Hi there, I'm Caroline Thor, professional organizer, konmari consultant, teacher and mum of three. I started off my life as a mum feeling overwhelmed, disorganized 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 chat with someone who gets your reality.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to the latest episode of the Living Clutter Free Forever podcast. Today I'm talking to Nazneen, a Konmari consultant, also based in Germany, and we're discussing a topic that we both feel really strongly about and that's decluttering and organizing using the Konmari method before a move. I hope you love this conversation as much as I enjoyed having it with Nazneen. Hi, nazneen, great to have you here today. Thank you for having me. I have been wanting to have a conversation about moving with another organizer, another Konmari consultant, for a very long time, so I'm looking forward to talking to you about this today, but first of all tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 2:So I'm Nazneen and I'm based in Hamburg and I'm also a Konmari consultant at Q and also a professional organizer. In a more classic way, I want to say and yeah, I have been working with my client for two years now and it's fun, and where are you from originally, because I can tell from your accent you're not German. Exactly so. Yes, no, I'm not German. I was born in Iran and I grew up in France, and I've been living in Hamburg now for 17 years, actually. So, but still not German.
Speaker 1:Oh well traveled lady. Actually, nazneen and I have known each other for a long time, I should add, because we actually met each other in our online Konmari training a few years ago now, and we've stayed in touch, which has been great and supporting each other in developing our businesses, and I didn't realize that you have been in Germany nearly as long as me. I've been here for 18 years now this summer, and you 17. I didn't realize it was that long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is. It also went very fast. Funny enough, the idea was to spend just one year here and learn German, and then I stayed. I kind of liked it here. So at that time I was young and partying in Hamburg it's really nice. So I stayed a little bit longer and a little bit longer, and a little bit longer and suddenly it was 17 years.
Speaker 1:It's amazing where the time goes. I've never visited Hamburg and in fact my husband said to me yesterday you should go and stay with Nazneen and have a girls weekend.
Speaker 2:I was like that's a very good idea. Hamburg is, I know, the best cocktail bar here, so perfect.
Speaker 1:We will have to do that. Anyway, let's get back to what we should be talking about, which is something we haven't done, or we haven't moved countries for a very long time, but we're talking today about the whole process of moving and applying the Konmari method to a move, and this is something I did four years ago when we moved into the house that we're now in, and it's something that both of us offer for our clients as a service, so it seemed to make sense that we have a chat about this today. So why do you think we should declutter before we move?
Speaker 2:I think there's so many reasons. In my opinion, one of the biggest important things is that it doesn't matter if you're downsizing or if you're moving to a bigger home. It's just to have a fresh start. And obviously, if you're downsizing, that you're going to need to have less things in your home. So it's the easiest way to do it before and not whilst moving, and when you're like upsizing I don't know if it's a word in English, but it's even. I think sometimes it's even more important, because the more space you have, the more you tend to fill it, and so if you move with all the things you don't really need or spark joy, we would say in our world then you're going to put them somewhere and not I'm going to take care of that at some point, and then you're actually never going to do it and it's going to pile up. Not really, because I always say clutter is like pull clutter in, so the more clutter you have, the more you get into that one room that I've started being your clutter room.
Speaker 1:Clutter attracts clutter Exactly. It's crazy. And what I found when I applied the Konmari method myself we had currently been living in that house for 10 years and I went through everything. I mean there was no corner of the house that was left unturned. I really made sure I did every category there very thoroughly and one thing I found or several things I found in the attic space under the roof were several packing boxes moving boxes that I had brought with me from England that had gone into that space when we moved into that house and I had never opened them in the 10 years we'd been living there.
Speaker 1:So clearly the stuff in there was not that important to me because I think even if we're hanging on to stuff for sentimental reasons, if we're going to hang on to it, we should occasionally be looking at it and enjoying it. And when I went through the boxes it was things like sports clothes that I thought I was going to need some photos and stuff like that. So I think we've all got these things and boxes in our homes from previous moves that have never been unpacked and, quite honestly, they can probably just go straight out for donation, because if we've not looked in them for that long. We definitely don't need them.
