love. Next time you are falling over your belongings, saying to yourself as you stand at the entrance of your garage, “I’ve got to get rid of some of this stuff”, take heed. God could always allow a tornado. It’s a sure fire clean out method, but probably simpler in the long run if you just did it yourself, believe me. Then give a heartfelt embrace to your nearest available loved one and cherish the moment.”

PJ Jonas: That was beautiful, I loved that. I can’t believe that you wrote that before I even asked you to do this.

Lori Lynch: Perfect timing.

PJ Jonas: I know. But I said that when I asked you to do it and you said I actually just journaled about that, I thought isn’t that one of God’s coincidences.

Lori Lynch: I feel… yeah it is one of those strange blessings that most people would probably not even understand, but anything that clutters, it’s like other areas in our lives that we need to deal with and we either don’t know how to or we don’t make the effort to do it. Even though most people will not consider a tornado a blessing, I view it as that. Yeah there are sad things too, there are things that we’ve missed and that we will miss along the way, probably 6 months down the road, a year down the road and we’ll say oh, we don’t have that anymore. It was my great grandmother’s, the children’s when they were little or something like that. There have been a lot of things like that and there will be more, but I think that there’s a lot of good that can come out of this.

PJ Jonas: As you are filling up your rental house and you are now purchasing some things, I know you are not buying a lot yet until your house is rebuilt but, what are some of those things that you are saying; no, not going to get that again. Is there something that stands out like that?

Lori Lynch: I think what I have just realized is that you’ve got to have a goal, you’ve got to know what you are going for. If my goal with my children is to raise children that have excellent character, and a heart for God, and a heart for others, then my purchases are going to reflect that. I think we often times just kind of take in a little bit of this, a little bit of that because somebody said it is a really good stuff, or it was a really good deal. There is a number of things but I think until we have a goal set in our mind, what is my goal for my life, for my children, for my house, then we are going to constantly be buying things we don’t need to be buying.

PJ Jonas: I agree. You said oh that it is a really good deal, I think so many things that you pick up, oh I might use this down the line, it’s on sale now, you just have to get past that. But do I need it, is it something I’m going to use today, not down the line, not what if. I call it the frugal clutter, all that stuff that we have just because someday we might need it.

Lori Lynch: Exactly.

PJ Jonas: That can be blessing other people. That can be out of your house, out of your life and if you need it, you just have to trust that it’s going to come back to you then, or you can always go out and buy it then if it is something you truly need.

Lori Lynch: I think it is residual from the depression mentality that grandparents or great-grandparents lived through, so they kept all the Tupperware containers and the pieces of aluminum foil that were cleaned you know all that. And we still do that thing today, and I think there is a difference between being frugal and being wise in your purchases and having stuff because you are afraid you are not going to have it when you need it.

PJ Jonas: Why do you think so many people have trouble physically taking the step to get the garbage bag, put the stuff in and take it out and donate it?

Lori Lynch: I wish I knew, because that was such a hard thing for me. I knew I had so many………..most of ours was probably home school books and papers. That was a thing that we tend to collect more.

PJ Jonas: I’m ruthless, when it comes to the clutter, I am ruthless, and I have no desire to keep it. My big thing is my digital camera is my best friend and anything that the children think that they can possibly want, they get a digital photograph taken, put in their file on the computer and I get rid of it. I am really ruthless when it comes to clutter.

Lori Lynch: Well I have to say that I did come across some pictures that were where we lived in our previous home eleven years ago, I had to go through a lot of things. I had tons of papers, mementos, and all sorts of stuff. And I did resort to taking pictures of some of my five-year-olds, things they would make for me; I grouped together and take a picture of them. I saw some of those recently and I thought they were cute and I was glad I had the picture, and I could not imagine keeping all that stuff. I would have had boxes and boxes and totes of all this stuff. What I found that were really precious to me since the tornado were things like the journals that my children had done, they had maybe read a book and they had drawn pictures of it, or they had written down how they were blessed that day and drew a picture of it, those things are very special. It is not the coloring book, it is not the work book or anything like that. It’s just the stuff that came from the heart.

PJ Jonas: How have they dealt with having their possessions gone, why don’t you tell everybody how old your kids are so they know.

Lori Lynch: My oldest is 20, Whitney is 20, and Eliza is 15 and they shared a room, and so they were able to recover some of their things. Not a whole lot, all their clothes were gone, some like journals and things like that, but most of their other things were gone. Our oldest son is 18 and he shared a room with our 15 year old, they recovered absolutely nothing from their room. We don’t know where it went, we know a lot of things were in our field, or we found a few things up at the neighbors’ maybe a mile and a mile and half up the road, we never found anything from the boys’ room. Now right outside of the room, I had a bookshelf of antique books, we did find those, they were ruined but we did find those. So it’s like they just went into this black hole somewhere, probably between here and Cincinnati. They have dealt remarkably well. When I think of losing, we have pictures, you know I’ve got lots of pictures of the home and I’ve got some of their younger scrapbook, like, kind of stuff too, but anything from say the last 7 or 8 years that would be personal items for them or anything like that they don’t have. They’ve handled that remarkably well. In fact my 18 year old when I was talking to him a couple of weeks after the tornado, I wanted to really know how he really felt about the whole thing, he had had journals, he journaled every day for like the past few years and all of his journals were gone, and that makes me as a mom just sad. I said to him, “Alex, how are you feeling after this whole thing?”, and he said, “Well mom I really just feel…” and he paused 3 or 4 seconds and he said, “free”.

PJ Jonas: Interesting.

Lori Lynch: Very interesting from an 18 year old who had collected history books and he loved history and just had his room full of things that were his and he said he felt free.

PJ Jonas: You know that right there is such a lesson for all of us because that is what I keep saying, I mean, the clutter in our house it just ties us down whether we realize it or not, it is this weight on our shoulders of stuff we have to clean, stuff we have maintain stuff we have to organize, and it is just…

Lori Lynch: I think that’s a big key, that’s a big thought you know. It’s there whether you realize that it’s there and it’s bothering you or not, it probably is bothering you at the back of your mind. I’ve got 2 other children, Timothy and Ethan. Ethan is 7 and Timothy just turned 4 last week, and I don’t think they had anything from their room either. I had saved a few things when we went over to my parent’s house, but I don’t think that they had anything from their room either. But as a whole, my children have handled this extremely well. My 13 year old was very sad for a couple weeks and definitely not herself, but she’s gotten over that hump and they are excited to be where we are right now and they are excited that we are going to be building a new house. They’ve been very busy especially the older ones at the property, cleaning up and working with all sorts of people from the community and outside the community that have just come to give give give give. And so it has been very interesting.

