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W four WN Radio. Hello and welcome to fear Less Fabulous. You.
I am your host, Melanie Young, and you're listening on the Women for
Women Network. You can hear all my shows anytime on ma'am after this live
show on about six or more podcast channel, so tune in, follow check
me out on Melanie Fabulous. You know if you food follow me, that
I really try to help women take charge of their lives, manage their stress,
live with more healthful attitude and lifestyle, and say no to things that
no longer matter in their life and yes to things that do, and ultimately
live life on your terms. You will, obviously if you follow me,
you know that I've had been dealing with a lot of things in the past
couple of years, namely selling my personal belongings and house in New York in
twenty twenty during a pandemic, which was kind of interesting living on the road
and a more frugal and simpler life for a year and a half, taking
a pet sitting for a while, and then moving in with my mother to
care for her until she died, and then cleaning out her amazingly cluttered borderline
horder house, which took a year and a half and nine days of estate
sales, and we still moved here to New Orleans with three storage pods because
we left New York with one storage pod and had sold ninety percent percent of
our possessions. We moved into a house with so much stuff that was twice
the size of our house in New York, moved all our stuff into the
house and lo and behold sold that house, had to liquidate, and are
now here in a much smaller house that still has too much stuff. But
we have taken control of things in an amazing way. And people always say
to you, how did you do this? Well, it wasn't easy,
And I will tell you that the topic is important because everybody is dealing with
us. Everybody is dealing with either trying to clean up their own life or
clean up somebody else's life. I'm serious. Is it is almost I wouldn't
say epidemic, but almost in terms of the way it's unpacking people. And
this is important. It's not about stuff, it's about your mental health.
And there are dozens and dozens and dozens of books that talk about cleaning up
your life and decluttering and dealing with all the stuff in your life. You
can find them online, but there are very few that actually deal with the
mental health of decluttering, which is something that's really important to me because I
had to declutter my head and get rid of a lot of emotional junk while
I was getting rid of my physical stuff. And so we're going to talk
about that today with somebody who is a specialist in this area. Her name
is Jenny Albertini. She actually has a master's in public health and MPH and
had a really high flying, really kind of fascinating career working for the Center
for Disease Control of Prevention in Atlanta. Love those guys dealing with I'll let
her explain the area in terms of working with AIDS patients, but she left
it to become a professional organizer to help people organize their life, and she
has a book out called Decluttered, Mindful Organizing for Health, Home and Beyond.
And the fact that it starts with health, then Home and Beyond is
super important because we're going to talk about how the process of decluttering is critical
to your mental health. So Jen Albertini, welcome to Fearless Fabulous. You
thank you so much, Melanie. So as I noted you, you've been
organizing people's lives in different ways through the health system. What were you doing
at the CDC, because I want people to know is really amazingly you were
in a really critical area that I think you should share before you decided to
take the leap. Sure. So I started working at the CDC way back
in two thousand and three when they were just opening up a new global AIDS
program which became what's known as the Residents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, initiating
and supporting AIDS programming around the world. So I actually worked on that program
in a number of countries. I lived in Zambia, I lived in Swaziland,
I worked in US offices and what I did was. I specialized in
HIV prevention and women's health initiatives, such as like working with pregnant women,
working on men's reproductive health, and I did that for a long time,
based overseas and really helping figure out with local governments and communities what were the
systems and programs that would be most beneficial to combat their HIV epidemics, and
then using the resources of the government and our partners, we could design and
implement programs that would help them meet their goals. I remember years ago I
interviewed someone who was doing something similar with NGOs and it's hard. It's very
hard because it is I don't think people in the United States realize how serious
the situation is in other countries and particularly in Africa, and a lot of
people, a lot of people, you know, because age isn't getting the
publicity it got re member came back in the day with Harvey Feerstein and angels
in America, it was everywhere, and now it's like over there, but
it's it's it's there still and still very important to acknowledge. Oh, I
totally agree, and so much progress has been made over the last few years,
and really I feel very grateful to have been able to work on this
program and have so many colleagues and local governments and communities working on this,
but it is still a challenge. And because it's not you know, a
quote unquote hot topic, anymore, awareness about it dies down, and then
unfortunately funding dies down. That's really sad. You know that, you know
it has to be a hot topic to get funding you which is a whole
other topic. But you made the decision. It says here you were thirty
six at the time to trained with Marie Condo, who wrote you know,
she basically was the ultimate expert in streamlining your life and you know, only
keeping things a spark joy and became a phenomenon. What was the impetus to
do this? You know? I had read Marie's book earlier, soon after
I came out in twenty fourteen, and I loved her method and this really
structured approach and thinking thoughtfully about what you had, and it was something that
I liked helping. You know, I went through and decluttered my own things.
