[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, friend, welcome back to wanna be Clutter-free.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Diana Yates, your decluttering cheerleader, and this is episode 323.
[SPEAKER_00]: Today, I am talking with Mike Lynn Smith.
[SPEAKER_00]: You might know her as the Nester.
[SPEAKER_00]: She's been encouraging women in their home online for over 20 years, and she's also the author of cozy minimalist home at House Rules, and her brand new book is out and it's called House Hushing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I love this conversation, and we talk about,
[SPEAKER_00]: this idea of your house being loud, that not only is your stuff loud, but your physical space might be loud too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, Michael-in comes at this from a decorating side, which means she's not going to tell you to get rid of everything you love, and she's going to show you how to turn the volume down first and then let the room tell you what it actually means.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we get into her backwards decluttering method, which takes about 12 minutes of room, it's what she says.
[SPEAKER_00]: It requires zero hard decisions up front, which is really exciting.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we talk about why we fill up whatever space we're given.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I push back on her a few times because we talk about closed storage, hosting, kids stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because let's go friends, too, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm here for.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm here to help and ask the questions that you are curious about as you read through the book and you go, what?
[SPEAKER_00]: Wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what I'm here for.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's what we get into.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also got vulnerable about where my own home is right now and her response was kind of exactly what I needed to hear.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I hope that it helps you as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if it does hit that follow or subscribe button so the new episode will land in your feed every Wednesday.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then coming out with me on Instagram, I am at want to be clutter free and I would absolutely love to know what's going on in your home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, show notes for today and every link we mentioned
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, let's do this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, hi, Michael, and thank you so much for joining me on the one-of-be-clutter-free podcast how you doing today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh, thanks for having me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad to be here.
[SPEAKER_01]: Glad to talk about all things home.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yay!
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright, I'm sure my listeners know you are, but for those that have not heard of you or the Nester, can you please introduce yourself and tell listeners who you are and what you do?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: My name is Michael and Smith.
[SPEAKER_01]: I go by the Nester online because, well, first of all, if you look at my name, you probably wouldn't know how to.
[SPEAKER_01]: has a Q&A.
[SPEAKER_01]: You wouldn't quite know how to pronounce it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like a grandmother of the internet.
[SPEAKER_01]: But on for 20 years, and back then, we all used these cutesy names because we were afraid of unibommer or someone would come and track us down.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're not afraid of that anymore.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's been real nice, but it just kind of...
[SPEAKER_01]: you know you start it and it's hard to shake that and it's easier to say as well but anyway I am here to help women create the home they've always wanted so they can use it the way they've always dreamed and I see the world through house-colored glasses which is a blessing and a curse probably
[SPEAKER_00]: That house colored glasses.
[SPEAKER_00]: That is a fun.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a fun way to put it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I like that a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call myself a decluttering cheerleader You know, like I'm cheering you on.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm on the sidelines.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's do this, but I love that That reframe.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's very fun Speaking of reframes, you say like the center of the book is that houses aren't cluttered that they're loud So first off, what does that mean?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I
[SPEAKER_01]: saying that a house is loud.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just another way to say that your house is cluttered and maybe a new way to think about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a lot of us don't like to call our beautiful stuff clutter, we just think it's our stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we can't identify maybe if we're like well art your house is full of clutter like no, it's not I just full of my beautiful useful things that are meaningful that I must have so sometimes I think it's just nice to reframe it and say it another other way but as far as the loud comes from like think about
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, you walk home after work, you come in the door with a bag of groceries and, you know, you see a pile of shoes and your shoes are saying, you should organize us and you need to find that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I lost shoe that you meant to and there's dirt all over the floor, you really need to mop the floor and you go to put your groceries down and.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, you have to move over the pile of mail in the calendar in the dinner at leftovers from last night that you forgot to put away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of these things maybe it's beautiful stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you have styled your island so much and you have placements ready and you have your cutting board out and you have your kitchen aid out that there's actually no place to put the groceries down.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we come in or our home and sometimes instead of feeling like,
[SPEAKER_01]: I can exhale.
[SPEAKER_01]: My home is rising up to greet me as Nate Burgas told us long ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: Instead, it kind of feels like, oh, my home is another to-do list.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's another place that makes me feel a little bit overwhelmed, a little bit overstimulated, and maybe a little bit shame or guilt, because it's just a reminder of things I haven't done.
[SPEAKER_01]: I haven't used, I haven't put away, I haven't fixed, I haven't cleaned, I haven't returned.
[SPEAKER_01]: all of those things kind of come together and that's what can make our house feel maybe visually loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I love that reframe because yes, you're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people don't want to say my house is cluttered and most people don't want to declutter because I mean nobody really wants to have to part with these things they love.
[SPEAKER_00]: So,
[SPEAKER_00]: The second part to that question was the story where I think you figured out that you thought your house was loud or that moment when you took that picture so you moved into a new place you styled you living room head as you always had and then
[SPEAKER_00]: You took a picture and you were like, I don't like it.