PJ Jonas: Yeah I mean forgetting the clutter aspect to it, the whole tornado. Not that you would ever wish this kind of thing on anybody but, it has been amazing to me to watch the character building that has gone on in my own children directly because of it. We went, Brett that first couple of days, she just stayed here which was hard for her to do that we were going out and helping people, she just stayed here and literally did not stop typing out email responses and Facebook responses to people who were trying, wanted to do something, she gave out addresses and she just kept saying over and over, “I just feel so good to help, I’m just so glad that we can help”.

Lori Lynch: I tell you what, it’s those little things that really matter too. What I saw was that so many people did so many different things, but it all came together. I had my friend Heather she took upon herself the project of my photographs which a lot of them were wet, muddy in our field and for 4 or 5 days whenever anybody collected any photographs, she would get them and she would clean them up as best as she could, she said she had it laid out all over her house. She had fans all around drying those, she had journals, any journal that she found, and she would dry those out. So that was a precious thing to do.

But there are so many aspects, so many things that people did that in and of itself doesn’t feel like a big thing. You know Brett would have loved to have been out, but she was doing such an important job right here.

PJ Jonas: Yeah. You have to tell everybody about your high school diploma, I think this is a really cool thing what that lady did.

Lori Lynch: Yeah. I guess about probably 2 days after the tornado, we were at my parent’s house and my brother called me and said you are not going to believe this. He said your high school diploma is on Facebook. I hadn’t even missed it yet, it is not one of those things I put on my priority list, but he said it’s on there and for the next few weeks it got on CNN, on Weather Channel, it got just all over the place, USA Today newspaper had it and it was just amazing.

PJ Jonas: But it was found in Cincinnati?

Lori Lynch: Yeah, found in Cincinnati. We have 5 things that have actually been found in Cincinnati, there are some websites, a couple of Facebook pages that you can go to, to see if any of your stuff is there or you can post some stuff if you found it. But it is so cool, just so cool.

PJ Jonas: Just to give those people who don’t live in this area an idea, Cincinnati is what, 2, 3 hours from here?

Lori Lynch: It is about at least 100 miles away from here. We’ve found things; people in Henryville have found things close to 150 miles from here. A lot of papers were up in the tornado winds and then just got deposited that far away in Cincinnati. So with Facebook, some of the things have been able to be recovered and I tell you what, when you see a picture of your child from 15 years ago and it’s on Facebook, and you realize, “oh wow, that’s so cool” and they’ll mail it back to you. And the lady with my diploma, she was so kind, it wasn’t that dirty but it was a little bit muddy, she cleaned it up as best she could and put a picture of their local newspaper article which said “Days of Destruction”, and she framed the whole thing and she sent it back to me along with a donation too.

PJ Jonas: It was such an encouragement to see people coming together; I just keep coming back to that. You can look around at America in so many respects and be so sad at just how selfish so many people have become and how much money people spend on stuff that is meaningless and the waste of all of it, and the “I need the stuff”. And then you see something like this happen and then you see there are people out there who put people ahead of stuff and sacrifice themselves and do things. Like you said, there were people driving down from hours and hours away just to help clean up, just to go in the mud and pick things. One of our other friends had Christmas  tree lights in her yard, and she had a lady come spend hours picking up all the Christmas tree lights out of the yard because it needed to be removed.

Lori Lynch: So many things you don’t think of. You know when you have a disaster like this, there are just pieces of stuff all over the place and you salvage some of it, you through away some of it, but it’s all going to be cleared up. We had lady who is from about 3 or 4 hours north of here and she said when Katrina hit, she just really wanted to go down there and she didn’t and she listed 2 or 3 other disasters that she really wanted to go to and just didn’t so when this hit, she said I have got to go. And she came down and she basically adopted our family for 4 or 5 days, started a blog, her quilting group took part in it too and they donated handmade quilts for our sons and there have just been so many neat things. There is a prison up about 3 hours north of here and one of the churches came down that does a ministry with them and the prisoners they make quilts. And so we got several of their quilting. Now those things you can’t buy at Kohl’s, you can’t buy. They are going to have such meaning for years and you are going to be able to tell that this came from so and so in the prison. There’s a story with it.

PJ Jonas: And that becomes something that, to get back to the clutter, it’s something that you can use. The things that you can use that also have a memory, those are the things that you can keep, and those are the things that are important. We talked about all of these memories like you said before, all the papers and the drawings and the macaroni necklaces, all of that stuff that yeah those are memories, but you can’t keep totes of them overflowing because (a) you just don’t look at it (b) it is meaningless. This is something that combines both of that, something useful and something that’s a memory, that’s awesome.

Lori Lynch: I’m trying to remember what my daughter had written on the outside of my memorabilia tote, it was something like, she had probably written this 4 or 5 years ago when we were decluttering stuff in the garage. I think she wrote “stuff to keep just because we want to keep it”. It wasn’t necessarily meaningful, it was just that we just decided we were going to keep the stuff and it’s funny because half that stuff was still in the tote the next morning when I saw it and half the stuff was who knows where, one of the things was the diploma that landed in Cincinnati. So you know even if you do keep all the stuff, you may never really get to keep all the stuff because of a tornado.

PJ Jonas: And I also found out too that time changes those things that you want to keep just because you want to keep them. You put it in a tote, you go back a year later and get rid of a third of it and you go back a year after that and another half of it goes, as long as you keep going through it and not just continue to add tote after tote after tote.

Lori Lynch: Set a yearly time, some people do this around Christmas, the New Year, when they’ve got a little break and they’ll just go through. That’s why part of our pictures were on the back porch because we had brought them in in January, it is kind of a down time, and so we look through pictures. If you have collected your children’s stuff from the last year, well look through it and see what is actually going to be in some that you want to keep.

PJ Jonas: I’m a big fan too of if it is something you want to keep and see, it should be framed up on the wall so you can see it. We are so busy even in down times to sit and go through 5 or 6 totes that just takes time so I like things that you can stick on the wall. But I’ve already said, I’m the queen of declutter, I like to get rid of all of it, which is interesting for me because Jim is so not, he would keep everything if I let him. It has been a very interesting marriage as he tries to keep things and I try to get rid of them.

Lori Lynch: At our old house, we would go back and my husband would drag things down to the road as we bought my grandparents’ house and some of their stuff was actually stuff that they gave to me, stuff that we really didn’t need to keep and year after year and I would drag stuff down to the road and I would wait until he was at work or asleep and I would drag a bag out of the house, it was bad and yeah, I’m not like that anymore.

PJ Jonas: You had to let it go, especially after this.

Lori Lynch: Yes exactly, perspective changes.