I helped my colleagues, I helped my friends just for fun and so
sort of a side project. But then I found myself in twenty sixteen,
I was really going through one of these perfect storms, Melanie. I was
in a failing relationship, I was in a very challenging work environment, and
I was having health problems with myself, and I just intovely knew something was
wrong and the way I was living my life wasn't feeling good anymore. And
I had this moment that summer where a colleague of mine was getting ready to
move and she asked, and she knew I liked decluttering just for fun,
and she said, Oh, I really wish you could come over during the
week and help me do this to get ready. And I thought, you
know, I would love to do that instead of this job that I'm doing
that's making me miserable. And so it sort of started getting the wheels turning.
And then shortly afterwards, Marie actually announced that she was going to start
training people in her method for the very first time. And to me,
that was like a light bulb moment to spark this decision to leave my public
health job and enroll in her first certification program. Now, certification programs like
the thing, you know, there are a lot of them. How what
is her program and how you know what is involved with it, how long
did it take, what was your commitment. So when I took the program,
which was in very first class in summer of twenty sixteen, it was
a multi day in person course with Marie and some of her senior trainers from
working in Japan, and we learned more in depth about the method, but
also how to basically teach the method to clients we'd be working with and how
to conduct tighting sessions with them. After the in person courses, we had
to go through a set number of practice hours with practice clients and do a
lot of documentation about what we were doing, what we were learning, how
the client was transforming. We submitted those reports to Murray's team, they got
reviewed a lot of back and forth, and then there was actually a test
too and that you had to pass sort of very specific about that. And
then once you pass all of those things, you become what's called a certified
consultant. And then over the years, as you track more and more client
hours, you move up in levels of ranking until you reach the what's the
top level, which is known as the master level, where you've seen more
spent more than fifteen hundred hours with clients, and so that's you know,
I got to that level several years ago. Now out Yeah, I'm very
curious because there are a lot of coaches and consultants out there, and one
of the challenges, as you I'm sure awhere, is getting clients and getting
the word out without cluttering their inbox. How do you do that? How
do people find you? How do you get build your business? That's such
a good question. You know, when I made this leap from working in
government public health service to running Mountain business, I had no idea how to
get clients, Melanie. It was not something that was intuitive to me,
and I'd never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. But you know, ultimately
what I did was I set up a website and talked about the behavior change
that I was going to help people achieve by working with me. And that
was something that felt familiar because of course I'd been working on behavior change programs
for years. They were just focused on HIV programs and prevention programs and things
like that. So I really tried to draw on what I knew a little
bit about human decision making and what can inspire us to want to seek change
and want to seek help for things, and over the years. I mean,
I've been fortunate that I've maintained a good website. I'm in good standing
sort of with the different programs I'm a part of. I'm also a certified
Professional organizer through the National Association, and so that's all helped me achieve sort
of credentials, but also education that I think helps my clients more and more,
and then I get referrals through my clients to new people. I'm on
your website now, Jenny Albertini dot com. You've got a lot of corporate
clients, which I think is interesting. You know, I'm curious. You
know, we all know how individuals need help, but what what do corporations
come to you for? How do you help them? Because you've got some
good ones on Hemmy Marriott, Campari, Campari, Smithsonia and COMPARI very interesting
coming from wine and spirits background, So how do you help corporations? So
usually corporations me in to conduct workshops, and what I'll do is I'll teach
about the KonMari method. I also teach a really popular one on designing your
dream work day, so really which really helps employees identify where their peaks of
energy are throughout the day, and then we talk about how to schedule priorities
based on that. It also involves a lot of working with your team.
