Mental Clutter, Toxic People, and Messy Closets: Let’s Talk About It.

Summary

In this episode, Layla Dawn explores the multifaceted nature of clutter, discussing its impact on mental health, relationships, and overall well-being. She delves into the different types of clutter—physical, emotional, relational, and digital—and offers practical strategies for decluttering various aspects of life. The conversation emphasizes the importance of setting boundaries, practicing forgiveness, and recognizing the emotional weight that clutter can carry. Listeners are encouraged to take actionable steps towards a clutter-free life, ultimately leading to improved mental clarity and emotional health.

Takeaways

Clutter can be physical, emotional, relational, or digital.

Recognizing clutter is the first step to addressing it.

Setting healthy boundaries helps manage relational clutter.

Forgiveness plays a crucial role in emotional decluttering.

Decluttering can lead to improved mental health and clarity.

Digital clutter can be just as overwhelming as physical clutter.

Practicing gratitude and forgiveness can aid in emotional healing.

Small, consistent efforts can lead to significant decluttering results.

Understanding the root causes of clutter can help in managing it.

Clutter affects focus, energy, and self-worth.

Chapters

00:00 Understanding Emotional and Relational Clutter

01:04:10 The Importance of Setting Boundaries

01:08:23 Navigating Toxic Relationships

01:12:49 Digital Clutter and Its Impact

01:21:44 Taking Action: Decluttering Your Life

Episodes
Boundaries = https://youtu.be/31emlrbCi0o?si=bRVoc50yjqQretYk

Self Love = https://youtu.be/NLZNPce3wY4?si=8z2MZ3MLUGSD9rg4

Forgiveness = https://youtu.be/N0OTV4XweqY?si=c0XmXwHUAw-mY61Q

Transcript

0:00

Everything you own either supports your future or clings to your past. But it's not just what's in your closet. If you've been feeling stuck, foggy, overwhelmed, disconnected, your environment, your relationships, even your thoughts might be trying to tell you something. Let me be so real with you. Clutter is costing you your peace. It's costing you your space. It's costing you clarity, energy, and progress. And it builds up for a reason. Don't leave me just yet, because today we're unpacking. the mental, emotional, physical, and relational clutter that keeps you weighed down. and how you can finally clear it. So we're not just talking about the physical clutter that you see around the room. We're talking about the emotional clutter that lives in your brain. We're talking about the relational clutter that is damaging your relationships. And we're going to talk about how and why it builds up, how to acknowledge it. and how to get rid of it. So stay with me and we'll go through some very powerful and impactful things to dissect the clutter in your life and what you can do about it. Hi friends, welcome to the Do Life podcast. I'm your host, Life Coach Layla, and this is a self-help podcast where we talk about life, its challenges, and some clever ways to tackle some common obstacles. Today we are going to dissect clutter. Mental clutter, emotional clutter, relational clutter, and yes, physical clutter. How it happens, why it happens, how to respond to it when it happens, and what to do about it. So... Thank you for being here and showing up, but let's start with what is clutter really? Clutter isn't just too much stuff. It can be bad, but it's anything that takes up too much space without adding value. The online definition of clutter is to organize something badly or fill an area or space in a messy or untidy way. So yes, that's not just a physical space. You can have a cluttered brain. You can have a cluttered relationship. We'll get into that a little bit more, but... Just so you're aware, there is the common physical clutter. The mess in the kitchen, the counter, the dirty dishes in the sink is clutter. The coffee table or kitchen table that's full of unopened or opened bills and mail and trash and garbage and cups, that's clutter. The... Unopened packages or socks and clothes and things that you've thrown around the room and a mad search to find something and get ready to go somewhere and still haven't cleaned up after yourself is physical clutter. That overflowing junk drawer, the piles of things that just keep accumulating in the garage, that closet full of boxes in the basement or attic or corner of your room. Those are all clutters. I'm not attacking you personally, I'm just saying, you know, the bins and boxes of things that aren't organized is clutter. Anything that isn't tidy or organized is technically considered clutter. uh You can have a throw blanket on your couch and if it's not folded in neat and tidy, it's technically considered clutter, physical clutter. And while something as minuscule as that and even some of the boxes and bins aren't necessarily a bad thing, I'm not telling you that every ounce of clutter in your house is treacherous and you need to go clean immediately. Everybody's gonna have some sort of clutter. It's to the degree of clutter you have that can be alarming. I don't want to say anything is good or bad because what's bad for me might be good for you. You might have... stuff thrown all over the house and you finally organized it and put it in boxes and now I'm telling you that those cluttered boxes in the closet that you worked so hard to accumulate are bad. That's not bad for you. That's good for you because it's better than where you were. So again, I'm trying not to label anything as good or bad and I don't want to go off on that tangent alone, but that's physical clutter And I'm not saying that any of it's bad. How about that? That's for you to decide. And then there's your mental clutter. There's your never ending to do list, your shopping list, your ah projects that you want to work on, the things in the house that you haven't got done, that mental, I'll make a mental note of it. Those mental notes are cluttered. I picture your brain full of Post-it notes everywhere, all over in your brain of things to do and things to work on and things you have to do. Like my brain gets like that too. I'm not gonna act like I'm not guilty of mental clutter for sure because I will have to write them down on pen and paper or put them in an app in my phone because I have to get them out of my brain because I can't stand to have the mental clutter in my brain of all the things that I have to do. So I have to write them down so I can see them and visualize them and then I feel less cluttered mentally. uh Even though I'm still just as busy and I have as many things to do now that I have it on paper. I don't have to be responsible for remembering it and thinking about it constantly. I can organize it, prioritize it, and now it's out of my brain and I can focus more on what I need to do or how I need to do the projects as opposed to what all I need to do. And while I'm focused and working on something, I don't have to worry about something else popping in. you still have to do that. You didn't do this because I know that. I already have it written down. It's accounted for. It's acknowledged. we can let those set aside because I can stay focused on this and not be like, I need to remember that. I don't want to forget that. So mental clutter is definitely all of those thoughts in your head. especially if you have like unmade decisions or or tough decisions and something that you hyper fixate on something you go back and forth and back and forth like okay do i want to take this job or this job this job does this or just stop this do i want to date this guy or this guy or do i want to leave him or do i want to stay with him like those are all thoughts that can are considered mental clutter because they occupy so much space in your brain and we'll dissect that a little bit later, but that's your mental clutter. And then there's your emotional clutter. your unprocessed feelings, that guilt, unresolved grief, that resentment. If you're still mad at your ex boyfriend from 10 years ago for cheating on you with your best friend, again, that's a deep wound. I'm not saying you need to get over that overnight. It's not my place to tell you how long it should take you to get over anything actually, but I'm just saying those things that you haven't resolved, those things that are still triggering, those things that are still emotionally triggering that are still at the forethought of your brain. When you see something, it reminds you of that and you feel those feelings all over again. That's emotional clutter. And every time you feel those feelings, your brain doesn't, your body doesn't have the comprehension to know that it's not happening again. And that you're reliving a memory when you feel those feelings, your gut tensions up, you, you feel it in your body. You know what I'm talking about? Um, that tension, that stress, that, uh, Um, when you feel that because you're reliving a moment in your brain mentally and thinking that your body doesn't know that it's a memory and things that's happening all over again. So every time you're triggered and you feel those things, you're, putting your body through that stress all over again. And then that's going to make it harder for you to release weight. That's going to make it harder for you to make big decisions. It's, it's, it's occupying too much of your emotional space and it's cluttering. your emotions. So, well, we'll talk about how to uh alleviate some of that in a little bit, but that is your emotional clutter. So we've got physical, mental, emotional, relational. the people dynamics that drain you, the people that you keep getting stuck in cycles and loops. people that take more than they give. The relational clutter. If you find yourself spread so thin to give yourself your energy, parts of you to all the people around you and you're not showing up for the people that show up for you that you want to. I think of teenagers uh when I think of relational clutter because as a teenager, have three biological female daughters. There's a lot of hormones, there's a lot of emotions, there's a lot of stress, there's a lot of relationships in that. And as teenagers... They're so focused on their friends and their friend groups and their peers and who's doing what and who's going where and who's going out with who and who loves who. And there's so much going on in their relationships that they're so cluttered relationally from all of the drama in high school, all the high school drama that they come home and you say, hey, can you put the dishes away? And they roll their eyes and they slam their backs because they don't have the energy to give to you. and they know