Got sentimental clutter? How to deal with the guilt and shame of excess belongings, or the current state of disorganization in your home #103

Ready to break free from clutter-induced guilt and shame? Dive into my latest podcast episode, where I, Caroline Thor, share insights from my journey as a professional organizer and KonMari consultant.

Picture this: overwhelmed by clutter, drowning in guilt. Been there, done that. But here's the kicker: decluttering isn't just about tidying up—it's about reclaiming your joy and freedom.

Feeling lost in the chaos of ADHD? You're not alone. We'll tackle the hurdles together, exploring compassionate strategies and actionable steps to conquer clutter-induced guilt and shame.

Discover how confronting clutter isn't just about a tidy home—it's a journey of shedding emotional baggage and finding peace.

Curious? Join me as we peel back the layers of guilt, offering a supportive guide to reclaiming your space and your sanity.

Don't miss out! Hit play and embark on the transformative quest for an organized life. Are you ready to declutter with compassion? Let's dive in!

Thanks for listening! For more organizational motivation, support and free resources:
Join my online membership Clutter Free Collective
Join my podcast Facebook group Living Clutter Free Forever Podcast: KonMari® Inspired Organizing | Facebook
Visit my website www.caroline-thor.com
Come and say 'hi' on Instagram @caro.thor
Follow me on Facebook @carolineorganizer

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi there, I'm Caroline Thor, professional organiser, konmari consultant, teacher and mum of three. I started off my life as a mum feeling overwhelmed, disorganised and desperately trying to carve out some time for me amongst the nappies, chaos and clutter. One day, one small book called the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying changed everything and I began to learn strategies for making everyday life easier. Today, I have the systems in place that means life can throw almost anything at me, and I want to share them with you. If you're an overwhelmed mum struggling to keep it together, then this is the podcast for you. Grab a coffee and settle in for a quick, free, forever podcast. I hope your week has got off to a really good start. If you're listening to this.

Speaker 1: 1:04

On Tuesday, when this episode comes out, and whatever day you end up listening to this, I hope that life is treating you well and that you're finding time to do things that spark joy for you in your life. So today's episode is a little bit of a difficult one, and I have thought long and hard about how to tackle this subject, because it might be something that's quite hard for some people to listen to, but I would like to really focus on how we can deal with the guilt and shame that many of us feel about acquiring excess belongings or the current state of disorganization in our homes. And I have seen this firsthand, not only in my own life but when I visit clients, that there is very often a huge sense of guilt and also of shame for the state of the home as it currently is, and there is never any judgment on my part, because there is always a root cause for why people have got themselves to a point where they are feeling their home is too cluttered and too disorganized. And what I think is very interesting is that there have been many occasions where I have walked into someone's home and they have immediately said, oh, isn't it awful? It's so terrible, I'm so embarrassed. And I'm looking around thinking, okay, well, my home looks worse than this today. When I left it, it wasn't looking this organized.

Speaker 1: 2:55

And it's very often the case that, because of things that people are dealing with, external things that are playing on their mind, or perhaps their mental health has taken a bit of a dive that it doesn't matter what I think or anyone else thinks For them in that moment their home is too cluttered and they are overwhelmed. And by having me come and help them with letting things go and creating perhaps a different organizational structure, whatever it is that they are feeling they need. We can very often unpick what the root cause of their guilt and shame is and therefore they can let it go. And this is really where I see the life-changing magic of tidying up at its most powerful, that it can actually release people from the guilt and shame they've been feeling and allow them to move forward in their lives with confidence and with joy. And that, I think, is the biggest gift that I can give anyone through my line of work, and when that happens I just absolutely love it.

Speaker 1: 4:20

So there is an emotional weight that can accompany excess belongings and disorganization in the home, and I in the past, before I applied the KonMari method in our home, felt great shame about the fact that I didn't feel I had it under control. I didn't feel like I was running the home or organizing the home in a way that was beneficial to me or my family. I felt like I was letting my kids down, and the fact that I was quite a grumpy, stressed mom with my kids when they were little is something that even now I really struggle with and feel bad about, but I also can see that I need to celebrate the fact that I chose to do something about it. I found the root cause and it has meant that for the vast majority of their childhood, they have had me as a mum who is present and not stressing about the small stuff, which is what I used to do, and I have been much more patient and calm as a parent. So I am eternally grateful for that.

Speaker 1: 5:45

But it doesn't take much for me to remember how I used to feel in that time and this guilt and shame that I had and I've seen this with clients as well the guilt and the shame of having spent so much money on items that they've never used, that they've even forgotten that they had. I remember once with a client we went through a box that had arrived after a move quite a large packing box and it was absolutely full of new makeup that had never been opened and it was high quality makeup and her shame of oh my god, I've spent so much money on all of this and it was now all totally out of date. It was years, years old. She felt terrible about this, but we were able to use it as a way of saying, okay, maybe that wasn't optimal, but there was a reason why that happened.