You know, many people in workplaces, they're on teams and groups, and
how do you communicate with one another about what's going on in your priority list,
how you can maximize time that you're together and not. The reason why
most companies come to me for sessions is they know, oh, their employees
are struggling with different facets of work life and also their personal life, and
so these sessions are often offered, you know as an HR benefit or workplace
wellness situation where they're trying to give their employees, my understanding is a menu
of tools that can help them feel better in their lives. And so I
think decluttering discussions and you know, you've mentioned sort of what you've gone through
with your family, and that's what so many people are dealing with. So
we also talk about that when you're navigating different ages and levels of clutter and
attachment styles. And so I really enjoy speaking to companies and groups because I
think it helps me reach a lot of people at once and really spark ideas
for people about you know, I give them takeaways for how they can implement
change in their life. Kind of right away. I think these are all
great points. And you know, clutter, as I said at the beginning,
and you really underscore in your book, it's as mental as much as
fit. And you discussed in your book Declutter that one of the more difficult
parts of writing the book has been recognizing reckoning how to describe the levels of
suffering. I see people faced with clutter. I think a lot of people
suffer with their clutter. It's interesting, Rick, please me as I said
my mother, I've been very vocal about what I went through. She was
a borderline hoarder. She actually went on Doctor Phil to be cured for her
incessant love of purple and having to buy everything purple. And on the show
he said, several years ago, he said, you don't have a problem
with the color purple. You are a borderline hoarder. And that was quite
some time ago, and it only got worse for some reasons that you actually
talk about in the book. You reference the widow who, after her husband
dies, just surrounds her stuff with stuff, and that sparked a reality for
me, Jenny, that as when my father died in two thousand and nine.
There was already a shopping problem and a clutter problem, but it got
war, it became stepped into the hoarderdom. And she wrote an article,
the last article, well besides her farewell column in her newspaper, the last
article she wrote, and she was a She wrote a column was comfort clutter
and how surrounding well Marie Condo people sparked joy for deg cluttering. She found
clutter brought joy into her life and happy memories. And that's when when I
thought about it and read the book. You talk about the widow and it
kind of aha, that's what she was doing. As I was trying to
declutter her life. She was like, no, don't get rid of a
lot of older people want to hang on to everything because it's all they have
left. Oh that is so true. And you know, I'm sure there's
article really captured that. And that's what I tried to express in the book
because I see that so often unfortunately, you know, clutter becomes the barrier
between what we want out of life and what we are afraid to sort of
let go of, which is oftentimes these emotions, these memories of people who
have left, or of situations in our life who have left. And so
when I talk in the book about these different levels of suffering, you know,
we have some people who approach clutter as you know, it's a problem
of how their home exists on a daily basis, and once they clear the
counters or the shelves, they feel fine. But sometimes that problem is going
much deeper. And I really try and express in the book different ways that
people can get at what's really driving their emotions and how to address them in
different ways. And sometimes addressing them is through working with someone like myself,
a professional organizer. Sometimes it's working with a therapist or a team. We're
really just having more open, difficult, sometimes conversations with family members about what
they're doing and how we can help them really move along the gradient of grief,
processing and suffering and recognizing ultimately how do they want to live and can
we help them achieve that through the reduction, sometimes very slowly, of what's
going on around them. I think clutter is a berry, but it's also
a crutch. I've seen it, you know, I referenced, you know,
my mother's experience was everybody you know, my mother in law right now,
you know, my husband's younger, and he doesn't like to let go
of things either. And you know, you know, we had you know,
the when Harry met Sally the wagon wheel fight, as we as we
you know, this is kind of what happened. My home that was in
the country became filled with clutter to the point where I was miserable. I
felt I felt burdened by my club. I've been very vocal, but it
quoted on it to the point where I actually wanted to sell the house.