as your parent that you love them unconditionally, at least you're supposed to, or hopefully they feel that way and that's why they feel like they can dismiss you because they feel safe with you. ah That's a whole nother conversation that we're not gonna get into, but a lot of times when you have teenagers, they are dismissive of you and they don't give you the time and energy that you would like to have from them because they're so relationally cluttered. from all of the drama and everything else that goes on in school, all of the other relationships that they're involved in are taking so much from them that they don't have enough to give back to you. And I feel like this is the easiest way that I can explain this to make it make sense because a lot of times as adults, we don't realize that we're doing the same thing. When we go to a party, say we bring one of our close friends to a party and we go mingle with everybody else at the party and we leave our friend just kind of sit in their pet and the dog because they're not, they don't know anybody. And we're giving ourselves to everybody else in the party, in the room, in the area that we're not showing up for our friend that we brought in a relational manner. And a lot of times when we're in romantic relationships, our partners take the bunt end of when they get the short end of the stick. you're so spread thin, you've put all of your relational energy into your work relationships, your kids, the schools, the teachers, and then you get home and your husband's like, hi, spend time with me. And you're like, please get F'd, like leave me alone. Because you're so cluttered with all the other relationships that you can't give to the relationships that mean the most to you. And a lot of times when we feel safe and comfortable, or even if we don't, if we're just like, done. um We can dismiss those relationships so much easier because We either just take them for granted and assume that they'll always be there and we can fix them later, maybe later, some other time. And a lot of times we destroy those relationships because there's, there's never a later, there's never a better time. We don't go back and fix the things that we've screwed up. and again, that's a whole nother conversation. I don't think we're going to do a deep dive into that today. You never know. I like to ramble on sometimes. But what I'm getting at is that the relational clutter isn't just romantic, it's friendship, it's work, it's everything. And last but not least, digital clutter. I have a friend of mine who knows that I can't stand it when she shows me her notifications. She has 5,000 unread text messages, 47 missed calls, 4,392,000 unread emails or whatever it is. She thinks it's funny. She has all these notifications on her phone and she's like, look, Layla. And I'm like, don't stop. Why are we even friends? Because I can't. I will. I cleared my boyfriend's notifications. He'll give me his phone to show me his meme and I'll just like, and he's like, did you just clear out my notifications? I'm like, yeah, my bad. He's like, I left them on there so I could see them. I was like, well, you can still see them. It's just a habit. Not just notifications though, like I am guilty of hoarding photos. All of my friends and family have given me such a hard time because we'll go on trips or things and I will take all the photos. I'm the friend that stops on a hike to take a picture of a cute flower or a mushroom or a little frog or a little lizard and then I don't ever post any of those pictures. So my friends have been making me send them the pictures so they can post them because they know I won't and then it just it became I have to have my hard drive. have to upload everything to the hard drive. Then I'm making separate files for things and I love. So one of my professions is I'm a professional mermaid. So I love to play dress up and take pretty pictures as a mermaid. I also like to swim and do events and do all the other stuff, but nothing makes me happier than getting to play dress up and get pretty and be a mermaid. And if I can take all the pictures to commemorate that even better. the problem is I have six years of mermaid phone photos on my phone on my hard drive on my whatever and they're they're not posted because you know one day i'll get to it i'll organize my hard drive one day or maybe i'll just get a social media manager and just throw them all of the things and they can organize it that's not fair i would never do that i whoever i i wouldn't feel like i pay them enough to do that so i would never do that to them so anyway um files, apps, how many people have millions of apps? Your phone's like, you don't have any more memory on your phone. You can't take any more pictures and you have to go through and you delete apps. And it's like, what even is this? What, why is this on my phone? Where did this come from? Um, that's clutter. That's digital clutter. And it's not, it's not as noticeable because it's, it's newer in the history of evolution, obviously in humans to have the digital clutter, but it is still a thing. If you're someone like me who has multiple emails for multiple things, then you have multiple things that can get cluttered up and those emails turn into to-do lists that turn into mental clutter and it's all in the house of Jackville. So it's just a problem. And that's why we're here to address that today. So those are the main types of clutter and the definition. Clutter shows up wherever there's a lack of intentionality, and whenever we ignore it, it becomes background noise that slowly chips away at our capacity. And I want to clear the air and say that clutter doesn't, we don't collect clutter because we're lazy. It's not like, I see that pile. I don't feel like dealing with it right now. No, it's not a priority. That pile will be there. I have to do this first. And then that pile never gets dealt with, regardless of what type of clutter it is. There's a lot of deep, very human reasons why clutter accumulates and you've got avoid it, your standard avoidance. There's a lot of reasons we avoid. don't want to make a decision. We don't want to make the wrong decision. We don't want to regret the decision. We don't want to have a hard conversation. We don't want to deal with the consequences of having that conversation. We don't want to deal with the confrontation of having that conversation. We don't want to feel the emotions that come with having that conversation or doing those things or dealing with that. And I'll do it later is also my favorite form of avoidance because when is later define later. Otherwise, it's avoidance. I will do that in an hour and a half and then do that later isn't real. And then the opposite of avoidance is attachment. So we don't want to get rid of that thing because my dead aunt gave it to me and she wanted me to have it. Okay, well, she gave that to you. You don't like it. You don't wear it. You don't want it. Do you think she would want you to hold on to it forever and be burdened with this? Or do you think she would rather it go somewhere where someone would appreciate it and actually like it? So when we're attached to things, we tie identity or meaning or people or things or certain memories to the things. I can't get rid of this ticket stuff because this was my first date with this guy that I dated in high school who overdosed and isn't on the planet anymore. Okay. What is that ticket stuff doing in your life? Every time you look at that ticket stuff. Do you think of the happy memory that you had with this boy that you dated for like a month? Or do you think of the sadness of him passing away or the guilt or regret or all of the other feelings? What exactly are we attaching to this item? And is it a good or happy memory? If it's a good happy memory, do something with it. Give it a home. My personal definition of clutter is anything that doesn't have a space. If it doesn't have a home, it's just clutter. If it has a home, then it has meaning and it belongs somewhere, belongs there. And meaning and belonging is not clutter to me. You can define however you feel comfortable with, but that's just my own little thing. So when you're looking at things that you don't want to get rid of because they have some sort of sentimental value, what is the sentiment? And how valuable is it? Is it good or bad? Is it real? And if it's because somebody has passed away, what do you think they would really honestly want you to do? Are you holding on to this memory? Like, I have this shirt that my mom gave me and I don't want to wear it because she gave it to me. And if I wear it, then it'll get ratty and messy. And then I won't want to wear it anymore. And then I'll have to give it away. So it's just going to sit in my closet and dry rot instead. I was going through closets and stuff with my brother yesterday, actually. And he's like, oh, these shorts mom gave me. And he grabbed them and went, and they dry rot. And he's like, oh, sorry, mom. And he put them in the giveaway pile. We put them in the throwaway pile. to see him so effortlessly do that was just very admirable to me because I would have had a moment. would have been sad. They were dry-rided. Now I have to get rid of them. It's like I'm getting rid of that person and that emotion. But he was like, sorry, mama. We had a good run. I like these. Thank you for that. And he said, thank you and sorry. And he was just done. And I was like, wow, that was so easy for him to just let go where I'm having some sort of weird emotional. crisis for him. Like, no, she gave those to you and you have to throw them away because they're dry-rotted and old. And he was just like, I have enough memories, my memories. You I have enough things. She wouldn't want me to keep that. And he's so right. And it's funny because I had the same conversation with my daughter. It was like, she gave me these and... She once made it look like leg warmers and I was like, you don't wear leg warmers. You're never gonna wear those. Like she would not want you to keep those forever just to remember her by. She doesn't want you to remember her by the gift that she gave you that you don't want. And she was like, ooh, yeah, yeah, you're right. I was like, yeah, you have enough memories. have enough things that she gave you that you do want. You don't need to keep the things that you don't want. She would want them to go to someone who would appreciate them. And I can have that conversation with my child. I can watch my brother do it. But when it comes to me doing them, I'm like. But I'm like throwing her away. And so I get it. I have the weird attachment and that leads me into the guilt. If I throw this