[SPEAKER_00]: What's going on there?
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we had moved from a little simple farmhouse with eight foot ceilings to an older home and it's a Victorian.
[SPEAKER_01]: So she's already like, hello, everyone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have details.
[SPEAKER_01]: Eva, I was so excited.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, a total diva.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're exactly right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was really excited because there were a lot of built-ins.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm like, I get to display everything I love.
[SPEAKER_01]: Not
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a person that has not had built in before because so I didn't really understand the downside of that like display and everything you love actually is a nightmare you don't want everything you love on display and that's what I learned so I had a window.
[SPEAKER_01]: With each side had these open shelves and I'm like, I'm going to put like my face collection and my weird taxidermy and my cute little wooden boxes and I did what I normally do like I I styled using my little rules left some white space.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had my seating, my surfaces, my storage, you know, make sure I had my window treatments and my
[SPEAKER_01]: Drapes is it functional do I have lamps?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, and I stood back and I was like I don't like this I don't know why and I took a picture of it and I think if we're if you're ever stuck in your home Sometimes just taking a photo and maybe looking at it later that night or the next day or I know this sounds crazy Like looking at it upside down or even flipping it It's it's just like a new way You sometimes just need a fresh way to see it because we come become house blind even at a house.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had just moved into
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't know what was wrong until I looked back at the photo and I was like, oh my, dear Lord, there are like 50,000 items on display, nothing is getting the attention it deserves.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everything is like, look at me, I'm beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is, this is not going to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: This house and I are going to have to figure this out because she is already very detailed of calling for attention, pocket doors, like all the things that we all think would be wonderful and they are.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just so beautiful.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I had to learn how to kind of
[SPEAKER_01]: decorate in a way that was still kind of met my own.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know Dana K. White calls it your clutter threshold.
[SPEAKER_01]: I call it my stuff threshold because again, I'm like, it's not clutter.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I had to figure out between me and my house.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to get my style.
[SPEAKER_01]: She already has a style.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so together, I needed to get my style, but I also needed to do that within my stuff threshold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna throw another layer of stuff threshold at you because right now life is throwing a lot at me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I've talked about this on my podcast recently.
[SPEAKER_00]: My husband just had back surgery.
[SPEAKER_00]: My mom has cancer and we have to move and that was unexpected and I don't wanna move.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I feel like as life throws a lot more at me, my home becomes louder.
[SPEAKER_00]: like everything around me becomes louder.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just want to put that out there because I have a successful podcast about decluttering and right now my house feels loud and my life feels loud and I feel really overwhelmed and so my house is actually kind of drifted as I have not put the I don't know the same.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so pressure, but like the same just I've gotten out of my routines because things have just been so busy, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: So things have drifted.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you tell someone or how do you help someone who feels like they've been drifting?
[SPEAKER_00]: Does that drift sound familiar to you or was your loudness a different shape?
[SPEAKER_01]: Nope, it sounds completely familiar.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love her vulnerability.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're like, I'm a professional.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm supposed to be the best of this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this is what I would tell you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you're doing it exactly right.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think your home is serving you exactly how it was meant to be.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've done work on the front end.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now it's there to serve my house as the same way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm in book lunch season.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have five podcasts today.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me tell you, it is the hottest mess.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a hottest mess.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have like business on the front.
[SPEAKER_01]: Luckily, I am wearing pants on the bottom, but it's like the same thing with our home.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is this breathing living partner, and it can breathe in like celebrations and messes and times where you, you know, a decluttered house is not the most important thing in the world.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we both know that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're tending to your family.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want a place to relax.
[SPEAKER_01]: You need to get ready to move.
[SPEAKER_01]: You've put in some hard work.
[SPEAKER_01]: So now your house is not in the same place it would have been five years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you had the same stuff going on, so you get to reap
[SPEAKER_01]: That is what a house is for.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so that, I mean, I think this is why we do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why we declutter.
[SPEAKER_01]: This is why we push the house as so in life gets crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: The noise is lower than it would have been if we never would have touched it in the first place.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's why we do it because life will
[SPEAKER_01]: things will come up and we won't be able to have our weekly decluttering session or however it is that we do it and we have given a gift to our future self if we go ahead when things aren't busy just like you have done and you make some decisions now but yeah my house is serving me in the same way every room is a disaster praise me to God as it should be thank you home yeah well thank you big things for
[SPEAKER_00]: helping me hold the space and understand that life goes in seasons and they Evan flow and it's like the tides they come in they go out and it happens on a regular basis and some seasons are going to be busier than others and some when we have a little more bandwidth that's when we can put the time in but yeah you're right it is it is easier than it would have been years ago before I had declared.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yeah, so thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate helping me with the grace.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because sometimes it is hard to see that, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes it is hard.
[SPEAKER_00]: You feel you can get down on yourself for feeling like you're behind or feeling like you're not doing enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I am doing what I can in the season and with what I've got.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, and I think you would have answered that same way to someone who asked you that, it's hard to say that to ourselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: you're right.