I was angry, so I had a lot of issues, and I was
angry at my husband for bringing all his clutter and his family's clutter, and
his grandparents' clutter, and Aunt Mildred's ugly rug and all the clutter he brought
from his storage units into my abode, my pay my palace. And it
got to the point where I threw everything out and said, I'm getting rid
of all. I'm done. This is the only way I can deal with
this, this escape is to sell on and get rid of it and start
over. And it was great. The happiest years of my life are living
on the road with this stuff until I had to move back in with my
mother and it was like the descent into hoarder hell started again. So it
really can and I can say to this listener is it can really affect your
mental health, which is why you have to get to the root of the
problem and clean out the anger and grief and frustration that goes with the physical
stuff around it, and you do a lot of talking. You really encourage
journaling in your book. Why do you feel this as critical as part of
the process. Journaling really gives readers the space to look inward and get to
those underlying issues that you just mentioned that I repeat over and over in the
book, to figure out for themselves what's really going on. You know,
if you're in person with someone like me, I'm going to be asking questions,
We're going to be trying to get at it. But through a book,
I think that journaling offers that same type of back and forth. You're
just having it with yourself. So the prompts guy are guiding people to find
their own voice and then identify what their goals are to change it. You
know, many people that I've worked with have struggled with feeling empowered or disempowered
around making decisions about their stuff, oftentimes from experiences like you describe such as
having lived with parents who had hoarding problems, or with partners who view the
accumulation of stuff differently, and they bottle all of those feelings up. So
in this practice like journaling, you're able to hopefully personally and get some of
those feelings out. And I'm trying to offer a pathway through these exercises to
kind of identify what's going on, figure out some solutions, and then offer
some ideas that you can write through and action items so that you can make
some change. You know, this is based a lot on research that shows
that when one of the ways that we can integrate new habits and processes is
by repeatedly writing things down or even making art about them. So doing something
with your hands, experiencing something in a different way really, you know,
lights your brain up so that you're experiencing the problem and hopefully the solution in
a new, different way. And I thought this was important to do because,
as you mentioned at the top of the hour, there are dozens of
books about decluttering out there, and a lot of them focus on this is
how we set up this shelf, this is how we fold in this way
to have an organized thing, and those are, and I you know,
I read those also and recommend them, but I wanted this to be different
because I think people aren't spending enough time doing this deeper work so that they
can have more sustainable change over time. And I get it. I mean
it's hard to sit down with your feelings and right through experiences maybe you had
in your childhood or tension you have in your relationship about this. But I
was hopeful that these exercises and journal prompts let people feel safe enough to do
this for themselves. Absolutely, and you know, I'm going to be clear
to everybody listening. It is a bigger It can be bigger than you can
handle. And that's where you do need to talk to somebody and get help,
which is whether it's a coach or mental health professional or talk to somebody
because it, you know, the hardness thing for many people. Well,
first of all, you talk about before I get to that, do you
talk about two categories of clutter? Explain that two categories? Yeah, you
say, the two categories of clutter A clutter the noun a collection, a
disorganizer, and wanted and use unloved, and clutter is also a verb.
And you talk about the brain condition. You know, there are you know,
there are people who yes, and then and then you go on to
I mean there's a whole aspect of it, and the and the stigma around
and everything, so some people just can't focus yes. And you know there's
in my very like public health brain. When I was matrixinging all of these
underlying issues and causes, I tried to identify different ways to think about clutter.
So for for the first one you brought up, absolutely, you know,
clutter is just the noun of it is all the stuff that's around you,
right, but the verb is the doing of the It's the too many
things on your to do list, it's the too many priorities. It's the
people overload that you're trying to keep up with communicating stuff like that. And
that's just really meant to frame for people, Hey, there's different ways we
can think about it. And because this book is a little bit more expansive,
I wanted people to be open minded about how I was going to use
clutter as a word. Now, the other piece you mentioned, the brain
based conditions and are part of the health chapter. You know, I break
things into health, home and beyond, and within health, brain based conditions
are really those cognitive and biological features that some people experience that change our ability
to usually start, follow through and finish projects or problems related to clutter,
and that has a lot to do with executive functioning. So some examples of
those are things like attention deficit challenges, depression, traumatic brain injuries can cause
challenges and this year also and these are things that you know, we we
try, i think in more recent years, not to shame people for things
like mental challenges. However, there are mental health issues. However, there's
still a lot of shame around living a cluttered life or having clutter in your
home. And this comes, you know, for many reasons. You know,
we're constantly bombarded on social media and on television of you know, quote
unquote picture perfect homes and latest styles of things in those images are represent something
that you would consider a decluttered space. And so when people who are experiencing
challenges with maintaining that, they feel like they should have been able to do
that when in reality and trying to get across that, we need to take
out the words should from this. Some of us are just have greater difficulty
doing certain tasks or feel more aggravated by, for instance, the volume of
clutter because of other issues going on. This also can come I'm sorry,
go ahead, Yeah, no, you're absolutely right about this. And what
I was gonna say is, you know, overwhelmed is a term. I
was having an email exchange with somebody this morning because I'm trying to get rid
of twenty boxes of books and he was going to buy three of them,
but he's overwhelmed. You can't think about it right now. I'm like,
oh God, here's the O word. Overwhelmed. Everybody's overwhelmed. And I
think it got worse during the pandemic because everybody was at home, so talk
about being clattered. Suddenly you're in your home, which is your safe space,
and now it's your workspace, your children's play space, your husband's hanging
around if he's not there all the time, if you're not already in a
home based business. And I think people started to feel squeezed during the pandemic
and accumulated a lot of stuff during the pandemic because they felt they needed to
get the holoton or whatever, and now people are trying to break free of
a lot of it. Have you noticed that with your clients somewhat. I
would say, you know, that pandemic squeeze that you talk talk about,
it was the stuff, It was the environments, and it was so much
of medical emergency, work crisis, family crisis, caring about all the people.