away, am I throwing that person away? They gave that to me or I spent real hard money on that. That my boyfriend, he really likes to... He likes to calculate things like, that table's not worth three hours worth of work. We're not buying that. Who does that? Who thinks like that? It's actually really helpful to think like that. I just never would have. You know, it was the first time he sat down and he was doing the bills and he's like, three hundred dollars for the phone bill. I don't even call anybody. I don't need to pay that. I'm like, well, buddy, you calm down. But you get you get that guilt. I spent that money on that. They spent that money on that. I don't want to let them down. I should be able to handle this. So you've got guilt attached to certain things. I don't want to tackle the clothes in the closet that I keep hiding things in because nobody can see the closet because I'm ashamed at my overwhelm and I feel like I should be able to do this and I spend my time endlessly scrolling on social media instead of doing the things that I need to do. and I suffer from some sort of executive dysfunction where I just sit and rot instead of actually doing anything that I need to do. I may not be talking about me personally or you, I'm just saying in general that those are things that happen and we have that overwhelming guilt of I know that I can do this, I know that I have the time to do that, and now I'm embarrassed or ashamed at the fact that I haven't. So that is when I mean when I say the guilt that's attached to certain types of clutter. And then my favorite, not really, that was highly sarcastic if you couldn't tell, is perfectionism. Where if I can't do it perfectly, I won't do it at all. If I know you're not gonna do it perfectly, I don't want you to do it at all. If I can't learn everything I need to learn about doing a thing, I won't do the thing. And so we just keep accumulating knowledge. I was actually accused of recording information in my brain during a coaching session. And I was so offended at the accuracy of that statement because that was so true. Like I would just learn all of these things with good intent. ah I was going to do the thing, but I needed to learn all the information. So when I did the thing, it would be perfect. And it was a really hard lesson for me to learn that perfection comes from doing. not from learning and that no amount of learning was going to make me perfect and that I was only going to get perfect by never. That's not a real aspiration to achieve and you should get that thought out of your head immediately. But I would get closer to my definition of perfection every time I did something. You're watching this podcast evolve from... terrible cell phone with trashy speaker to a better cell phone. Sometimes I use my fancy microphone. Sometimes I don't and uh play around with different softwares, different webcams, different microphones, different configurations, different lighting, different places, different areas in my home or surroundings. So it's still a work in progress and I feel like every episode I put out is slightly better than the last one that I recorded. So There's no such thing as perfection only progress and I have learned to love progress more than perfection and that was really really hard so Being afraid of perfectionism I can't put these clothes away because I don't have a fancy dresser to put them in I'm just gonna leave them in totes or on the floor, you know, whatever the situation is Oh I gotta organize my closet, so until I have time to organize my closet, I can't hang up my clothes, so they'll just sit on this half of the bed, whatever the situation is. Again, I'm not here to judge you, and I'm sorry if I'm calling you out directly. I've had so many people who are like, I can't believe you would just talk about me in your podcast like that. And I'm like, I wasn't. I didn't even know that was a thing you did. So if you're watching this and you wanna yell at me for being like, why are you talking about my clothes? Have I been to your bedroom? Do I know I'm talking to you? Chances are this is just a generalization that I've seen a lot of people struggle with and uh this is just a thing that I'm saying. So don't get offended if this is you specifically. Most of it is me specifically. I don't have a pile of laundry on the bed. I just don't do laundry for months at a time. I have enough clothes that I don't have to worry about it because I hate laundry like most humans. I just have the luxury of having enough clothes to not have to... worry about it as frequently. you know the laundry I do once every couple of months is a lot and kudos to anybody who can wash, dry, fold, and put away laundry all in the same day like you're magic and I want to be you when I grow up. Anyway what were we talking about? Clutter. So clutter becomes a coping mechanism. But ironically, it also ends up adding to more stress. So when you think of, I'll do this pile later, I'm working on this now, this is more important, that pile later turns into more stress because now it's physical clutter, it's mental clutter, it's emotional clutter, it's all the things. And so no matter what type of clutter it is, it's going to affect us. It affects your focus. It affects your emotions, your energy, your self-worth, your relationships. When you have so much clutter, you can't focus. It's so hard to focus on what you're working on when there's so many other things going on, whether physically, emotionally. How many times have you gone through a breakup or some sort of emotional... I don't want to say disaster, an emotional event where it just replays in your head. You can't get over it. know, somebody passed away. You can't believe they're gone. Somebody broke up with you. You can't believe they left you. Something tragic happens and it just stays in your brain. And clutter is like that, but on a different, it's on a different scale. Some big clutter can be, you know, if your, relationships clutter. and oh, my girlfriend wants to leave me. I don't know why she wants to break up with me. I know I've been such a good boyfriend. I've done everything I can to make her happy. But have you let the relational clutter build up and not addressed any of the things? But like I said, it's really hard to focus when your bandwidth is stretched so thin and there's so many other projects and things going on. It's very easy to get overwhelmed and fatigued. You hear people who suffer from decision fatigue because there's just so many things to do. And when you're making decisions like, do I tackle this pile or this pile? know, if you have one small little area, you have one little bucket of clutter and you want to go through that bucket and get rid of it. and you feel accomplished and you feel so good about it. But when you have buckets, you have a room full of buckets and you don't know what bucket to start with or where to go. It's very overwhelming and it's really hard. And again, I say buckets, but this could be all of the other types of clutter we talked about. This doesn't just have to be physical, but the more clutter we have, like I always thought clutter was just physical. didn't realize that I had emotional clutter or mental clutter or relational clutter. Like I didn't even know that those were things. And then when you combine all those things. It makes a world of difference in how you, uh how you, how aware you are of why you react to certain things like. Like I really try not to have a lot of physical clutter. And I never really understood why. I just figured because my mom had hoarding tendencies and she had organized piles of chaos, but they were still piles of chaos. And I was like, I don't want to have to walk through a path of organized boxes. You we weren't dirty. Everything was clean. We still had to clean quite regularly. So the house wasn't like a dirty hoard, it was just a cluttered hoard. So I made it a point as I grew up that I didn't want to hoard things. so everything has a home, everything has a place. I didn't want any kind of clutter or chaos. But in doing so, my brain stayed cluttered and chaotic. And I didn't realize for the longest time how detrimental that was and that I didn't want physical clutter in my view. because I didn't have any more capacity emotionally or mentally for more clutter because I was already so cluttered in so many other areas of my life. And so that was a harsh awakening. But also once I acknowledged that made it so much easier to kind of dissect things and understand things. But yeah, when you have that much clutter and overwhelm everything gets harder to focus. It triggers your emotions. Like I said, you've got that guilt, that anxiety, that resentment, that shame. You can't come into my room. Don't go downstairs in my house. You can't go downstairs. I'm not talking about my house, but I've been at friends' house that are like, can't come to my basement because I don't want you to see it. I'm like, I'm here to help you clean and declutter. Like, let me help you, but. You know, some people are just so riddled with guilt and shame that they don't want you to see that. And I understand that. And then the worst part about it is it deletes your energy it depletes your energy like you don't realize how much of an energetic drain Having all the chaos and stress and clutter is causing you Like I said if you have a box of clutter and you clear out that box and you get everything gone And you've got this empty box you have this like surge of energy and excitement and you're like I accomplished something look at the thing I did So if you think of how much energy that gives you on such a miniscule scale of just clearing out a box or something, think of what that does on a master scale of everything else that's going on in your life. Think of how much energy you have if you finally clear the mental clutter, you finally tackle the relational clutter, you have the conversations, you make the decisions, you do the things. Think of how much energy you get back because you're not being energetically drained. by these things that are heavy. You you hear people use the analogies. It feels like I have the weight of the world on my shoulders. That weight is all your stress, all your problems, all your clutter. And when you get rid of that clutter, you release that weight, both metaphorically and physically. when I was super stressed out and... I was stressed about money, was stressed about work, was stressed about the kids, was stressed about my foster kids, I was stressed about my partner, I was stressed about my family. Like everything in my life was so stressful and so chaotic and I gained so much weight. I'm 5'4 and I was