Speaker 2:Exactly and I'm going to take care of it later Box that always stays there, never move ever. You never get into it. So yeah, it's. The thing is that you're going to take a whole bunch of things that you really don't need or don't even want in your new home and to let go of them. And also, I mean it's also a practical thing. The less box you have, the easier, I want to say, or the less complicated is to move. So it's also completely practical thing. So it kind of makes sense to just go through your things. And also because when you move in a new home it's always some such a nice feeling, and I think it's even nicer to get in a new home and everything you have in there is something you have intentionally choose to have in your home. It's such a nice feeling, such a cool feeling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's. This fresh start feeling is amazing and I think I was telling you once about the fact. I actually got moving envy. Before we were moving house, a friend of mine was relocating into another house in our village and she'd packed up her kitchen and I went with her to help her unpack it and put things away Just friend support, not even in a Konmari role and I really got envious about the fact that she'd got all these clean, empty cupboards and she was able to put things exactly how she wanted to have them and it looked so amazing and I really liked was like oh, I would love to have a fresh start and we'd already started thinking about the idea of possibly looking for somewhere else and it sort of lit a fire under me and I was not going to stop until we found some to move to, yeah, yeah, and we did up size, yeah, quite considerably.
Speaker 1:And I com married again before we moved because it's an ongoing process. Anyone thinks you do them, you're done. You can forget it, especially if you've got kids that always Stopping playing with toys, and so I read it all and we really only bought with this the stuff that we loved, that was serving our life at the time and we didn't need any new furniture, we didn't need any new storage, despite the house being considerably larger. It was just an amazing feeling, really great.
Speaker 2:And I think it's also. It's a, it's also a visual thing, like if you come in that new home and it's not that full, then it's always a better feeling because it feels like more fresh and more what's the word? Like more air, more space. Sometimes we forget how nice it is to have space, to have empty space, like we tend to want to fill empty spaces and sometimes I think it's such a nice feeling to have empty spaces, like obviously, if it's too empty and it doesn't feel like a home, it's something different. But like I have a closet and the upper shell is kind of empty, so I just put two nice decoration things, but the whole thing is empty and it's actually a nice feeling. It gives more, you know, the air can goals and it's more inspiring. I found when, when you have more empty space, actually it's not a bad thing.
Speaker 1:No, absolutely not, and I think it also sets you up for fresh opportunity. The last year I've been supporting a family who are moving from an apartment into a home they've had built, and they're very aware of the fact that the systems that they've perhaps been using up until now for example, pantry or storage of clothing and stuff hasn't necessarily been serving them very well. It hasn't been making life particularly easy. So they want to move into the new home and have those systems set up right from the start so that they don't fall back into the bad habits of bulk buying and not knowing where things are, so you end up buying another one because you can't find it and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:So I'm actually going in the middle of August to do a walkthrough of the empty house with them so that we can think about, okay, where would it make sense to put these things. But this is where it comes back to and I know I know you're really hot on this as well with the Conmari method this vision of how is your life changing, your ideal lifestyle. And that is all that is so important with moving, because if you don't know when you move into your new space how you want to live, then you don't know how best to set up your home to support your ideal lifestyle. So we've been doing that work as well. So I think it's just an amazing opportunity to declutter before you move.
Speaker 2:And I think the thing is, most of the people can do that on their own. But to have a professional organizer or a con-married consultant or both, like the two of us, helping you, it's also because I call it the Tetris eyes. We have the Tetris eyes. We used to go in spaces and in our head it goes a little bit faster to say, okay, here's make sense to have X and here's make sense to have epsilon, so it's just that helpful way to have someone that also not maybe in as much stress as you are when moving, cause it's not only moving the home, I mean the things, it's also moving the kids and their school and everything that has to be taken care of. Especially if you're in Germany, the whole administration part is the nightmare. So you have someone that is a little bit calmer and they can take the overwhelm and have a fresh eye on everything and help you also set up those systems, cause sometimes we know the system we're having is not the right one and it's not always easy to find the right one. And that's where the our expertise come in play and we say, okay, but have you think of X or epsilon?