So that's really that like mental clutter on overdrive too that you consider.
So that's really hard, and if you were living in a space where you
didn't feel supported, where you felt too crowded by stuff, your problem with
clutter was probably going to get worse. As you say I have had,
I will say, it's not like there's been a huge increase of clients I've
seen or talked to who had that increase in shopping habits during the pandemic.
That's you know, either you kind of had that issue challenge or you dealt
with it pretty quickly. But I had a lot more people that became aware
of their baseline level of clutter and they were like, oh, this,
this isn't good enough anymore, because now that I'm faced with this emergency situation
and I can't handle maintaining the stuff that was just around me on a regular
basis, so I want to better handle on it that So that should another
pandemic arrive. Should another crisis come up, I feel better able and more
supported from my environment to address it because I'm not spending all my time trying
to find the thirty packs of toilet paper that we're hidden throughout the house.
Yeah, you know, my mother had more than fifty violet saran wraps because
you'd love the color parbal so. Which brings me to a couple of things.
Here's the opportunity so I used. You know, I believe in challenges
become opportunities. That's kind of my thing. And I use the opportunity to
declutter my life twice now in twice in four years. Think about that.
So two homes, two sets of estate sales, two sets of you know,
and while I was during a pandemic and one was dealing with after the
alphamath of a death of someone who beloved in my former community. I use
it as a way to make money, you know, so I love to
make money in my sleep. I actually business was slow. You don't make
a lot of money podcasting or writing. So I turned it into a business
opportunity and I became, you know, like I became obsessed with pricing everything
and figuring out way to sell it, and people thought I was crazy,
but you know, I sold every single one of those saran wraps a dollar
apiece, a dollar apiece, and it was just it just started adding up,
you know. And you write about that in one of your blog posts
on your website about turning your stuff into cash do good while you're deg cluttering,
and I've talked about that as well. This is a great opportunity to
take what you have make a little cash. You do have to look at
the time time versus opportunity, because you could spend a lot of money trying
to sell zeff free talig Pepe. You have to decide what's worth and on
and then you can donate the rest or do swaps. I do you know
a lot of swapping of things. You could do stuff with schools. There's
a lot of ways to take your stuff and repurpose it or provide it for
someone else and feel good about it. Oh absolutely, I love that.
And what's key to me with when I'm helping clients figure out what they want
to sell versus what they want to donate, is what is your time worth?
And so we really want to try and focus first for people on the
high value items because that's you know, you're getting the most for your money
out of that, and then really try and look at different opportunities wherever you
are in your city for sharing and passing on other things. I live in
Washington, d C. There are great charities and nonprofits that accept gently use
items. There are craft centers that do craft swaps with you know, people's
unused materials, and there a variety of free cycle and offer up and things
like that. So you know, really there's I think that there is a
way to share or sell or donate just about everything that is in good condition.
You know, at a certain point we do just have to accept that
sometimes things have lived their life, they're not useful anymore, and then we
want to try and find as environmentally friendly as possible a way to dispose of
things exactly. It was a lot harder during the pandemic. Let me just
say that Jenny, nobody wanted myselff. It was really awful. It was
a lot easier when I was in cheddoa Tennessee doing it, and a bit
harder here in New Orleans because you don't want people to come into your house.
You have to It's a bit different everywhere you have to know your market,
you have to know it. And I've paid, I've really paired back
and focus on selling what we have to sell. Let's just say that that
we because we make a conscious decision when people were the bottom feeders were showing
up at like a State Selle day number four and it became really like how
low can you go? And I said, I'm feeling pretty low about this
way right now because I really like this stuff and I really don't want to
sell to you for nothing. I made some decisions to take what it still
did spark joy with me, and I'm glad I did because I have it.
It's all I have left because I got rid of everything else. But
you know, I also live every day knowing that a hurricane could blow this
all away, and I think about that every day and learn. Yet you
can't just can't get attached to too many things, guys. And one thing
about that too, Melanie, is with the kon Mauri method, when people
are going through the process, we really try and think of it as by
when do you want to be finished? Because if you're doing the kon Marii
tidying session, you know you're going through category by category, but it's not
your daily tidying, so someone you know, sort of like middle of summer.
