You're listening to the decluttered mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, diana Renee, and in 2017, i had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home Okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me. Over the next 10 months, i got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom system and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show.

Welcome to another episode of the decluttered mom podcast. I am so happy you are here and you may or may not have been doing my five day challenge last week. If you did, i hope it went great for you and I would love to hear how it went, what your thoughts were, if you noticed a change in your home, because, even though they were very short tasks they purposely are built that way They typically tend to pack a little bit bigger of a punch because of what we're doing and how we're doing it. The challenge is something I have done since 2018, which is crazy. We used to do these four or five times a year. Now we only do them twice a year and we are even considering going down to just once a year because as the business has grown, as the decluttered mom on social media has grown, we have a lot of people join the challenges, which is a great problem to have, but they are very, very time consuming on my team's part. They take a lot of effort and extra hours and all of those things. As the business has grown, we keep making it happen, just not as much Twice this year. We will either do it twice or maybe just once next year, but I will make sure, once we've made that decision, to let you know, because we did have the challenge last week. We do have a promotion on minimalish starts here, which is my main decluttering program. We have had over 5,000 people go through it now at this point and it's an A to Z guide. It walks you through your entire home. It teaches you how to overcome the emotional obstacles that come up with decluttering. If we don't do that first, we probably are not going to be super ruthless in our decluttering. We're wasting our time. I don't want you to waste your time, because time is a limited resource already, especially for us busy moms. This program walks you through how to do everything in just 20 minutes a day. Like I said, we've had over 5,000 women, which blows my mind. When I first started this course, i never could have dreamed having that many women go through the program and so many women have such great success with it. We have a discount. It's 50% off until Thursday at midnight but I had to get that all out to you now because, I wanted to tell you a story about someone who was one of the first people who ever joined my program back in 2018.

Her name is Mary. She is a homeschooling mom of boys in Florida. She actually went through my whole program and ended up being my first ever coach inside the program. She helped me develop that position and figure out really what a coach was going to do and what their job was going to be. Then she now is pursuing her own thing, her own business. She is number one. She's just wonderful and the nicest person ever. When she first took my program, she had the funniest story that happened when she got through her kitchen. Inside the program, we go through a specific order in your home because if you are like most people, you probably jump into your like, most problematic areas because they stress you out, which is understandable. So you're like the playroom is really stressing me out or my closet is just out of control, and so most people tend to like try and tackle those areas first which back fires, because you don't have the number one tools and number two momentum to be able to tackle a space like that. And so we have the program set up in a very systematic way and it's for very specific reasons, so that you can build the momentum and you can kind of build your ruthless muscle before getting into the spaces that tend to be a lot harder, so that you are making a more efficient choice in how you are decluttering and in what order you are decluttering. So once she got done with the kitchen, her youngest boy walked into the kitchen like a day after. Okay, so she had spent this time in the kitchen going through decluttering everything and she had cleared off all the counter tops, because she was like diana, this is the first time i had a place to put everything in my cabinets, because before my cabinets were like overflowing so i had to keep a ton of stuff out on the counters because there was no rules to put them. But then when i went through the process, i actually had space for the things that were living on the counter and so i was able to put them away and the counters were totally clear. So her one of her sons walked in the next day and he goes mom, when did we get new counters? because he had never seen clear counter tops before in their home. And she was like dying laughing telling me this story and she's like diana, i think. He legit didn't. He didn't know what our counter tops looked like because they always had so much crap on them, and so to him it was like it was a completely different counter top, a completely different kitchen, just because he had never even like realized what space all of that stuff on the counter top was taking and how much it hid the actual counter tops. So i just love that story. I think it's so funny and little kids are so funny.

But it was a true testament to how decluttering can completely transform how a space looks and how a space feels. Because we have this promotion going on and you can get 50 off until thursday at midnight, i wanted to share with you a couple of dms i have received from various members of the program and also a couple things people have written in our facebook group. Um, i have gotten permission from all of these people. I never, ever, ever, share something that someone dms me or posts in our private members group without asking for permission. So i just want to clarify that, give that disclaimer up front, because that the trust is way more important to me than having a testimonial, and so i just want to make sure that you guys know that before i go through, go into any of these.

So this is from someone who did the five day challenge in January of this year and she said you're literally out here changing lives, and I couldn't be more grateful. After doing the five day challenge at the beginning of the year, i decided to finally purchase minimalist starts here I'm down to our basement and garage and it's literally life-changing. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. And if I had to tell you, if I had to break it down into two words that are used the most in testimonials or in DMs that I get from people when they have finished the program, it is life-changing, and I think that when I describe it that way, maybe people don't really, maybe they're like yeah, yeah, it's life-changing. Of course, like you say that it's your marketing, but that is what I hear from people over and over and I know for me personally it was life-changing. And so to hear it from other people, it just it's confirmation number one, but number two like that's why I do this, because knowing that it is life-changing and it is helping women take their homes back from the clutter and not dealing with that daily stress every day is it is life-changing, okay.

