June 13, 2025 • 21 mins
It's probably no surprise to you that decluttering can be challenging, especially with ADHD.
Renee lists her Top 5 Reasons that it's tough to get rid of things (and how ADHD can play a part of this).
Renee also gives simple tips to help you get rid of things in your life that you don't need.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:29):
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with ADHD.
I am Renee Allen, the host of this podcast, and I'm excited to
be back. I have been out of town and have
been decluttering like crazy since I got back
home, and which I've. I've loved. But it's
(00:49):
teaching me a lot about myself and my need to get rid
of things and. And how ADHD plays into it.
So I want to talk about some of
what I think are the five hardest things about decluttering,
about organizing, getting rid of things.
(01:10):
And one is just getting yourself to do
it. Getting yourself to do it. How often have you wanted
to clean out a drawer or reorganize something in your
life, some space, your desk, whatever it is, and you just
can't get yourself to do it. And there are a lot of reasons
for that, but some of it is just you.
(01:31):
You can't get it all set up to do it.
You might not know what the best
plan is, or you have a lot of ideas and you're not sure
which one to do. You hem and you haw about it, or
you decide, well, I'll need some containers for it, and then
you try to figure out which ones are the best or
(01:52):
what will fit. And I went through a lot of
that this week since. Since I got back from visiting my daughter.
Her house is new, and it's very clean and it's
very organized. And
I tend to think I'm somebody who can organize well,
but you always get ideas from other people.
And I just thought, okay, I need to redo this, I
(02:15):
need to redo that. And it wasn't that I was feeling
bad about myself in thinking that, but it was just inspiring
to. To think, okay, I could do this too.
I could make my pantry, which actually looked
pretty good, but it bugged me because there were spots
(02:35):
that would just kind of build up from people in our family, the
way that we put back the chip bags or whatever.
And I thought, I need containers for those so they're just not
kind of all over on the shelf, and then you don't even see what's
there, and then things get overlooked and they get older.
And so. So I just wanted to kind of streamline that
process. And planning it out takes some planning,
(02:59):
because if you want to get containers for a space, you have
to measure your space. You have to figure out which store
carries containers that would work for that, whether it's
a box or a bin or a little
rope container, you know, the cute little cotton containers.
I have one under here. And getting out tape measure, and
(03:23):
all that takes a lot of. Bit of. A lot of work and
a lot of effort and some bit, some organization.
And so you not only have to measure things, but you
need to write it down. Where are you going to write it down?
Will you remember to bring that with you when you go to
the store or when you look at a website, Are you gonna be
(03:45):
able to keep track of what the measurements are?
So it takes a lot of organization just to figure
out how you're gonna organize, which, to me is fun
at times, but it can take a lot of effort.
And if you're trying to fit that into your regular life, it might
just take a long time, or it might be discouraging or might stop
(04:08):
you from even beginning. So understanding what you
need to do, making a plan, and even just a list
of, today I'm going to measure. Tomorrow morning when I wake
up, I'm going to measure this or that.
And try to keep yourself on track when you do that.
But getting set up is one of the hardest things, or
(04:28):
even just getting yourself motivated to do it.
But once you have that motivation, once you think, I really
want to do this, you still have to figure out the plan.
You still have to figure out how that's going to work.
I'm just looking my. Sorry if this is distracting, but I
keep thinking my glasses are blurry, but I think it's just the
lighting, so I think my glasses are fine.
(04:49):
But another reason that decluttering is really hard
is that you often make a huge mess by doing
it, by going through. If you just. If you simply
just go through and decide what to get rid of, that might
not be making a big mess. You can grab.
(05:10):
You actually have to grab containers before you do it.
You need to have a place to put things so that when you walk
out of the room, it's easy to take it out.
So deciding whatever that container for the clutter is could
be a box. It could be shopping bags that you've had,
you know, not the reusable ones. Well, it could be the reusable
ones, but ideally you have something that's more of a throwaway
(05:32):
thing that you take that box, or you take that plastic bag
or paper bag from the grocery store and you fill it up.
It could even be a trash bag, but you might have more than
one. You might have one for actual trash, one for thrift store,
one for a place to donate books. That's different than
thrift store. What? However many places that you have, have that
(05:53):
many containers, Unless you know you're going to get rid of so
many things. Maybe you need three or four for the thrift store,
or two or three for what you throw away.