Speaker 2:So, and that's the kind of thing that helps you then set up your new home, like make that new house and home actually from day one, and makes everything also the unpacking less complicated Cause one of the things that we do is also pack efficiently, like not packing the things in the room that were and then defining where they have to go, but also maybe in a room there's two type of thing or two category of thing they're not going to go in the same room in the new house.
Speaker 2:So having that background and thinking about it, okay, that needs to go in room X in the new home. So I'm going to pack them separately to the other thing and et cetera. So that's the whole process, also to for us to take on some of the stress and mix everything with system and structure. So it goes a little bit smoothie and then you don't really have to think about lots of things and have some brain free, brain sale to actually take care of the other part of moving again, like finding a new school or registering to a new school or meeting the new teacher or whatever might come, and then you have to do so you're free to do that while we take care of the packing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I completely agree, and I think once you have applied the whole Konmari method to your home prior to moving, things are automatically then gathered together according to category anyway, because having applied the Konmari method, we would then have all stationary gathered together, all things for gift wrapping together, so that when it comes to packing it is literally just a case of gathering this category together, putting it in a box, labeling it and making sure it's clear which room it's going to in the new home so that when you get there you can just unpack.
Speaker 1:I think I was telling you a while ago about a client of mine who actually hadn't intended to move. I had done the Konmari process with her in her whole home and then they had a very sudden move back to the USA, which was very, very unexpected. But she said it was amazing because the pack has literally came in and because everything was also then stored in boxes within the cupboards and drawers, they can literally just lift it up, put it into the packing boxes, and when she got to the other end she just lifted it back out again and put it in the new storage space. It just speeds the whole process up hugely.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it makes it less stressful. I'm not gonna say and we're not gonna move is stressful. That's why we're not magician, but what we do with helping is really reduce the stress to the minimum and that's so cool. Like, really, to take the, I found it so cool that you just take the box out in the new boxy home and then just out and in, so you don't really have to pack every single thing actually. So it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It is really, really great and I think also because people listening to my podcast are very much spread out all over the world, I think it's really important that we acknowledge that moving is different in every country. Now, I'm not clear on what the situation is in the US, for example, but if you buy a new house in the UK, you tend to be in what we call a chain, so you're buying a house and someone's buying your place, and the person that's moving out of the house you're buying is buying a place, and so on. It's more often that you have a chain of perhaps two, three, so four, sometimes even five people, and because there's a chain, what happens is everyone moves on the same day. So that morning you pack your home up and you all drive to your new location and hope that your other people have moved out on time and then, literally, it could have maybe only been gone an hour and you get the key and you go in, whereas in Germany, as you know and I've experienced here, we very often will have like a sometimes a few weeks, because we're very often moving from a rental property to another rental property or a rental property and bought something, and there is like this time a few weeks, where you go in and renovate and decorate and get it how you want it before you actually move in. That just it makes a huge difference to a move. I mean, the stress in the UK is massive because it all has to happen on the one day in most instances.
Speaker 1:And then there's other things, like in Germany when you move into a property, there usually isn't a kitchen in it. Yeah, I still, after 18 years, I still can't get my head around this that you move into a home and there is no kitchen. People take their kitchens with them when they move, yeah, which, for the US and the UK, is a really bizarre concept. For some reason it works here. I don't know why, still not really understood it, but this is very often why you have a renovation period. But I know the first apartment I ever moved into in Germany. We had no kitchen for several weeks and no fridge and it was 40 degrees and we had nowhere to cool milk or anything. I couldn't cook. It was just a nightmare. And then eventually we found a second hand kitchen online because someone was selling their kitchen and we built in a second hand kitchen from somebody else. But yeah, we were a few weeks without a kitchen.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I also. I always. The first time I saw that I was super surprised because I was like, but I'm renting and then I have to pay for the kitchen that I might not like take. With what head? Yeah, but yeah, and I know that has that got even worse in Germany, because now, because of the whole supply chain being slower now since corona and from what I know it hasn't really picked up yet, like you have, even when you go to without naming a brand but IKEA and that kind of place, and you get everything done and you have the perfect kitchen, it can take up to 10 weeks until they can actually deliver you the kitchen. So it's like okay, so what do we do now? So you only have to eat cold and see what happens.
