What do you do if you LOVE stuff but you know you have too much and need to declutter? You listen to this episode of The Simply + Fiercely Show. As someone with an (ahem) strong appreciation for material possessions, I’ve learned to balance my love of stuff with my need for less—and you can too.
In this Episode:
- 3 decluttering tips for people who love stuff
- The surprising relationship between joy and clutter
- Why you “love stuff” and how to fall out of love
Featured in this Episode:
- Get your free Mindful Decluttering guide
- Read the blog: simplyfiercely.com/blog
- Read about my shopping ban
- Connect on Instagram: @simplyfiercely
Subscribe to The Simply + Fiercely Show
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Note: this is not an exact transcript and has been edited for clarity.
Decluttering Tips for People Who Love Stuff
Hello, everyone, it’s Jen here, and welcome to episode five of the Simply and Fiercely Show. In today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about decluttering tips for people who love stuff.
I know that might sound like a bit of a strange topic or quite a specific topic. So, before I dive in with the decluttering tips, I thought I would just take a second to share my inspiration for this episode.
The inspiration why I want to tackle the issue of decluttering.
As some of you may know, I have been doing work with decluttering and minimalism for about seven years now.
In addition to the website, I have been teaching decluttering courses since around 2017.
It’s been quite a few years that I’ve been investing a lot of time and energy thinking about decluttering and minimalism. On top of my own personal experience of embracing a minimalist lifestyle, which has been over 10 years now.
Part of what I do is research. I want to see what other people are saying about decluttering and minimalism.
Not so much, I guess, to see what other people have to say, but to understand what people are struggling with so that I can better serve my audience.
One of the things I do is go onto social media, Instagram, or Facebook groups, and see what kind of questions people have.
Something I’ve noticed is that when someone asks a question in a Facebook group, for example, and they say, ‘I’m really struggling to declutter XYZ, does anyone have any advice for what I should do?’
Of course, there are a million things that people say, but sometimes there is a very anti-stuff sentiment.
Where people say you shouldn’t care or stuff isn’t important. And, yes, that’s true, I’ve talked about it in another episode.
But for some people, it’s not that easy. Some people love stuff.
Jennifer’s eight-month hiatus from shopping.
I’m in the middle of a year-long shopping ban and I wrote a blog post about it, you can check it out here.
I’m currently eight months in and I’m trying to go a year without buying any clothes, whether they’re new or secondhand.
I posted about it on Instagram and I asked, ‘Could you go a year without buying any clothes?’ The feedback that I got was very, very mixed.
Some people said, ‘Oh, that’d be really hard’. Maybe I could, but you know, it’d be a bit of a struggle.
Surprisingly though, quite a lot of people said, ‘Yeah, no worries, that wouldn’t be a problem for me’. I only buy what I need, I don’t buy excess stuff, etc.
Seeing those comments really drove home in my brain that there are two types of people in the world.
The two types of people and their perception about stuff ex. the difference between Jennifer and her husband.
There are people who can be detached from stuff. They see it as a means to an end. They’re very naturally minimalist.
I think I’ve mentioned this before, my husband is very much like that. He moved from England to Australia with just one bag. It wasn’t like stress or drama for him.
He buys stuff when he needs it, but it’s so rare. So rare I should probably try to get him to buy some new clothes.
He just doesn’t care about stuff.
For the people who fall into that camp, the type of advice that works for them is a little bit different than for people who love stuff.
I can say that because I am the type of person who loves stuff. Even though I now identify as minimalist, I still really enjoy things.
I have a good friend who will send me photos whenever she finds cute shoes or cute things for the kids. And I’m like, oh my gosh, you know, heart face emojis all over the place. I appreciate stuff and I love enjoying stuff.
So, for me, I had to take a really different approach to decluttering and minimalism than other people. We’re all unique. We all have our own different personalities.
That long intro was to explain that some people love stuff more than others and they need to take a slightly different approach to decluttering.
Here are three tips for decluttering for people who love stuff
Tip number 1 – Be really picky about the stuff that you love.
Tip number one for people who love stuff is to get really, really clear on what you like, to the extent that you’re almost being snobby.
Okay, snobby is not a very nice word. People don’t resonate with that. Perhaps I should say discerning. You want to develop a really discerning taste.
I’ll explain how this works by sharing an example from my life.
As a former Shopaholic, who was once addicted to buying clothes, one of the things that helped me declutter was to get really, really picky about fabrics.