PJ Jonas: When I find that with the children, if I’m cleaning out their room because they are really hard, they don’t like to clean it out so I do it, I’ll just take a garbage bag and fill up the garbage bag and put the garbage bag in the corner and if they don’t ask for anything in the garbage bag in a week, it is out of there. And if they ask for it, I dig through and I take the stuff out and I give them the thing they asked for back and the rest of it goes, because they don’t even know most of the time although I did get rid of Indigo’s Rapunzel doll which I didn’t think she played with but the next day after I got rid of it, she started crying for it and so I felt really bad.

Lori Lynch: Yeah, we’ve done that and saved it maybe for a little bit longer, I don’t remember applying periods, but you know put it out in the garage, if they haven’t asked for it, it’s probably not that major of a thing in their lives.

PJ Jonas: Because I’ve always said that for every 100 things you get rid of, there’s going to be one thing you regret getting rid of. But you can’t keep the 99 things just because of that one thing. You’ve lost everything, you’ll get over it. There’ll be a little pang every once in a while, but you’ve got your family, you’ve got your children and then…..

Lori Lynch: And then we move on.

PJ Jonas: Yeah.

Lori Lynch: Move on without so much clutter.

PJ Jonas: Yes and freedom. I love that, it shows so much maturity that Alex said that.

PJ Jonas: And just really the perspective, I know I love watching garbage of stuff go out of my house. I love it. My kids cry the whole time but I love it. I’m mean, what can I say?

Thank you so much for doing this, thank you for sharing your journal with us and all of that.

Lori Lynch: Thank you for helping us through your business, just to help us to get up on our feet, we really appreciate it.

PJ Jonas: We are so glad we were able to do it. Although I’ll still tell you that she mentioned that before, that one of our customers came to our house and she said, “We don’t have much to give, but I do have eggs from my chickens that are grass-fed and could somebody use these?” and I said, “Absolutely”. I brought them to Lori and that was giving up those good healthy grass-fed chicken eggs was probably one of the hardest things that I had to do, but I said now you know how much I love you that I’ve given you the chicken eggs.

Lori Lynch: That’s the mark of a good friend; she’ll pass on something to you. And there was also the day that I got home at our rental house, and there was a box and it said from Fairy Tale Brownies, and it was brownies. And it was wonderful; it was just what I needed for the day.

PJ Jonas: People know that and God knows just what we need, when we need it. I am so glad you are safe, I am so glad you left the house and went to your parents and it missed, because we, people know that we saw it. We sat on our back porch and we saw the hurricane and we knew it was headed right for you guys and when it was past and we got into the car, we could not get to you because the trees were down and we didn’t have anything, turning around and going the opposite way was one of the hardest things because you didn’t know what was on the other side. We didn’t know if you were there, we didn’t know if you had left, and you just pray and you just wait and you keep waiting and you are checking Facebook constantly for someone to say we are okay. When Alex said the house was gone I was like oh my, because it was, it was gone.

Lori Lynch: Definitely down to rubble. And it is one of those things that I want everybody to hear that you always think it is going to happen to someone else. There is value in not believing that, and there is value in taking some preparations, some precautions. I was glad over the last ten years, I’ve decluttered as much as I did, because your house it looks like a tornado came through, you know, when you have all your stuff just sitting over the whole place, but if I had not decluttered, oh my goodness.

PJ Jonas: It would have gone beyond Cincinnati to Dayton.

Lori Lynch: Oh yes.

PJ Jonas: It’s not something that you ever wish on anybody, but you sure do grow from it. God just really grows you during those trials.

Lori Lynch: And it is definitely one of those things that…you know just seeing our community come together and seeing all the people that have helped initially and that are still helping. There are groups that are setting up long term assistance to try to rebuild the town and on Facebook there is a $100 relief fund that has been started, and there are others too and it is just, those are the people that are going to stay, they are going to do the long haul, the months, and we need all the types of people helping in a situation like this because when you are in a devastating situation no matter what it is, you can’t be the one to rebuild everything. You are just so focused on your own than any other people.

PJ Jonas:  And you guys are going back to your home, to the land, you are going back to rebuild all of that and there are people who have not, they can’t do it.

Lori Lynch: Lots of people without insurance. And it kind of scares people too, there’s lots of scared people that it is going to come back, you cannot live your life like that. You don’t know that wherever you move to, there’s going to be some type of a disaster that can occur and you cannot live your life that, live in fear like that.

PJ Jonas: Agreed.

Well thanks to Lori for taking the time out to join me on my podcast episode today. I’m so thankful that Lori was able to share some of her experiences and what she learned from the tornado. I truly hope that it encourages you to rid your house of all the excess stuff that is weighing you down, because I don’t know about you, but I long to feel the freedom that her son Alex expressed.

Now, it is time for our survival guide tip and that is to get rid of it today, just do it. Gather up some garbage bags and start to collect all of those things that aren’t important and that you are not using, take them to a local donation center and donate them. Get them to the people who really need them, you’ll feel a lot better. You can try and do 2 or 3 garbage bags a day; it is really not that difficult once you put your mind to it.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Busy Mom’s Survival Guide, I hope you’ve enjoyed listening and that you are motivated to start removing the clutter from your home and from your life. Join me on the next episode where I’m going to continue the clutter discussion by talking more in depth on the types of clutter, how to declutter the difficult things that your family wants to keep, and then how to organize the stuff that is left behind. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, please leave me a comment on the blog post at www.pjjonas.com or rate this episode on iTunes. You can also call my feedback line at (240) 230-SOAP. So until next time, I’m PJ Jonas and I’m praying that you take the time to free yourself of the clutter that is weighing you down.

Getting Rid of Clutter Part 1- Blog Post

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Getting Rid of Clutter Part 2- Blog Post

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You are listening to episode 7 of the Busy Mom’s Survival Guide.

Welcome to the Busy Mom’s Survival Guide where we discuss making the most of your family’s health, time and money. I’m your host PJ Jonas and I’m here to help you make the most of each day despite your busy schedule.

Today we are going to continue talking about clutter. I hope you were able to listen to last week’s episode; I was joined by my friend Lori who lost her house and almost all of her possessions in the tornado that struck our area in March. We had such a great conversation and it was a wonderful lesson on how free we can feel when we get rid of the clutter in our lives that really does weigh us down.

Today I’ll be talking more in depth about the types of clutter and how to actually remove it from your home. Later on I’ll be joined by Jim and we’ll get his take on how he has dealt with me constantly  decluttering his stuff over the years.

