How To Declutter Your Life

This audio takes you through the decluttering process. Clutter is anything in our lives that no longer serves us. When we let go of the clutter, we take back our lives. This class is taught by professional clutter buster and best-selling author, Brooks Palmer.

Transcript

Hi,

This is Brooks and thank you for joining me.

It's good to be here with you.

Today we're gonna talk about how to clutter bust,

How to declutter your life.

I've been a professional declutterer for a little over 20 years.

I've written a couple of bestselling books about it.

And I've done a lot of workshops and been on the Oprah Winfrey Network about it.

And I love talking about letting go,

Letting go clutter.

My definition of clutter is anything in your life that's no longer serving you.

So that could be,

You know,

Tangible things.

It could be activities.

It could even be certain people in your life.

And also it could even be ways of looking at the world,

Beliefs that you have about life itself.

Anything that hurts you,

Anything that inhibits you is clutter.

And the opposite of that are things that uplift you that make you feel good about being alive today,

That support you.

And what clutter busting is all about is taking a curious look,

A curious look around at your life.

Like,

Hmm,

I wonder what isn't serving me anymore.

And I say curious because that's opposite of critical.

I know if I'm working with a lot of clients,

They're very critical.

Like,

Oh,

You know,

Why didn't I keep all this stuff?

Why didn't I get rid of this stuff?

You know,

What's wrong with me?

So when we think that way,

When we're critical,

What happens is we constrict,

We reduce.

We tense,

You know,

That's what criticism does.

We tense when we hear criticism from ourselves or from others.

And as a result of that,

Our capacity to hear,

Our capacity to have intuition,

To have insight,

To have understanding,

Have clarity is rapidly or tremendously reduced.

So the opposite is curiosity.

I wonder what's no longer serving me anymore.

And curiosity is openness.

It's this feeling of really like looking around with wonder,

You know,

Without any chastisement.

It's like,

Hmm,

I wonder,

You know?

And that allows us to see,

That allows us to notice,

To be aware.

No,

It's using our innate discriminating ability,

Which is very powerful when it's supported like that.

You know,

We can use that and it can be very effective.

And the reason we even do this,

The reason we even declutter is because we always feel better afterwards.

I mean,

Everybody I've ever worked with,

Like that's my experience.

It's like initially at the very beginning of the job,

There's this,

The client is always very tense.

Even though they're pay me to work with them,

They don't want to go through the process.

They often look for distractions,

Like go on the cell phone or,

You know,

Excuse me,

Talking about anything but what their stuff,

You know?

And then because I don't have judgment about it and I start asking some,

You know,

Basically asking them questions,

Which they ask themselves.

And I'm curious too,

That curiosity is spread.

They start to become curious themselves.

And that curiosity makes them open and aware.

And basically they're able to discriminate between,

You know,

When they look at their things in their lives,

You know,

They were able to discriminate between what feels good and what hurts.

And that's really good description.

When you're looking at stuff,

The interesting thing is like,

Here's a question I usually like to ask.

When the client's considering something,

You know,

We'll say,

What about,

Let's take a look at this.

I'll ask,

Do you like and use this or not?

Because that's really the criteria for,

You know,

When something serves us,

We like it and we use it.

So it's a part of our lives,

It's an active part of our lives.

It's an experiential part of our lives.

And it feels wonderful to be part of it.

And whenever something is not clutter,

When someone's looking at something and it serves them,

It's always a yes,

I like and use this.

It's very simple.

It's very immediate,

It's very clear.

And so that's how,

You know,

When something is not clutter,

Everything else is a red flag.

Any kind of hesitation,

Well,

Can I put this in that maybe pile?

Can I come back to this later?

I'd rather not look at this.

I spent,

I don't like and use it,

But what if I do need,

Like I do want it later on,

You know,

Or I spent $1,

500 on it,

So I can't get rid of it because I'll be wasting money,

Or so-and-so gave it to me as a gift,

And it doesn't feel right to get rid of it because what if they come over and ask me,

Like the person comes over and says,

Where's that thing I got you?

These are all things that people have said to me,

You know?