And if you're simply getting rid of things and it's
you. Which sounds simple, right? But it's not actually simple.
But if you're just getting rid of things, you're.
You might not make a bigger mess because you can take the item
(06:13):
and put it in the bag. Take the item, put it in the bag.
If you are rearranging or cleaning as
you go, then that can make a bigger mess, especially if you're
deciding to put things in other places.
And sometimes the easiest way to deal with
stuff is to just throw it all out. So
(06:34):
if you have a drawer or something, just take everything from
that drawer and put it on the counter or put it in
a box or something and then go through.
I think the counter is better or the floor is better because
you can just see it all. And then you choose what you're
going to keep and you take what you're going to throw away
(06:55):
or whatever and deal with it. If you have fringe items
like where you. You don't want to leave the room yet, or
you're not sure yet, so you just leave it there.
That's where the mess can grow. And there
are a lot of reasons why the mess can grow.
But just even setting up what you're going to do, I
(07:15):
keep walking around the house and looking at different areas.
Oh, yeah, I should go through all my shopping bags too, or, you
know, like the reusable shopping bags.
And I haven't been putting them away like I usually do, and
I need to go through each one and see if there's in there because
there might be something left. There might be some lip balm or
something. Sometimes I put other things in a bag besides what
(07:38):
I buy. If I'm just going to go in the store and I
don't want to bring my whole purse, sometimes I'll just put my
wallet in there, put a water bottle or something, and then
come back out and forget that something's in there later.
So if you have a strange system like that, you might need
to go through each item as you're organizing it or
look through each thing while you're decluttering.
(08:00):
If you're gonna get rid of purses, check the pockets.
Maybe you have something in there. Have you ever bought a purse
at a thrift store and you find something in the pocket?
I have. I found money in the pocket before.
So, you know, that can happen. So it might take some
effort to go through things. And I'm sure it's no
surprise to you that it makes a bigger mess to go through and
(08:21):
organize, because it does. It's like you're making little explosions
everywhere you go. It's like you're a child who gets into
the toy, close it, and doesn't just play with one toy,
but you're throwing everything out. That's what it looks like
sometimes when you declutter. So that can.
That can be a derailment that can make you think, I don't really
want to do this, or this is getting hard because it's taking
(08:43):
more than one day, or it's taking all week and I'm
just making bigger messes. But know that the end is
in sight and you can get through that.
You can get through that. You can eventually go to those little
piles or whatever's left and gather it up and
throw it away or pick a few more things out of it and
really just be brutal. I've been trying to be more brutal.
(09:05):
Like, you really don't need to keep all these random clips
and, I don't know, little things from having parties
that were like, on a little. What do you call it,
Like a toothpick, little decoration that maybe I'll use for some
someday. And there's only three left.
No, I won't. No, I won't. So just get rid of it.
Get rid of it. And one thing that I do, if I'm giving little
(09:27):
things to the thrift store, I often put them in, you know,
kind of organize them by, like, kind and put them
in a little Ziploc sandwich bag or something, or with necklaces
or something like that. Just so it's easier for the people at
the store to figure out what. What you have so it doesn't
get mixed up with other things and it's easier for them to sort.
(09:48):
So I tend to organize as I declutter for other people.
But one obvious, really hard thing about decluttering
is the emotional attachment that you might have to.
With things and. Or even if you're not
attached to it, just having some emotion.
It might be fear. It might be if I get rid
(10:11):
of all these things, I might need them later.
You know, it might not be something you're attached to.
It might be you have a ton of crayons and you really
don't have children in your home anymore or hardly ever will.
Or when they come, they're really not going to play with that
many crayons, you know, Well, I might need this Mini or I
might need this for later on, or I might need it.
(10:31):
I, I got rid of something the other day that I've
hung onto for a long time. It's a clipboard.
It's, you know, the really old fashioned clipboard with the metal
at the top. And I thought they're really nice to have.
Well, when's the last time I've used one?
I don't know, like six, seven years.
I don't know. I don't know. And I just thought that
(10:53):
is, that is dumb to think that I need something.
It's like some kind of emotion. It's making me think I can't
be without this and it's making me hold onto it.
It's getting in the way of that decision.
And then you might even have past regrets where you do get rid
of something and then a month later someone's at your house and
they say, oh, do we have a clipboard?
Or whatever? You know, it's just an example.
