5 Bins From My Old Life Showed Up and It Changed How I See Clutter

I think probably what I've failed to say in the past is that clutter is actually an emotional burden. Each piece, each thing we hold up, we have to make an emotional decision about. And so, honestly, I would have been fine if none of these containers ever showed up. There are sometimes seasons where like, I would like that chapter to close. Like, no thank you. But nonetheless, they're here. And so now I need to deal with them, which is fine. And ironically, they kind of represent a bunch of different types of clutter. We have just in case, we have sentimental stuff, we have fantasy self stuff, there's some toxic clutter in there too. And so if we can understand what type of clutter we're dealing with, then it makes it much easier to make the decision if we should keep it or not. Now, we always have permission just to load it all up, throw it away, take it to the donation center, give it away, whatever we want to do with it. I wouldn't have to go through these. We've been talking about this recently. I don't have a moral obligation to go through all of these bins. And honestly, I'm kind of tempted just to do that because I've lived without them for a couple of years now. But I also have this curiosity of not knowing everything that's in these bins. Some of it is my grandma's milk glass that is important to me, and it is good object lessons for how to deal with each type of clutter. So we're going to go through these together. I do have specific questions that you can ask for each type of clutter, and I do think that makes it much easier. And if nothing else, hopefully you know that you're not alone if you have this kind of stuff living in your house too. I should probably put this warning at the beginning too. Be aware of touching stuff, especially if your hope is to move a lot of it out. We'll talk about that. But real quick, if we haven't met before, hi, I'm Dawn. I go by The Minimal Mom. I've been a minimalist for 10 years, got rid of 85, 90% of my stuff. I don't miss any of it. And now I love getting to help busy and overwhelmed women declutter and simplify their homes as well. And so I have lots of free YouTube videos that cover every area of your house. And I also run a membership community where we get to do this together. You get the emotional support that you need. It is awesome. I'm in there every single day helping you. And it's only $22 a month right now on special. Okay, so details where details should be. But as you go to get started, we don't always want to touch everything and I'll tell you why. And I'll demonstrate this to you and how we don't actually have to touch things to be able to declutter them. And like I said, I have a question for each of these categories of clutter. And I would categorize these kitchen bins into just in case clutter. Again, I've lived with all of this without it for two years. And now we've been in this house for over a couple months now. I have not needed or missed any of this, but I also haven't gone through every season in my new house yet. So maybe there is something in there that I could make use of. But again, I think this is really important. We don't want to personally touch each thing and hold it up because it is scientifically proven that when we touch something, we feel more of a connection to it and more of an obligation to keep it. And in one of our live decluttering sessions and cyber membership, there was a gal in there who is a professional organizer too. And she said that when she holds up things for other people, for clients and says, keep it yes or no, they're 50% more likely to let it go if she's the one holding it up versus the owner, the person that being the one touching it. Now, if no one else is around, we don't have someone else to do that for us. How do we do that for ourselves? Okay. I literally have not even looked in these bins yet. I have not opened the lid. So I will demonstrate this to you. I don't like this. I don't want to go through any of this stuff. It brings up a lot of negative memories, honestly. If I'm going to be really honest, but I also do just want to get through these, be done with it and move on with life. Right. So here we go. Okay. So kitchen, I have two kitchen bins here and the way that we can do this without touching it ourselves is just to take off the lid and look in. Now for this bin, there's not actually much in it. So it's very easy. I'm going to show you on the other one, how we're not going to be able to see everything from the top. I'm going to touch it just to show you it, but I already have all my decisions made about this. Okay. So we have a cake plate, cake stand, you know, you, if you've followed me, I love making bundt cakes and I used to have a collection of cake stands and I liked it. And now again, I don't want this one. I don't, I just, Nope, Nope. This is kind of funny because I got this bowl. I saw it at target. I liked how it stood up. I never used it once. It's cute. I like it a lot, but I never actually even used it. Now here's the question. Cause I would look at this stuff as like just in case, or could I use it in the future kind of clutter? Like