So that's why I can use them in that way.

But any kind of,

I don't know this,

Is a red flag because when something is part of our lives today,

I'm not talking about in the past,

But today,

It's like,

Yeah,

I like that.

There's no conflict about it.

And hesitation or confusion or coming up with different,

Having a different mind about it or having different excuses,

Those are conflicts,

And they show their face.

And it always happens,

You know?

It's like,

You can't hide when something's cluttered.

I mean,

You can try to avoid it,

And clients will say,

Can I put this in a maybe pile?

And I say,

No,

Let's just keep looking at it,

You know?

And again,

Without any judgment,

It's just like,

Well,

You seem to have,

There's some turbulence about this in you.

So let's take a deeper look,

Let's see what's going on.

And then with that curiosity,

You're able to notice,

You're able to see like,

Yeah,

I really don't like this thing.

I'm tired of living with what it are doing or,

You know,

Whatever it is that is hurting us.

Even certain relationships sometimes can be caustic or drain us.

And we notice that,

And it's like,

I don't wanna have that in my life anymore.

Because the thing is like,

Whenever you discover any piece of clutter,

And you let it go,

You get your life back.

Because clutter interferes.

It's amazing how much discord and the feeling of stagnation that clutter brings to our lives and diminishes the experience of our life.

And these are the things that we're protecting by hanging on to,

You know?

But it's not our fault.

We've been trained to think that we're not enough,

You know,

And that our stuff is more important than us.

We become secondary to our stuff.

We've all been raised on commercials from many different sources,

From television,

The internet,

From billboards,

Magazines,

Newspapers,

Movies have subtle advertising in it,

Sometimes not so subtle.

There's a lot of interesting ways that advertising is being put out there in the world.

There's actually,

Companies will hire people to walk through a mall or a place where other people,

Some kind of event and talk about how much they like a certain product.

So we're constantly hearing like,

This is gonna make us feel better.

And commercials are basically,

This is the way they work.

They say like,

They show an actor who's in some kind of pain,

Physical or emotional,

Spiritual pain,

And they get this product or service and within seconds their life becomes radically fulfilled.

It's like they have a halo around their head and they've never been happier in their life.

And so we start to feel like,

Cause all you gotta do is hear a message repeated at certain amount of times and you believe it.

It's not your fault.

It's incorporated into our lives.

So it's natural that we have a resistance to letting go or a part of us that never even considers it.

And,

But the thing is you're enough as you are because you're alive,

Cause you exist.

That's the criterion for being enough.

And there's no advertising out there that's gonna promote that.

You know what I mean?

It's a self discovery.

But I say that because things come and go in our lives.

From as far back as you can remember to this moment today,

Many things have come and gone in your lives,

In your life.

The clothing that is come and gone,

Come and gone,

Come and gone.

The places that you lived have come and gone.

If you've been around for a little while that you've had a number of different jobs,

Maybe you've had more than one partner.

And the people in our lives,

Sometimes people pass on or they move on and the beliefs that we have about life change too.

So things are coming and going,

Coming and going.

But the one constant,

The one thing that we have,

Our greatest possession is being alive.

And that doesn't mean we live with nothing or we just be a minimalist and have the least amount of stuff.

Everybody has a different nature of how much stuff they need.

You know,

They seem with their natural inclination,

You know.

But it all comes back to,

I'm alive.

I'm here,

I exist.

And I wanna remove the things that are in my life that are reducing my experience of being alive.

That were reducing my experience of feeling enough.

That make me feel secondary.

So really this is taking your life back.

And it's recognizing that being alive is my greatest possession.

And I wanna protect that.

I wanna protect myself.

And so you might feel resistance in the process.

You might feel like,

I don't wanna do this.

Or as you're going through certain things,

You might feel like stuck on certain stuff.

And that happens,

You know.

Again,

Cause we've been trained to think that we're not enough.

It's so deep in us that we don't even recognize that as a thought.

Just feels like if I get rid of this,

It just feels like something bad's gonna happen.

I mean,

That's,

In other words,

That's the same thing that I was talking about.