Now, I have people who are like, ah, I want to
be done by the end of summer. So to me, that also means
the disposal of the items that we're going through by the end of summer.
So I'll say to people, Okay, you want to sell some of these
clothes that you've decided you're going to declutter, you know on poshmark that's a
popular clothing resale site, for instance, What can we put into your calendar
so that let's say you're doing two hours of that a week and by the
but you only have until the end of August to do this, so you
know it, whatever sells by that point, wonderful, that's great. But
we're trying to make a commitment that at the end of the summer you're going
to just donate the rest of the items, because what you're choosing is the
piece of being done with this project, so that you are not going,
you know, into the next phase of your life or the next season with
that stuff still hanging over your head. Now. Of course, the timelines
are different for everyone, and sometimes they're motivated by a move or the need
to sell a house or something like that. But we're really trying to push
because we want you to feel that change and experience what it's like to have
that freedom that you describe of being done with the project of living with less
and having so much more time and flexibility in your life. Well, I'm
looking to the left and I see boxes. I'm looking behind me, I
see you know, I've laid down deadlines with my husband, who doesn't like
to get rid of things as much as I do. It's like dieting.
Everybody. You have a goal to lose twenty pounds, and you have a
goal to do it by a certain time. You got to get started,
you got to stay on a schedule, and you've got to be very structured.
And you know, I think you said something really important, allocate I'm
a big allocator and chunking your day. And you know, I'll say I'm
going to spend two hours doing this, and then I'm putting it away.
Two hours on this, and I'm putting it away and I and I do
that. It's I call it chunking. And you talk about that set goals
on how many hours you're gonna do it, because listen, it can take
a long time to do Poshmark, Facebook, market Place even, you know,
pick maybe two things that you want to do, you know, do
and and really go for the biggest, bulkiest and most expensive stuff to get
it out of the way, because like I said, you can spend a
lot of time selling. You know, I sold the box of crayons for
six dollars you know, wow. But you know how about that twelve hundred
dollars Pisa jewelry, right, so you got it. Prioritize, I mean,
right now I'm working on the bulky stuff. I've got twenty books,
twenty boxes. I'm down to eighteen now of civil war books. And I
have set a goal of when I'm going to you know, the collections I'm
going to sell and I'm targeted who because that there were you know, quite
a bit of money and everything else is going bye bye to be donated.
And I've set a goal of when i want to see those boxes out,
and I've done that with other things. And if you don't set that goal
and timeline, this stuff is just going to like linger and gather moth holes
and dust. And as I said to my husband, as God is my
witness, when I move out, as I've said to Betty people, when
I move out of this this house, it's going to be in a lot
smaller when potentially an urn and my stuff is going with me. So I've
I've really laid down the law. And you have to think about that,
particularly when you're reaching toward your later in life lights and you don't have children,
or you don't want to burden your children with all your stuff. Because
my mother used to cackle, go, oh, yes, your problem,
and it was my problem. But I turned my problem into an opportunity and
I made some money and that was a good thing. I felt good,
right, So you got to figure out how you're going to make it work
for you in the way you want it and their timeline, and I think
that that's really important. I have a question for you. So everybody says,
you know, I hate to let go of all my photos, my
memories, the love letter I can tell you right now, I seem to
have even though I said throw them out, there's four boxes of all this
stuff and two from New York. And I'm like, now, what is
the best way to deal with that? When you have all those photos and
you know the love letters you find from your parents and grandparents, what really
matters? And why keep it? And what have the better ways to do
something with it? You know, why keep it is such a personal question.
And some people keep them because they remember the events, they remember the
people, they love to look through them, things like that. But often
those all those boxes of photos are just staying as boxes of photos. It's
not right. People are routinely going through them and stuff. So with my
clients when we're doing photos, you know, the first thing is to really
identify what are the types of photos or events that you're looking to save,
right, Like, what are the memories that are much more than you know.
