Addressing Barriers to Letting Go: Season 2 Premiere

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Welcome back to season two of Organizing an ADHD Brain with Megs. In this special one-year anniversary episode, Megs dives into the multifaceted topic of 'letting go,' discussing the barriers that often prevent us from decluttering our homes. She shares personal stories, including helping her parents clear out their attic and linen closet, and offers practical advice on how to reduce emotional and logistical barriers to letting go. From adopting easier donation strategies to innovative methods like ThredUp, Megs emphasizes the importance of establishing regular routines for decluttering. Tune in for heartfelt anecdotes, practical tips, and a roadmap to achieve a less cluttered, more organized life.

Welcome to Season Two!

00:31 The Journey of Letting Go

03:52 A Personal Story: Helping My Parents

08:50 Understanding the Emotional Barriers

16:14 Practical Tips to get things out of your home

24:35 The Benefits of Letting Go

30:03 Final Thoughts and Community Shoutouts

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The ULTIMATE Recycling & Disposal Guide: Disposal Guide

Transcript

Yeti Stereo Microphone & FaceTime HD Camera: 0:42

You're listening. To organizing an ADHD brain. With my mom. Megs. Hey, beautiful people. Welcome back to season two of organizing an ADHD brain. When I decided to launch season two, I thought, you know, no better time than the very day I launched my very first episode last year in 2024 on February 12th. So you are here for a momentous event. Happy official one year anniversary to me, and I'm just so excited to be here today to talk to you about letting go. We're going to talk a lot about letting go over the next year. And a lot of that is because there's so many different aspects to letting go. There's so many different aspects to organizing and ADHD and like, is it digital? Is it physical? Is it pictures? What are we organizing? All of it. We're doing all of it. However. You can only start where you are and so part of this is going to be the journey of simply learning, learning where you're at and seeing yourself evolve to this next level. I want to thank you all so much for tuning in. this has been such a cool adventure. I never thought that the podcast would take off the way that it did. I never thought that I would be able to talk to the incredible people that I have. I could never have imagined the amount of people I've built in my network Even more so my coaching clients. are incredible. Do you guys know that people with ADHD have the most incredible brains that ever existed? Because let me tell you, being able to work with people, not only my digital sidekick, but my bookkeeper, my husband. They all have ADHD and of course my clients have ADHD and it's so incredible to see all of their hobbies, to see their love of life, to see their goals, their different vibes, the different things that they want to achieve. I'm just so grateful that I get to do what I do. So thank you so much. Thanks for showing up. My community is also officially in full swing. I'd love to see you there. We have a monthly Q& A session, so you can ask all the things that are related to ADHD and organizing. It's a group coaching session, really, where you ask me questions. I ask you questions back when we figure out a solution to your issue in the moment. You have access to the dopamine menu, It's a pop up when you go to my website, which is Mindfulmegs. com and OrganizinganADHDbrain. com, which is a mouthful, but we'll get used to it. And if you're feeling fully stuck and you need so much more than just a community, you get the community when you sign up for coaching with me. So check out my calendar in the show notes below. Get on my list and let's just see if coaching is the right fit for you. It's free, so it is no obligation whatsoever. And I'd love to chat with you. Also, my girls did a very special recording for us today. And I'm so excited that you get to hear their sweet voices on the podcast. I am doing this podcast for them after all. I'm so excited to be able to show them what their mom is capable of. So let's dive into letting go and this week we're going to be talking about the barriers to letting go and some of the things that often get in our way of getting things out of the house. Initially, we're not going to be talking about the decisions we make on individual items, although that will totally be a future episode So many of us want to make a change, but we don't know where to start. And the barrier there is the research that we need to do in order to make the plan to start. So, what I mean by that is like, oh, well I need to get these clothes out of my house, but I don't want to just donate them to Goodwill, so I'm going to wait until I find a more ethical place that I can donate to. I've heard that story so many times. So back in June of 2023, I went back to visit my parents with the intention of helping them with their home. Now, I had no idea I wanted to become a professional organizer at this point. It's just that my parents have lived in this house. And they haven't let go of a lot. And so my mom had been asking for help for a long time. I knew I wanted to take my girls to Massachusetts for the summer and my husband was able to come out for a week as well. So we all got there. We emptied one of the attics and we helped my parents go through a lot of stuff. One of the things that we decided to go through was my mom's linen closet. This linen closet, I don't think has