So when it comes up,

You can recognize,

Oh yeah,

That's that part of me that thinks I'm not enough.

That's why I wanna hang onto this thing.

I can't remember this one client,

She had a wedding dress on the back of her closet and sealed in some kind of like plastic to maintain it.

And she was divorced.

And she didn't wanna let go of the wedding dress,

You know.

In some ways,

She didn't wanna let go of the relationship that she used to have.

Cause we talked about it,

That came up,

You know.

And if she felt like if she got rid of that dress,

On some deeper level,

She'd have to admit that that relationship didn't work out,

You know.

And these things don't have to make sense.

You know,

Logically,

Sometimes they don't make sense what we feel,

But a lot of our decisions come from things that we don't even,

You know,

They're subconscious.

What we do recognize is this feels good and this doesn't feel good.

And that's what this whole process is about,

Is looking at it,

You know,

Like,

Oh,

Anyway,

By the way,

The woman got rid of that dress.

She donated it.

A lot of this is,

Imagine if I gave you a plate of food and you took a bite and I asked you,

Do you wanna keep eating this or not?

Basically,

Does this taste good to you right now?

Are you enjoying it or do you not wanna eat it?

And that's how you're looking at your stuff.

You know,

Does this feel,

Is this fresh to me?

Does this make me feel,

You know,

Good today?

And then not just like,

There's something to look out for actually,

As far as some things that feel good,

Because sometimes we look at stuff and it's an old artifact from our lives,

You know,

Something we've had for a while that we haven't used for a long time.

And when we look at it,

We get a flood of memories.

You know,

We remember the good times with that particular thing.

And we feel like,

Oh,

If I get rid of this,

I'm getting rid of those feelings.

But it's hard to live with stuff that used to mean a lot to us,

Because all that really does is say,

Things used to be better than they are now.

It's like our life becomes a history museum.

Oh yeah,

This is when things were good.

And trying to like siphon those good feelings off that have already passed,

You know,

By having this around.

And it doesn't work that way.

I remember this one client,

She had a,

She had a box in the back of her closet and she hadn't looked at it in many years.

And so we're going through it like piece by piece.

Do you like and use this or not?

I mean,

Pretty much it was all going in the trash because it had been there for a while,

You know.

And her recycling or donation.

And she came upon this one thing and I don't remember what it was,

But I do remember her response.

She got so excited.

She's like,

Oh my God,

Oh my God,

Oh my God,

Oh my God,

I completely forgot about this.

And so I recognized,

Okay,

She's going through the memory part of things,

The memory phase,

You know.

And that usually lasts like 30 seconds,

20 seconds,

Up to a minute.

So it waited a little bit,

You know.

And then I asked her again,

I asked her,

You know,

Can we let this go?

Is this something you like and use?

And she goes,

Oh my God,

Oh my God,

I can't get rid of this,

I can't get rid of it.

And I said,

Well,

If you keep it,

What are you going to do with it?

And she said,

I'll put it back in the box.

And I said,

Well,

You'll forget about it.

And I'll just sit there being stagnant and create a stagnant feeling through your life,

You know.

That's what things that are in storage do.

They create this dullness.

Things that aren't an interactive and enjoyable part of our lives that are sitting there,

Stored away,

Make everything sluggish.

That's just what they do.

And I know,

Because as people get rid of that stuff,

You can feel the vitality in the air and you can see it in there,

The way they are,

You know.

So she realized,

Yeah,

I'll put it back in the box and I'll forget about it.

And when I see it again,

I'll get like 15 seconds of joy.

That's it,

You know.

Meanwhile,

It just takes up space and wouldn't allow her to have new things come into her lives that mean something to her today,

You know.

So,

So that's why it's good to ask,

Do I like it?

And use this both.

And the other thing I wanted to say is,

This whole clutter-busting process that I'm talking about,

It takes the time it takes to go through it.

It can't all be done in one day.

And so when you start to do the process,

Here's what I recommend.

You schedule a time,

Like in the same way if you were hiring somebody and you wrote it down on your calendar or you put it in your smartphone,

And you're like,

All right,

Three o'clock on Saturday,

I'm gonna do this decluttering.