Flashback like 12 years now, I used to buy a ton of fast fashion, not really proud of it, I know it’s horrible for the earth. But that’s the type of person I used to be. A ton of what I own was polyester or polyester blends.
I just want to say that I don’t want to shame anyone for what you buy, or what’s in your closet. Obviously, it’s a personal choice. But what I realized for me is that I didn’t really feel my best wearing these items.
Most of the things that were poly blends are the kind of clothes that I’d wear once or twice. I’d like the way that they looked on the hanger or the way that they looked in the shop. But when I spent a full day wearing a polyester shirt, I just didn’t feel my best.
One thing I did that helped me become more minimalist, helped me declutter, and helped me save a ton of money on shopping, was to become a snob about fabrics.
I realized there are certain fabrics that I really love. I love the way linen feels, I like silk, and I like 100% cotton.
Those are the things I was wearing the most anyway, so I trained my brain to not only prefer those clothes but to get snobby about it.
To be like, ‘Oh, I wouldn’t care to have that stuff.
Again, not judging anyone else but I’m just saying you can use this hack to kind of train your brain to only love certain things.
So if you’re the type of person who loves stuff, when you’re decluttering, you just kind of fall out of love with certain things, and then it’s easier to get rid of them.
I will say that I find this tip really, really helpful, like the snobbier you can get about what you like, the easier it is to get rid of certain things.
I will say that it can be hard to implement sometimes.
When I tell people about it they’re a bit uncomfortable because our brains have been trained that being snobby is a really bad thing.
Of course, being snobby in general is not very nice. In this case, though, you’re using it in a very specific way, not to be judgmental or mean to other people.
It’s to help you curate your desires. If you’re the type of person who desires everything, this is a way of scaling it back.
I also just want to say that if you’re scared of the idea of being snobby, I think it’s helpful to think of it a bit like people-pleasing.
For example, if someone asks you to do something you say yes, I’ll do it because you want to be helpful.
But if you say yes to everything, you reach a point where you’re overextended, and you’re exhausted, and you feel like you’re being taken advantage of.
If you use that analogy when you think about your stuff, you’re trying to see the best in everything you own.
If you love everything, a byproduct that is keeping everything because you’re trying to see the best and you might use it someday. You then end up overwhelmed with clutter.
It’s kind of like the clutter version of people pleasing. You have to set some boundaries.
If you’re the type who loves stuff, I would definitely recommend that you try to force yourself not to care about certain things when you’re decluttering because it doesn’t come very naturally. At least it didn’t come very naturally to me.
You can embrace the idea that you love stuff, but get really particular and really specific about what it is that you’d love.
Tip number 2 – Indulge only in things that you love, more than stuff.
Tip number two, for people who love stuff, is to really indulge in things that you love more than stuff.
What I mean by this is that if you are the type of person who really loves stuff, I think it’s not a huge jump to say that your personality might be someone who enjoys the pleasures of life.
I can say, that’s definitely me. I am 100%, a pleasure seeker.
For anyone who follows the Enneagram. I’m not an expert in it. But if you’ve not heard of it, it’s like this personality test. I am Enneagram seven and from what I understand about these tests is that type sevens are the type of people who want to feel good.
So, we do things, and we buy things, and we chase things that make us feel good. That is my innate personality.
As a side effect of that, I’m not a very disciplined person. I have a very hard time making myself do things I don’t want to do.
If that resonates with you, and sometimes you have to be honest with yourself because sometimes I don’t really like to admit those things but if I’m honest with myself, that is my personality type.
So, you have two options. If you’re like me, you can try and go against your natural behavior and force yourself to declutter. That’s what I tried to do for a very long time, I thought that I could use sheer will and effort to create the lifestyle I wanted.
If you have heard my minimalist and decluttering story, you will know that that did not work for me.
I just kept forcing myself to do things that I didn’t want to do and spent several years trying to declutter but making no progress.
Essentially, what I realized is, hey, why don’t I work smarter, not harder? Why don’t I work with what comes naturally to me? Instead of trying to force myself into being someone I’m not.
And so, with regards to decluttering, what I needed to do was to find something that I loved more than stuff. It’s like a perspective shift.
I’m hesitant to share this analogy because I don’t want it to sound like decluttering is some kind of life-changing thing.
But let’s say you had a near-death experience, or you had someone you were close to get really ill or something. When you go through an experience like that, all of a sudden, you’re going to look at your life differently.