changed even remotely since I was in high school. Or possibly younger, but maybe I just didn't notice it then. I just remember when things were clean or needed to be put away, we just kind of shoved it in there, like we just made it fit. And then if something fell, you just closed the closet fast enough so that the closet door would close and like your job was done, but you didn't worry about what it looked like inside. And because things had been shoved in there for so long, it was almost at an angle, but like an angle that things just stayed. Like it was just this heaping pile of stuff that just stayed. As we were emptying the closet, my mom remarked that it hasn't been emptied, likely ever. not since she moved in, there were still some items in there that were my grandfather's 90s. So, we're going through all these linens, Adam and I are folding everything and just putting them into categories so that it makes sense, for figuring out what to stay and what to leave. Now, there's a whole nother emotional side to this story. I'm gonna leave that out for the purpose of this episode because that's another episode on all of the emotions of Letting Go, but as we're sorting items, I remember my mom found. this large piece of linen. It was just like this huge tablecloth of linen and a couple pieces had been cut out of it. And lo and behold, those pieces were sitting on the side. It was all together. And my mom said that her mom had actually been cutting them into little linen cloths, little napkins, because in her words, she said, this kind of cloth is really expensive. And then she looked at me and she's like, but I think maybe it's time to let this go now. as I was putting decisions in front of her reminder, while I've read a lot of organizing books at this time, I did not know how to help my mom. Nor be able to lend her the type of support I'm able to now lend my clients. Regardless, she was still making some pretty awesome decisions. So then I asked my mom, mom, why do you have all this stuff still? Now, there's sheets with holes in there. There's towels that have been washed so many times and dried outside in the fresh air, which smells amazing. But if you don't know what that does to towels, it dries them out and makes them like a sandpaper towel. But I looked at my mom and I said, Hey, why did you keep all this stuff? And she said, Oh, well, I kept it for you and your siblings. Just in case. I said, well, just in case, you know, we need towels or linens. And she said, yeah, you know, if you run out, you can come here and get them. I said, well, mom, we didn't know about that. And also. If we wanted to get something, then we would just simply go out and get it because that's what makes sense and she goes, Oh, I just got sheets from this place and she goes on and on. Does my mom have ADHD? likely. she's also deaf. And so that has presented a communication barrier throughout most of, if not all of my life. we got rid of probably about eight bags of stuff, not just from the linen closet, but also from the attic that Adam and I had emptied. And it was, it was a really great experience. I got rid of a ton of stuff that I had no idea was still there from high school, and I just threw a ton of it away. Some of it had mold on it, if I'm being honest. My mom gave me a mask. She's like, here, you're going to need this. But then I was back visiting my parents in October again, and I shared this on the podcast that my dad had surgery and I was. Um, I was asking my mom, I said, Hey, how's the linen closet working out for you? And she goes, Oh, it's fine. I haven't touched it. At that time, I didn't even think to ask how she used this space and what she wanted. What was her ideal space going to look like? Things like that. Regardless, I asked her, I said, why do you keep, why do you keep everything then? She goes, Oh, well, just in case you all need it. I'm like, Oh, and again, I'm like, Mom, we don't, we don't want it. And that's okay. You can let it go. If that makes sense. I didn't press because that wasn't the time. I share this because we have this trap, this thing going on in our head where we feel like things need to go to a home that we know of that is going to be reused in a way that just makes sense. I think it's fascinating. It's like we truly want to know where the things that we've loved, or maybe even haven't loved too much but have spent money on, where they go to know that someone else is going to enjoy it. Maybe that's a little dopamine hit that we get because we see that we've done a good thing by getting rid of the stuff. Sometimes we even make piles for kids. Or for friends, for cousins, for neighbors, for the next friend that's about to have a baby, or for our neighbor's kids that are just a year younger than your kids and you're ready to let go of some clothes. Or, you have a pile of clothes you thought about donating, but because it never had a label on the box, it just kind of sat there. And then people started going through it, including yourself and you're pulling out things like, why would I get rid of this? And you're second guessing yourself. And now you've got a box that's no longer donations. You don't even know what it is. Cause what if someone put something in there that doesn't belong there? And then you've got the pile of stuff that sits in the garage because it's also probably not in a donation box, but probably just thrown in there and is now a collection of things waiting to leave the home, but it has to be a certain amount of things in order to leave the home. And where do you bring