Speaker 1:That adds to the stress. So in the UK you've got the stress of perhaps everyone moving on one day and you're not being able to get into the property in advance to do anything, let alone clean. And then in Germany we have the issue of you need to get a kitchen, the perhaps are no light fittings left, things like that, and you need to sort all of that stuff out, which is another stress, which is why having decluttered and organised everything so that the packing goes smoothly and gets someone in to help you with the packing, just reduces any extra stress that you really, really don't need.
Speaker 2:Exactly. I mean, that's the magic I wanted to say. It's really the less you have to think about the things, the actual things, the more you can take of the other part of the moving that needs maybe more brain cell and less items. So it's come back to that fresh start thing that's. It's when you go and declutter every single thing. It helps you also to reduce the chaos in your head, like you know what you have, you know where everything is and again it kind of I found it's kind of reduced also the background noise in your head, like you have some sort of clarity.
Speaker 2:You gain such a clarity on the items you have in your home that it really help you be less stressed about that, which help you manage the other stress better. You're going to be stressed to move, but it's just the amount of stress and how much you can handle and you have also someone that can help you, because we kind of magical that way. I want to say we always have tips for everything, so it's not just the items. Like if there's something not working you can always ask a professional organizer or a convoy consultant. We always know people, we always know how to manage stuff and it's really it's really having someone helping you along the way, and a move can also take a long.
Speaker 1:I mean a long time from deciding to move to the day you actually move, and even after that to the the horn packet process and I think one thing a lot of people underestimate when it comes to moving is having your paperwork in order before you move just saves you so much time, so, so much time. So I I think I would recommend I don't know what your feeling is, but I would recommend if someone knows that they are going to be moving and they have a good time frame in advance if you start working a good six months in advance to organize things and declutter and start getting your kids to go through things and make decisions about what they want to keep, then it just reduces the pressure as it gets nearer to moving time. Then you can actually just concentrate on packing and you know that everything you pack is stuff you want to take with you. I actually had, or I have, a family who did my online course in January and they they had been looking for a property in January. They were in rental at the moment and they were desperate to find something bigger and had just hadn't been able to find anything. But they decided in January okay, let's do Caroline's course, let's start decluttering now so that when we do find a property, it's done. We don't have this mad panic of trying to fit it in with everything else that's going on. So they've been plugging away at it. The whole family got on board, husband got super on board and they've been working away at it.
Speaker 1:And they've actually asked me because they do live relatively locally to me if I will actually go and do a session with the children, who are all quite young, to help them make choices about what toys and games and puzzles they really want to keep and to help them understand how they can let things go, because that's sometimes a point of friction with parents and kids. It doesn't always work work well with your own kids. So they were like, perhaps if you came and did this with them. So I'm going to go and do a session with them. And they messaged me a couple of weeks ago to say we've got a house, we're moving in October and the relief must just be fantastic because they know they're ready. Yeah, they're not going to have this quick, we've got to declutter. What can we do with the donations? How are we going to manage this? It's sort of it's just calmed everything down for them, which is just amazing yeah, and it's also show how amazing your online course is, obviously because, wow.