I have a client who said, you know what, the birthday parties
were such an important part of my life. I want to save photos of
the birthday parties. And so what we did is we sorted by year and
party, and she kept just a couple of each of each party and for
each year, and so she was better able to let go of the other
stuff because she was focused on what, you know, this priority was the
party. So we're always trying to look for like what's what's the one when
that you know, you know is going to help you feel like you've saved
enough of something that was truly important, And then we think about how do
you want to experience this? Do you want to have a really nice album
on your coffee table and when family or friends come over, you're going to
share that material? Okay, then let's go ahead and make this. And
I mean, these days, there's a million ways to get an album made
or get something pretty done that you would like aesthetically when people make memory boxes
and shadow boxes and things like that, So we're trying to hone in on
like, what's the point of you keeping it and how are you going to
enjoy having it? And once people start to keep some of those, it's
a little easier to let go of them. But photos can take ages to
go through and are really hard. So I like one tool that's sort of
like a clear plastic box that's got these like little cassette tape type things in
it, and you sort by you know, event or year or whatnot,
and once you reach the limit of photos that'll stay in that cassette tape,
that's that's it. So it's giving you a guard rail of how many photos
you can keep of any one thing. And I think in general, that's
a good practice. It's the same idea. If you've got chest of drawers
that's got five drawers in it, let that be your limit of what you're
keeping clothing wise in there. And yes you could go a little above,
Yes you could go a little below, but we're looking for ways to train
you to be okay with just enough exactly. And I use this. I
do the clear plastic boxes. My mother seemed to have put all her shoes
in them, so I repurpose them. I'm big on repurposing. I'm actually
turning a lot of things for therapy into art projects. So I found all
their credit cards, like sixty credit cards, so I'm going to cut them
up and create collages. I found, you know, hundreds of postage stamps,
so I'm like, hey, my posting stamp's gonna be worth a lot
of money, right, you know, No, they're not okay, So
I'm going to create colagos out of them. So I'm using a lot of
that, and which leads me to just because you don't want to think about
schools, I donated a lot to libraries and schools in Tennessee because they use
these things for art projects. So if it may be junk to you.
But photographs, post cards, greeting cards, all that can be used as
art projects in schools, and I encourage you to think about you know,
I made a list of local nonprofits and I contacted them and the deal was,
you know, whoever comes and picks up the stuff gets it. And
it worked really well. I donated a lot of stuff to public schools and
libraries and it really made me feel good. I didn't care about the tax
that. I just wanted it to go out the door. And you know,
like I said, I sold the fifty dollars worth of ceram wrap.
It didn't cost me anything. I just had it at the checkout at the
Estate Selle and people kept buying the stupid seram wrap. I had no idea,
so you just kind of make it work. But the other thing is
we talked about pictures, and the other one is books. People don't,
you know, seem to collect a lot of books, and there's some great
ways to repurpose books, right for repurposing books for like our tell me all
the books you've collected over the years. You know, what are some things
to you would suggest for people who don't want to have hundreds of books on
hand. Oh, honestly, Melanie, I suggest donation. There are different
services at least in our area that will do free pickups and they'll do donations
for things. There's a prisoner program books for prisoners in the area, and
so a lot of books for my clients go through that way. Sometimes the
libraries will take certain types of books. I will say with any nonprofit school
library, very often in their donation website links they'll say what types of books
they want, and so I always try and be sort of, you know,
as specific as possible. There are a few companies and bookstores that will
sales, but oftentimes it's it's just sort of the general donation sites or local
books swapped sites and events. We have those in town also, So those
are the typical sort of books. I mean, just last weekend a client
of mine had eighteen boxes of books picked up. Mm hmm. That gets
that deals with a lot of space you've just decluttered, right, Oh,
absolutely, And you know it's a couple and they you know, love books,
write books or academics. They'd had hundreds and hundreds of books throughout their
homes and they love them, but they recognize they didn't need all of them,
and they didn't want to leave it for their kids to have to make
the decision, Oh what was important for mom and dad to keep. So
they made that decision now and they still have books on their bookshelves, they
still have things to read. Things like that. They just were able to
go through the books and say, oh, you know what, I read
that book once. I don't need to read it again. It's still in
good shape. Why don't I donate it and someone else can enjoy it?
And it was a really at first they were worried about doing it. But
after a few sessions of doing deep decluttering work like this, you'll feel more
empowered to go into those hard categories, which you know, in books is
often a category that people are like, oh, this equates to me being
educated and well read, and how I can't let go of any of my
books. But once you start going through them one by one, you realize
that we can separate your personal identity from the particular items we ended up.
You know, Toothy, I had a huge library, and my parents were
both authors and collectors, and on and on. I mean, can't image
hundreds and hundreds of books I actually had. Someone I was lucky, I
knew this person. He's a book Uh, he's a book specialist and I
know him through family connections with Juniper Books. That's your why. And he
was doing a project in Tennessee and I wrote him, I said, I
really would like you to come look at these books. I need someone to
tell me what I have that could be of value. And frankly, it
was the best time spent with him. He went through. And so if
you have anything that could potentially be valuable, get a book specialist in if
you can do it, because he ended up identifying books. Frankly, I
would have liked silver. Nothing and the books silver like six thousand dollars a
set. Okay, So I've you know. So he went through and I
just emailed him before the show because I have a first edition. So if
you you know, be careful because you may have stuff that is valuable.