(11:14):
But it's really, it's, it's really easy to look
at those past regrets and think, oh, I threw something away
or I got rid of something right after I, I can't
even talk sometimes and right after I needed it.
And that will happen. But you can also look at
(11:37):
a past regret of having your house have more things
in it than you need and dealing with that in
the day to day, that's something that I regret is hanging on
to things for years when I, I don't need them
and they're getting in the way of me walking into a closet and
making an easy decision because I'm not trying to weed through
(11:59):
so many other things. And I think that's what's driving me
right now to declutter is when I open a
closet, when I open the pantry, when I'm going in, and
I'm already dealing with some decision making dysfunction,
whether it's for what to eat or how to find something
(12:22):
there. There are things with my executive function that are more
challenged now than they have been in a long time.
Well, I would say like more so in the last five years and
past 10 years too. I really do think that as we
get older, our brains aren't functioning as top
(12:43):
tier as they once did. And we, hormonal differences could
play a part in that. Aging can play a part of that.
But we want to give ourselves every advantage.
We want to make it nice and breezy, make it simpler to
make it through the day. So noticing what emotions are
getting in the Way of getting rid of something that if you
(13:05):
have the idea of, yeah, I should probably get rid of that.
Don't let the other ideas come in and crowd you out.
Like, I was going through some books in this room today, and
I saw a book, a novel that I read for book club
in 2009. Was it 2009, 2010?
(13:25):
Something like that. Anyway, yeah, it was a fun book.
I loved it and I held onto it, but I
know I will never read it again. And I don't even really care
about it anymore. But for some reason I've held
onto it. And I looked at it and I thought, you don't need this
book. And I thought, yeah, you're right.
This is something else you can add to the bag.
(13:46):
I was all excited about it, and as I'm carrying it over to the
bag, I start thinking, but you held onto it for
a reason and you might want to read it again.
You did love that book club. That was fun.
I was realizing that I had all this attachment to it.
I had all these second thoughts, and I thought, keep going, keep
going. Keep putting it in the bag. Get rid of it.
(14:07):
And if you have to give yourself that pep talk to get past
those other voices that come in your head, then do it, because
the emotions will come up or just weird thinking.
And I think a lot of it could be just a fear of, I
think I need this in my life. You know, I think I can't live
without it and you can't live without it.
But, yeah, yeah, there, there. And there's definitely the
(14:31):
emotional attachment with things that people have given you.
That person gave me that. Or that reminds me of a time where
I really loved it before. Therefore, it still has that
same value in my life. Doesn't always.
Or the money thing, I spent a lot
of money on this. It's worth a lot. I should keep it.
(14:52):
Even if I never make use of it again, I should
keep it. And part of that emotion might be regretting
that you spent the money on it and thinking it's worth more
to you now if you keep it than if you let it go
and it served its purpose. Whether that was to teach you
(15:12):
a lesson not to buy things like that anymore, or you did enjoy
it for a time, but it's okay to let go of things like that.
And there have been times that I've given things away and
later, you know, like it's Halloween or something.
Not that I dress up for Halloween anymore, but seems like it's
those kind of occasions that I think oh, that would
(15:34):
come in handy for this dress up party or something like that.
I don't know. Yeah, we always need the things.
Maybe it's more for my kids that they needed it.
But dealing with the leftovers is definitely difficult.
Dealing with the emotions that we go through is definitely hard.
And
(15:55):
yeah, the, the bigger mess. I guess I have two
parts to this. So the bigger mess is the big mess that you make
while you're in the process of decluttering and then dealing
with the leftover stuff. To me, those are
two different things because you make this big mess, like you're
cleaning out a closet, you take the things out and your room,
(16:15):
your bed, everything is filled up with the stuff as
you sort through it. But after you carry things out, a
lot of times, at least for me, I have some residual things and
that's when I'm more tired. I don't feel like making
those decisions. I can't deal with it at that
(16:36):
point. And a lot of times I'll put that in a
little container, like a little box or a little bag or something
and say, you know, take care of that later.
And if you put it where you can see it, then there's a
good chance you could. You'll do that, you'll deal with it.
If you don't, there's a good chance you'll find it the next time
you're getting rid of stuff. And that's no fun, no fun
(16:57):
at all. But the good parts about decluttering, if you
don't know, is that you end up with such
a better space to live in, to work in, to exist
in.
And I think it's fun to do. I don't
know if you think it's fun to do, but I think it's super energizing.