[SPEAKER_00]: You are 100% right.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: So the book is fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's called How Sushing.
[SPEAKER_00]: It is gorgeous by the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love how it walks us through what you call a simple method to declutter and decorate for a more peaceful home.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you talk about backwards decluttering.
[SPEAKER_00]: So can you talk about what backwards decluttering is for someone who hasn't heard about it and I'm going to talk about what some of my favorite parts of the process I would love to.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, remember, I am coming from the decorating mindset.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the women that I work with my background is let's create a pretty house.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now I am a cozy minimalist, which means when I'm decorating, I'm trying to get the most amount of style with the least amount of stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I do already, like, I want it to be simple, but I'm not going to sacrifice beauty, soul, meaning, comfort.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, I want to welcoming home.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to host, I know a lot of us are like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Most of us are not like, I would.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want simplicity and nothing else.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think a lot of us find ourselves there somewhere in between that.
[SPEAKER_01]: minimalist, maybe stereotype that for some reason we have or the design world where we feel like well their solution is to buy more and a minimalist solution is to get rid of stuff and there are lots of ways that we can get rid of stuff or declutter and so backwards decluttering offers just another method and maybe to work for someone and maybe at well I've had a lot of luck with the ladies who are like me.
[SPEAKER_01]: who maybe are, we know we need to do clutter.
[SPEAKER_01]: We can't find the scissors.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe we're surrounded by beautiful things that don't feel like clutter.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we also were like, my house feels a little bit busy to even invite people over, like I need to do something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so this is a risk-free experiment that helps you, it's kind of like if you get to eat, dessert for dinner.
[SPEAKER_01]: You get the reward first and that's gonna give you confidence to be able to make some decisions So this is a way to not have any decision fatigue, but to experience a Simplified room on the front end and what you're gonna do is you're gonna pick a room Say I'm gonna declutter my family room and you're gonna pick another area that's your holding area I know this sounds like a lot you're gonna have two areas gonna be wonky for 48 hours You more in the family you just say I'm just doing experiment I'm not getting rid of anything it's all in there if you need it
[SPEAKER_01]: And the holding area I like to be a place where you can't see from the room that you're hushing or that you're backwards decluttering because you just really want to get that whole, this is about visible noise, this is about like visual.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what you do in the room you're backwards decluttering is you're going to get that first layer of stuff out, everything that's on surfaces, everything that's on your sofa, anything on the floor that's like a basket of pillows, a craft basket.
[SPEAKER_01]: the puzzles, the games, anything that you've styled on your mantle, or your heart, the pillows, the catbed, the toys, the diapers, you know, that layer of stuff that kind of adds up, we become house blind, the gifts, the little, the little trinkets, all those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're just going to pull them out and I have, I have built in Shoms and my family room too.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a lot of areas, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot of things, and I have a lot
[SPEAKER_01]: And it really takes me about 12 minutes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really quick.
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: You still have your furniture, your rug, your television, your lamps, like anything you need to function.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is not a practice in like misery.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if there's something you took out and you're like, oh, I want my book, I'm gonna read it tonight.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bring it back in.
[SPEAKER_01]: If the cat is meowing, she needs her bed, bring it back in.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we wanna keep it as empty as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: At first,
[SPEAKER_01]: It's gonna feel so weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're gonna be like, what, the lady is crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: This feels like when we first moved in.
[SPEAKER_01]: But slowly, depends on your personality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Some people that happens in a couple minutes, some people that takes, we say give it 24 to 48 hours.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I want you to spend time in that room.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want you to read in there, eat in there, watch TV, have a movie night.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're live with a family, whoever lives with you, let them experience it too.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because a lot of times, they're gonna make comments.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're gonna be like, wow, the room feels big.
[SPEAKER_01]: Alright, mom, can we keep the room like this?
[SPEAKER_01]: It feels so good.
[SPEAKER_01]: What's happening in here?
[SPEAKER_01]: It's weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, they're going to make comments.
[SPEAKER_01]: But they're going to want to beat.
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we do our homework in there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Can we dinner in there?
[SPEAKER_01]: The dog is going to be wallowing on his back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Everyone's going to want to be in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because you have created space.
[SPEAKER_01]: And suddenly, over those 24 or 48 hours, that room is going to start to feel good.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to start to feel really big.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to feel like when you first moved in and you had those, you know, creative ideas for the room, and you're going to start secretly wishing that you didn't have to bring all that stuff in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's when you know you're at the right point.
[SPEAKER_01]: You want to protect that simplicity and the piece that you have created.
[SPEAKER_01]: And from then I say, sit in that room and ask yourself, what is really missing?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do I really need to bring back?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you have a plant that is gonna die if it's not by the window.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bring your plant back in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe the kids need their trumpet and clarinet and they need to put on top of the piano.
[SPEAKER_01]: We'll bring it back in.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you play a certain game every Friday.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bring it back in.