that's, what's running through my brain right now. If I'm going to entertain, would I use this? Right. And the question I am using for just in case clutter is what am I trading for this? What am I trading for this? So right now my house is very peaceful and easy, and I've, I have house tour videos. It's kind of sparse right now. Some have said it's not cozy and I'm okay with that because I'm not going for cozy. I'm going for easy and peaceful with easy being the number one priority. And so when I look at this stuff, and right now my house is easy. I have a very manageable amount of inventory. I asked myself, well, what am I trading for this? And I have an even better example of that. They also got real grody cause they were sitting outside of my parents' house before I brought them over here. But I noticed in this kitchen bin, there is a glass craft right there. Oh, there's a spider in it. Oh, well now I'm for sure letting it go. I don't even want to show you. I don't want to gross you out. Okay. I saw this. Oh, like I know it's dead, but ah, darn it. This makes me feel even more yuck about these things, right? Okay. And you know, real quick, there's also this other kind of clutter. I would probably call didn't realize it. Didn't realize your mattress was old and worn out and you weren't sleeping well anymore. Today's video is sponsored by Helix Sleep, but this is so cool. I just got to see my aunt yesterday and she was like, Dawn, I could sell so many Helix mattresses. And she told me about how she used to just turn over all night long because she was uncomfortable. But now that she's sleeping on a Helix mattress, she said, I hardly wake up at all through the night to the point where her husband now feels like he gets more room in bed too, because she's not moving around so much. And so it has been a complete game changer for her. I sleep awesome now on my Helix mattress. I don't wake up with back pain and feeling unrested. And I've been talking about Helix for over five years now. And it's always fun to see your comments in there too that, Hey, I made the upgrade. I invested in myself. I decided I am worthy of a really great night's sleep. Or I simply didn't know that my mattress was worn out and I wasn't sleeping well anymore. So what I love about Helix and why I continue to sing their praises is that they make it so easy for you to get matched with your perfect mattress too. So you just go online and take the Helix sleep quiz. It only takes about a minute, and then they're going to match you with your best mattress. 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Thank you Helix for sponsoring, and you can visit helixsleep.com slash minimalmom to take advantage of their spring savings event and to get 20% off sitewide. All right, I'm stalling. I'm avoiding the rest of the boxes in the entryway, but why don't we get back to it? I saw this. It was sitting outside of my parents' house. I saw the glass craft in there and I was like, oh, that actually might be nice when I'm entertaining because I don't have anything just to put water in. And I've only entertained once here at my house. Some of our bodybuilding coaches from our membership community stopped by, which was awesome. And I didn't have a water pitcher. I didn't need to put it in. And so I put the Brita pitcher on the table. It's not beautiful. It's a little tacky even, right? But when I saw this at first, I was like, oh, that might be nice to have that. And then my very immediate next thought was, but my house is so easy right now. And I feel like I'm trading an easy, peaceful house for something that I'm only going to use very occasionally. I love right now, all of my upper cabinets are empty. Now I have a just ridiculous amount of lower cabinets, so it's that, but they're mostly empty too. We use the pantry the most for anything, right? And then I have the one uppers next to the fridge that I have some glasses and stuff. And I'm like, I have room. I could go put this in there. It would not be unreasonable. Everyone, you all would probably be like, yeah, that's fine. You have room for it. Who cares, right? But I know now because I have been able to experience living with so little, I know now that there actually is a cost to this. When I open those cabinets and two of the three shelves are empty, it feels easy. It feels peaceful. It feels like I don't have more stuff to manage than I have capacity or bandwidth for right now. And so it was really interesting how hard it struck me when I saw this. I was like, oh yeah, that would be nice. And how quickly I You are trading your peace for that. You are trading an easy house for that. And so now when I look at this stuff, that is what is going through my brain. And so I can look at, I don't actually want to break any of this. I will donate this stuff, right? I can look at something like this, super cute, right? I still think it's super cute and say, you know what? I have mixing bowls that work just as well. And they're like a Melmac material. This is glass. This we have to be like careful with. And so for the very few instances that I would use this, I don't want to trade my peace. I don't want to trade an easy house right now. To