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Diana Rene: 0:06

You're listening to the decluttered mom podcast, a podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom. I'm your host, Diana Rene, 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 this episode of the decluttered mom podcast. Today, I just want to talk about something, just a realization, or not even a realization, but, I guess, something that reconfirmed my feelings about decluttering. And, for those of you that maybe don't follow me on Instagram don't know that we had to move out of our home for at least several weeks, potentially longer, due to some water damage that we have to have figured out, and restored and rebuilt, and all of that. We have to rebuild a bathroom, we have to rebuild part, or potentially all, of our kitchen, we have to rebuild a part in our basement, and number one lesson is that water is damaging, and we already knew that if you've been around for any period of time since 2022. We actually had to gut our kitchen at our kitchen at our old house because of water damage because of a pipe broke in our wall, and it's just crazy how much damage water can do, and quickly.

So we don't know when we're going to be back into the house, but we had to remove a bunch of our stuff because of all of this happening, and we also we had to, you know, pack all of our stuff that we are going to have for at least three weeks, like that's kind of going into the situation. We were like we're going to be, we're going to be out for at least three weeks, so we need enough of our things for our routine to be as what's the word? My brain doesn't want to work right now For our routines to be like the least amount of issues or disruptions, and so you know, the girls still have to go to school, I still have to work, my husband still has to work, so getting enough of our things over here in three weeks is like a sizable amount of time, right, and so we had to kind of felt like we were moving, especially because in two bathrooms and the kitchen and part of our basement, we had to have everything removed because they have to take care of the damage and they have to rebuild.

And so as I was going through that process and emptying all of these cabinets and things like that, I was just reminded of how much more work this would be if we just had a ton of stuff, if we had the amount of stuff that we had when I first started the decluttering process in 2017. I know that it would be unbearably overwhelming because we would, number one I would not just the sheer amount or the sheer volume of things that we had in our home, it just would take so much time. And so I know that if I had opened a cabinet and knew that I had to empty this and find homes for everything in there, it would have been so overwhelming. So that's number one. Number two is that I have just built and developed and strengthened the decluttering muscles so much over the last, oh my gosh, 2017. So seven years Is that right? Yes, that's right. That's crazy.

Over the last seven years that it was kind of good for me because when I had to go through these cabinets, I actually did a quick declutter, and I was really quickly and easily able to pick something up and know whether or not it was something that we needed to keep, needed to donate, needed to throw away. So some of the things were damaged right, so that was easy to. Yes, we have to get rid of this, but a lot of the things, it was just a good, good reminder of how many areas of our lives decluttering spills over and it just makes things simpler and it makes things take less time, which we could all use. Right, we are all busy, we have so many things on our plate and so if we have a task that is out of the blue, that is not expected and is very time-consuming, it can really quickly spiral and feel out of control and overwhelming. And even though this whole thing is overwhelming like having expensive water damage to your home and having to move out and not know when you're able to come back in and trying to figure out how this is all going to happen and coordinating with all the different companies and contractors and weighing everybody's opinions and deciding and decision fatigue, like all of that is already overwhelming, but the fact that we didn't have an excess of stuff on top of it is just like it. Just it makes me feel like I can breathe right, because that's always what we talk about is that decluttering alone is not going to magically make your life perfect and you're never going to have issues and you're never going to have anything in your life that you don't desire. It's just going to make your baseline less stressful.

Does that make sense? It just anything that you're going through. It's not going to exacerbate it. It's not going to add to your problem. It's actually going to make you feel like, oh, okay, this isn't as heavy as I felt, because when I opened all of those cabinets, it wasn't like, oh my gosh, how am I going to do this? There's so much crap in here. It was, oh, I opened the cabinet and I know, oh, that's not bad, there's not many things in here and this we haven't used in a while. I'm going to get rid of this, this, this. I think we need to move into a better home. I was able to go through that process really, really quickly and it only took us I don't even know because there are so many spaces, but it only took, you know, 10 to 20 minutes for each room to be able to empty those things out and know exactly where to put them and make quick decisions and not have it be an added burden in a time that was already a naturally high stress type, and so I just wanted to share that with you guys, maybe as encouragement, or maybe I don't know if you're going through anything like this right now. I've had quite a few DMs of people that are having recently gone through a forestry model or are about to go through a forestry model and they feel really stressed out. And I get it because I'm stressed and I'm not saying that I'm not stressed about the situation.

I am simply saying that I am so happy I don't also have the added stress of excess stuff in my home that I now have to figure out what to do with it. Not only that, but when something like this happens and you have to get rid of the things that are in the area like if you have a lot of things that's extra hard because you are being forced to let go of a lot of things that you probably weren't ready to let go of yet. And a big part of decluttering I would argue the biggest part of decluttering is just facing and overcoming those emotional obstacles. And if you're not ready to do that or you don't know how to do that and you're just forced to let go of everything, that feels really hard and can almost create even more of an attachment to your physical belongings, which then adds another layer of emotion that you have to figure out how to overcome as you're working through decluttering and systemizing and all of that.

And so I just want to encourage you. This is just yet another reason to declutter, to start the process. If you're not sure where to start the process, I have a free training for you. It's linked in the show notes, but it's going to give you three action steps. It's called from chaos to calm and it's going to give you three action steps that you can start taking today that are going to start building that momentum for you so that you can do this process and it's not going to just feel extra frustrating for you and just feel like you want to do it and you just don't even know where to begin. So I hope this was helpful for you. I hope this was encouraging. I will try to keep you updated on the podcast as far as what is going on with our home, but the best way honestly to follow along with. That is on Instagram. I'm in my stories, I'm asking for help with what tile to pick and what shower I should do, and all of that because, when it comes to design, you guys decluttering a. Okay, I am great at decluttering design. No, I am not great. And so I love the Instagram community because you guys give me feedback there and help me figure out what to do when we are coming up with with how to do how to rebuild these spaces. So if that's something that is interesting to you or you think it would be fun to follow along or give advice, I would love it. Definitely follow me on Instagram at the decluttered mom.

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 the decluttered mom 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.