[SPEAKER_01]: There might, and usually are lots and lots of things that just have gotten dusty, that I'm just sitting there that we don't even think about, and maybe we wouldn't have thought about decluttering, but since they're gone, and since we experience the room working so well for us, and feeling so good, from then, now we have information, now we have facts, now we have confidence to say, actually, maybe I don't need all that stuff, and maybe it's time to let go of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So my favorite step in there is the one where you sit and listen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think is number step six, where you just sit and enjoy the room and just give it a moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm one of those people that I love to just be quick and go back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I just do it like just if I'm going to dive in, I'm going to do it and go and it is hard for me to sit and be quiet and silent and
[SPEAKER_00]: and take a moment and breathe it in, so I love that that step is put in there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what I also love about it is what you said there.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got to listen to what your family's going to say, because you might have this preconceived notion of what they're going to think, but you might be really surprised about how they actually react to the room.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, in a way you didn't expect, they might not want to bring things back in that you didn't expect.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm always surprised with how the decluttering process goes with our daughter, you know, some things she keeps that I thought she was going to get rid of and some, and a lot of times she gets let's go if things that I think she's going to want to hold on to and it's kind of that same thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: You never know what they're going to say.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just hang out, chill, be for a minute and see what actually happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: I agree.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think even with that, sometimes, you know, your husband might say, well, why do we have that old piano?
[SPEAKER_01]: It takes our blinders off.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they might start questioning, like, well, why do we even have that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Now that I see that, maybe we should move it to the other room, or, you know, we've been meaning to sell that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It gets everyone's juices flowing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I meant to repair that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so good things always happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's fantastic.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good things always happen.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, so I want to go back to that idea of drifting because I think you've moved a ton like you moved 15 times.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think you said in this book and you've lived in every house size imaginable.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I have noticed we moved recently, I'm not recently, but this will be our fifth year in this house, but like we moved from a two bedroom house to a three bedroom house and we had an extra room, which is what I'm in right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call my den, um, but we ended up getting stuff to fill the house.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I'm always surprised by.
[SPEAKER_00]: This idea that we will fill up our home based on the space we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you already mentioned that, you know, Dana K. White calls it the clutter threshold and you call it our stuff threshold.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do you think we do that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you think it's space in and of itself?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or do you think it's just human nature?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm just curious your thoughts.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think that there's two things.
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, you have a third room.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're not gonna leave it empty.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're, you're, I'm like, I mean, I see behind you.
[SPEAKER_00]: You've got a sofa.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a feeling you guys use.
[SPEAKER_01]: So far, I have a feeling what you have in there are things that you use.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, it's hard when you move from a bigger house to a smaller house, you know, where if you haven't been there very long or you don't know how long you're staying.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's nice to get things that you can easily move from a house to house, ask me how I know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I do think our human nature, even though we're none of us are like born knowing how to decorate.
[SPEAKER_01]: We know when a room is too empty, and when a room feels too empty, I do think our natural tendency is, let me add some things in it, because I want it to feel welcoming and cozy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even from what I see behind you, it looks like you have the right scale sofa.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have a large scale rug, you have great lighting, you have some artwork like, I think you did an excellent job, so I hope you don't feel
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, bad at all about it because it's so well-lit, like, it's wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you should use the room that you have.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we don't want, although I do think empty space is so wonderful.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want margin on my wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have anything art on this wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have any art on this wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: But also, I want to use each room to the fullest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe, you know, if you weren't, maybe you would stay there 10 years.
[SPEAKER_01]: And maybe next year you would use that room in a different way.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, maybe you would sell the stuff on Facebook Marketplace.
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, someone's going to live there and need a bedroom or maybe you use it as a music room.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think that is part of flipping the script on ourselves and saying, oh, it's fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's fun to experiment within my clutter threshold, within my family's budget, within not making everyone like we're all going to paint this room to us weekend.
[SPEAKER_01]: And next weekend, we're all going to do it again, but like to really think about how we live in our home.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I would say you're doing it exactly right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I do want to ask a question because in the process you say to not really worry about or touch your closed storage to start and I think that that makes sense when we're first starting because the first things we see that visual clutter really is what I think makes our homes feel really loud.
[SPEAKER_00]: But at what point do we go back to the closed storage, you know, because, you know, a hushed room is going to feel great, but if everything is still packed behind, I think we're still going to have some mental clutter.
[SPEAKER_00]: At what point do you say we go back and do the others?