Suddenly, you’re thinking how you were obsessing the other day about whether to get two or three T-shirts off the clearance rack at Target. but now your whole life feels different. Those T-shirts feel insignificant. It’s kind of like that.
I’m not saying that decluttering is life or death, but if you can indulge in the things in life that are more joyful it’s going to give you that perspective shift.
For example, for me, I am very passionate about travel. I love to travel. I love food. I hate cooking, but I love eating.
I’m not a huge beauty person, but I love going to the spa. I love like beauty treatments.
I love spending time outdoors. I love indulging in creative hobbies.
All these kinds of things are the things that make me feel alive. When I’m doing them, life just feels great.
It’s like when you go on holiday or vacation. If you’re out having a good time, all those things you thought were important just don’t matter. It’s the same kind of thing.
The more I make a conscious effort to do things that I enjoy, the easier it is to declutter because these decisions don’t seem that important.
If we go back to the title of this episode, if you’re the type of person who loves stuff but you’re filling your heart and life with these pleasurable activities, you love stuff less so it becomes naturally easier to declutter.
One thing I will say is that this topic of enjoying yourself and learning to enjoy life more, is so important.
And it’s not even just for decluttering, I think that it is related to why a lot of people have so much clutter in the first place.
Our lives have gotten busy. Even if you put the effort in to have a less busy life, we can’t escape that we’ve got kids and work and bills and all these adulting things that get into our life.
Sometimes it’s hard to make ourselves do things that are fun.
I’ll give you an example I live in a high-rise apartment complex and one of the reasons we chose this building is that there is a beautiful resort-style pool here.
It’s not just the pool but it’s got a sandy beach, palm trees, and fountains. It’s like a little oasis in the city. It’s so lovely.
When I first moved here, I was like, oh, I’m going to go down there all the time and sit by the pool.
You know when you’re on vacation, you just go sit by the pool for a bit, even if it’s not long you feel so relaxed, right? That’s how I envisioned I was going to live when I moved here.
However, I always catch myself thinking that I don’t have enough time. I’m like thinking, oh, I’ve got things to do, I don’t have all afternoon to spend lounging around the pool, so I just don’t bother going.
In reality, I could have easily gone and spent 20 minutes getting a bit of sunshine and relaxing for a bit. But I’ve told myself that I don’t have enough time to do that.
Let’s bring this back to clutter and how this relates to decluttering and why we have so much clutter in the first place.
What has happened is, our brains tell us that we’re too busy, so we stopped doing little things that bring us joy. Then what we do instead is, we get little jolts of joy by shopping.
Because shopping is such a quick high, isn’t it? Whenever you buy something, you get a little buzz of joy.
And now with online shopping, it’s like one swipe and you buy something. You can buy something in under a minute. It’s insane.
I’ve noticed that the idea of going down and spending a half hour of sitting by the pool, I don’t have enough time for that. But the idea of popping into Target for 20 minutes, sounds very manageable in our minds.
So what we’ve started doing is using shopping and making little purchases as a way to fill the hole in our lives, because we’re not out doing joyful things.
We’re not doing things like reading a book, going for a walk, or any of these other little things that make us happy because we don’t think we have enough time.
I’m going a bit on a tangent, but this is all related to decluttering. It’s a bigger story of how did we end up in this place? How are we living in this time where everybody is struggling so much with clutter.
I think on some level, we have lost the skill of enjoying ourselves.
Even though developing that skill, getting out there having fun, and enjoying your life may not seem relevant to decluttering, I 100% promise that it is.
The more you enjoy living, within your reality, I acknowledge that people have bills and responsibilities, but finding little pockets in your day.
The more that you practice doing things that make you happy, the love you feel for stuff weakens. As a result, not only do we buy less, but decluttering becomes easier.
I don’t think there’s anyone today who doesn’t need to practice enjoying life more and I think that’s a powerful way to break the consumer ties for stuff.
The last decluttering tip – getting clarity on why you love stuff. (…What are you trying to cover?)
Moving on, I want to share my last decluttering tip for people who love stuff.
This is a really big one, but it’s a little bit out there. So bear with me for a moment.
You need to get clear on why you love stuff.
You might feel a little bit of ‘What are you talking about?’ and trust me, I get that. If you said that to me 15 years ago, I’d be thinking the same thing.
But it’s a bit of tough love.
I’ve been blogging for seven years and part of blogging, for me, has been very personal.