(17:19):
It's very freeing. It very much is like taking some
weight off of your shoulders to let go of something that
you don't need anymore.
And the yoga teacher in me always loves
to make parallels with things like that.
But that goes with anything in life.
(17:41):
Whatever you don't need in life or is causing some issue
for you, if you can let go of it. We can't
always let go of everything that's causing issues for us.
Maybe financial burdens or something, but anything that you can
let go of, even if it's just a busy, busy schedule, and
you can take something off of that schedule, that's freeing too.
(18:04):
So, yeah, I hope, I hope that if you're
doing any decluttering this month or this week that you can
just know that you're not the only one that makes a bigger mess
when you are trying to sort through things.
Or you're not the only one who has all these second, third, fourth,
fifth thoughts that just keep coming up and thinking, I can't
(18:25):
do this, I can't do this. But if you can really get into
the groove of doing it, especially if you put on music, podcasts,
TV show I've been watching Survivor seasons in the
last two days, I've watched two whole seasons of past
seasons of Survivor because I started watching it long, long
ago and, and like only like five seasons in the
(18:46):
very beginning and then I started again last year.
And I don't know if all women with ADHD tend to
have compulsive behaviors, but I do get
deep into things when I'm interested in them.
And so that's what I've been doing is just having it on my phone,
in my earbud, on my computer, walking around the house, even
(19:07):
if the computer doesn't follow me or my phone doesn't because,
you know, I lose my phone all the time.
I can still hear it in my house and I can still tell what's
going on. I don't always have to see the people, but it helps
me just focus on what I want to do and
whatever it is that helps you focus.
Anyway, I think that's going to be it for tonight.
Because it's dark. I don't know if you can see out my windows.
I've been trying to rearrange in here as I get
(19:30):
rid of things and it left me till Thursday night
to make my podcast that I usually make on Mondays.
But yeah, I guess that's the other thing that's hard about decluttering
is it does take over your life. It does for the time
that you're doing it. It's a set aside everything else
so you can do this, but then once you do, the rest
(19:52):
of the life goes a little more smoothly.
So I hope that works for you. Let me know if you're getting rid
of things this month, this week, and how it's going for
you. And I'll be back again next week.
Thanks so much for being here.
(20:17):
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(20:44):
rewind I run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me
(21:05):
Sam.
Hello, welcome to Inspiring Women with ADHD.
I am Renee Allen, the host of this podcast, and I'm excited to
be back. I have been out of town and have
been decluttering like crazy since I got back
home, and which I've. I've loved. But it's
(00:49):
teaching me a lot about myself and my need to get rid
of things and. And how ADHD plays into it.
So I want to talk about some of
what I think are the five hardest things about decluttering,
about organizing, getting rid of things.
(01:10):
And one is just getting yourself to do
it. Getting yourself to do it. How often have you wanted
to clean out a drawer or reorganize something in your
life, some space, your desk, whatever it is, and you just
can't get yourself to do it. And there are a lot of reasons
for that, but some of it is just you.
(01:31):
You can't get it all set up to do it.
You might not know what the best
plan is, or you have a lot of ideas and you're not sure
which one to do. You hem and you haw about it, or
you decide, well, I'll need some containers for it, and then
you try to figure out which ones are the best or
(01:52):
what will fit. And I went through a lot of
that this week since. Since I got back from visiting my daughter.
Her house is new, and it's very clean and it's
very organized. And
I tend to think I'm somebody who can organize well,
but you always get ideas from other people.
And I just thought, okay, I need to redo this, I
(02:15):
need to redo that. And it wasn't that I was feeling
bad about myself in thinking that, but it was just inspiring
to. To think, okay, I could do this too.
I could make my pantry, which actually looked
pretty good, but it bugged me because there were spots
(02:35):
that would just kind of build up from people in our family, the
way that we put back the chip bags or whatever.
And I thought, I need containers for those so they're just not
kind of all over on the shelf, and then you don't even see what's
there, and then things get overlooked and they get older.
And so. So I just wanted to kind of streamline that
process. And planning it out takes some planning,
(02:59):
because if you want to get containers for a space, you have
to measure your space. You have to figure out which store
carries containers that would work for that, whether it's
a box or a bin or a little
rope container, you know, the cute little cotton containers.
I have one under here. And getting out tape measure, and
(03:23):
all that takes a lot of. Bit of. A lot of work and
a lot of effort and some bit, some organization.