[SPEAKER_01]: I agree with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have found for myself that
[SPEAKER_01]: in the same way that more leads to more, less leads to less, and there was a study done, oh my gosh, it was like in the 90s where they, some anthropologists went to some people's homes, they counted everything visible in the home, and they found that an indicator was their refrigerator.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the more things they had stuck to or taped to are magnitude on the fridge, really gave a nod to how much they were going to have in their house, so if they had
[SPEAKER_01]: 89 things on their fridge, and the next person had 30, well, the person with 89 things had more visible items in their house.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that means there's a correlation with the stuff that we have visibly out and the stuff we allow behind closed doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: And although I'm not a, this is not a full on decluttering book, like this, but you know, the next part is quiet decorating the week.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's more of the visual part of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it is a wonderful first step because I still think,
[SPEAKER_01]: that less also leads to less.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when we get a taste accidentally or on purpose, easily or make it harder and harder on ourselves of life with less, we start to crave that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we say,
[SPEAKER_01]: maybe we play this, uh, these games every night in the family room, but I don't want to sit on my sofa at night and next to the mantle read yotsie, sorry, uh, you know, all the names of the games.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe I would rather have that still in the family room, but behind closed doors, while you open the doors, and it's full of
[SPEAKER_01]: junk that you don't need in the family room.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, because you want to protect the visual piece, now you're a little more motivated to say I really want to put that in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Therefore, I guess I'll face that little, you know, this one drawer of junk and I will declutter it so that I can protect the piece of the room, put this away behind closed doors that I know, so I feel like it's just like a little snowball.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I
[SPEAKER_01]: I trust, and for my ladies that have done this, this does happen, but I'm not going to promise that this is going to fix every decluttering issue.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think then they come to you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Diana.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that sounds good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you are struggling with what to let go of and figuring out how you make space in the closet, when you have hushed your house, come on over and we will work on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: No problem.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I love that idea because
[SPEAKER_00]: It does give you the motivation, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: It does now you say, okay, there's a purpose.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's a reason because I think when we're saying like, let's just let go of our stuff or the sake of letting go of it, it doesn't make sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you don't need to and you don't have to, I don't want you to let go of stuff just to go buy it back for something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it also leads me to my next question which is also a little more pushback on this idea of abundance.
[SPEAKER_00]: You talk about hosting and the abundance piece in this quiet decorating, which is the next part of the book.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I believe that you can host well and still have an inviting home without keeping all the extras.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it just takes a little creativity.
[SPEAKER_00]: One Christmas we hosted my family, which ended up in nine people.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, our home is tiny, and I have eight plates.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do I host nine people with eight plates?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I ate off a smaller plate, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like everyone else gets the good stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I'm willing as the host to be a little creative.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we just had to pull chairs from all sorts of different places.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, it was really tight.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, we might have been using beach towels.
[SPEAKER_00]: Also, using beach towels to shower.
[SPEAKER_00]: And we just had some friends visit.
[SPEAKER_00]: But
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't think they felt uninvited in the home, and so where do you draw the line between keeping things to host others, hushing your home, and then just keeping things just in case you don't have to answer those hard questions or face a hard, a hard truth?
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, I love your question so much.
[SPEAKER_01]: And really, the perspective I was coming from for that example was a minimalist mindset, because I think
[SPEAKER_01]: and I completely agree with you.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that most people are like, I have to get rid of all of this stuff if I'm going to be on the simplicity train.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I can't, but I like to host.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess I can't beat, because we feel like we have to pick aside.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I like to host.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I guess I can't do this.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't declutter my kitchen because it's important to me to host.
[SPEAKER_01]: So oh well, I guess I'll just have to keep everything forever.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I was trying to show an example.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I like to host too.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I feel like my kitchen is extremely simple, but I can host, we host like 20 or 30 people almost monthly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I have the hard dishes for it.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, there's a lot of stuff I don't have.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, what if I loved snow skiing?
[SPEAKER_01]: If a person loves snow skiing, I think they should have their skis and you have, and so whatever it is you're into, that's important to you, then find a way that doesn't mean you can't be and can't have a simple home.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even if you can't find a way like you said,
[SPEAKER_01]: I can eat off a smaller plate like the size of your house does not dictate the size of your hospitality.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody cared.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nobody cares what towels they're going to use.
[SPEAKER_01]: They want to be invited in and they want you to be able to not be preoccupied with the state of your home so that you can listen, laugh and interact with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is why that's my whole thing of like I want to help you create the home you've always wanted so you can use it the way you've
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't care how your house looks, however, I know that you care how your house looks and my ladies care how they have their house looks and I care how my house looks and if I don't like the way my house looks I'm not going to use it and that is the whole point of home and so if for someone
[SPEAKER_01]: to be able to make a step in decluttering, to know, oh, if crafting is important to me, then I can still keep my crafts.
[SPEAKER_01]: But then in other areas, I might be a little more, you know, kind of put the hammer down and be more of a deeply decluttering.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I love to host and I love to host on real dishes, well, then I can find a way to do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And no one's gonna come, spank me.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not gonna get my minimalist card taken away.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, we're living real lives.
[SPEAKER_01]: And whatever yours is, I think that there is room for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I talk to another girl, another podcast, and she loves fashion.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm like, I don't, don't you dare get rid of like all your options.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's your creativity.
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, but maybe, you know, our home is our container.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's all we have.
[SPEAKER_01]: My cabinets might be bigger than your cabinets.
[SPEAKER_01]: Might be bigger than someone else's.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we have to make our decisions based on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or if I want to put my dishes in my basement and save them, like we all get those trade-offs.