And then this next one I wanted to share and I wanted to talk about something she mentions in it. So let me read it real quick first, and then I'm gonna expand on something she says. So she said I cannot thank you enough for what you have created. I have binged on every platform of content you have in the program and I have completely turned my home upside down. I cannot get enough. I sit down after the kids go to bed and feel so strange not having anything to do. I have always done declutters, but never like this. I am at peace at my home, i play more and I smile more. Thank you so much for giving me my life back. Okay. So something she said in here that I really wanted to just expand on where she said I sit down after the kids go to bed and feel so strange not having anything to do. I know I have talked about this on the podcast before when we have had guests on who have been members of the program, but that is something that I have seen over and over and over where a lot of the women who go through the program they have so much time freed up that they're like I don't know what to do with my time. I have too much free time, which who would ever think you could say that as a busy mom, i have too much free time and I don't know. Like I have to now discover what I enjoy doing, because I don't even know. I have poured so much of my life into everyone else and making sure that everyone else is good that I've kind of forgotten about myself as a human right, not just as a mom, but as a, as a person who has interests or hobbies or things they enjoy doing. And so a lot of women who have gone through the program, and myself personally, have had to like, re-examine and re, like I don't want to say research, but like look into what they actually enjoy doing and like what they want to be able to be doing with their time and also just learning how to just be okay with having nothing to do, with being able to sit down and relax and not have like seven things on a to-do list hanging over your head. Like just learning to be okay with being still, or just relaxing or watching a movie and not feeling bad about it, things like that.

To go along with that, another person in the Facebook group had said that they found themselves walking up and down the hall trying to figure out what to do with myself this morning. We had nothing planned for the day, and after breakfast I found myself wandering my home. So it's like there's so much time and we have pulled in the past I we need to do this again, but we have pulled in the past. The members who have finished the program and asked like how much extra free time they have now as opposed to the beginning of the program, and it was, on average, seven to ten hours a week of extra free time, and you might be wondering like why, though, like I don't understand you're just decluttering? why does that like give you all this time? well, there's, there's a lot of reasons why. Number one. you're not spending all your time picking up like if there's less stuff to be out, there's less stuff to actually pick up.

The other thing is when you have the systems and routines that we cover in the program that you do after the decluttering, that That also eliminates a lot of the excess time that is spent on managing the home because everything is just being run in a more efficient manner. You're also spending way less time looking for lost items and just all of those things that just really build up. But I would say the biggest thing is just the lack of picking up. There's just less picking up all the time to be able to just manage your home. I wanna go back to what I was saying before about how a lot of times as moms we kind of forget about ourselves And that's nothing new, like that's not a new concept, right, but it's often not until our kids leave the house, like until we become empty nesters, that we are able to start like exploring that and grieving the fact that we like lost who we were for so many years. At least that is my perception of how the process typically works And I find this to just be a fascinating thing Inside the members group.

We have a lot of people when they are done with the program they will post in the group that they're done and they'll post a bunch of their before and afters and just like kind of their reflection. Because the members community is just one amazing, tight, encouraging community And so members like get close in there, they have gotten used to cheering each other on And so when someone is done with the program they will stay in the group and they will help people that are new to the program because it was so life-changing for them that they want to be there to help new people go through the process also. But one of those posts from someone who had finished the program. She said a bunch of things. It was several paragraphs, but then at the end she said a final thought. That surprised me When I released things I was holding onto for some day or for some version of myself that I hope to be. I have been able to slowly embrace the person I actually am. Today, in this very season of my life, i no longer feel the guilt or shame of not being something other than myself when I walk into certain spaces of my home And I just think that is so powerful Like that right there is worth going through the whole process of the entire home, because what a gift she gave to herself by being able to embrace the present and embrace who she is and not just constantly remind herself of who she's trying to be instead.

So I know that this is the Decluttered Mom podcast. I know that we do talk about decluttering, but we also talk about all sorts of things. If you've been here for any amount of time, you know that we cover all different types of things with simplicity and with motherhood and productivity and organizing and systems, and while all of those are so wonderful, the deep core of what I teach and why I am in this business is the decluttering, and so I just wanted to really come on here and talk about some of these really big benefits that come with decluttering. Whether you do them inside my program with my members in the community or you do them on your own, it doesn't matter to me. What matters is that you are able to take those steps and you are able to create a home and a culture inside your home for you and your family to live a life of less stress, to live a life where you can feel present and you can feel good about where you are and who you are, where you're not worried about the mile long list hanging over your head and you can't even relax in your own home. I don't want that for you. So, no matter how you go about that process, i just really want to encourage you to take the first step. Just take the first step and decide that you are going to declutter and you are going to do it ruthlessly, and I have so many free resources for you on this podcast on my Instagram. I have been on there almost daily for five years providing free content and resources for you guys. But if you are just ready to go and you want the guidebook and the step by step hand holding and just efficient decluttering processes with the community to cheer you on, encourage you and answer your questions along the way, then I hope you'll consider joining us inside the program before Thursday night so that you can get that great discount also.

Thanks for hanging out and listening to the Decluttered Mom podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could write a review or share this episode with a friend or your Instagram stories, and if you're on Instagram, be sure to follow me at thedecletteredmom and send me a DM to say hi. I'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. I hope you'll come back next week and hang out with us again.