Speaker 1: 6:51

And now you are able to reflect on that and realize that you don't need to be buying things in order to, whatever it happens to be, that it is with you, fill a void, make you feel better, give you that dopamine hit. Whatever it happens to be, there are always reasons why these things are happening and it's important to look at it for what it is. You've not done anything wrong. You just, in that moment, that was the best thing for you to do. That's what made you feel good in that moment.

Speaker 1: 7:30

And it is difficult to reflect back on that, but it's important that we do, because it allows us to let go of those habits of buying things to make us feel better, or buying things because we don't know that we've already got that item, and so on, and it means that we can move forward with a home that is organized and decluttered. So this guilt is like a feeling of remorse or responsibility for past actions and shame, because there's this belief that we are somehow fundamentally flawed or unworthy, because that is how we behaved at that time. And it has been shown in various publications that there is a correlation between clutter and increased levels of stress and anxiety. So actually, by doing the shopping to make us feel better, buying items that we don't really need, we're doing it from a place of this is going to heal me, I get the dopamine hit, I'm going to feel better, but actually what we're doing is increasing our levels of stress and anxiety because we're creating more clutter in our home. So you're in like this vicious cycle, and this guilt and shame can also manifest itself in behaviors such as avoidance and perfectionism and self-criticism, and these then further perpetuate this cycle of clutter and disorganization.

Speaker 1: 9:13

So let's explore some of the root causes of why we end up with excess belongings and disorganization, and there are three things that I would like to mention today, but there are, of course, others. It is such a huge topic, but I wanted to focus in on three. One of them is the consumer culture that we're living in, this pressure to acquire more possessions because it seems to be the normal thing to do, and we're also pressured by advertising, even though lots of us would like to say we're not. We are. We are pressured by advertising. So there is this consumer culture, there is an emotional attachment, so we're holding onto things for sentimental reasons or as a source of comfort, and that very often is tied into life transitions. So we maybe have had a change in circumstances, we're perhaps downsizing or we've perhaps lost somebody and that will cause us to create an emotional attachment which contributes to the accumulation of belongings. So that's the second one. And then the third one which I see incredibly commonly in my clients and I recognize it in myself as well, and that is when you have an ADHD diagnosis.

Speaker 1: 10:45

It is increasingly difficult for you to keep organization in your home and I see by an awful lot of my clients who have an ADHD diagnosis, this excess buying diagnosis, this excess buying, and it's partly for the dopamine hit and partly because they have genuinely forgotten they already have that item and they maybe have that item two, three, four, five I have seen it all like loads of stuff because they have genuinely forgotten that they had that item. And the reason that they forget is because they don't have the organisational system set up in their home where they can easily see things which, as someone with ADHD, you need to make sure you can and therefore, out of sight, out of mind, they forget that that item is already there and then they buy it, thinking I don't have this, don't put it where the other one is. So they all get strewn around the home and, before you know it, you've got multiples of this thing, but you actually genuinely haven't remembered that you already had it because you can't see it. So this is.

Speaker 1: 12:02

Another major problem is ADHD. So there's the consumer culture, there's an emotional attachment that often is tied into life transitions, and then there is a diagnosis of ADHD. These are three underlying causes of excess belongings and disorganization. As I said, there are others, others, but if I went into all of them you'd be sitting listening to me all day, which I am very sure you really don't want to do.

Speaker 1: 12:30

So when we are feeling this guilt and shame, it is important that we practice self-forgiveness and self-compassion as essential steps towards healing these feelings of guilt and shame essential steps towards healing these feelings of guilt and shame. Now you have to reach a point where you have begun your decluttering journey and, as you start to realize that you have too much of something and therefore you're going to let it go, rather than feeling guilt and shame, you need to turn it and practice self-forgiveness and self-compassion that at that point in your life that was what you were capable of doing and that you now recognize that is not serving you. You don't need to feel guilt for it. You don't need to feel shame for it. You need to feel compassion for yourself and forgive yourself and allow yourself to move forward, letting go of that guilt and that shame.

Speaker 1: 13:38

And there have been studies done on self-compassion. One was conducted by researchers at the University of Texas in Austin, and that research shows the positive effect on your mental well-being and resilience when you are exhibiting self-compassion. And there are other strategies that you can use for cultivating self-compassion, such as mindfulness, meditation, self-affirmations or reframing negative talk. But you need to be aware that you are actually talking to yourself in this way in order to be able to make the change. So just try to be aware if you hear yourself saying oh, I'm useless, I can never keep the house tidied up. Okay, no, you're not useless. I've been finding it difficult. So what is my step that I can take in order to make some improvement here? Don't always focus on the negative. There is an amazing book called the Gap and the Gain and I would highly recommend you read it. If you have a tendency to focus on the negative, it teaches you how to see your life, for the progress that you have made, however small, and it is a great book and it is really life-changing, so I would highly recommend you reading that.