Speaker 2:But and the fun part is and I know maybe it's a little bit too theoretically, but I had a client. She wasn't happy about her home and she was looking for something else. And then at some point she was like, because in Hamburg is kind of a nightmare to find a place because there are too many of us. And she was like, okay, I'm going to make the best out of my actual, like current home because I'm not finding anything. So we went, we did the whole Conmarri thing and went to everything and, believe it or not, a few months after we were done, because she obviously kept looking, she found something and she moved. So it's also something that has to do with the whole decluttering process, like beside of the whole movie thing. But it's just because you gain such clarity and also reduce the stress in your life altogether it helps, for it has like a domino effect. It has that effect of the more you declutter, the less, the more you reduce the stress in your head and you know that background noise and the better you are at looking at. And it doesn't matter what the project is, if it's moving, finding a new job or whatever. But I really find that the whole decluttering process always helps you gain much more clarity about the rest of your life also. So it's not only a matter of physical clutter, it really declutter your head and your brain, say all free and can be creative and also manage the rest of the stress in your life better.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I think it's crazy. You always see, the first time I read Marie Kondo's book because she's talking about it it's always have that domino effect when you start decluttering to the rest of your life. I was like she's like exaggerating, okay, I'm not going to get that one, it's exaggerating, thank you. But then you see it happen. It's insane. And I had another client. She did the whole Conmarie thing and without me, because she had learned with me, she did the whole Conmarie thing through her work and after that her business obviously had like was better. I'm not saying because we did the Conmarie. Now she's super successful, but it helped along the way. So, and it's the same with moving when you do the decluttering you just gain such clarity and then the rest kind of works. It's insane, but it is. I've seen it and I'm guessing you too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely. I had one of my first ever Conmarie clients. But she did the Tidy Festival.
Speaker 1:We Conmaried her whole apartment and she said it freed up her clarity of thinking to be able to actually decide what her new career path was going to be. She knew she needed a complete change. She knew she did, and we talked about this a lot while we were decluttering and just having the whole apartment organised and having everything a place to go back to and especially her office space, which had been quite chaotic. It just gave her this clarity to be able to sit down and really concentrate and give this some thought. And she had this like a harm moment and she went off and did some trainings in some very exotic places in the world. I kept getting messages from her. I'm now here and I'm now there's like what are you doing? She wouldn't tell me until she'd finished and she said I'm now trained as a consultant in this method and this is what I know I'm meant to be doing. But she'd only found that clarity from having gone through the Conmarie method.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just crazy. It's crazy because, speaking of moving, it's like you gather so much baggage through your life, like not only of things, but with these things come a whole weight of emotion and no-transcript I want to say problem, or maybe sadness or whatever, especially when it comes to sentimentals, but not only. And when you let the things go, what do you want? To keep a one-note and let some things go and keep something? I always say that when I talk about the conmariate no, you don't have to throw everything away. You keep everything you want to keep and it's your decision. But it's just taking those decisions and thinking about it. It's so much more than just taking a decision about an item do I want to keep it or not? It makes you think about so much, so many things in that process, especially if you do the whole home, that it's really. It is life-changing. I mean I cannot find another word. It is life-changing, and what is more life-changing than a move? So if you combine these two life-changing events, it's really.
Speaker 1:It can only end up in a magical rest of your life, kind of Absolutely, and I think having that fresh start, knowing that you have got things in your new home that you love, that bring you joy, that support you, that your children have those things, that your partner has those things around them, it just lifts you up and gives you permission to move forward in a way that is much more confident than when you are being weighed down by the past. Definitely.
Speaker 2:And also it's such an, I think, to also teach your children. I found, because when doing that process of moving, which can be challenging for children, I think something is new. Someone had decided for them they're going to move. Maybe they don't want to. There's all of the emotion in their head going on. I think it's also there. It's so nice to teach them. Okay, let's do that, let's go through your things and we're going to have a fresh start and let's do that together. And if you're doing, they're going to want to do it and if you see, if they see you doing it, then they're going to get into it also. And I think it's a very nice process also for the children. But what you said, I'm totally with you. It's probably easier when someone external comes and does it with them as when it's the parent.
Speaker 2:But talking about stress, but, yeah, it's also nice things to teach your children to. You know, let's have a fresh start, let's let go of things that doesn't serve us anymore. And it's something they learn. They don't know what from day one.
Speaker 1:It's also something they have to learn.