me, it's not worth it. Now, in another season of life, and even in the past, it was worth it to me to store it and to have this option. Right now, I have four kids ages 11 through 16, and life is so lifey right now. It's not worth it to me. And I get to make that decision. And you get to make that decision. I had a video recently about the easy line, and that line adjusts based on the seasons we're in. And so right now, this type of stuff does not make the cut. And that's okay. And people can think I've gone too far, and I'm bizarre and all that. I don't actually really care right now, right? And you can do with this information what you want, right? I don't care. Absolutely not. But I do want to give you permission to know you don't have to keep stuff, even if you could use it, or it would be practical. You do get to choose if you want to keep this type of inventory in your home. If you want to pay the trade-off for it, everything is a trade-off. Or if you want to let it go, especially if you've been living it for... I actually forgot that I had that answer, right? If you want to let it go and not have to manage this type of inventory. Okay. I'm putting this outside. I know the spider's dead, but I just... Look, I'm going to put it outside right now. Okay. I also have like... I mean, this is just from the dollar store. I don't need... And then the Zoodle Maker, I have not used in a very long time. I don't... I know I won't use it. So all that stuff's going to go. I feel good about that. Okay. Now this bin though, if we look at it, I can't see everything in it just from looking in. And so I do have to touch a few things. But what I recommend, again, because we're trying not to touch things, is just to kind of pull stuff aside enough to see what's in here and then be like, yeah, I don't actually need any of those things, right? Now, if there was something in there, like, oh, actually, that would be nice to have. Be very selective about what you want to keep, right? All of this stuff has been time-tested. So it's giving us really good data to work with. And again, even as I'm looking through this, it's weird. Like, some things... I don't think we acknowledge this enough, how certain things make us feel. Because you would probably just look at this and be like, that's a Pyrex lid for a baking dish. Actually, it was very handy. I use this a ton. We got this set of Pyrex dishes for a wedding gift from when I worked at the radio station. A gentleman there, he used to go to all the concerts. It was actually even unexpected that he gave this gift to us. And then we used it. I mean, for all the years that we were married and everything, it was very practical. Now, when I see it, though, I just feel this negative... That is from a past season that I don't want to revisit. I don't want to... I have strategically not brought into my new house because there's such strong emotions and feelings attached to it. To a Pyrex lid. I mean, even as I'm saying these words, I'm like, it feels a little silly. It feels a little disproportionate, out of whack. But I don't want this. I don't want this in here. I don't want reminders of it. And again, it's okay for you to say, I only want to have stuff in my house that brings up happy memories, that makes me feel good. This does not do that. So to me, I would categorize this more as a toxic clutter because when I ask myself, how does it make me feel? I'm just like, ugh. And again, it could be the most practical, useful thing on the planet. And if it makes you feel yuck, you do not have to keep it. And I don't. I don't have baking dishes with lids right now. So old me would have said like, oh, well, you should keep that and use it and whatnot. No, I don't have to. I get a yuck feeling from it. And so I don't have to keep that in here. Isn't that great? All right. So then also like, here's the baking dish that went with it. I kind of don't even want to touch this stuff. All right. But it's really good examples. So nonetheless, here we are. Okay. I can't remember. This was just like a charcuterie board, but not even like a pretty one. I don't need that. Whatever. I don't even do charcuterie boards. It seems like something I would do again, if we're talking about fantasy self. Well, yeah, let's talk about fantasy self. Have you gotten any things? Thinking, I'm going to do a cheeseboard. I'm going to do this, that, baking things. This was when I was making our Bundt cake recipe book. I'm like, I'm going to invest in a really nice, you know, it's the original Bundt pan, Nordic ware. I'm going to invest in that. Like, I've earned that. Whatever. Right. It wasn't the right size. It made the Bundt cakes too small. It's like more cups than the one I had before. Anyways, whatever. But we have this like fantasy self because I'm like, oh, I'll try different recipes or I'll make monkey bread in it or a casserole breakfast bake thing that you can make in them. Right. So for fantasy self items, it's really helpful to ask ourselves, will I for sure use this in the next month? Will I use it in the next month? Because if you won't use it in the next month, chances are you will not use it in the next six months and definitely not