like 250 pounds and it didn't matter what diet I did, how long I starved myself, what medication, anything, nothing mattered. I just kept gaining weight and When things started to settle down, the foster kids were happy, the family situation calmed down, the relationship was working itself out, the money situation got better, I was able to release that weight. And I say release weight because I don't like the phrase lose weight because if I lose something, I lose my keys, I... lost my marbles. Those are things you want to find, right? You want to find your keys. You want to find things that you lost. So if you lose something, you want it back. And in my brain, this is how my brain works. If you release something, you let go. You let it go and you don't anticipate it ever finding you again. So I say release weight as opposed to lose weight because our words have meaning and deep subconscious levels that we're not going to get into today. There's a whole metaphysical conversation that we're not going to have in this episode, but your words have power and meaning. So if you want to release weight, say that because if you lose it, you find it because every pound I've ever lost, I promise I've found and then some. ah So let's not do that. So when I was finally not as stressed, not as cluttered emotionally, mentally, physically, I was able to release weight because I was less stressed that. weight was lifted off my shoulders, that weight magically released from my body. And I'm not going to say that the second that you're not stressed out anymore, you just lose a bunch of weight. It could happen. I'm not going to say it's not happening, but don't come at me if it doesn't happen, but just know that this is a thing that happened for me. I was actively trying to lose weight at that time. Nothing worked. And then as I got rid of the clutter in my life, I was able to release that weight that nothing else had worked. And then of course, you know, not only does it deplete your energy, it's... It can ruin relationships. I said, if you have a romantic partner and you have a lot of relational clutter, how many times you guys got into a fight or argument and instead of just instead of having a conversation about it and fixing it and getting to the root problem, you're just like, hey, I'm sorry, I didn't eat lunch. And they're like, I'm sorry too. And then you just snuggle on the couch and everything's better. It's not really better because you didn't resolve anything. You didn't work it out. And some couples can live their whole lives like that and they're capable of like, okay, we're done. We let it go. We've released that emotion and we don't have it anymore. Most people I know, need to have a conversation about, oh why did you think it was okay to say that? I understand you were hungry, but you're going to get hungry again. And that's not a legitimate excuse for you to talk to people like that. So I want to make sure that we can avoid this from happening in the future. And you need to have a conversation like what was the root cause of these things. And when you can do that, then finally you can release, okay, now I understand why that happened. We understand how to avoid it in the future. And We've mitigated this. So that is getting rid of relational clutter because every time you get into a fight or an argument or you don't address something, you put something off and you just let it go, Because no matter how many times you apologize or you think you've let go of whatever the situation was, the second they do something even remotely close to the same thing, you're immediately going to be triggered and assume that the same situation is going to happen. So unless you are able to have the conversations and release that situation, it's going to haunt you. It's going to keep coming back. So in short, clutter fragments us. Clearing it brings us back to alignment with ourselves and with our lives. And I know I've mentioned a handful of times clutter and hoarding, so I want to pause for a second to differentiate between the two because clutter simply is stuff or baggage that builds up, but you can let it go when you're ready. and clutters when you have more stuff than you need. but it's still manageable. You might be overwhelmed or annoyed by it, but you can clean it up when you have the time and energy. Hoarding on the other hand is, it's more intense and psychological. It's when the idea of letting something go causes actual distress. And the amount of stuff that you have actually starts taking over the quality of your life. A big key factor in differentiating the two is quality of life. If your couch is so covered in clothing and debris and boxes that it's not functional anymore, you might have a little more than clutter. If you can pick up the clothes that are on it, put them in a basket, fold them quickly and put them away, it's probably not as bad. But if you can't even see your furniture, it's probably a little more intense than you think. People often hoard as a trauma-based response, whether it stems from childhood, scarcity. Some people find clutter comfortable. It's familiar. There's also, you know, the same like perfectionism. You can't throw it away unless you're absolutely sure that it's useless. I'm having a hard time getting rid of things because I still find value in them. And I think, I can sell that. And I know I'm not going to put the time and effort it takes to put it on marketplace. I've done that with a handful of stuff and it's been a pain in the butt and it's almost not even worth it. So I just kind of gave up on that. But it's so hard for me because it's like, I feel like it's more valuable. than to throw in a yard sale, I don't want to just give it away. So that's something I struggle with mentally, and I know a lot of people do, but when you're hoarding, you take a baby, broken Barbie shoe that has absolutely zero value, but for whatever reason, you have yourself convinced that you need that for some reason. It's a deep psychological identity almost. It's... Having that represents a person or a part of you that you've dreamed up that you know needs the shoe at some point. It's really, really hard to explain the psychological... psychological aspect behind the thought process of hoarding. And if this hits close to home, I want to say there is no shame. We all have a tendency to hold on to some things for emotional reasons. The key is recognizing it and knowing when to reach out for help. whether it's from a therapist, a coach or a professional. organizer, someone who works with compassion. I have dealt with hoarders. I have dealt with people with lots of clutter. I am really good at organizing things and I would love to help one-on-one if this is something that you struggle with. I can help declutter your physical space, your mental space, emotional space. I can help you in your home and I can also help you with your life as a life coach. My website should be linked in the show notes. You are more than welcome to book a one-on-one call with me and we can see if this is something that I can help you with. Because it is a very serious matter. It's a fine line between clutter and hoarding. Clutter is something that you can get to one day and you know you'll get rid of it whenever you have the time. Hoarding is something that you don't want to deal with or acknowledge because you're not sure that you're capable of getting rid of it. if that makes sense. So I just want to say that if you suffer from hoarding or you're not entirely sure that it's hoarding or clutter, get a second opinion, reach out to someone, talk to someone, and let's make sure that you get the help that you need to tackle this because if you have hoarding tendencies, it's really hard to overcome that by yourself. And you can have a professional organizer come in and make sense of everything that you own, but that's not going to stop you from bringing more things in and from continuing to hoard. So you need to work with a trained professional that can help the mental aspect behind it. So once the hoarding is cleaned up and addressed, you don't continue to fall into the same patterns and behaviors. So again, I say this from a place of love and understanding and no judgment. So. Please reach out if you need help or assistance if this is very triggering to you. You're not alone and it's okay. So I want to get into the practical ways to declutter all of the areas that we've discussed. So the first and probably easiest is your physical clutter. And I know for me, my physical clutter is basically a direct relation to my mental health. If my house is a mess, then you know my brain is a mess. And I wish that wasn't the case, but I understand it seems to be that way for a lot of people. So if you can tackle an area of your life and you get that sense of relief and that weightlessness and that helps you feel better, even if for a moment, then you can maybe declutter some of the other areas of your life. So whatever's easiest for you, start there. and work your way up. So we're going to talk about physical clutter first. So the way I tackle physical clutter is start with one room, one space in that room. So let's start in the bedroom. Your bed is the biggest piece of furniture in the room, I'm assuming. Clear off your bed. Clear off your bed, make it pretty. Even if you just throw all the clothes on the floor or in a basket or whatever, make your bed. Having that visual aid is so key. If you're in the living room. Clear off your couch. Even if you're just putting things in a box or something, clear off that couch. It's a simple act, but just seeing that having that visual representation is so much, is so powerful. It's so impactful. And it gives you that sense of accomplishment that like, look at the thing that I did. Look what I just did. Look what I can do. The way I like to organize is to have three bins. You have a trash bin. You have a yard sale giveaway, sell bin, whatever. Don't want to keep bin. And then you have a keepsake bin. So we all have those items that we've talked about that have some sort of sentimental value that we just can't seem to bring ourselves to let go of. We'll put those in the keepsake box for another time. So again, We're giving them a home that gives them purpose and meaning. And then one day eventually we'll go through that box and we'll be able to get rid of things. Ideally, every time you get rid of, you go through that box, you get rid of more and more things. But that'll be something to address at a later time. Right now we just want to put things in a home. So if it's garbage, it goes in the garbage. If it's something that you know you don't want to keep and you want