[SPEAKER_01]: we just get to choose what is most important.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I love, I think you've chosen with integrity and intention, and I have as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, choosing with integrity and intention and your home size, the size of your home does not
[SPEAKER_00]: make the same talent dictate.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the word dictate the size of your hospitality.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that because it is very true and we all are going to have to make choices, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, think of all the things in the world that we don't participate in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Think of all the things we don't bring home every day.
[SPEAKER_00]: We are making these decisions out in the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've chosen a certain career path or we've chosen to have a certain number of kids or we've chosen to live in a certain place.
[SPEAKER_00]: We have made decisions.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we just have to do that in our home too.
[SPEAKER_00]: And yes, you can keep whatever you want.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you have to know that those come at a cost.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you're keeping something just because you're trying to impress someone else, I don't think that's a good verometer for why you keep something.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's not a good reason to keep something.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you're keeping it because you love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it lights you up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it makes you show up as the whole person you want to be.
[SPEAKER_00]: I call them my three p's.
[SPEAKER_00]: person, the partner and the parent you want to be, then I think you keep them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the scale you should be dividing or, you know, making your decisions on it.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I think we are definitely on the same path.
[SPEAKER_00]: I just wanted to bring that up because I was like, I read that and I was like, oh, oh, oh, wait a minute.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to have to talk about this beautifully set and I love that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, my gosh.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's my favorite.
[SPEAKER_00]: Perfect, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, one other area I want to push back on is kid stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So talk me through this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Step two of the method is to tell your family.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so you say to do this, well, okay, and so you say like, okay, hey, we're doing this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing this thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: just have a heads up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you say that maybe you should hush your kid's room because they're going to come back to this piece.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so where is that line for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where is the doing this for and to everyone else versus having them come along and where do you see
[SPEAKER_00]: those guardrails.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, to me, the family room is the mom's domain, although we were a family that always had toys that lived in the family room.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had kitchen and, you know, kids kitchen, kids table in the dining room.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I had all boys, and we still had the kitchen in the table of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: All my boys are old and can cook now.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I didn't want to get your toys.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we always, to what I love toys, that's very important to me.
[SPEAKER_01]: The kids room, you can do it with your kids, or if you feel like you're the parent.
[SPEAKER_01]: You have to be the judge.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you feel like they're going to Granny Camp, and I think they're going to do better if I surprise them with this, but a lot of moms do it with the kids, and I think that's really good.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you just say, I think it's good to do like your family room first and let them be like, this was kind of awesome, but where is such and such, and you show them, it's right there, it's not gone, you know?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe the next week, do you want to hush your room?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's just do it.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're going to just put boxes in the hallway or bins or baskets or whatever, and we're just going to put everything right here in the hall if you really want to play with something you can get it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: But let's just see what it's like if we're not getting rid of anything, and they can then
[SPEAKER_01]: have the freedom and the confidence they saw you do it it's kind of fine it's just an experiment they don't there's no you know big decisions and they're gonna love their where they're gonna be like I'm closing the door nobody come in you know or if they're sharing a room they're gonna mean the cat are gonna be in here and they're gonna be so creative and you could even say like let's pick two toys to stay out or mate it's just a you're the parent you it depends on
[SPEAKER_01]: But just to turn down, it's kind of like this Montessori mindset, like turning down that visual stimulation, really giving them a chance to be creative, like have more floor space, have one or two toys, and maybe you decide we're going to root, let's just like rotate out, which toys do you want to have next and we'll put these in the article, put these in the basement, like you can decide together.
[SPEAKER_01]: But just doing that and hearing how your kids respond, you're going to get in touch, you know, I had my two youngest, like, one is like a major maximalist, one is a major minimalist, plus their hearts.
[SPEAKER_01]: They had to share room until like my oldest went to college and they figured it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because we were kind of tuned into that, we kind of, we gave them like a drawer under their bed that they could both be messy in.
[SPEAKER_01]: We gave them a certain number of shelves.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they both had places if they wanted to be messy.
[SPEAKER_01]: They could, but it wasn't like in the visual I set site of the other happened to each have a closet.
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can imagine one closet was like empty.
[SPEAKER_01]: one closet was just had a fire going in it like disaster, but so you can kind of judge your own kids, but I encourage you, find a way to hush your kids room in some way.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think you might learn a lot, your kids might teach you a lot, even when what they say about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think it's a great way to kind of introduce the adult skill.
[SPEAKER_01]: We all know that we need, which is evaluating our stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: So true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think the point that was really important there was that we're not getting rid of it when we're doing the hushing process.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just being moved out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's we're just packing it to the side.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a little like that packing party for the middle of us, but you're just taking a moment to say, okay, we're going to quiet this down and we're not getting rid of anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Mom didn't throw anything away.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, I think that's where I see a lot of parents getting into trouble or, or backfighting, like the process backfire on them is when they declutter this event, they actually get rid of it without having buying in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, so I love that you're not getting rid of anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, although I do want you to get rid of stuff because I'm the decluttering cheerleader.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't want you to have stuff just because, but yes, everyone has to be okay with it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everyone has to buy in and say, yes, otherwise you're going,
[SPEAKER_00]: to, like, erode that trust.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's exactly that.