Speaker 1:And I see that in my own children. They will suddenly have a decluttering session and there will be stuff on the landing outside their room or, for some reason, they always dump it in my room. I did. I mentioned this in a podcast the other day. Everything seems to land up in my bedroom that they no longer want and they've made a decision, though. This isn't serving me anymore and they're very much. I mean even my youngest, who's 10, it comes very much from him. He'll suddenly have this day of right. These things are no longer serving my life and I don't need them anymore. So I'm going to remove them from my space and he reorganizes everything and make sure his books are how he wants them on the shelf and all the rest of it, and it's lovely to see because it means he knows what's important to him. Oh, cool, yeah, really cool. That's awesome. And you are based in Hamburg, as you said. So how can people find you? How can people have you come and work with them?
Speaker 2:The easiest way is to go on my website and then there's a contact form there and you can just write me a message and what they're looking for, and then usually we just set up a short call, then we talk a little bit and then I normally I do an in-home complimentary consultation and then we talk again and then that's how the process start. Is but the best way to contact Maison through my website and obviously I'm on the social media, but my website is the one where I went to get in touch with him.
Speaker 1:Perfect, and I think you are doing mainly in-person decluttering and organising and packing services. I also offer remote, so I will do online with people, which I'm sure you can offer as well, and I also have a sort of support package for people that move so that people can get PDFs and downloads and have relatively regular chats with me, and I sort of keep the motivation going from afar and I actually work out the timeline of what they tell me when they're going to be moving, and then we can work out OK, how many weeks have we got? This week you're going to declutter this. Next week you're going to declutter that, so that we get it done by the deadline, always with a couple of weeks to spare, and that's a fun process to do with people as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's also awesome because it's also then you have to. I mean, that's the thing I have to have a professional with you. Is that we kind of an accountability partner? Like if we say this weekend you've got to do, I'm sorry, something the kitchen Then we're going to be there and say did you do the kitchen? Yeah, so it makes you do it, it makes you prioritise it, because you're going to have someone asking you about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the same.
Speaker 1:I mean, if someone in the Hamburg area books an appointment with you, as soon as that's in the calendar, it's going to happen, whereas we are very good at procrastinating and putting things off because we have so many other things that are also priorities that, for decluttering, you sort of think, oh, I could do that tomorrow, and we all know that tomorrow never comes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so booking an appointment with a ConMari consultant is really the best way of making sure that what you want to happen happens, and I think also we should give a shout out to all ConMari consultants worldwide. I don't know if people are aware of this, but if you go to the ConMari website, which is conmaricom, you can search on there for a consultant Wherever you are in the world. You can put your area in and it will show you all the consultants that are in your area. So that is another way to find a consultant. If you're, for example, in Asia or something and you're listening to his podcast and you think, oh yes, I'm moving, I would love a consultant, nazin and I are happy to work with you online, but if you want someone in person and you live in Asia, then go to the ConMari website and you can find a consultant there. Exactly, yeah.
Speaker 1:Nazin it has been brilliant talking this through with you. Thank you for having me. Yeah, you're welcome. It's always such a joy talking with you, especially. But just another ConMari consultant, because we're always on the same wavelength about these things, which is so fun. And, yeah, I look forward to hearing how you can support, or how you have supported, people with their moves in the future. Yes, I will. Bye, bye. Well, I hope you found that conversation between Nazinine and myself valuable.
Speaker 1:I got a bit trigger happy when editing and managed to edit out Nazinine's website address that she gave you, so I will repeat it now it's wwwthetidewondercom and all of the links that were mentioned today. So how to get in touch with Nazinine, how to get in touch with myself and the ConMari website for finding consultants internationally are all available in the show notes as links that you can click on Whether you have a move planned or not. I'm sure you'll agree there are lots of really great takeaways from this episode so happy decluttering and organizing. And if you're now feeling inspired to get started with the ConMari method, you can download my free guide to getting started. The link is in the show notes, but you can also find it at caroline-thorcom. Forward slash guide Until next time, thank you.