to get rid of, you put it in the yard sale box or the giveaway box. And then if it's something that you don't want in this space, but you're not ready to get rid of, can put it in the keepsake box. So those are the three boxes or bins that you need to have when you're decluttering. And then once you start with a big piece of furniture, I like to start, like if I'm in my bedroom, I will go by the door and I will pick one side of the door, either the right or the left side, and I will go across the room and I will clean in small segments. So right next to my door is all my nail polish. So I will go through, I will dust and clean my polish. I'll put anything away that doesn't belong there. This is a trick that I've taught myself that is very, very helpful because I know my ADD brain, if I take a cup from my bedroom and I go to put it in the kitchen, next thing I know I'm doing dishes and then laundry and then sweeping and then making dinner and I haven't cleaned anything in my room. So what I like to do is they make organized piles of things that don't go in that room. So I'm cleaning my nail polishes that's right there by the wall. Say there's a cup that goes in the kitchen. I'm going to make a pile on the floor for everything that I find that goes in the kitchen. because I know if I leave that space, I leave that room, I'm getting distracted. So then I finished cleaning that, I moved to the next spot. I find something that goes in the bathroom and something that goes in the pantry. I'll make a pile of things that go in the bathroom or the pantry. If I don't have a lot of things that go in other rooms, I might just have one pile of things that belong in other rooms. These are things that don't belong in this room. So as I'm cleaning, I'm just cleaning each segment that... is in that area and then I go around the room and I clean the whole room like that and I say I'm all done with the room and then I can find all the things that don't belong in that room and then start to put them where they go. If your space is a little more overwhelming and you're having a difficult time going through one space. Like I'll clean my nails, I'll dust and wipe down and clean everything. That might be a bit much for you if you can just put what goes in that space for now. Maybe you can just do a scan of the room and just take everything that goes in the kitchen and you take like a bin and you put all the kitchen stuff in that bin and take that bin to the kitchen. You take all the stuff that goes in the bathroom and if you have to do your room that way. You take everything out of your room that doesn't go in the room and you do that first and then you come back in and clean. A really, really easy trick. Layla, I don't have enough time to sit and clean and organize my entire room. That would take a whole weekend. I have a life. I have kids. I have a job. I have friends. I get it. Give yourself 10 minutes a day. Set a timer. 10 minutes every day to dedicate to cleaning one area of your your space. Again, we're still talking about physical clutter. But 10 minutes a day, you're going to fold the laundry that's on the couch. You don't even have to put it away. You're going to fold laundry for 10 minutes straight. And a lot of times you'll find when you set that timer that you're already in the zone and you're like, I've already folded this much. I only have this much left. I might as well just get it done. And you might even be so motivated to put it away. You never know. But if that's more realistic than setting a goal of cleaning a section of a room, set a goal for a specific amount of time and just know that you're gonna focus on cleaning for that amount of time. And then make sure that when that timer goes off, that you're not frustrated or aggravated, oh man, I only got like this small pile of stuff folded, I still have a whole couch full of stuff. Don't beat yourself up over what you didn't do, praise yourself for what you did do. Give yourself credit for the cleaning that you did do, for the decluttering that you did do. So in your physical space, Make sure you're focused on one surface at a time, one area at a time, one room at a time, 10 minutes at a time, whatever is gonna work for you. And then maybe make a box for keepsake or we'll deal with that later. Or a box of things that belongs to other rooms. However is gonna work for you. These are just some things that I've accumulated over the years that have worked really well for me. And I wanted to share those with you. Now. Mental clutter is a little different. guess that one of the things I do is I write my to-do list down and organize them. My favorite thing to do is I use my calendar, my phone like my Bible. If it's not in my calendar, I'm not doing it. So if you make plans with me and you don't see me put it in the calendar, I'm not going. So there's a thing that you know about me now. But one thing I like to do is I sit down every Sunday and I plan out my week and I will have specific things that I need to do on specific days. But for the most part, I put all of my tasks and things that I need to do for the whole week on Monday and prioritize the three most important things per day. And I'll put them on those days. So then on Monday, you see, I have this big long list of things that I need to do and I will try to do as much as I can on Monday because everything I don't get done on Monday, have to physically move to the next day on my calendar. And if I don't do it on Tuesday, I have to move it to the next day on my calendar. And that's so tedious and time consuming and annoying and I hate it. So it forces me, motivates me to do the things on the calendar so I don't have to move it to the next day. So that's a little trick that I've used. Learn how to say no to things that are not essential. Learn how to, I did a whole episode on boundaries. I will link that in the show notes too. So just make sure that you know what your limits are and you know how to say no and you know how to set boundaries. That will help alleviate some of the mental clutter because when you're already stressed, super thin and you're doing as much as you possibly can and somebody asks you to do more and you say yes, you're adding to your mental clutter and you don't need to do that. something else you could do is create rituals in between tasks. I struggle with structure and routine, waking up the same time every day, doing the same thing, eating the same things. That's not a thing that I'm really good at. I have an idea of what I want my day to look like, and I try to have some sort of structure and routine. So if you can add to that, like if you know I'm gonna deep work on this thing for two hours, and then after two hours I'm gonna give myself 30 minutes to... stretch or scroll on social media or however you want to reward yourself make sure you you have that so those are things that you know you want to do when I'm trying to work on my mental clutter I make sure I have a plan in place I do a thing called a brain dump where I just take my journal and I just start writing and anything that comes out is there. Like you'd be surprised how many scribbles are in your brain and then when you scribble them on paper how empty your brain gets. And I don't mean that in like a dumb way. I mean that in like how relieved you are. Like there's so many thoughts. Like I want to say I read something that was 90 % of our thoughts are recycled thoughts. I suppose it's 70. It doesn't matter the percentage, but most of our thoughts are recycled thoughts. Like we think the same thing over and over and over again. And then when you write them down, you get them out of your brain and then you can look at them and you see them almost from like a different perspective. And it helps with problem solving and solutions. And so do a brain dump. If you just feel super stressed and overwhelmed and there's so much in your brain, just start writing on paper in a journal and see what comes out and see what happens. I also like to do a daily recap. So I plan every Sunday and then every night before bed do an assessment. Okay, so what did today look like? Did I accomplish everything I wanted to? What didn't I do that I wanted to do? Why didn't I do that? How can I avoid these setbacks in the future? What could I have done differently? What am I grateful for? And What are my intentions for the next day? So when you fall asleep, you recap today's day, dissect it and make it a point to do better tomorrow. And then when you wake up in the morning, part of my meditation, my morning meditation is visualizing the day and how my day is gonna go through. Most of the time I can visualize everything almost exactly as it happens. But then if something goes off track or something, I have a minor setback or something happens, I'm not so thrown off by that. used to like ruin my whole day and mood and everything. And now it's like, okay, well, that's the thing that happened. Let's move on. So when you're planning your day and trying to create routines, try to segment your day, your morning planning, and then evening recap, because that will help you eliminate some of the daily stress that happens. and having a plan in place to deal with some of the things as they happen. So that is one way I like to tackle our mental clutter. And your emotional clutter. This one is a tough one. I feel like this one is really important because emotional clutter is something that we keep that we don't even know that we keep and this is typically a two person job. So I am doing monthly mermaid meditations the first Monday of every month at 7 p.m. Central Standard Time. I've been going, I'm trying to go live on the YouTube channel I did last month and I plan on doing it again in July. This is 2025, so I don't know when you're watching this. It may or may not still be relevant, but next month I'm going to do an inner child healing. I did an inner child healing in a group coaching session and one of the guys had such a profound impact to him. He realized he hadn't processed the grief of losing his grandfather at a young age. It changed the way he wanted to parent his own children. He realized there were all these different things that he had in process. He was crying. It was beautiful. It was a really good session. And it made me realize how much emotional clutter we carry that we don't even realize we have. He wasn't aware of these things. So many coaching sessions I've had where I've had aha moments where I'm like, my gosh, I didn't even realize certain things. So I think working with a professional coach, therapist, a spiritual healer, anything along those lines that will help you release some of the emotional clutter that you