I’m going to share something that happened this past week. The day that Lori and I recorded the podcast, I decluttered my kitchen junk drawer, nobody had listened to the podcast yet. I don’t think that anybody, other than Brett who always knows everything that goes on around here, even knew what the topic was. Now as I told everyone last week, I am a decluttering maniac, so the children are fairly used to finding things emptied or rearranged or missing. Anyway, that evening Colter was helping with dinner and he opened the junk drawer and he said “Wow, it is so much easier to find things in there now, thanks Mom”. Isn’t that awesome! It was so encouraging to me because I personally always feel lighter after decluttering but I’m pretty sure that was the first time that one of my children ever expressed pleasure at the results, so I just really wanted to share that with you.

I’ve mentioned before that people are always asking me how I get so much accomplished despite everything I have going on. If you’re new to my podcast, I’m a wife and home schooling mom of eight children plus I run Goat Milk Stuff, our growing home business where we make goat milk soap with the milk from our own dairy goats. I’m a super busy mom but one of the reasons that I can get so much done is because I constantly battle the clutter in our lives, constantly. Whether it’s time clutter, physical clutter, emotional clutter or debt clutter, it doesn’t matter the type, I wage war against them daily on a constant desire to simplify. My husband will often hear me say that I am convinced that entropy is stronger in my house. This is partly true because I have 8 young entropy magnets and if you don’t remember your high school physics lessons on entropy, entropy simply means that things naturally tend to go from order to disorder. What that means for our day to day lives is that if we don’t interfere, things will progressively become more chaotic and more disordered in our homes all by themselves.

So why am I talking about entropy? The reason is because clutter is one of the end results of entropy and if you want a peaceful home and less chaos in your life you’ve got to fight against clutter. I really think that for most people the battle against clutter is mostly a mental battle, because the battle against clutter never ends. Entropy doesn’t simply decide to stop one day. You have to realize that it is something you need to always battle against. You know, you can have your home completely uncluttered and organized and if you never worked on it again a month or six weeks or a year later it will be worse than it is now. You can’t just listen to this podcast episode, get all excited and declutter your house. You’ve got to decide to live a simple life style and declutter regularly.

Clutter actually applies to many areas of our lives. It applies to our homes, our minds, our finances and our relationships. Today I’m going to focus on our homes and our physical stuff. I do want to take a moment to define clutter. There are all sorts of definitions out there but to me clutter is anything that you don’t use. I’ve seen a lot of definitions that say that clutter is anything that you don’t use or that you don’t love, but I think you have to be really careful with that love part. We can justify just about anything with that phrase, so to me anything that you don’t use really has no business being in your home. Now before you take that definition to be too strict I will tell you that for me I do use some things such as artwork simply to bring beauty or pleasure in my life and that counts. I use photo albums to foster memories and closer relationships, so it doesn’t have to be a kitchen gadget that you’re using, it can be something else as well. Really, if you have items in your home that you don’t use, then those items are just wasting space in your home and in your life and they’re causing you stress and they’re creating disorder. Not to mention that they are taking your time because they need to be maintained. You know, even photos that you put on the wall need to be dusted periodically, so really, everything in your home takes time from your life.

For some people decluttering is not easy. When I married Jim he was a complete pack rat. He was raised with that thrifty New England mentality that you don’t get rid of anything because you might need it someday. A lot of that mentality actually came out of the Great Depression, but it’s also stronger in some regions than others. Honestly it’s something I didn’t understand and it caused some tension early in our marriage when I would get rid of stuff that Jim felt he needed. Over the years I’ve become more sensitive about his stuff and asking him first before I get rid of it. I still do get rid of some his things that I know he hasn’t used without asking. Now if that happens, if I get rid of something that he feels he needs, he tends to just shake his head because he’s kind of gotten used to it. But it is something that you do have to deal with in a marriage if one of you likes to keep things and one of you likes to get rid of them.

If you’re more like Jim than you are like me, you may need some convincing as to why getting rid of clutter is so important. For Jim he keeps everything because he might need it someday and he doesn’t want to spend the money to buy it later on. He’s super frugal and the thing that I really want you and him to realize is that clutter actually costs you more than you think it does.

So I’ve sat down and I’ve come up with four things that clutter actually costs you just from having stuff in your house, extra stuff that you don’t use if I may clarify that.

First clutter costs you time. It costs you time because just by its essence, clutter tends to be disorganized which makes it hard to find an item when you actually need it. We waste a lot of time looking through our clutter for things we can’t find. If you’re looking for your car keys but can’t find them amongst the clutter it can cause you to be late, which also costs you time. But also if you’re one of those people who can find things amongst all your clutter, you’ve probably spent a lot of time organizing that clutter and not to mention all the time we spend cleaning our clutter. The bottom line is all that searching, organizing and cleaning is time that your clutter has cost you that you could have spent with your family.

The second way that clutter costs you is it costs you concentration because clutter is very distracting. Just on a basic level we humans seek organization out of chaos. It’s just how we are wired and if we are surrounded by chaos in the form of clutter, our subconscious is spending time thinking about it and that really tires us out and distracts us from the things that we should be thinking about. So it costs you concentration.

Third, clutter is going to cost you peace of mind. We need to recognize that clutter is stressful because it is always hanging over us. For some people it prevents us from inviting people into our homes. It can stress us out because it is always on our to-do list waiting to be dealt with. It also causes us to feel out of control, because when the clutter takes over our homes we are not the ones in control, our clutter is. Interestingly enough, there is actually a correlation between the amount of clutter in your home and being overweight and being in debt. Because if we are out of control with our clutter, we can also be out of control with our eating and our spending. I thought that was pretty interesting as I was doing some research.

Finally clutter is going to directly cost you money. It does this if you can’t find something you actually need and have to buy a duplicate. It also costs you the money you spent on the organizational stuff you purchased to try and organize the clutter that you really should have just gotten rid of, you know, things like baskets and organizers and storage bins. Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for those things in your house but it’s for the things we need and use everyday not for organizing our clutter. I want to be really clear about this, you cannot organize clutter, you have to get rid of it. Clutter also directly costs us money because it gets us used to stuff everywhere and makes us much more likely to continue to purchase items that we don’t really need. You’re going to be much pickier with the things you spend your money on if it has to earn a place in your home. In reality many of us waste huge amounts of money because we buy bigger houses than we really need in order to accommodate our stuff and our clutter. The size of the average home has increased dramatically and it’s really not because the average family size in America has been increasing. In 1950 the average new home was 983 square feet. In 2004, just 54 years later the average new home was 2349 square feet and that’s an increase of 238%. There are other factors despite clutter that is affecting that growth in home size, but you’ve got to admit that clutter is a huge part of it.

Those are the four reasons why I think clutter actually costs you. Now that, hopefully, I’ve convinced you that clutter can be negative in having extra things that you’re not using right now is negative, I want to talk about the many types of clutter and why people tend to keep those things. When I sat down and thought about it, I was actually able to come up with ten types of clutter. There are may be more, I might have missed something, but these are the ones that I could think of and want to discuss. They are not in any particular order, they are just kind of as I thought of them.