And so you not only have to measure things, but you
need to write it down. Where are you going to write it down?
Will you remember to bring that with you when you go to
the store or when you look at a website, Are you gonna be
(03:45):
able to keep track of what the measurements are?
So it takes a lot of organization just to figure
out how you're gonna organize, which, to me is fun
at times, but it can take a lot of effort.
And if you're trying to fit that into your regular life, it might
just take a long time, or it might be discouraging or might stop
(04:08):
you from even beginning. So understanding what you
need to do, making a plan, and even just a list
of, today I'm going to measure. Tomorrow morning when I wake
up, I'm going to measure this or that.
And try to keep yourself on track when you do that.
But getting set up is one of the hardest things, or
(04:28):
even just getting yourself motivated to do it.
But once you have that motivation, once you think, I really
want to do this, you still have to figure out the plan.
You still have to figure out how that's going to work.
I'm just looking my. Sorry if this is distracting, but I
keep thinking my glasses are blurry, but I think it's just the
lighting, so I think my glasses are fine.
(04:49):
But another reason that decluttering is really hard
is that you often make a huge mess by doing
it, by going through. If you just. If you simply
just go through and decide what to get rid of, that might
not be making a big mess. You can grab.
(05:10):
You actually have to grab containers before you do it.
You need to have a place to put things so that when you walk
out of the room, it's easy to take it out.
So deciding whatever that container for the clutter is could
be a box. It could be shopping bags that you've had,
you know, not the reusable ones. Well, it could be the reusable
ones, but ideally you have something that's more of a throwaway
(05:32):
thing that you take that box, or you take that plastic bag
or paper bag from the grocery store and you fill it up.
It could even be a trash bag, but you might have more than
one. You might have one for actual trash, one for thrift store,
one for a place to donate books. That's different than
thrift store. What? However many places that you have, have that
(05:53):
many containers, Unless you know you're going to get rid of so
many things. Maybe you need three or four for the thrift store,
or two or three for what you throw away.
And if you're simply getting rid of things and it's
you. Which sounds simple, right? But it's not actually simple.
But if you're just getting rid of things, you're.
You might not make a bigger mess because you can take the item
(06:13):
and put it in the bag. Take the item, put it in the bag.
If you are rearranging or cleaning as
you go, then that can make a bigger mess, especially if you're
deciding to put things in other places.
And sometimes the easiest way to deal with
stuff is to just throw it all out. So
(06:34):
if you have a drawer or something, just take everything from
that drawer and put it on the counter or put it in
a box or something and then go through.
I think the counter is better or the floor is better because
you can just see it all. And then you choose what you're
going to keep and you take what you're going to throw away
(06:55):
or whatever and deal with it. If you have fringe items
like where you. You don't want to leave the room yet, or
you're not sure yet, so you just leave it there.
That's where the mess can grow. And there
are a lot of reasons why the mess can grow.
But just even setting up what you're going to do, I
(07:15):
keep walking around the house and looking at different areas.
Oh, yeah, I should go through all my shopping bags too, or, you
know, like the reusable shopping bags.
And I haven't been putting them away like I usually do, and
I need to go through each one and see if there's in there because
there might be something left. There might be some lip balm or
something. Sometimes I put other things in a bag besides what
(07:38):
I buy. If I'm just going to go in the store and I
don't want to bring my whole purse, sometimes I'll just put my
wallet in there, put a water bottle or something, and then
come back out and forget that something's in there later.
So if you have a strange system like that, you might need
to go through each item as you're organizing it or
look through each thing while you're decluttering.
(08:00):
If you're gonna get rid of purses, check the pockets.
Maybe you have something in there. Have you ever bought a purse
at a thrift store and you find something in the pocket?
I have. I found money in the pocket before.
So, you know, that can happen. So it might take some
effort to go through things. And I'm sure it's no
surprise to you that it makes a bigger mess to go through and
(08:21):
organize, because it does. It's like you're making little explosions
everywhere you go. It's like you're a child who gets into
the toy, close it, and doesn't just play with one toy,
but you're throwing everything out. That's what it looks like
sometimes when you declutter. So that can.
That can be a derailment that can make you think, I don't really
want to do this, or this is getting hard because it's taking
(08:43):
more than one day, or it's taking all week and I'm
just making bigger messes. But know that the end is
in sight and you can get through that.
