149 | When Clutter is More than Physical Belongings and Why it's Important to Surround Yourself with What is Serving You - Intentional Edit

Clutter comes in all shapes and sizes. Physical, mental, virtual, and emotional are types of clutter and reducing all of them is the best way to simplify, grow, and feel better in life.

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Full Episode Transcription (not edited):

The term clutter is often associated with extra stuff, extra physical belongingness. But clutter really comes in a lot of shapes and sizes. It’s physical, mental, virtual, and emotional and clearing. All of that. Clutter is the best way to simplify, grow and feel better in your life.

If you find yourself struggling with too much clutter, or you can’t figure out where to start organizing your home. Or you just want help solving a problem to have something to do with all the topics that we discussed on the intentional edit podcast, head over to intentional edit.com and click on the record. Now button that pops up.

You can leave me a message. To answer a question for you or solve a problem for you on a future tip tuesday episode A few weeks ago, I received any email that has a lot of success in it. It shares a personal story about someone who embarked on a de-cluttering journey and organize their home. And has now truly seeing the benefits of living this clutter-free lifestyle. So this is the email that I received. I’m going to read it to you now. We are a few years into our clutter-free living journey and made massive changes to live a more minimal life. Some months are easier than others to maintain, but overall, we wouldn’t change a thing, but we would have started this process much sooner.

Once we got rid of 85% or more of our useless belongings that we were really storing, never using. We realized that we had to cut out the screen time, extra birthday parties, social events. And relationships that were not healthy and a true time suck for our family. The benefits are numerous and our family is finally thriving. I wanted to thank you for your podcast and helping to keep us motivated and remind me why we began this process to start=

Yes, this is so amazing. I love getting feedback like this and getting to communicate with you guys when you have had so much success and. You’re really feeling the benefits from the decluttering, the organizing, or the routines and systems that we like to come up with in our homes to simplify. Absolutely everything.

My favorite kind of messages and emails are the success stories. And I love, you know, I love the before and after pictures. I wanted to use this message to talk about the other types of clutter. We really focus on at the physical cutter. We don’t talk about or focus on. So much of the other types of clutter.

Here. So I wanted to just take this one quick tip Tuesday episode and focus on. Other types of clutter, other than physical clutter. So the definition of clutter is anything lying about in an untidy mass. Like a crowded or confused mass or a collection of things. So you could think of stacks, piles, things, congested together, even.

Cluttered areas like in doubt, very busy downtown areas where all the buildings and restaurants and motels and all that stuff are all compact in one little space. There thing is, are usually physical things are usually clutter and they clutter your home. They begin to collect and pile up and they clutter your home.

And then the other thing, when I was looking for the definition of clutter is. Interfering the word interfering so interfering and it can be caused by objects. Or other thing is interfering to me seeing him as like something that is. An annoyance or you don’t want to deal with it because it’s interfering with your life. It’s interfering with the things that are truly important to you, and that you actually want to spend your time on.

That’s a little bit of a background on physical clutter. Physical clutter is what I teach you, how to eliminate. It’s what I want you to get rid of. And I have a proven framework, a process that works for decluttering. And it helps you with the decision-making. It gives you the how to it’s all covered in the intentional edit program the simplified home masterclass.

the decluttering is a very big section at the beginning because you have to remove the clutter before you even think about organizing. Decluttering is huge. It is game changing. It will truly change your life if you get rid of the clutter and get the things out of your house that you do not need, use, or want.

When I do the weekly refresh and restock in my home. That helps to prepare. For the week ahead. And what I mean by preparing for the week ahead, it’s the calendar looking at the schedules time, blocking out events for the future. Time-saving strategies. And that reduces mental clutter. The systems and routines that we put into your home that reduce the number of decisions that you have to make in a day. Those significantly reduce the mental clutter in your life.

In today’s world, there’s a ton of virtual clutter, clutter on your computers, on your screens, on your phones. The virtual clutter is occupying our time and energy and our thoughts, and that is a huge clutter to tackle and reduce in your life as well. The virtual clutter, we don’t think about that much because when it’s just the physical space that your phone or your laptop or your computer screen takes up, you don’t think about it being a big.