First we have memory lane clutter. This is one of the types of clutter that is hardest to get rid of. These are the things like baby clothes, pictures your children drew, tickets to your first ball game, your favorite t-shirt, or really anything that reminds you of a good memory or a happy time. The best way I have found to deal with this type of clutter is to use my digital camera. I simply take photos of these items and make them photo memories instead of the actual item memory. If the item is small enough you can also frame it or put it into a shadow box and hang it on the wall. Once you’ve done that then it’s something you’re actually using to beautify your home and it’s not clutter anymore. In my opinion all memory clutter really needs to be reduced to photo albums that you actually look through or it needs to be on your walls as mementos somewhere, because memory clutter that is just kept in storage bins is really pretty useless.

Second, there is frugal clutter. Frugal clutter is anything that you think to yourself I might need that someday, what will I do if I need it? It won’t be here and then I’ll be in trouble and I’ll actually have to buy it again. Worse yet, I might not be able to find it when I really need it. Those are the questions that come around when we think about our frugal clutter and for most people this is the sticking point to whether or not they are committed to simplifying and decluttering their lives. Because with frugal clutter you have to be ruthless. If you’ve not used it, or are not using it, or definitely will not be using it in the immediate future, and by immediate I mean a month or less, then get rid of it. I’ve always said to Jim that for every 100 things I get rid of I will regret getting rid of one of those things. But I simply cannot and will not hold on to 99 things that I don’t use and I don’t need for the sake of that one thing that might possibly come in handy someday.

You have to trust that you will be able to get it again, if you really do need it, but for the vast majority of things you’re going to find out that you really never needed them. And if you just get rid of all that frugal clutter you’ll be amazed at how much better you feel and really don’t beat yourself up if it turns out that you really did need something you got rid of, just be happy thinking that someone else needed it more and try and find a substitute. If you can’t find a substitute then you can go out and buy it again.

Third there is life clutter. This is the stuff that you accumulate just through normal living, things like extra packets of condiments from takeouts, school papers, extra rubber bands from the mail, duplicate wooden spoons, all those stuffed animals, doll clothes, and legos that keep getting added at birthdays and Christmas. Not to mention all the paper work that we’re constantly dealing with. It’s all that sort of stuff and you need to constantly stay on top of life clutter because by the definition it happens every day. With life clutter the best thing to do is to work to get your home where there is actually a place for everything and everything in its place. Because if you can get to there when you clean up in the evening, you can simply toss all those extra things, because they don’t have a home. Therefore they don’t belong. Just on a side note, I’m a big believer that if you choose to keep something, something new gets added to your house then something else has to leave.

Fourth I decided there was unfinished clutter and those are the things like the cross-stitch or the knitting project you began but never finished, or a model airplane you were saving to finish with your child one day. You know, things like that. This stuff is hard to get rid of because we’ve already put so much of our time and ourselves into it. But you need to ask yourself this question, “Do you have the time to finish this in the next month?” And if the answer is no, get rid of it. Because, you know, I don’t know about you, but if I have unfinished projects around, they make me feel so guilty and they make my to-do list feel like it’s never going to end. Because I feel like I need to get to them. If there is a project I am working on, that I am excited about or that I need, then I finish it, if not I just get rid of it. I don’t worry about it, and I don’t feel guilty about it. I know I can always start it again sometime in the future and will save that time and that space now and deal with it again later.

Fifth we have reference clutter and these are things you need to keep to refer to later on: things like the hours and the phone numbers for the doctor’s office, or the phone number and names of your new neighbor, or a Chinese takeout menu if you refer to it. Reference clutter is actually pretty easy, you just simply need to get rid of the stuff that you aren’t using, or you haven’t used, and you organize the stuff that you really need to keep for reference. For me, I have a central notebook where I keep all my reference clutter that’s actually needed. You can either punch a hole in it and put it in the notebook, or keep it in sheet protectors. If I want a Chinese menu, I just have a sheet protector and I just slide it right in there and its kept there and its always handy for when I need it.

Sixth, we have seasonal clutter and this is just what it sounds like, it’s things that you only use for one season or holiday. Christmas decorations are the classic seasonal clutter, leaf rakes are another example, the trick is to get this down to what is truly used seasonally and what is truly important. Most of us simply have too much stuff when it comes to seasonal clutter. We put up too many decorations; we keep all our broken ornaments; our lights that don’t work. Just get rid of this stuff, get your holiday decorations down to just what you love. You can take photos of all those ornaments that your children made when they were little and get rid of them if they are falling apart. You don’t need to keep the actual thing.  You can simplify your decorating and just get rid of the rest of it. Take your favorite Christmas decorations and save those. Not only will you be getting rid of extra stuff but you’re going to make the holidays so much less stressful because it’s just the things that you love and you can do it a lot more simply.

Seventh is broken and old clutter. This one is super easy, just toss it, just get rid of it. If you haven’t fixed it yet then you don’t really need it and you’re probably never going to get around to fixing it. If it is something you absolutely need fix it right now and use it. Because if it continues to sit in the broken pile then you don’t really need it just throw it out. Be careful, don’t try and pass your broken clutter on to anybody else this includes older electronics or electronic items that don’t work. It’s really not worth your time, just toss it if it’s broken.

Eight is freebie clutter. This is all the junk that is given out for free, either we take or that somebody gives us because they no longer want it. So many people have trouble with this because if it’s free, they don’t see the harm in taking it, but the trick with this is to never ever bring it into your home in the first place. Just say no and walk away. If somebody gives something to you, say thanks and get rid of it as soon as they leave. You don’t have to keep it just because they gave it to you because they didn’t want it. The only things like this from freebie clutter that you should ever keep are things that were already on your shopping or wish list, things that you were actually going to go out and buy. This will also include stuff that is a really good deal, so if you went to a garage sale (which I don’t recommend doing) and you saw a really good deal those will count in here as well. You’ve got to learn to say no to those really good deals, because most of the time it’s stuff that you don’t really need. Yes you’re not paying full price for it, but you’re paying less money for something you don’t really need and now you’ve got to keep it in your home.