in the next year. And so for fantasy self clutter, ask yourself, will I actually use this in the next month? Will I pull it out right now and make it a priority to use it? And if the answer is no, it is absolutely okay to let it go. All right. What else? See, this one's hard too, because there's one bug in here. I adored this tablecloth. I, it was on the table in our farmhouse. I found it at Marshall's or TJ Maxx and the colors, they were like the exact colors of our kitchen and our house. And I loved the pattern. And when I put it on the table, it just like felt pretty and I don't know, vibrant and versatile. And I just adored it. And we had it on there for a long time. But again, now when I look back at it, I just feel sadness, honestly, when I look at it. And again, you might be like, that makes no sense. It's a cute tablecloth. I know. Right. But things bring up different feelings in all of us. And can we be real with ourselves now and recognize that instead of, again, just trying to keep it for some day or some occasion. So again, I would put this more in the category of toxic clutter right now. If we ask, how does it make me feel? Sad. Not even, it makes me feel sad. I don't know. Yeah, no, they can go. All right. What else? I don't know, some decorative things. Oh no, there's a live spider in there. Darn it. Putting those in there. Dang it. And then there's some practical stuff. These are freezer alarms. And so we had chest freezers in our basement. And one time we had the electricity or the extension cord got unplugged and we lost a full freezer of meat, which was devastating. Right. So I'm like, I know, I'm going to get freezer alarms. This is as far as we got. They never got put in. I don't have a chest freezer here. I actually don't want a chest freezer here. It's just too much inventory to manage right now. I don't like cooking from frozen meat, even though I'm a farm girl who that's all we did my whole childhood growing up. Right. Like I'm a pro at, my mom would be like, Hey, somebody go get hamburger out of the freezer. Right. And we would bring it up or different things. I mean, I get it. Like I know the value of it. And also the seasonal life I'm in right now, I'm not doing it and it's fine. But what do I do with this now? If I would classify this as just in case, if I would get a freezer, I would want to use it. What am I trading it for? Peace and easy home, having to remember that I have it, coming across it another time when I'm decluttering me like, Oh yeah, that's still there. I totally forgot it was there. Right. To me, the trade-off right now is not worth a $7 freezer alarm, especially when I don't have a freezer. Right. But I get it. I know how creative our brains get and how we start to come up with all the reasons that we should keep stuff. All right. So again, none of this stuff, I, I don't want it. I am ready to move on. I want to put the lid back on. So spiders don't come in here. Yeah, darn it. Okay. Let's move on now to some Christmas stuff, some home decor, my grandma's milk glass. Okay. So Christmas stuff, this feels very emotionally loaded to me as well. I had gotten some new like Christmas decor and stuff before I moved out. And so I'm, I'm fairly confident that that's what this is. I don't think it's like sentimental stuff or the kid stuff. I think that has gotten put elsewhere. And so for this, I especially just want to do a quick glance through, see if there's anything important. Um, I don't have my grandma's red tablecloth yet. And so it's not being like held hostage or anything. It's just, I just, I don't know where it is right now. So I would very much put this like in the category of like sentimental stuff. Again, the question of how does it make me feel? And if it's good, happy, then yeah, let's talk about keeping it. Right. If it's not, then it's just like, no, not doing it. Right. Whatever. So if we think here, see, this is hard because this actually, I loved this. I But again, when I think about decorating with it this Christmas, I don't, I really don't think that is something that I would want to do. This was just something from like the Target dollar spot, whatever that I'm totally okay letting go of. Um, even this Santa, like, I just thought he was cute, you know, but again, thinking of decorating with him now, I don't think so. Okay. Here's a, the tablecloth is here. So that's good. Again, this was just from the Target dollar spot. So I'm okay. Letting that go. I just thought this was so cute too. I got it on clearance because a couple of the bulbs were missing and I didn't have a big budget at the time. And I was just like, I just felt like, Oh, this is so cool. I found something that's cute. Um, you'll also notice like there's a lot of red I'd found with Christmas decorating because our house is not big, but like we do like pops of red, it feels festive without needing like a lot of stuff. So I had been intentional about that. This guy, um, actually the tablecloth is wrapped around him. I just thought like, all right, so here's my grandma's red tablecloth. Um, this, I am going to keep, we can talk about firsthand and sentimental, um, sentimental stuff here too. I just thought this