Deal. But we are inundated with receiving information. Our brains are not meant to do that. The clutter that that is causing and the stress that that is causing on ourselves. This is huge. I don’t think we are even close to realizing the damaging effects that that is having on us because this inundation of constant information.

Is a newer thing. Yes. It’s been around for a few years now, but it’s definitely a newer, this isn’t something that we can study like over a hundred years. So that’s another type of clutter. And then the type of virtual clutter that we do think about is like, oh, I have 5,000 email unread emails. That are just sitting there. And I see that little bubble pop up on my phone with all of those emails or text messages or any notification that you have. We think about that we are more aware of that because we see that it’s in our face. What about the messy files on your desktop or an unorganized photo system? You have 20,000 photos in your iCloud, but you don’t know how they’re organized because they’re not organized.

That’s other types of virtual clutter. There is also something very, very significant emotional. Clutter calender, clutter relationships commitments. All adding to the clutter in your life. That means they’re overwhelming you. They’re adding to your stress. When we talk about and share the benefits of reducing clutter or eliminating clutter, it doesn’t just apply to the physical clutter and the belonging is.

That are in your home. The clutter you can see with your eyes, that is all over your home is easy to pinpoint. It’s easy to think about. And to identify that as being clutter, that has being something extra it’s excessive. You don’t need it. You don’t want it there. It’s easier to identify those types of clutter.

But the other types of clutter can be just as damaging, if not more damaging because of stress and overwhelm. Now my personal story is that the more that I have eliminated all the types of clutter, the better I feel the better and the stronger my family relationships are. Our connections improve. The more rested we feel. The more adventures we go on. We’ve become more adventurous. And we see the increase in time. So we have more time, more experiences. It’s the right kind of more, we are removing all of those types of clutter. And then there’s more time for all of the things that are important. All of the things that we enjoy, all of the things in life that we want to be doing because the clutter takes us away from that. when you eliminate the unnecessary, the things that are breaking you down there, they’re consuming your time. They’re adding to your stress. You will have more time for the things you want to be doing. You can spend more time of your life.

Doing what you enjoy with the people you enjoy. that is huge. You want to fill your days with thing is that you enjoy and things that you love doing.

When you eliminate the unnecessary, the things that are bringing you down that are consuming your time, that are adding to your stress. You have more time for the things that matter to you, the things you want to be doing. You can spend your days doing what you enjoy with the people you enjoy instead of constantly scrambling and being stressed out to the max.

This is the story that you want, the results we hear over and over again, when people eliminate the unnecessary that’s when the improvements happen, that’s when the big changes happened for the better. The shedding of the commitments, the time-sucking apps on your phone, the negative, the toxic relationships.

All of those unhealthy habits that we have old items, physical clutter, as you grow and change. This elimination, this decluttering, it helps you be the best version of yourself. There is nothing wrong with making changes and growing. In fact, I want you to think about that. It’s really quite the opposite.

When you can grow and make changes for the better when you can declutter and you can surround yourself with the things, the people, the experiences that you desire in your life, that is when it makes it possible for you to be the best version of yourself and it improves all of the important things, the priorities for you and the priorities for your family.

Take a few minutes after this episode and I want you to reflect, so think about what is adding to the clutter in your life. All types of clutter, the physical, the emotional, the relationships, the virtual clutter, what are the things that are bringing you down, but that are adding to your stress that are adding to the clutter in your life.

What’s bringing you down and instead of filling you up, And lifting you up, remove those things, find a way to declutter and eliminate and drastically reduce those things that are bringing you down. And a fill your life with the things that are lifting you up. The thing is that you desire the things that you want to be spending your time on the things that you actually want to be doing.

Stop saying yes to the commitments that are sucking the life out of you. What changes can you make to reduce all these types of clutter in your life? Take a few minutes. Now we’re going to end the episode and think about how can you declutter all the areas, not just the physical clutter so that you.

Can improve your life and be the best version of yourself for yourself and for your family

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Lauren is the founder of Intentional Edit, a home organization and lifestyle company focused on consciously editing to create efficient and organized spaces. Lauren believes that a functional home that looks and feels good has a positive influence on all aspects of life. Creating systems that allow for the home to function more efficiently, therefore, eliminating most of the clutter and chaos is her priority. While trends come and go organization is always in style!

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