Ninth is valuable clutter. This is everything that you spent a lot of money on in the past or you think is worth something. You don’t want to get rid of it because you could get good money for it, only you’re really not sure how to get what it’s worth, so it just continues to sit in your home. I deal with this too: I’ll tell you a story. Years ago I had purchased a really good used embroidery machine for $800 and I had saved up, I had used some of our tax refund money because I wanted to personalize some things for the children. I thought I would really use it. I did use it a couple of times, but not a whole lot and it came with us to Indiana when we moved here. I really didn’t use it except a couple of times the whole time we’ve been living here. So I did get it out a couple of years ago and when I tried to make something the needle broke off inside the machine. Of course I told Jim and he took it apart but he couldn’t get it out and couldn’t get it working. Several times over the years I’ve tried to find a sewing machine repair shop, but the closest one is almost an hour away. I’m just not driving that far and this sewing machine has caused me so much stress because of how much I paid for it. I didn’t feel like I could just get rid of it because I paid a lot of money for it.

Well about 2 or 3 months ago I gave the embroidery machine to a friend of mine to get it repaired and sell it if she wanted to. Right now I’ve got to tell you if she throws it in the garbage that’s ok with me too because the bottom line is I had attached a value of $800 to that machine, but I can tell you there’s no way that machine is currently worth $800. I really don’t know how much I could get for it and I don’t really care because I’d have to go through so much effort to try and get money out of the machine. I’d have to go drive an hour, get it fixed, drive an hour then pick it up, then try to find a buyer, and ship it safely. Of course I don’t have the box for it, so I just got rid of it and I feel so much better now that it is out of my house. So when dealing with valuable clutter, take a real honest look at not what you paid for it and not what you think it’s worth, but what you could actually get for it if you brought it down to the nearest pawn shop. If you’re not willing to donate it to somebody who might need it and you think it’s worth your time then go ahead and do that, find the nearest pawn shop and just bring it in, just get it out of your house, don’t think you’re going to find a specialty buyer or what not, just bring it in, get what you can get and move on.

Finally our last type of clutter is guilt-trip clutter. This is usually of all of them the most difficult clutter for us to deal with, it’s the things that people gave to us, left to us, or made for us. It often includes collectibles, antiques, things that we feel that we really shouldn’t get rid of because they are family mementos. It can also include stuff that are children made or bought for us that we just don’t love but we really don’t want to hurt their feelings.

Someone told me that they had a painting that their mother-in law painted and gave to them for their wedding and she had always hated this painting, so it’s wedding doodads that you were gifted with that you really never used. This is another type of clutter that’s going to really test your commitment to living a more simple lifestyle because it is your home and your life and you don’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings, but you shouldn’t have to keep anything in your home that you don’t use and that you really don’t enjoy. If that antique clock doesn’t give you pleasure when you look at it then you need to remove it despite any guilt you might feel. I really don’t think that you need to make yourself feel extra guilty about it. If you are asked where it went, you just simply respond with “I’m simplifying my life and my home and I’ve donated a lot of items to people who need them or can love them” and just leave it at that. Don’t go into this big huge explanation and carry on about it, just you know, a nice explanation. This is obviously going to go over a lot better if it’s obvious that you’re removing a lot of clutter from your home and not just that one item. You can also remember to take digital photos of it before you do that. But don’t feel guilty about removing items from your home that you don’t use and you really don’t like that belong to deceased loved ones or that other people gave you especially with things you were left in a will or before somebody died, because those things were their things. They are not your things and you don’t need to keep their things if you don’t use them because things won’t help you to remember that person. You remember the person, you remember the time you spent with them, that’s what’s important, those kind of memories not their physical things.

So those are the ten types of clutter that I came up with and I’m here to encourage you to just remove them from your home. I know that may be difficult for people. Some of you may be asking how do I actually get rid of it. First and foremost you need to come to terms and embrace the fact that decluttering is a lifelong process. It’s not a one time thing that you do and never have to do again. Remember the beginning when I talked about entropy? As long as your family is living and breathing you will be generating more clutter, so you have to build decluttering into your lifestyle. I will tell you that it does get easier, the more you do it, the less attached you get to the things in your home and the more pleasure you get out of that sense of freedom from when you get rid of it. Because honestly you’re really going to be amazed at how much better you do feel when it’s gone. I do admit that it does take time to declutter and the trick is you have to commit to it, if you’re a busy mom or busy anybody you have to make the time to get rid of the clutter. That’s going to free up time for the things that are more important, if you listened to my first podcast, I asked you to make a list of the things you spend time on that are important and the things you spend time on that are not important. Getting rid of clutter is going to allow you to free up time so you can do more things on your important list because that’s what it’s all about, it’s about having more time to do the things that are truly important with the people we love, it’s not about taking care of our things and our stuff.

There are a lot of different techniques to decluttering. One of the most common is the 3 garbage bag method and that seems to be very popular. You basically empty an area and as you’re emptying it you go through every single item and you place it in one of 3 bags: the first is garbage, the second is a donation bag and the third is a bag where you’re going to put that stuff where it actually belongs. For me I usually have a fourth bag or pile and that is the “take a digital photo of it and then dispose of it” pile, so that works for me but you really just have to do what works for you. To declutter you’re going to have to touch everything that you actually own and that simply takes time, there’s not a lot of way to get through that faster. While you’re doing it please don’t relive memory lane, don’t take out a box and ooh and aah over everything as you touch it, just very quickly take something out, one thing at a time, make an immediate decision. If you’re really struggling over something you can put that aside and decide on it later. Just pick it up, stay, go, donate and put it in the right pile, it also helps if you’ve got somebody with you with the digital camera so you can say here, take a photo of this and then put it in the disposal pile.

Let’s say you do have a bin of stuff that you want to ooh and aah over then that stuff in there should not be packed away, take out the best things from that bin, put them on a book case, or frame them and put them on your wall but display it for you to enjoy. We have friends where the husband has a baseball collection and in their guest bathroom they put up wallpaper that looks like baseball uniform pinstripes, I don’t know if it’s an actual team, kind of reminds me of the Yankees but I could be wrong on that. Then they decorated the room by displaying all the baseball paraphernalia and cards and shelves and frames in their little guest bathroom and its beautifully done and it perfectly demonstrates this concept. Don’t hide your memories away in totes because that is clutter, get rid of the mediocre and display the best of it in your house. That is decorating with memories and that’s where you want to get to.

Also while you’re doing this be careful that you’re not creating a bunch of new projects for yourself that are going to add further stress to your life. If you find a box of photos that are needing to be framed just commit to doing it within a week. If you haven’t gotten to the project in years and you’re not going to do it in the next week or couple of weeks then get rid of it, if it is truly important, finish your decluttering and just do it. You will feel so much better. I know it can be hard, especially if you have little ones or your schedule is really out of control, I know it’s hard to find the extra time. Most of us if we just turn off the television or do one less thing we can create a whole lot of hours for this kind of thing and then it’s done.