[SPEAKER_00]: We don't do not want to erode any trust on the process.
[SPEAKER_00]: I suggest stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, and are the trust, and then at least so much more important.
[SPEAKER_01]: Right.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh my gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the magic happens in those 48 hours, because now your kids have played in their room for a couple of days.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you can say, okay, let's go through, you know, listen, if there's anything you would rather not come back in, because remember the more that comes in, it's going to feel like your room before and you really seem to like
[SPEAKER_01]: Children mostly are easier to part with stuff than we we don't give them enough credit and so Yes after those two days you still want to go through just like you're gonna go with your own stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I like to say You know with my own stuff instead of I'm not gonna look in the pile and be like where can I?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I put this, where can I put this?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I'm just like, what is missing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me go get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And kind of just tell myself, look, this room feels good.
[SPEAKER_01]: All that stuff in there, I don't wanna add it back.
[SPEAKER_01]: So if it's really, really important, maybe I can find another place.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I really need it to function in the room, maybe I can put it behind closed doors.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the point of stuff is for it to be used and enjoyed.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's give it to someone who can use and enjoy it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Hmm, love that, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, there's one other part in the book that I love.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's talking about seasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I live in San Diego.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have lived with seasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: I lived in Chicago, Des Moines, Boulder.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've definitely lived in seasons, but I've been in San Diego for a while, so I'm out of the seasonal habit.
[SPEAKER_00]: So tell me a little bit about this idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, I wanted to kind of make sure we're balancing the, is it, is it so it enhances your life or is it so you don't have to let go of stuff?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure what you're talking about is what so you don't have to let go so like so like decorating seasonally like you were talking about there was like the hat you wanted that you the pink hat you had and you decluttered it in December but come March you were like oh I wish I had that and I think that these out with like our holiday stuff because it's the only season I really decorate for so where is that line there between I'm going to pack this up.
[SPEAKER_00]: and declutter or like and decorate seasonally versus I'm just I'm getting able to I don't have to make the hard decision and let it go.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: I didn't even think about it that way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because my what I found was I was decluttering too hard.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, I was having to rebuke wardrobe things because I was letting go of every spring.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to wear pink lipstick.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a neutral girl, but every spring.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to wear pink lipstick.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to wear a bright pink hat.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to have a t-shirt that's bright blue and then
[SPEAKER_01]: I would be, it would be like December, and I was decluttering my drawers, and I went through a couple years process where I was doing this, and then every March, I'd be like, and I did that, like, where are those things that I bought, and I realized I got rid of them in the off season, because in October, I couldn't imagine wanting to wear a pink shirt.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so it was a more of a seasonal wardrobe thing,
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, however, I am a big person about seasonal decor, and you know, the season's things, it's really trying to marry the seasons of our life, which do kind of interact with the specific young children with the seasonal, you know, the hemispheres and the spring summer winter and fall.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I say when it comes to seasonal decor, I really like to
[SPEAKER_01]: Make sure I have things that are going to help me experience the season instead of decorate for the season.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't like to have, I don't like us to spend our money on something like a beautiful
[SPEAKER_01]: I love Halloween.
[SPEAKER_01]: We have Halloween party at our house, but a Halloween Reef gets to be on your front door for like one month a year and you're storing it for 11 months and I don't want to use my space to store something for 11 months.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want to use my precious stuff that I buy, like as much as possible.
[SPEAKER_01]: So instead of getting the decor, what I say is, how do we experience the season with our
[SPEAKER_01]: How do we experience the season in our life?
[SPEAKER_01]: We do that with our five senses.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's fall, where the smells, what are the sounds, what are the tastes of fall?
[SPEAKER_01]: What do we feel and fall?
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to be cozy.
[SPEAKER_01]: We want to feel texture.
[SPEAKER_01]: And what do we hear in fall?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do we have a fall playlist?
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have a fall playlist?
[SPEAKER_01]: And if you don't, you can listen to mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: But if you do, do you have a speaker?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have sound system?
[SPEAKER_01]: Like how are you going to listen to it?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you?
[SPEAKER_01]: You have headphones, you have something in your car, a Bluetooth that you can enjoy your playlist.
[SPEAKER_01]: If you want to bake bread in the fall, do you have a, is your bread knife sharp?
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you have a cutting board?
[SPEAKER_01]: You're going to make chili for everyone?
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe you need a dojo?
[SPEAKER_01]: I just bought myself the, I call it my culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because every year for probably 10 years, I have made chili and we have people over, for either Halloween or if we haven't lived in a neighborhood, it was like just for a fall festival type of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was using like four different pots, you know, putting and splitting up the chili and I'm like this year, I had some credit and I bought this 23 pound.