You can get through that. You can eventually go to those little
piles or whatever's left and gather it up and
throw it away or pick a few more things out of it and
really just be brutal. I've been trying to be more brutal.
(09:05):
Like, you really don't need to keep all these random clips
and, I don't know, little things from having parties
that were like, on a little. What do you call it,
Like a toothpick, little decoration that maybe I'll use for some
someday. And there's only three left.
No, I won't. No, I won't. So just get rid of it.
Get rid of it. And one thing that I do, if I'm giving little
(09:27):
things to the thrift store, I often put them in, you know,
kind of organize them by, like, kind and put them
in a little Ziploc sandwich bag or something, or with necklaces
or something like that. Just so it's easier for the people at
the store to figure out what. What you have so it doesn't
get mixed up with other things and it's easier for them to sort.
(09:48):
So I tend to organize as I declutter for other people.
But one obvious, really hard thing about decluttering
is the emotional attachment that you might have to.
With things and. Or even if you're not
attached to it, just having some emotion.
It might be fear. It might be if I get rid
(10:11):
of all these things, I might need them later.
You know, it might not be something you're attached to.
It might be you have a ton of crayons and you really
don't have children in your home anymore or hardly ever will.
Or when they come, they're really not going to play with that
many crayons, you know, Well, I might need this Mini or I
might need this for later on, or I might need it.
(10:31):
I, I got rid of something the other day that I've
hung onto for a long time. It's a clipboard.
It's, you know, the really old fashioned clipboard with the metal
at the top. And I thought they're really nice to have.
Well, when's the last time I've used one?
I don't know, like six, seven years.
I don't know. I don't know. And I just thought that
(10:53):
is, that is dumb to think that I need something.
It's like some kind of emotion. It's making me think I can't
be without this and it's making me hold onto it.
It's getting in the way of that decision.
And then you might even have past regrets where you do get rid
of something and then a month later someone's at your house and
they say, oh, do we have a clipboard?
Or whatever? You know, it's just an example.
(11:14):
But it's really, it's, it's really easy to look
at those past regrets and think, oh, I threw something away
or I got rid of something right after I, I can't
even talk sometimes and right after I needed it.
And that will happen. But you can also look at
(11:37):
a past regret of having your house have more things
in it than you need and dealing with that in
the day to day, that's something that I regret is hanging on
to things for years when I, I don't need them
and they're getting in the way of me walking into a closet and
making an easy decision because I'm not trying to weed through
(11:59):
so many other things. And I think that's what's driving me
right now to declutter is when I open a
closet, when I open the pantry, when I'm going in, and
I'm already dealing with some decision making dysfunction,
whether it's for what to eat or how to find something
(12:22):
there. There are things with my executive function that are more
challenged now than they have been in a long time.
Well, I would say like more so in the last five years and
past 10 years too. I really do think that as we
get older, our brains aren't functioning as top
(12:43):
tier as they once did. And we, hormonal differences could
play a part in that. Aging can play a part of that.
But we want to give ourselves every advantage.
We want to make it nice and breezy, make it simpler to
make it through the day. So noticing what emotions are
getting in the Way of getting rid of something that if you
(13:05):
have the idea of, yeah, I should probably get rid of that.
Don't let the other ideas come in and crowd you out.
Like, I was going through some books in this room today, and
I saw a book, a novel that I read for book club
in 2009. Was it 2009, 2010?
(13:25):
Something like that. Anyway, yeah, it was a fun book.
I loved it and I held onto it, but I
know I will never read it again. And I don't even really care
about it anymore. But for some reason I've held
onto it. And I looked at it and I thought, you don't need this
book. And I thought, yeah, you're right.
This is something else you can add to the bag.
(13:46):
I was all excited about it, and as I'm carrying it over to the
bag, I start thinking, but you held onto it for
a reason and you might want to read it again.
You did love that book club. That was fun.
I was realizing that I had all this attachment to it.
I had all these second thoughts, and I thought, keep going, keep
going. Keep putting it in the bag. Get rid of it.
(14:07):
And if you have to give yourself that pep talk to get past
those other voices that come in your head, then do it, because
the emotions will come up or just weird thinking.
And I think a lot of it could be just a fear of, I
think I need this in my life. You know, I think I can't live
without it and you can't live without it.
But, yeah, yeah, there, there. And there's definitely the
(14:31):
emotional attachment with things that people have given you.
That person gave me that. Or that reminds me of a time where
I really loved it before. Therefore, it still has that
same value in my life. Doesn't always.