Once you’ve collected items that you’re ready to remove from your house, throw the ones that are in the garbage pile in the garbage. Then the question becomes what do you do with all the stuff that you’re going to get rid of that isn’t garbage, that’s useful to somebody else. Personally I’m a big believer in donating those items unless you’re desperately broke and you can’t pay your bills, I really don’t recommend garage sales or selling things on eBay. I’ve talked with a lot of women over the years and they feel like they need to get money for the stuff they declutter and that in-and-of itself is a major mental block to actually decluttering. If you donate it, you can take the tax write off for it. Be sure you get a receipt when you drop the items off.

There’s actually an economic principle called opportunity cost and it means that everything we do comes with the cost of preventing us from doing something else. All that time that you would have put into a garage sale or eBay is time you could have spent continuing to declutter and time you could have spent with your family. So if you’re financially not making ends meet then definitely try and sell what you can but otherwise bless others with the stuff you no longer need. Don’t try and find individual homes for your stuff because that could be putting a burden on other people and you really don’t want to do that. Find a place that you can just regularly donate stuff to so it doesn’t take a whole lot of mental energy figuring out what to do with it, you know, for me I declutter and I take the stuff to the declutter location, I drop it off and boom! It’s done, it’s out of my house.

You may be fortunate enough that you have an organization that will come directly to your house and pick stuff up. For us here in Indiana we have a group called the Cedar Lake Lodge that does that. They just call maybe once or twice a month to see if we have anything and its wonderful. I just leave the stuff on my front porch and poof they come and it’s donated and it’s gone. In fact they just called the other day and they are coming this Monday to pick up stuff. I already have 3 garbage bags of stuff on the porch waiting for them and the best thing about it is because I know they are coming and they are making a stop, I’m going to get as much other stuff on that porch by Monday morning as I possibly can. It’s really kind of motivational to do it that way.

That’s my take on the types of clutter and how you can handle them and I have a lot of questions from listeners but I’m not going to answer them right now. I’m going to answer them on the next episode because I really don’t want this episode to go too long because Jim has actually joined me. And I want to have time to talk with him and I’m really grateful that he is here because I’m used to doing things with Jim and it’s kind of have been strange not having him podcasting with me and having it being more of my thing, so I am excited to have him with me. And he knows that I’ve been talking about clutter but I did not prep him with the questions that I’m going to be asking.

PJ Jonas: Hi honey, thanks for joining me.

Jim: My pleasure, darling.

PJ Jonas: My first question that I want to ask is after 17 years or almost 17 years of me pushing you to declutter, has it gotten any easier for you?

Jim: Yeah, I would say it’s  been easier lately.

PJ Jonas: How come?

Jim: I don’t have any room for anything else.

PJ Jonas: Yeah, you pretty much have most of the barn about as full as it possibly can go.

Jim: Yes and that’s having gotten rid of almost everything I could already make room for supplies.

PJ Jonas: There’s still a lot in there that I could get rid of if you want me to.

Jim: So you said.

PJ Jonas: Many times huh?

Jim: Yes.

PJ Jonas: I know I’m bad. What are the things that are still hard for you to let go?

Jim: Things that I’ll need.

PJ Jonas: I’ve heard that same answer for years and years. Yes, but see and here we go, how do you know when you’re going to need it?

Jim: Well there are things that are useful and then there are things that are not so useful.

PJ Jonas: Ok, so what’s useful?

Jim: Hardware, screws, nuts and bolts and things and brackets and electrical plugs and –

PJ Jonas: Ok, so things that you know you will use?

Jim: Yeah. Damage control items or fixing items because inevitably around here the boys are going to destroy things.

PJ Jonas: Ok, I will buy that. I will buy nuts and bolts and screws and stuff like that.

Jim: Yeah, because I don’t have time to go down to the hardware store every time something breaks because I would get home and have to turn around and go get something else.

PJ Jonas: So your tools and equipment that kind of stuff you want to keep. What about all the stuff on your dresser?

Jim: My dresser is clear.

PJ Jonas: Yeah because I just made you get rid of it all. I didn’t make you, I asked you very nicely to do it, very kindly and you did it. It’s easier but it’s still not easy.

Jim: Well it stays on my dresser because that’s the only place I have that I can be reminded that I have to do it. That’s my to-do pile

PJ Jonas: Ok, so the drawers that I got you for to-do pile then it was out of sight and so I guess-

Jim: Nope.

PJ Jonas: Would you ever declutter anything if I didn’t ask you to do it.

Jim: Oh sure because you run out of space eventually.

PJ Jonas: Ok, so purely by necessity your piles start falling over?

Jim: Yeah, pretty much.

PJ Jonas: Has there been anything that I’ve gotten rid of that you still hold it against me?

Jim: I don’t think so, I forget things pretty easily.

PJ Jonas: Yeah, that’s been my blessing, it doesn’t tend to come up very often but every once in a while I can tell if there’s something you ask me and am like mm I think maybe I got rid of that and I can see you’re not too happy about that, that’s pretty rare.

Jim: Yeah.

PJ Jonas: And do you have any advice for people who have trouble letting go of their stuff?

Jim: Don’t get a big house.

PJ Jonas: It’s pretty much what you just said because it will all fill up.

Jim: Yep, if you have trouble letting things go or if you have trouble with clutter, restrict your space because otherwise it will just grow and grow. If you’re like me and you want to hold on to things and you know, I will need that at some point and just make sure that you’ve got a space that’s only so big that you can keep it all in.

PJ Jonas: Do you have any advice for women who want to get rid of their husbands’ stuff and their husbands are resistant?

Jim: Give them a designated area. Give them a place for their stuff and it doesn’t have to be a huge place. It’s got to be a place that’s going to work for your man like when you got me those drawers, there are still stuff in there that I was supposed to have done that didn’t get done because they went in the drawer, I still don’t know where it is.

PJ Jonas: Yeah those drawers definitely didn’t work, they just got more and more full and you never did even like open them, I don’t think.

Jim: Nope.

PJ Jonas: So I guess figuring out different people’s ways of decluttering and organizing is important too.

Jim: Yeah.

PJ Jonas: Alright, that was really about all I wanted you to talk on. I really just kind of had you come on to see if there’s anything that you’re really holding against me.

Jim: I see, stick a mic in my face and I have to tell the truth?

PJ Jonas: Well that was the hope but it is what it is and I’m not going to stop decluttering.

Jim: Yeah, I know that.