[SPEAKER_01]: It literally looks like a witch's culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is so big.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm like, I can make everyone's chili in this and I'm so excited.
[SPEAKER_01]: But guess what?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't have to put that away after October 31st.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can use it all year around.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to serve me.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to help our family experience the season.
[SPEAKER_01]: So think through those five senses.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make sure your house smells like the season.
[SPEAKER_01]: Make sure your house feels like the season.
[SPEAKER_01]: Also to decorate seasonally instead of holiday, decorate for winter.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I love baby Jesus too, but I'm not going to get a pillow with baby Jesus on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to get a pillow that maybe doesn't feel like it's summery, you know, maybe it's more texture or something like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those are some, I think, really nice ways to kind of welcome the season that you don't have to get out the plastic bins.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for clearing that up.
[SPEAKER_00]: That makes a lot of sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the fact that it's more about the experience.
[SPEAKER_00]: And again, how you want to feel versus, again, doing it for everyone else.
[SPEAKER_00]: So perfect.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, tell everyone where they can get house hushing and where to find you and everything that you've got going on right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Absolutely.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm on Instagram encouraging women in their home every day at the nester.
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, my website is the nester.com and the book hopefully is everywhere that books are sold.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for having me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, my gosh.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you don't get to go get.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have three quick questions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: The first one.
[SPEAKER_00]: What does clutter free mean to you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it means quiet.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, number two, what is bringing you joy right now?
[SPEAKER_01]: Puzzles, puzzles are bringing me joy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, good puzzle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do love a good puzzle.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not in a puzzle season right now in my life, but I do love a good puzzle.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are seasons for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're exactly right.
[SPEAKER_00]: My life is not quite enough for a puzzle right now.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then number three, what is one small step someone listening right now could take today?
[SPEAKER_01]: Clear off your coffee table, and let it be naked.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hmm, let it be naked.
[UNKNOWN]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: For your testicle, Michael, this is a great way to end the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for joining us.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wish you all the best.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks, Diana.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, I loved that episode.
[SPEAKER_00]: I told you I really enjoyed our conversation, but I want to tell you what stuck with me.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I asked Michael in the question about drifting and I was expecting a tip.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was expecting her to just kind of say, I do this, do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: But instead, she told me that my house was serving me exactly the way it's supposed to.
[SPEAKER_00]: That it's holding my mass so that I could go live my life.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that the work that I put in years ago is the reason the noise is lower now than it would have been otherwise.
[SPEAKER_00]: I needed to hear that from someone else, because I have told that same advice and given that same advice versions of it to so many of you, but isn't it so funny that it's so much harder to say to ourselves?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if your home feels loud right now,
[SPEAKER_00]: I want you to hear it for me the same way I needed to hear it for Michael in.
[SPEAKER_00]: You're not behind your in a season, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the season is where you are right now and your home is doing its job.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a place for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's holding you.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's holding space for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whether that's messy and chaotic or calm and peaceful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whatever it is that you want to do, your home can be that vessel for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: We might just have to put in a little different effort or show up a little differently, but it's okay if it's drifted, don't get down on yourself, that doesn't mean it's going to be that way permanently, you can make a change and you can make it work for you again in whatever season you are in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you enjoyed this episode or you got anything out of it, well you do me a huge favor, well you please leave a rating and a review wherever you're listening to this.
[SPEAKER_00]: It genuinely helps other overwhelmed people find the show.
[SPEAKER_00]: Not saying you're overwhelmed, I definitely am sometimes, and it's just really helpful to know that there are podcasts out there that are presenting different ideas for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you liked it, please let me know.
[SPEAKER_00]: And one of the best ways you can do that is leaving a rating in a review.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you can also send it to a friend.
[SPEAKER_00]: If they have some beautiful things and maybe they're feeling a little loud or their house is a little loud and they have no idea where to start.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, this would be a great place for them to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Alright.
[SPEAKER_00]: Next week I'm going solo.
[SPEAKER_00]: We're going to tackle a question I got on Instagram while I've been decluttering the 500 things out of my own home.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm doing this again, so I know you can find things to decluttering your home because if I can, you can.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so what do I actually do with all of it, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where does it go?
[SPEAKER_00]: Once I know I'm going to declutter it and get it out of my home because I know those of you listening to this or following me on Instagram, you don't want your
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, I can't guarantee that it's all going to not go in the landfill, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just kind of the cycle of stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: But we're going to talk about, what do I actually do with it?
[SPEAKER_00]: Where do I try to let go of it so that I'm trying to be more responsible, okay?
[SPEAKER_00]: And then we're going to show you how that you can let go of that stuff without the guilt or with less guilt.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, before you go, here's one quick win from Michael and right, go clear off your coffee table, let it be naked, make it if you're not in the cell.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing goes back on it today, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just look for it, look at it for a while, see how it feels, take a moment, read it in and see what your family says, see how they react to it as well.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, things for hanging out with me, happy to cluttering.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Diana Yates and you've been listening