So you do,

You pick a day and you pick a time and you pick a doable amount of time.

A doable amount of time.

Because sometimes we get ambitious,

You know.

Sometimes we get,

Oh my God,

I can't stand having the clutter and people will sometimes try to work a bunch of hours and they get exhausted and they don't ever wanna do it again.

Talk to people that have been through that experience.

So you wanna pick a doable amount of time.

Like what's a really so easy amount of time?

Maybe it's half hour,

Maybe it's 40 minutes,

Maybe it's 15 minutes.

Or whatever feels right to you,

Like,

Oh yeah,

I can easily do that.

And then you put that amount of time on your phone or a calendar and then when the time comes,

You give yourself a pep talk before you start.

You say,

You know,

Right now I'm patting my heart,

So I would say to myself,

Okay,

I come first.

I'm gonna go through my things and they have to prove their value to me or they're gonna go.

Like a certain kind of ruthlessness,

You know.

But really it's like,

I'm gonna protect myself.

I wanna remove the things that are hurting me.

I wanna find them and I wanna remove them.

And so it's healthy curiosity to remove.

In the same way we remove a stone from our shoe,

If we're out for a walk and it hurt to walk because of the stone.

And we take off our shoe and we tip it upside down,

Out comes the stone.

So you give yourself a pep talk,

Something,

Whatever words that feel true to you.

And you drink some water before you start so you're not dehydrated,

You're thinking clearly,

And you have water by your side while you're working and you drink it while you're working and you make sure to eat something healthy before you start so that your blood sugar is good.

And you turn off your cell phone and you set a timer on your phone or on a clock,

On your watch,

And then you start one thing at a time.

And you don't move to another area,

You stick in one area.

And you're asking,

You know,

Do I like and use this or not?

The same kind of way of like when you're at work,

Whatever work that you do,

Or if you're not working right now,

Whatever work you've done in the past,

When you're at a job,

You have a certain kind of mentality.

It's like,

All right,

This is my job.

I'm here to do this job.

You know,

My job is to ask myself questions about these things and see,

Do I like and use this or not?

And I'm gonna look at my reactions,

See,

You know,

You're working,

You're working for yourself really.

And you go from,

You know,

You have a trash bag by your side,

Recycling container.

If you wanna do donation,

You can have a donation container.

And as you go through each thing,

If it goes to any of those containers,

You put it in there,

If it's something that you like and use,

You put it where you'll go looking for it.

I do that with clients when I'm working with them.

They go,

Oh yeah,

I need this,

I like this.

I go,

All right,

Let's put it where you would go looking for it.

And they get up and they put it where they,

You know,

Where they go looking.

So you do this one thing after another,

And you might feel some feeling of resistance that comes up and you can take a look at that.

Well,

What's going on?

What am I feeling?

You know,

Curiosity.

And a sense of caring too,

Of compassion.

Like,

What do you need?

What are you feeling?

It can really help to listen to ourselves,

You know.

And it's really an act of love to ask these questions.

And it's a true act of love because you're going to yourself to look for the answers.

You're not going out into the world what do the experts say,

What does everybody else say?

What does my friends say?

What do my friends say or my family?

Like,

How do I feel?

I don't care if everybody in the world loves this thing.

If I don't,

If it's not for me,

I want to get rid of it.

So that's a true act of love.

You know,

I love myself and I want to take care of myself.

So each time you ask that question,

It's a gift of love,

You know.

It's a sign,

It's a term of endearment.

It's a sign,

It's a term of endearment.

So when you're done,

You know,

The timer goes off and you're done and you stop.

And you take the recycling stuff out to the recycling bin and you,

The trash you bring out to the trash bin.

And if there's stuff that you want to donate,

You can bring it out to your car,

Put it in containers the next time you go out and about,

You can drop it off at a charity.

And then when you're done,

You stop.

You don't continue decluttering because you don't want to push yourself.

You don't want to get exhausted.

You want to treat yourself well.

This is real training on how to take care of yourself.

And when you're done,

You set up a time to work again.