don't know you carry is so beneficial for your health. You can also do things independently for free. I mean, not everything costs money. You can journal. simple journal prompts, what am I holding on to? What do I need to let go to? What are the patterns that I keep repeating? And I say, you know, go to spiritual healers and things because I went to a channel. There was a girl who learned how to channel and she channeled your inner subconscious, which I was like, okay, yeah, right, whatever. But she did. And when I asked her, I said, why do I keep falling into the same money pattern? Because my pattern is, I have a lot of money and then I have no money and then I have a lot of money and then I have no money. I'm like, why do I keep doing? Why can't I just have a decent amount of money and keep it that way? And she channeled my subconscious and she says, I came from nothing. I deserve nothing. I have to prove that I'm worth something. So I build up this empire. But then once I get to this empire, I don't believe that I deserve it. So I crumble it down and then I have to start back over again so I can prove myself that I'm worthy of this empire that I'm building, even though I don't believe I'm worthy of it once I have it. That was so profound and having that insight, I would have never got that on my own. And that was her tapping into my subconscious. She also said some other things that I'm not going to share on the internet that was very relational and was like, there's no way that you would have known that. there's more to that story, but it was very much like, I believe she was tapped into my subconscious and knew certain things. And I was like, okay. But having that insight helped me heal my money wounds that I didn't know that I had and see patterns that I could kind of see the patterns, but I didn't understand the depth of where they were coming from. see a lot of people will date the same person, different face. Like, yeah, same chick, different face, same dude, different face. It's the same relationship, same problem, same argument, same cycles. And... you might be aware of the pattern, but the deep psychological reasoning as to why. So when you're falling into the same patterns, what haven't you learned yet? That what is the universe trying to teach you when you're doing the same thing over and over again, it's because you're supposed to learn a lesson and you're not learning and you're going to keep repeating the same patterns until you learn that lesson. take a look at it from a very deep psychological level. You need to get in touch with your shadow self. I'm doing a whole course on shadow work soon So I will make an episode and announce that when I get that done, because I think that's just so integral for any kind of growth or self-help is to be able to look at the parts of us that we don't want to acknowledge and. see them in all their authenticity and embrace them, acknowledge them, and evolve them. So something else to help you with your emotional decluttering journey is forgiveness. And don't hate me for saying this. I know so many people are like, I try to forgive them and it doesn't work for me or they don't deserve my forgiveness. And I just wanna say that I did a whole episode on forgiveness and then I highly, highly, highly suggest that you go look at it. I will also link it in the show notes. because it is so integral for you to learn how to forgive people, not for them, but for you. In my episode, I make the analogy of somebody does something wrong to you, they hand you a pile of shit, and instead of getting rid of that pile and washing your hands, so if they try to hand you another pile, you can be like, no, I know what you're about to give me. I don't want any more of that. No, thank you. You stand there and you hold it. And then anytime anybody else tries to give you anything, it's contaminated and gross and dirty because you refuse to let go of that because you, you want to be able to be like, no, no, no, you can't give me this. Look, I already have this pile of shit. You can't give me any more shit. No, go wash your hands. You forgiving them as you washing their hands. It doesn't condone what they did. It doesn't make it. Okay. If somebody robs you, you can forgive them for robbing you and still press charges. a hundred percent that is not what forgiveness is about. Forgiveness is about you being able to let go of the emotion attached to the wrongdoing. They know what they did. And a lot of times they don't even care that they hurt you or acknowledge that they hurt you. You aren't even a thought. So you're holding on to all of this animosity and guilt and these grudges for someone who doesn't even think about you or acknowledge you exist. And maybe they do. And it's not, it's different for each situation. But what I'm saying is that you letting go, of this situation, you not holding onto it, doesn't affect them. It affects you 100%. And I go into detail on how to do this. So please watch the episode on forgiveness because that will help you release so much emotional clutter. Like learning how to forgive is definitely been the most impactful thing that I've ever done. And it's made me more calm and peaceful as a human in general. And I think that everybody should practice forgiveness. You hear about gratitude all the time? The gratitude is great. highly suggest you have a gratitude practice too. But forgiveness is so important for that deeper, more emotional subconscious change. that's all I'm going to say about the forgiveness. You can move through your emotions. There's somatic breath work. There's a quantum flow. There's crying. You can sit down and just cry. I hate the phrase. got to feel it to heal it, but it's so accurate. And you really do sit down and, and just go through all of the emotions that you've been holding onto that you didn't want to let go of. all the pain, all the suffering. Cry, cry, get it out, scream, yell, punch a bag, punch a heavy bag, scream into a pillow, lay on the floor like a toddler and kick and scream and pout and flare your fist. Like whatever you need to do to feel your feelings and get those emotions out of your body, get rid of that emotional clutter, whatever you need to do. And again, there's always just talking. You can write it out. You can talk to someone. Sometimes me making these episodes and just rambling about certain situations are kind of cathartic. So having a conversation with a good friend or Maybe even just recording yourself and not ever sharing it with anybody Might be good enough. So those are just some ways that you can get rid of some of the emotional clutter. Now let's talk about relational clutter. First and foremost, boundaries. I think it is so important to set healthy boundaries. I've done a whole episode on setting healthy boundaries. I will link that. There's show notes for you to watch too. It is okay to say no and just know that the people that are going to have the biggest problem with your boundaries, with you setting boundaries are going to be the people who are probably the reasons you needed to set boundaries in the first place. And these relationships could be in the workplace, they could be through friendships, they could be parental, they could be any kind of relative. So know that you need to set the healthy boundaries, know that it's okay to say no when someone asks you to do something and you're not capable of it. If someone wants you to go to this party, or they want you to go to this event, or this lunch. No, I'm sorry, I'm not gonna be able to make it to that. No, I can't do this. I've got a lot going on right now and I really just need to take a break from doing all the socializing and just kind of spend some alone time. And if people can't respect your boundaries and they don't respect you, then why are they in your life? Why are you letting them add to your relational chaos, clutter? What do these people bring to your life? Why are they there? So that's just something I want you to kind of be more mindful of is where are you dedicating your time? Are you like a teenager? Are you giving your time to all these people who don't matter and aren't relevant and lacking healthy boundaries and taking for granted some of the relationships that are meaningful to you. Are you? putting your spouse or partner on the sidelines because you just assume they'll always be there for you. I see this is a big downfall on a lot of relationships and I'm guilty of this at times was just like, you know what? I've got so much other stuff going on right now. I will deal with you later. We will be fine. We'll work this out. And at one point we weren't, we weren't fine and we weren't going to work it out. And it was because it was like, we'll deal with this later. Well, later never comes and we never dealt with it. And then it got to the point where it was like, what are we even doing? So are your healthy relationships suffering because of your relational clutter that you have with people? I don't want to say who aren't relevant, but who shouldn't be as high of a priority. Are you prioritizing people that aren't prioritizing you? Why? That's something definitely to think about. So setting healthy boundaries, saying no to things that are going to drain you, saying no to hanging out with people who don't need to be in your life. I've definitely cut out a lot of people lately because they just energetically drain me. They lie and tell stories all the time, or they just want to be a victim and everybody to feel sorry for them. They don't actually want any kind of solutions or helpful workarounds. So I just don't want to interact with people like that because it just takes away from me and it adds to my clutter because then I can't stop thinking about their situations. Why would they lie to me about that? Do they really think I'm that dumb that I believe that? Like I'm insulted that they think I believe that or are they just trying to convince themselves? The more people they tell that story to, the more they believe it themselves. I clutter my brain with questions. from associating with these people that are just adding to my clutter and they're not beneficial for any means. So you think about your relationships. Why are these people around and why do you dedicate so much of your time to them if you're not getting anything out of the relationship? And I'm not saying that you need to get something from everybody that you're in a relationship with, but there should be a mutual, everything should be symbiotic. You you should get what you give. And it's good to give unconditionally sometimes, but when it's just expected or it's just taken, I've definitely cut people out of my life that just