So get people in who know, get experts in. If you have any
doubt before you just start going willy nilly donating here or there. It is
worth it to spend the money, allow the time, let them pick to
help you. So I do advise everybody on that. So I have learned
that through the process, because yeah, it was actually shocking some of the
stuff he priced for me. And so I know what to keep and what
to get rid of. So it is a process and a lot obviously,
if you're under pressure because you have to move or selling house, it gets
a little messy. But I think most important is get help. Get help.
Don't try to do it all yourself if you need help, but interview
people and get references. You know, in your case, you have a
lot of references. You've got a great website. You know, Start the
start the process before you're pressured to have to move faster. That's a big
one. Like start now, like everybody listening, start now on how to
clear out and streamline your life and your environment so that when the time comes
when you you know, have to move or God forbid, you're not feeling
that pressure. It's a process that you have to live with every day,
like your diet. Right. Yes, absolutely, And what you say is
when people are faced with a pressure like an illness or a move, they
don't make the decisions they really want to make. And so when we can
start now, when and this is part of why I talk about in the
book, sort of encouraging mindfulness and taking your time and being thoughtful. You
will feel so much better about the decisions you're making when you're decluttering with that
in mind, as opposed to at a crisis point. And so that's you
know, the more awareness that people have of this, I think the ease
in getting started. And there are so many resources for help, Just like
with any goal one of us might have, whether it's exercise or nutrition or
decluttering, there are people who are trained who can be of assistance and lots
of different options for working with them. Yeah, just that and references and
don't make rash decisions. I mean, you know, take your time and
set a timeline. I think that's really important. Otherwise, like with a
lot of things, it can take over your life and you don't want that
to happen. And I and I mean that, and whether it becomes a
disorder that as you try to find order, it becomes a disorder. M
hm, well put yeah, and uh, you know I lived it,
so I can say I think your approach is very interesting. I've not read
any of Marie Condo's books, but I love the term spark joy. I
look at everything as we were, as we were going through everything, I
kept saying mouzin, does this really spark joy? You know? Cute?
He go, it's cute. I mean, cute doesn't spark joy for me?
Okay? You also, and and I think this is also important you're
in your relationships. Let's just say your goal of decluttering may not match your
partners, so you have to have some goal setting there too, and be
very sensitive to that. Right, Yes, it sounds like you experienced this
with your husband too, you know, I right, yeah, you know.
And I think that these are questions that you know, perhaps people should
be talking about earlier on in relationships. It brings up there's options for talking
about what type of home did you grow up in, what was your parents'
relationship with clutter, and how does that equate to how you live now?
Because it has a lot of impact on your daily life living with someone else,
which are the major causes of stressors personally and in relationship. It also
has a bit will have a big impact on your finances. So if you're
going to be sharing finances and budgeting with people, you want to know,
are you someone who's going to be buying dozens and dozens of something to keep?
Or you know, are we going to be holding on to tupperware for
twenty years, just because that's what you always have. You know, there
are different things that will affect how you're communicating and working together. So I
don't think it if it's approached with compassion and that shared goal of what do
you want as a relationship, how do you want to feel in your home,
in your love, in your partnership, and what can you do to
really you know, whether it's like meeting in the middle or setting new shared
goals for how you're going to live, you can find that pass forward,
you know, if you're willing to address the issues. Yeah, and it
you know, just keep you know, it takes diplomacy, but it is
important as much as discussing finances, discussing the space is really important. I've
enjoyed talking with you. This is a topic, as I said, I
address a lot. I enjoyed speaking with you, Jenny Albertini. The book
is Decluttered, Mindful Organizing for Health, Home and Beyond. You can find
it on her site and all the other sites. You know. I hope
your life remains streamlined and successful as you move through what I hope is a
decluttered life of your own. Thank you so much for having me Melanie absolutely
and for everyone listening, I hope this has been helpful. Remember get started
now, don't wait until it's too late and you feel stressed. Start now
to take control of your health, your space, your relationship, your time,
and your finances. Because you have the choice to live life on your
terms. Choose to be fearless and fabulous and on it. I'm Melanie Young,
thank you for joining me. I'm fearless, fabulous. You