Speaker 1: 15:13

Okay, so what are some practical steps moving forward? The first one, as I always say I think I must say this in every single episode is to start small. So begin by decluttering a manageable category or area, rather than thinking I'm going to do the whole house. Don't overwhelm yourself. Start small and let go of perfectionism. You've really got to emphasize for yourself progress over perfection and you've got to accept that decluttering is a process that you're going through and it's almost like you're never actually going to reach the end, because there will always be new things coming into your home and there will always be the potential for decluttering. I have that even now, as someone who has KonMari'd our whole home. My kids have got older and there are toys in the house that we can let go. Now there are books that are no longer being read. I've become very aware of the fact that the few CDs that I kept from my CD collection, thinking I was going to use them my daughter is listening to a few of them now, but otherwise they're just sitting there in a box. There are always things you can be decluttering, so let go of this perfectionism.

Speaker 1: 16:37

And the last point I would make here is it's really, really important to seek support. You could ask friends or family to help you. Just having someone else there as an accountability partner and also to make it fun, means that you are more likely to make progress. So ask support means that you are more likely to make progress. So our support, especially if you're feeling overwhelmed, especially if you're feeling guilty or shame about the situation, if the shame and guilt is such that you don't feel like you can invite someone into your home that you know so a family member or a friend then reach out to a professional organizer or a KonMari consultant, where there is, from our side, absolutely no judgment. Our job is to support you in making progress, not to chastise you for what you've done up to this point. So having someone a professional come in to give you guidance and accountability can be really, really helpful, and we will always. We will always work in a way that works for you.

Speaker 1: 17:54

So I have had a client in the past who felt huge guilt and shame about the state of her home, which actually wasn't as bad as she thought it was. It was in her, in her mind it was really really bad, but it was so difficult for her to have someone come into her home that we ended up doing the first three sessions online and I was able to coach her through decluttering and organizing remotely in an online session and after three sessions, when she felt she'd tidied up enough that it was okay for someone to come, at that point I went into her home and we worked together and we've had so much fun sorting her home out over the last couple of years. So really look at what it is you need and if you are going to approach a professional, then ask them how they would support you. It's really important that you find the right person for you that you feel comfortable with letting into your home, especially if you have these feelings of shame and guilt. I think it's also important to add that when you have a professional there, not only are we going to support you with reducing the clutter, but we're also going to be able to support you reducing the stress, because we can strategize how to go about it and remove the overwhelm. So that's a huge help as well.

Speaker 1: 19:19

Another thing that you can do in order to mitigate the shame and guilt is cultivate gratitude and mindfulness. So if you can shift your focus from the material possessions that you have to experiences and relationships, it's going to help you have increased happiness and resilience help you have increased happiness and resilience. So there are different ways that you can try to incorporate gratitude and mindfulness into your daily life, such as keeping a gratitude journal or practicing mindfulness meditation, or even when you go to bed at night, just lying there and saying, okay, three things I'm grateful for today, and just say them out loud to yourself, even if it feels a bit weird. But cultivating gratitude and mindfulness will go a long way to help you let go of this shame and guilt that you're carrying. And then I mentioned this in my last podcast episode. I mention it often because it is so important and I think it's the bit that gets missed a lot Celebrate your progress and growth.

Speaker 1: 20:26

You really can't underestimate the importance of celebrating small victories and recognizing progress made towards a clutter-free and organized home, and this is the thing that I find well, one of the things that I find most fun about my online membership Clutterfree Collective whenever anyone posts that they've done something, even if it's they've just made a decision between two items. We are all there celebrating their small victory. We're there to celebrate the big victories as well, but it really causes you to feel more motivated and more likely to continue if you feel like you have celebrated, and just by posting it in a Facebook group, you are celebrating the fact that you have done that thing, and then everyone else can join in and celebrate you as well. So it's really important to acknowledge your accomplishments and embrace the positive change, no matter how small, really really important. I can't emphasize that enough.

Speaker 1: 21:31

So, as we come to the end of this episode, we've talked about how there can be a degree of guilt and shame attached to having too many possessions or feeling like the disorganization in your home has got out of control, but there are things you can do to move yourself out of that. The first is to explore the root causes about why it is that you have reached this point, and then practice forgiveness and compassion towards yourself and look at practical steps for moving forward, such as starting small and letting go of perfectionism and seeking support, and, if you can, then start to cultivate gratitude and mindfulness and learn to celebrate the progress and growth you are making, then you will be going a long way towards being able to let go of the guilt and the shame that you have been feeling. I hope that is helpful. It really only scratches the surface of this topic. It is such a huge topic and I'm hoping to get in this coming year a couple of professionals in this area on to talk to them about why we feel this guilt and shame and how we can, in more detail, how we can let it go. But I hope that gives you something to think about.

Speaker 1: 23:11

If you are one of these people that feels this way and I would love to know what you thought of this episode so you can now text me through the podcast by clicking the link in the show notes, or come over to Instagram at carothor and let me know, or, even better, join my Facebook community and there you get to choose what podcast episodes come out next and you help to inform the direction the podcast is going in. So I would love to see you there. The link for that is also in the show notes. So until next time, if you've enjoyed this episode, please send the link to a friend you know would appreciate it, subscribe and leave a review. I look forward to bringing you more organising tips next time, but if you can't wait until then, you can go to my website or find me on Instagram, at carothor, or on Facebook, at Caroline Organiser. Thanks for listening and I look forward to guiding you on your journey to find your clutter-free ever after.