Or the money thing, I spent a lot
of money on this. It's worth a lot. I should keep it.
(14:52):
Even if I never make use of it again, I should
keep it. And part of that emotion might be regretting
that you spent the money on it and thinking it's worth more
to you now if you keep it than if you let it go
and it served its purpose. Whether that was to teach you
(15:12):
a lesson not to buy things like that anymore, or you did enjoy
it for a time, but it's okay to let go of things like that.
And there have been times that I've given things away and
later, you know, like it's Halloween or something.
Not that I dress up for Halloween anymore, but seems like it's
those kind of occasions that I think oh, that would
(15:34):
come in handy for this dress up party or something like that.
I don't know. Yeah, we always need the things.
Maybe it's more for my kids that they needed it.
But dealing with the leftovers is definitely difficult.
Dealing with the emotions that we go through is definitely hard.
And
(15:55):
yeah, the, the bigger mess. I guess I have two
parts to this. So the bigger mess is the big mess that you make
while you're in the process of decluttering and then dealing
with the leftover stuff. To me, those are
two different things because you make this big mess, like you're
cleaning out a closet, you take the things out and your room,
(16:15):
your bed, everything is filled up with the stuff as
you sort through it. But after you carry things out, a
lot of times, at least for me, I have some residual things and
that's when I'm more tired. I don't feel like making
those decisions. I can't deal with it at that
(16:36):
point. And a lot of times I'll put that in a
little container, like a little box or a little bag or something
and say, you know, take care of that later.
And if you put it where you can see it, then there's a
good chance you could. You'll do that, you'll deal with it.
If you don't, there's a good chance you'll find it the next time
you're getting rid of stuff. And that's no fun, no fun
(16:57):
at all. But the good parts about decluttering, if you
don't know, is that you end up with such
a better space to live in, to work in, to exist
in.
And I think it's fun to do. I don't
know if you think it's fun to do, but I think it's super energizing.
(17:19):
It's very freeing. It very much is like taking some
weight off of your shoulders to let go of something that
you don't need anymore.
And the yoga teacher in me always loves
to make parallels with things like that.
But that goes with anything in life.
(17:41):
Whatever you don't need in life or is causing some issue
for you, if you can let go of it. We can't
always let go of everything that's causing issues for us.
Maybe financial burdens or something, but anything that you can
let go of, even if it's just a busy, busy schedule, and
you can take something off of that schedule, that's freeing too.
(18:04):
So, yeah, I hope, I hope that if you're
doing any decluttering this month or this week that you can
just know that you're not the only one that makes a bigger mess
when you are trying to sort through things.
Or you're not the only one who has all these second, third, fourth,
fifth thoughts that just keep coming up and thinking, I can't
(18:25):
do this, I can't do this. But if you can really get into
the groove of doing it, especially if you put on music, podcasts,
TV show I've been watching Survivor seasons in the
last two days, I've watched two whole seasons of past
seasons of Survivor because I started watching it long, long
ago and, and like only like five seasons in the
(18:46):
very beginning and then I started again last year.
And I don't know if all women with ADHD tend to
have compulsive behaviors, but I do get
deep into things when I'm interested in them.
And so that's what I've been doing is just having it on my phone,
in my earbud, on my computer, walking around the house, even
(19:07):
if the computer doesn't follow me or my phone doesn't because,
you know, I lose my phone all the time.
I can still hear it in my house and I can still tell what's
going on. I don't always have to see the people, but it helps
me just focus on what I want to do and
whatever it is that helps you focus.
Anyway, I think that's going to be it for tonight.
Because it's dark. I don't know if you can see out my windows.
I've been trying to rearrange in here as I get
(19:30):
rid of things and it left me till Thursday night
to make my podcast that I usually make on Mondays.
But yeah, I guess that's the other thing that's hard about decluttering
is it does take over your life. It does for the time
that you're doing it. It's a set aside everything else
so you can do this, but then once you do, the rest
(19:52):
of the life goes a little more smoothly.
So I hope that works for you. Let me know if you're getting rid
of things this month, this week, and how it's going for
you. And I'll be back again next week.
Thanks so much for being here.
(20:17):
Frozen dreams are left for tomorrow
(20:44):
rewind I run out of time to sing
melodies and harmonies I'm cut short
the silence of sound has yet been found but
not by me
(21:05):
Sam.
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