I’ve pretty much put my life, my feelings, my relationship with clutter, under a microscope, and I’ve dissected everything.
What I have found is that part of the reason why I really love stuff, why I feel a strong attachment to stuff is because for me, is that I use stuff as a mask.
Everyone has a story, and this might not be your story.
But it was a way to protect me from the things that I feel insecure about.
For example, if I feel insecure about my appearance, I can buy certain clothes or makeup to make myself feel better.
Or if I feel insecure about how successful I am, I can buy something that kind of signals wealth.
Or if I feel insecure about my skills as a parent, I can go drop a couple hundred on fancy educational toys. It’s like a pat on the back because right now I feel like a good mother.
So, part of why I love stuff is because for me, those things are more than stuff, they represent to me who I am.
I’m actually in the middle of doing some toy decluttering right now and it’s really hard sometimes. I look at those toys and I adore them. I absolutely love them. They’re beautiful.
And it’s because, to me, those toys are signaling that I’m a good mother. If I get rid of them, I’m like, oh, there’s that vulnerability,
And to be clear, it’s not like super obvious. I’m not some kind of, you know, non-human person who looks at everything in my life like it’s feelings.
But if I spend a lot of time really reflecting, on why it’s so hard for me to get rid of something, I realize it’s because sometimes it’s fear. I won’t have the stuff to protect me.
Your relationship with stuff might be different.
Everyone’s relationship with stuff is very different and I encourage you to realize that loving stuff isn’t necessarily your identity or your personality.
That used to be me. I used to think, I’m Jen, the shopper. I’m the Jen who loves shoes.
I’m sure the people around me 15 years ago used to think that about me too, but that’s not actually who I am.
Instead, my love for shoes and my love for stuff is a response to things that are going on in my head because of the stories and beliefs from my past that has created an environment where I love stuff.
When you realize this, when you start to unravel your relationship with stuff, then you can start to change it.
You know, what I said towards the start of this podcast isn’t quite correct, where I was saying, I’m the type of person who loves stuff.
More accurately would be that I used to be the type of person that loves stuff. The work that I’ve done over the past decade has evolved me to be the type of person who appreciates stuff.
For example, I can see beautiful things now and I can adore them and appreciate them, but I no longer crave or need them.
That’s a big difference.
The older version of myself would see a picture of shoes that I thought were beautiful and I would start to feel like I needed those shoes in my life. It would be obsessive until I would go out and buy them.
Jennifer’s realization from loving stuff to appreciating stuff. (…Changing your relationship with stuff.)
By working through my relationship with stuff, I’ve learned how to appreciate something without needing it. The love has been downgraded to appreciation. I buy a lot less stuff than I used to.
It applies to decluttering as well.
Shopping and decluttering are two sides of the same coin.
When you change your relationship with stuff, you buy less, but you also find it easier to let go.
If you are someone who loves stuff, examine that relationship. See if you can break it down and get to the point where you can start to view a beautiful thing as just a beautiful thing, it has nothing to do with who you are as a person.
Then it becomes that much easier to declutter.
Those are my top tips for decluttering when you love stuff.
One thing I’ll say is that so much of this is all about clarity, Clarity is key to decluttering.
When you get clear on what you want from your stuff, when you get clear on what you want from life, when you get clear on why you are in love with stuff or what your relationship with stuff is, that clarity is the key to decluttering.
The Clear Your Clutter Program
For anyone interested, that is part of the work that we do in my group program. I have a group decluttering program called Clear Your Clutter. I open it twice a year.
The people who join are the type of people who’ve already “tried everything” you know, they’ve read a lot of blogs and podcasts and books or even taken other courses, but they find that nothing is working for them.
What sets my program apart is that we spend so much time getting to the heart of why you have clutter.
We get to the heart of your clutter so that we can clear the clutter from the roots.
It’s not just about getting rid of a few bags and getting them out the door.
Instead, it’s about completely changing your relationship with stuff and that is so powerful.
It’s not just about owning less, it’s about figuring out what you want most out of life, and then taking the steps to create that lifestyle.
It’s a decluttering course but really, it’s about using decluttering as a tool to help you with your lifestyle design.
If that sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, you can go to simply fiercely.com/clearyourclutter
There you can get on the waitlist so you can get updates and be notified when the program opens again.
That’s all for today. Thanks for listening.
I had some difficulty ‘hearing’ all the words because the spill out so rapidly.