guy was so cute too. Cause he had, he's holding one of the vintage Christmas trees, right? So cute. But I don't know. Part of me is like, well, I could just like pack it away and then we'll see. I just, ah, but I don't know. I think, I think we're just ready for a fresh start and I don't even want to, I think I just don't even want to have to deal with this again. I think I want to just make the decision and move on. And if right now it's not a for sure, yes, just let it go and trust when the time is right, I will be able to find some new Christmas decorations. I might even take the kids with me and whatnot. And, uh, I don't have to like hold onto this stuff, um, from the past. That is mostly it. I always thought this was super cute too, but I don't know. This like matches my house now at least. And it is cute, but I don't know. Then I have to find a place to store it. And again, I think right now I just need to let it go and not have to worry about it. All right. So I'm going to pack all this stuff back in here. I got the tablecloth. That's the most important thing. And I'm just gonna let the rest of this stuff go. All right. I've actually got a pretty good mess, uh, going here, but let's get through these last couple of totes and then I will clean it all up. So this one is my grandma's milk glass. Um, so my other grandma, this was my grandma Adeline, and this was my grandma Bev. And then this is a bin of random home decor. I think milk glass actually feels easier to me right now. My grandma Bev loved milk glass. I also really liked milk glass too. And so she, um, gave me her collection of milk glass when she was downsizing and it all fit into here. I used a few pieces of it. I would display some here and there on our open shelves in our kitchen. And I always knew that it was here. And you know, if I wanted to use it, then I could. And the thing though is that most of it does not get used and it's just from being stored. And so right now it's categorized, it's contained. This doesn't cause a huge amount of an emotional burden on me. I have plenty of storage space, so I can take this whole tote and just put it in the basement. Or something else that we can do in this type of situation is just to pick out the pieces that I really like. One, I know many, even if you've inherited a China set or you often want to test it and make sure there's no lead in it, but if it's safe to use, I know many friends in our membership group now use the China on a daily basis. And if it breaks, it breaks, right? And so it's okay to pick out a few pieces. It's okay to use it daily use, use it. And it is okay to donate incomplete sets as well, just so you know. So you can take out a few pieces you love and use them, display them, whatever, and let the rest go. So don't feel like you have to keep full sets of things. But what I do want to mention real quick, especially when it comes to sentimental stuff, is another good question we can ask ourselves is, is it firsthand sentimental or secondhand sentimental? So like I said, my grandma Adeline, she lived very close to us when we were growing up. It was my dad's mom. My grandparents' farm was just a few miles away from my parents' farm. And so we saw them all the time. And my grandma Adeline, who I named our oldest daughter after Adeline. And she was just always very special to me. And so when she passed away, my parents and the other aunts and uncles were going through my grandparents' house. And my mom asked, hey, would you want your grandma's China? My grandma Adeline's China. And I was really torn about it because I'm like, I don't, but I don't know why. I adored her, right? But then when it came across, but my mom got her red tablecloth and I'm like, oh my goodness, I would love that because I remember this being used for holidays and being on the dining table when we would go over for holidays. I don't remember the China ever getting used. I couldn't pick out the China out of a China lineup, right? And so this is firsthand and this is, I used it, experienced it. When I see it again, if we ask the question, how does it make you feel? I feel happy memories with this and I used it, you know, with our kids growing up now and everything, I want to use it again. Still, when I look at this, I feel happy memories of my childhood from this. The China I had no connection to. So I would call that secondhand sentimental. Someone told you it was special. And for many of us, there have, these things have been passed down and we're told they should be special to us. And if you're like, why isn't it? It might be because it's secondhand sentimental. And so you have permission not to keep that kind of stuff, right? Again, we only want to keep things in our home that make us feel good, happy, joyful, glad they're in our house, happy to maintain it and take care of it. I will trade a space in my house, you know, for this. I will risk a little bit of peace and ease in my home for this. It doesn't disrupt that at all. And so it can be really helpful when you're looking at things that you've inherited, have been passed down or someone else's and given to you to ask yourself, how does it make me feel? And if it doesn't make you