took and took and took and weren't ever interested in giving back. They only cared about what I could do for them and what I could bring to the table for them. They weren't ever giving anything in return. And the second I stopped giving to them, I didn't exist anymore to them. I was only in their lives to benefit them, not any way around. And those are the people that deplete you because you keep thinking, maybe if I give them more, eventually they'll give back. And the truth is they're never going to give back. You're never going to get what you put in and you got to be okay with that. And we spent a lot of time with the wrong people because we hold onto those thoughts and ideas that I put so much time and effort into this. I don't want to throw it all away. You're throwing away your future by not letting go of it now. Yes, you've already spent all this time, but this is already happened and we've learned lessons. We did the things and now we know from those things that we did. If we know it's time to let go and we don't let go and we continue to hold on to it because we don't want this time to be a waste, then all you're doing is wasting this time. Does that make sense? Like Don't see this as a waste of time. See this as lessons learned, things that we've done, overcame, understand. And now we're moving forward with our future. So it's okay to let that go. We don't have to hold onto those people and those situations and those emotions because of old ideas or whatever the situation was. We can move forward with our present and let go of that relational clutter. So. Be really honest with yourself when you think about these relationships. Are you holding on to them? Are you clinging to them because they're comfortable or because you're afraid of growth or do some deep digging? Like, why are you holding on to these people? Why can't you let go of them? Should you let go of them? There's a lot of questions that you need to be asking that only you can answer. And the more you deep dive into each relationship, like you can sit down with a pen and paper and write every single name of every person that you know or interact with and put a plus or minus and be like, just tap in energetically, like you don't have to be some kind of guru to do this. You can just sit there. And if I say a name, you immediately feel a feeling. And it doesn't matter if this name is from someone from grade school, from kindergarten, that you barely remember, that name will trigger a response. And it's good or bad in your brain. Immediately you know what it is. If you overthink it, that's your brain taking in. You're not tuning into the energy. So the energy is the second I say a name. If I say April, and you know in April, you're going to have that plus or minus is going to pop into your brain. And when you see their name on that paper, you just write that plus or minus. And then I want you to look at everybody that has a minus and let them go energetically. They're like, you know what? I love you and I release you. I don't need to keep you in my life. I don't need to hold on to you. And if there's names that are on that list and you find yourself struggling to let them go, then do more deeper reflection. Who are they? Why do they mean so much to you and why are you having a difficult time to let go of them? I struggled with this with my biological mother. There was a lot involved in that and at some point I just, for my own mental health, I had to release her with love. Like I want nothing but the best for her and I hope her well in life and I hope she gets the help that she needs and her mental health turns around and one day she's all better. That would be great. That would be ideal. I wish no ill towards her, even though I know she curses me every chance she gets. And I am okay with that because that's not my problem. That's not me. That doesn't reflect me. That reflects her. And I want nothing but good things for her, but I need to want that from a distance because involving myself with her and her chaos and her toxicity was not okay. for me or my family, for our mental health. And I know so many people come at me like, your mother gave birth to you and she did this. And I love those people. I love that you can't fathom a world where there is a terrible person that is out there raising children. And I have so many friends with toxic mothers and people who have done terrible things to their children. And the fact that you can't fathom that those people exist is a good problem for you to have. So I love the comments that are like, I can't believe you don't talk to your mother and you're part of the problem and all these awful, hurtful, hateful things that you say to me because you don't understand. I love that. I love that for you. I honestly do. I love that you can't understand the pain and trauma. that a child has to go through to cut their mother off. It's not an easy situation or solution to a problem. It's not like, she didn't buy me this coat I wanted. I'm never talking to her again. No, it's not that. And the fact that you can't comprehend anything outside of that is amazing for you. And I'm so happy for you. But cutting toxic people out of your life is not the easiest thing to do, especially when there's trauma bonds and deep connections. So when you're writing your list and you have these pluses and these minuses, if you put a plus and you know it should be a minus, contemplate that. I'm not telling you what to do other than really dissect your thought process behind your pluses and minuses and what you're struggling to let go of and why. And just think of, you know, your inner circle, who's just draining you and who's nourishing you. And that was easy for me. There are certain people, when you hang out with them, do you get excited to hang out with them or do you dread the idea of hanging out with them? When you're done hanging out with them, are you invigorated, excited, renewed, at peace, chill, relaxed, or are you energetically drained and exhausted and tired and just done? So these are all things to be very mindful of when you think about who is... contributing to your relational clutter. And we've already talked about interpersonal clutter between a relationship, between two people. If you have a business partner, are they not holding up their end of the bargain? Are you doing more work than you feel like you should? Are there conversations that need to take place between you and this partner in order to kind of clear away some of this clutter? We've talked about romantic relationships and in parent parental relationships are there conversations that you need to have with your children and you're just avoiding them because you don't want your kids to hate you or lash out at you or even in friendships. I know so many people don't have conversations with friends because well, I didn't want to have that conversation at this time. And you know, it's never really a good time to have certain conversations and sometimes they just need to take place and be done. because the longer you draw it out, the longer it takes you to have those conversations. The the kind the more awkward it is, honestly, like someone comes to me and they're like, hey, remember this thing that happened a month ago? Yeah, I'm pretty upset about it. And I'd be like, what the fuck? Why are you coming to me with this now? Why didn't you just say something a month ago? Because I can't sit on something for a month and just dwell on it. I'd be like, hey, you know, this thing that you said, just now, can you not? Can you help me understand what you meant by that? Did you mean to say it like this? I can't, I can't do that. and I, I do, sometimes I might need to take a minute and be like, am I overreacting? Do I need to calm down? Let me gather my thoughts, but I'm not, I'm not dwelling on it for weeks and months at a time. But yeah, I can't just sit and dwell on something for months at a time. So if you need to have a conversation with someone about something that's bothering you and you value this relationship and this is causing clutter between you, have that conversation, get rid of that clutter and feel so relieved. I know so many times so many people have conversations with their friends or partners or children or whatever in their head and They have this whole scenario worked out in their brain of how this person's going to react, what they're going to say, what they're going to do, and their worst case scenario, preparing for the things and then they have the conversation. The person's like, Oh yeah, no, I totally meant this. I'm sorry you took it that way. Or, Oh yeah, no, I knew I did that and I meant to apologize for that. And I'm really sorry. Um, you know, that was a one-off thing. I absolutely value our friendship and I'll make sure that that never happens again, or, know, whatever the situation is, but you get yourself all worked up about something that's not really real. Anxiety is just basically your brain reacting to hypothetical situations and things that aren't real. And you get really mad at me for saying things like that, but that's all anxiety is. It's just worrying about a future that isn't really real. Just like depression is. kind of dwelling on the past that has been scientifically proven that our thoughts and memories aren't really accurate a lot of the time, so that's kind of fun to know. But anyway, those are some ways to get rid of your relational clutters, to fix any kind of debris floating around in your relationships and get rid of relationships that aren't valuable to you in your life and your trajectory and your growth and who you are becoming. A lot of times we hold on to people just because they're familiar and they've been around forever. And I have friends like that, you know, hey, I've been friends with you for 25 years and you're the same person and I've evolved so much. And it's not that I'm a better than you kind of evolution. It's just that we're different and you. love who you are and want to stay that person forever and I love that for you because you're an amazing human but we don't click like we used to because I'm not the same person I was when we hung out 25 years ago and the things I do and am interested in and find pleasure out of are not the same things that bonded us 25 years ago and those people get a minus on my checklist and I love them and I don't wish ill upon them and I'm not gonna be like, I can't hang out with you anymore, but it's just, it's very minimal because when I do hang out with them, I am exhausted because it's... It's not an alignment. We're not in energetic alignment. There's a disconnect there. And again, it's not better or less than, it's just