Well we’re almost done with part two of this podcast episode on clutter and I want to leave you with this week’s survival guide rule and that is to get rid of it. Yes I know that it is the same rule as last week and it’s the same rule because you need to remember that you cannot organize clutter, you have to just simply get rid of it. Last week I asked you to get rid of the easy things. This week I’m going to ask you to tackle some of the harder things, get out your digital camera, take photos of those things and remove them from your home, have your children even remove more of their toys and clothes especially if they have too many because everything in your home has to earn the right to stay there. It has to be worth it for you to spend your time organizing and cleaning it because if you do not use it you just need to get rid of it and then remember you need to make decluttering a part of your life, try to think about it every day this week, try and do something every day and teach it to your children. It’s a very valuable life lesson and that they can spend their time and energy on people or they can spend it on their stuff. Try and model for them making people more important than stuff and you’re one step closer to teaching them how to live a happier lifestyle because the bottom line is which would you rather spend your time on, your clutter or your loved ones? And which one do you want for your children?

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Busy Mom’s Survival Guide. I hope you have enjoyed listening and that you are motivated to start or to continue removing the clutter from your home and from your life. Join me on the next episode where I will conclude the clutter series by answering listeners’ questions on specific struggles they are having with clutter. If you have your own question on clutter that you’d like answered you can email me or call my feedback line at (240) 230-SOAP. Until next time, I’m PJ Jonas and I am praying that you’ll decide to defeat the clutter that is weighing you down.

Getting Rid of Clutter Part 2- Blog Post

Audio File

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It’s Mailing Week!

Time to ship out all of those presents that we should have prepared during Week Six, and the holiday cards you prepared during Week Four.

If you’re sending a holiday card, we recommend using Vistaprint, which will print and mail your cards for you. Their oversized postcards are the perfect size for a Christmas card, good quality, and cheaper than any of the other printing companies around.

If you’re mailing gifts to friends and family far away, get those gifts to the post office now so you’re not scrambling to get them out on time later!

If you can’t make it to the post office, they will come to your house and pick up your packages! Just schedule a package pickup on their website and put the packages on your porch or in your mailbox.

If you’re emailing or posting your Christmas letter online, this is a good time to do that, too. You should already have it written, so it shouldn’t be stressful!

Good luck, and we’ll see you next week for one of our family’s favorite weeks – baking week. 😉 If you get done with mailing week early and want to get a head start on baking week, remember that cookie dough freezes well! Start making a double batch every day, and freeze the dough – one to give away, and one to bake for yourself. Share the love of Christmas cookies and enjoy them yourself.

Have a great week!

PJ and Brett

Hopefully by now, you’ve either started or have completed wrapping your presents, but if you haven’t, it’s not too late! Take fifteen minutes a day, or set aside an hour, and start tackling that pile. It won’t take nearly as long as you think it will.

Don’t forget to package up any gifts that are being sent to family and friends that aren’t local. We’ll send them later, but it will make things so much easier if they’re already packaged in their boxes.

If you’re doing any charitable giving this holiday season with Operation Christmas Child boxes or something similar, we’re going to work on those this week as well. Shoebox Drop off week isn’t for another week or two, but we prefer to get them packaged up and ready to go now – that way if we forgot anything, we still have time to run out to the store and get them.

Operation Christmas Child sends shoeboxes of toys, school supplies, hygiene products, and more to children in third world countries around the globe. It is one of our favorite charities and we love supporting them. If you need instructions on how to pack a shoebox to send to a child, you can find that here. 

If you don’t have the time to build your own box, you can build one online! You can choose what child (girl, boy, and age range), what items to put in, include a message, and send it, all without leaving your house. 

Happy wrapping and shoe-box building!

PJ and Brett 

Today, we’ll be making any invitations you need.

If you have any parties or host any of the holiday gatherings, you’ll need to invite the family and friends who you would like to attend. 

So today, we’re going to create those invitations. 

If you’re sending email invites, there are plenty of online services where you can create an e-vite. 

If you’re sending physical invites through the mail, go ahead and design them. You can choose whether you want to send them now or later.  

If you’re creating a Facebook event (our personal choice for inviting people to parties), you can choose to create that now, or later. Personally, we create the Facebook event now, rather than wait until closer to the holidays, because calendars fill up quickly during the holiday season, and we want our friends to know about our one big Christmas party before everyone else tells them about theirs. LOL

In your invite, don’t forget to address the following:

• Who’s invited.
• What the party is.
• Where the party is.
• When the party is.
• What they need to bring (if anything).
• If they are bringing food, are there any allergies?
• If they need to RSVP or not.

Our Facebook event has this in the description (feel free to copy this for your own use).

Enjoy fellowship, food and fun with us as we celebrate Jesus Christ together. We’d love to see you! This is an Open House format, so join us between 1 and 8 for as little or as much time as you can spare during the busy season.

You are welcome to bring food, but it is NOT AT ALL necessary, we will have plenty! Please let us know if you’ll be coming so we can plan accordingly.

**Due to anaphylactic airborne allergies of some of our guests, please do not bring anything with any tree nuts or nut butters.**

We tend to have 150-200 people show up at our Christmas party and we provide all of the food, which is why we request RSVPs. If you host a potluck, or ask people to bring their own food, you may not need RSVPs.

If you do a Facebook event, we highly recommend printing little pieces of paper with all of the information on them for your children to hand out to their friends who may not necessarily be connected to you through Facebook. 

Let us know in the Facebook group if you need help with any of this, and we’d be happy to help you.

See you tomorrow for the last day of Communications Week!

PJ and Brett 

Today, we’re going to focus on all of the other things we do with food during the holidays.

First, we’re going to make a menu for any parties that you will be hosting over the holiday season. For us, that’s just one big Christmas party that we generally invite 200 to 300 people to, and have close to 200 show up over the course of the day. 

We choose to provide all of the food for our Christmas Party. You, however, can coordinate a potluck, or ask everyone to bring their favorite Christmas dessert to share – you don’t have to supply all of the food if you don’t want to! Share the burden of hosting by asking everyone to bring a dish and suddenly hosting a Christmas party becomes much easier. Don’t miss out on the joy of hosting family and friends for a celebration because it’s too much work or money!

So, like we did yesterday, make a menu for any parties you’ll be hosting with everything you’ll have to provide. Whether you’re making a full meal, providing finger food, or just setting out a few bags of chips and pretzels, write down what you’re planning on doing. Don’t forget any special drinks, even if that’s just a big serving container of ice water. 

Our second (and last) thing we’re going to do today is create a list of all food related activities, gifts, and traditions you will be doing this holiday season. Here are a few examples:

• Drinking apple cider while singing Christmas carols (tradition)
• Making homemade marshmallows as a family to enjoy with hot chocolate (activity)
• Baking cookies from scratch or pre-made dough to decorate (activity)
• Homemade baking mixes in Mason jars for all the Aunts (gift)
• Decorating gingerbread houses (tradition/activity)

You don’t have to specify whether each item is a tradition, activity, or gift, though you might find it helpful to write down roughly when you will be doing all of these items.

Once you have all of these written down, you’re done for the day!