feel good, it could just be because there's not happy memories tied to it or because it's secondhand sentimental. So I, for now, I'm going to store this and then we'll see over time what we decide to do with it. Now we have this bin of home decor. I love home decorating. You haven't really got to see a lot of it in this house because again, my only goal right now is easy. But in the past, I really love we remodeled our house. I loved decorating it. I loved coming up with creative solutions, especially in the small spaces that we had. It looks probably bigger on camera, but our house was only 1300 square feet. It was a little quirky and I really enjoyed just getting to try out different design things and testing things out and whatnot. Now here is a bin of home decor stuff that I had there. And again, and as I'm looking through it again, I'm just, I don't, I don't think a lot of this stuff, I don't know that I would have a place for it. Again, this is cute, but I don't know that I would have a place for it. Even this, you know, is for serving. I remember when I found this at Walmart. It's a pioneer woman and I just thought it was so cute. It matched our house. Again, this table cloth at the time and everything kind of like went together and I loved it. I think we only ever actually used it once or twice because it's kind of not big enough. Like the compartments aren't quite big enough for having people over and serving stuff. But I still just kind of like, but it's cute and it's fun. It makes my heart happy, right? It used to make my heart happy. Again, now when I look at it and I think about using it here or what am I trading for it? I don't think it's worth any kind of trade off to me or wanting to store or house it. And so I'm going to let that go. And again, this stuff, I just kind of want to do a real quick look through this beautiful, again, a pumpkin that I was just so happy because it matched our kitchen. So it was like a fun way to decorate for fall without it being like so typical fall. And yeah, I just, I, I know I'm not going to use it here. So, you know, it's okay to recognize that things were for a season. Gage had wanted to watch an episode of Tiny House Nation. And so it was a gal who had been living in a tiny house, I think for eight years now they were doing like an update. And she said something that really stuck out to me. She said, I've gotten really good at letting things go. And she would talk about how often if something new comes in, then she would have to let something else go. And she just recognized the exchange. Like that was the cost of bringing something new in. And when she said, I've just, I've gotten really good at letting things go. I was like, wow, that it's so simple, but it's so profound. I think most of us, I don't think we're real good at letting stuff go, we let the emotions dictate our decisions. We let them overtake us. We second guess ourselves. We let old patterns of thinking and maybe times where we never had enough or, I don't even, I don't love the term poverty mindset either, but sometimes we let that sneak in or these ideas of just in case, like we could somehow be prepared for every season and every instance that could come up. And I think I've just realized over the last few years of just going through a really hard season that most of the stuff around me did not make life any better. It didn't solve any of my problems and it only made things harder. And I was so grateful to have such low inventory and to not have to be so worried about all of my stuff. And so I think many of us could keep practicing the art of letting go and getting really good at letting go, because there's so much freedom on the other side. Again, I used to say I've gotten rid of 85% of my stuff. I'm pretty sure I've gotten rid of at least 90% of my stuff now, if not more. And I just don't miss it. If anything, I just crave more freedom and peace and not having to manage stuff. And so again, for me right now, I'll plop the Brita pitcher on the table. It's okay if I don't have a fancy drinking craft or pitcher. And I really am okay with that. So I just want to give you permission though to match your inventory with your season of life. And if you're in a low bandwidth, low capacity kind of season of life right now, it's actually really okay to let stuff go and to not have to try and figure out ways to store it and manage it right now. And trusting that when the time's right, the stuff you need will find you again. I really believe that. And I've experienced it and yeah, you don't actually end up missing much of it. All right, well, we're going to wind up for today. I do have some videos about the easy line in my house right now, the line I drew across each room about what's not coming in. I have a house tour and all of that. So I will link to those videos as well. Also a kitchen organization too, all my favorite kitchen organizing products. So I will link to those as well. And if you could use a little more hands-on help with the cluttering, I would love for you to join us inside our membership community so I can spend more time with you there. I love you, I hope you have a really good day, and I'll see you again soon.