different. So those are relational clutters. And last but not least, my favorite, digital clutter. I get in so much trouble because all of my digital devices are on silent. If you want to get a hold of me, you have to message me or call me. My watch will give me a notification. It'll vibrate. I've gotten several messages and calls while I've been recording this episode and that's fine because I'm this is my priority. My podcast is my priority right now. I will get back to whoever, whenever it's convenient for me. I am not a slave to my phone and I refuse to let notifications on my digital devices overwhelm me. So anytime I download a new app, immediately turn all the notifications off. I'm sorry duo, I don't need to know every eight seconds that I've dropped out of the number one spot because somebody else decided to play for the day. I will duo when it's convenient for me and not because you remind me 87 times a day. I don't need those notifications. I don't need notifications from games. I don't need a million notifications from emails. I check my emails in the morning and I check them in the evening. So if I get an email in the middle of the day, all 837 of them from the 90 different email accounts that I have, they will get looked at and addressed when it's convenient for me, not because I have a notification. If it's important, you should have access to me and you should call or text me. And other than that, I don't want any notifications on either of my phones, my personal phone or my business phone. My business phone is on and working during business hours, but when I am not at work, or if I'm taking a break, my phone is on silent. And I think so many people don't know how to turn the notifications off on their phone, or they don't know how to delete apps, or, you know, they have, I have a friend of mine who has Google Teams for work, and they're always getting notifications for Google Teams. And I was like, you could put Do Not Disturb on your phone and set certain apps to not disturb you. And if your workplace, if you haven't signed a contract and they're not paying you to be on call, then you don't have to legally respond to those messages outside of business hours. And again, I'm not telling you to get in trouble or do anything. Double check what your work requirements and contracts are. I'm not telling you to do anything outside of your contractual obligation. That's your responsibility to figure that out. So yeah, that is definitely within your rights to do, but they can't tell you that you're on call if they're not going to pay you for being on call. And they can say, you're not a team player. I'm absolutely a team player when I'm paid for it. I act my wage. So if you want me to be on teams 24 seven, you're going to pay me to be on call. I need my own call pay or you can shove it up your ass. You could say it a little bit more tactful than that, but You know, anyway, so decluttering digitally. have my apps organized on my phone. So when I go to look at an app, it's alphabetized. Most phones default setting, which is so stupid, is to show up in the order it was downloaded, like your most recent downloads. Like, I don't remember when the last time I downloaded my banking app was. I don't know where to find that. I do know that if I put my phone in alphabetic order that I can just go right there, there's my bank, and find it. also organize my phone as little apps and folders and things. You can take and you can drop and drag multiple apps together and it'll create a little folder and then you can name it. Like all my work stuff is under hustlin' or just goofy stuff or whatever or money moves or something. So you can make. little folders for all of the things that you use frequently and have them easily accessible. Your emails. There's zero reason. Like I have one email that's specifically for spam. So when I sign up for a contest or something, it's a fake phone number and it's a fake email. I mean, it's not a fake email. It's just, it's ancient. It's my grade school stuff. So that's all the spam goes there. And I just checked that every once in a while to see if I win a million dollars, which of course I did every day. And the main ones that I use, I unsubscribe to everything constantly. If I see something and I'm like, who are you? What are you? I don't remember you. Unsubscribe. What is this thing that I signed up for? yeah, unsubscribe. I don't have time for that. Notifications for my car. I don't need text messages and emails. Unsubscribe. Any chance I get, I'm unsubscribing. And yes, it's a pain in the ass to unsubscribe to everything, but it's less of a pain in the ass. to get a million notifications and I'm not gonna be my friend with her email box is so full it doesn't even tell her how many emails she has it just is like 99,999 plus. That's ridiculous, I don't ever want that. So I unsubscribe to everything. I leave things if I need to go back to them. So if you send me an email and I'm like, I need to remember to do that, I'll mark it as unread or flag it depending on what email it's in and go back to it. everything else just goes away. don't need to keep those things. So declutter your emails, declutter your, when was the last time you went through your contacts? Oh my goodness. When I got my last new phone, I had like 900 something contacts. like, I don't even know that many people, but it was old work phone numbers and people from jobs that I haven't had in 10 years. And I'm like, I'm never going to need to have a conversation with this person ever again. Get rid of old contacts in your phone. I'm trying to think of what else you could do. Delete apps, go through your apps. There's so many times my phone was like, hey, you're almost out of memory, you need to delete some photos. I'm like, I'm not deleting photos. So I go through and I'm like, what is this app? What even is this? And delete, delete, delete, get rid of stuff. So organize your desktop, your phone, your hard drive. Declutter digitally, turn off notifications that aren't pertinent. Like I said, the only notifications I have are text messages and phone calls. And do not add me to a group chat. I've gotten so much slack. People are mad at me because I'm like, please don't add me to group chats. And they're like, it's just you and you and you. And I'm like, I don't care. I don't want it. Because I don't have the mental capacity to sit here while my phone's going off and you're deleting the battery from my devices because you two are having a conversation about what to have for lunch. And I'm in the middle of a conference call and I can't. turn the notifications off on my phone. So everything's distracting me and just cluttering my brain and it doesn't even involve me. You don't need to have a conversation. I don't need to be involved in your conversation about lunch. I don't care. And I mean that in the nicest way. I really just don't. Like if you were asking me specifically, I'll respond to you when it's convenient for me and when I have time. I don't need notifications that you two are having a conversation. that you felt that I needed to be included in. don't know, maybe that's so selfish. I don't care. Don't add me to group chats. Don't get mad at me when you add me to a group chat and I ask you nicely not to because some like on Messenger, that's fine. On any of the social medias, add me to all the group chats on the socials. I could care less because I'll look at them when I have free time. But on my text messages, do not add me to group texts. because a lot of times I can't leave them on my own and then I have to make an embarrassing announcement like, can you un-add me to this group because I hate group chats? And then people are like, they think I'm being rude or disrespectful or whatever and I just can't delete myself from text message chats that you add me to. So just don't add me to them, please. Because that is adding to my digital clutter that I don't have the mental capacity to deal with. So that is a boundary I've set. That's a boundary that most people I know have been very respectful of. So I appreciate that and I appreciate you. And these are just different things that I wanted you to be aware of that are considered clutter, that are cluttering your brain that you may not even know exist, that you may not even think are problematic. But when you think of all of the things, when you think of all the conversations with friends that you haven't had, all of the notifications on your phone that are Tearing in the background of your brain all of the things that you have on your to-do list all the piles of things that you have around your house These are all clutter and these are all weighing heavy on you and these are all taking away from your brain powers your emotional capacity your thought processes There's so many things that these are affecting negatively So I just want you to be mindful of them and aware of them and know that decluttering isn't about becoming perfect or minimal. It's about making room for joy, ease, connection, and growth. It's saying I matter. My energy matters. I deserve peace. I deserve freedom. I deserve clarity. and I don't want clutter. and you're not broken because you have clutter, you're human. Like I said, everybody has some level of clutter and the degree of which we can handle varies individually. You might be able to handle more physical clutter because you have less mental clutter. There's all kinds of things. Some people can't handle any physical clutter because they have so much relational clutter. Everybody has a degree. It's like a big pie chart and we all have different levels of different types of clutter and there's nothing wrong with whatever level you're at. We're all human and these are all just things. So whether it's your inbox or your friendships. or your thoughts or your closet, I want you to pick one area this week and clear it out. So if you wanna have a difficult conversation with a friend and get rid of some clutter, if you wanna clean your closet, if you want to delete a million apps from your phone, organize your photos, go through your, organize your hard drive, pick one thing this week. and give future you a little breathing room. I hope that you found value in this episode. I really just wanted to share some of my top tips and tricks for decluttering because I found that certain things have been really impactful and profound in my life. And I just, want to share all of these things with you. So again, like, share, comment, subscribe. do reviews, all the things will help me bring more episodes and more information to you. I love you and appreciate you so much for being here. Let's go do life uncluttered. Thank you.