Doesn't matter when it is or how long it is,

A time that you can do that feels right,

That's doable for you.

And then you go and have some fun.

You do something to take your time,

You know,

To refresh yourself after the clutter bust.

And really that's the whole,

That's the whole process.

And it's quite wonderful.

I've seen people take their lives back.

I've seen people stuck in situations that are really uncomfortable for them,

Unhappy in their lives.

And all they do is go through and ask questions about their life,

The things in their life with a curiosity to find things that don't serve them and they remove those things and people's lives transform.

And we can get used to living with clutter and we can get used to feeling miserable.

But this is something profound,

You know,

Some real powerful way of taking your life back.

And you're removing that stagnant energy and you're creating space in your life for yourself.

And space in and of itself is a thing.

You know,

Our spaces are often filled with things that we don't even notice the space,

But space itself is tangible.

So as you begin to let go of things and you're creating space,

You can take a moment here and there to notice like,

What does the space feel like?

The space that I just created.

Anyway,

I'm very excited for you.

I'm very excited.

And if you need more help on Inside Timer,

I have a 30 day class and a 10 day class on letting go.

And they're basically meditations on different areas of life.

Some have to do with exercise,

Some have to do with food,

Some have to do with forgiveness,

Some have to do with spirituality.

Like there's so many different areas of life and they take you on a kind journey through different areas of your life.

So,

You know,

That curiosity can extend to that area and you can perhaps notice something that you don't like doing or something that doesn't feel good or a particular relationship that doesn't fit.

And you do get your life back.

I guarantee you that.

And that is like we were saying,

It's the most valuable thing because without our life,

None of this stuff matters.

So I wish you the best in your looking.

Absolutely.

And it's wonderful spending time with you.

And take care.

Bye.

Reviews

Brooks is wonderful and has helped me let go and focus on what is most important in my life.

Practical approach to an issue that plagues many of us. Brooks truly has a gift for simplifying this daunting problem and destigmatizing it. He not only walks you through the process of decluttering, but helps you rethink how we all ended up with all of these items in our possession to begin with, and how to prevent that going forward. Grateful to have found his content and highly recommend his courses and tracks! ❤️

Great delivery. I have been procrastinating my decluttering and now I feel motivated.

This was very refreshing reminding me about a cluttered mind. And all the things we keep because someone gave it to you. I can now take your advice and declutter.

Super helpful! I will listen often as I need to do some serious decluttering in my life. This will help me make it manageable (or convince me to hire a professional).

Amazing - thank you so much! So thoughtful and thought-provoking 🙏

I just scheduled a time in my calendar for my first "Clutter Bust" great talk. I will be listening to this often. Thank you! 🙏 ❤

Very helpful, thank you!

Excellent presentation and advice. Thank you. Feeling more excited about decluttering.

I am such a clutter bug I love the way Brooks

broke it down for me and gentle Ways and this talk thank you

Thank You for presenting the process as a gift to ourselves. Be kind. Be patient… and yet, be ruthless…. Present moment awareness and living in the now.

So inspiring, I am enough. Thank you so much Brookes🙏

A lovely talk to listen to prior to another round of decluttering. I declutter whenever I feel stuck and it works wonders every time.

I love this guy! He’s kindhearted, nonjudgmental and practical. Helps us to declutter without shame. No matter how much or how little clutter there is to deal with, his gentle way is empowering. 🙏🏻💞

Great simple yet powerful suggestions
Thank you.

This short talk is excellent. It defines clutter (not just stuff !) Considers why we hold onto clutter and suggests practical ways forward. It would be an act of love to yourself if you listened to this talk. All in 27 mins. Thank you.

Unbelievably supportive and need to hear information to give yourself clarity and what’s important in your life. This simple and gentle guidance on how to maintain life’s stuff. Brooks is the Albert Einstein of organization. He’s is a genius!

Thank 🙏🏼 you Brooks!
💚Jesse

Thank you

Gentle and loving talk. Excellent information/ideas given that I can apply to my life now to release the clutter that has been holding me back for so, so, soooo long. I will be revisiting this one for sure . Thank you Brooks!