it? Right? Because you want it to go to a place that makes sense. There's so many other examples I could come up with of the way that we want things to leave our house. Here's the thing. So many of us are in the position where if we stop and analyze everything that is in our home and the way that it leaves our home, it's going to add years. To the things leaving your home. I'm not over exaggerating here because every single item that you own and that you have is a decision waiting to be made, a decision waiting to be given a home that it's never had or a decision to be just put back in its home that maybe it's had, but we never actually used or to say, Hey, we're going to throw this out or we're going to get rid of it. Our intentions are amazing, and I'll tell you another story I was making a TikTok reel last year, and I was cleaning my garage, and I took a bucket of nails that were all different. Like there were, there were teeny tiny nails, there were bigger nails, there were teeny tiny screws, there were bigger screws, there were, those awful drywall anchors where you could try to use them, but I don't know anyone who can actually use them and make them work. Maybe that's a finesse I just don't possess. But I took this little box of nails and I looked at the camera and I was like, I'm doing it guys. And I put it all in the garbage. and there was an uproar from the internet. people were saying hilarious things, but one in particular, I remember Someone saying, you could donate those to Habitat for Humanity. Habitat for Humanity certainly would not want to be using those nails to build the homes to house actual people in them. our hearts are in it, but the realisticness of getting things out of our house in a faster way or in a way that actually makes sense that could support our goals of having less clutter. Could happen faster if we're able to release some of the barriers. as I was writing this I realized I was wearing a shirt that my sister had given me and I was like, Oh, if I tell them to do this, I would have never gotten this shirt. I like this shirt. And then I realized if I had never gotten this shirt from my sister in the first place, I would never know. That the shirt existed, which means that my life would be fine. So this first step I want you to do is if people are giving you things, ask them to stop. That can be difficult, but your intention and go back to that communication episode, but your intention is to have less. And if you don't have a regular practice of getting things out of your home. Then we need to stop the inflow of items into our home, regardless of if it's a good deal, regardless of if it was given to us from a friend and only if it's a necessity, you get to make up your own rules here. And maybe you say, uh, I'm only going to take little kid clothes because we know that those can be expensive and maybe you have room for them, right? This does all come back to, do you actually have room for the stuff that you have for them to have homes? I love the shirt that I got, right, but it was also a bag of stuff that now I had to decide what I wanted to do with it. So if it's stuff for my kids, do they need these things? Are there spaces for them? Do they have a home? Is this something that's actually going to be used, or is it something I feel obligated to keep because a loved one gave it to me? Think of yourself like your very own donation center. And there's a lot of donation centers out there that don't collect everything. In fact, most of them stopped taking clothes because there were so many clothes being donated to them. step number two, if you're going to let things go and give them to a loved one, you need to ask them first, communicate first. Do they want these items? And if not, let them go. Now here's what I'll say. If you're really feeling brave, what if you didn't ask them and then you just let it go? So then the decision is solely on you and not on your loved ones. Because if they don't know that it exists right now, they won't know that it exists if you donate them. If it's a sentimental item, again, you get to make the rules. if it's an old dishware set, that means nothing. I'm going to let it go. But if it's a sentimental old set of china that grandma gave us, I'm going to ask my kids before I let it go, but I'm not going to give it to them to make the decision for themselves. I'm going to ask first, but that's where you get to decide and maybe you even ask your kids or your loved ones or family friends, Hey, I've got these items. Would you like them now? It's up to them to set their own boundaries there. They might people please you and say yes to anything. I used to do that. I still do that a little bit. How to work on that. Okay. I see people get into this inventory trap a lot where they have a ton of stuff that's leaving the house to go for this person and that person. And for some, we've made boxes. We write kids names on it. We write aunt's names on it, cousins, whomever. And we do have a system to get it out of the house, but that's another barrier for things leaving. And it's going to prevent things from leaving your house as fast in the event that that's what you're doing. So you get to weigh your options here and make a decision on whether or not you want to do that. I'm not telling you what you should do. I'm not telling you that you need to do this or you need to do that. I am explaining to you that these things will slow you down. And if you're okay with that, then you're taking on that extra responsibility. And it's gonna take longer. So number three? I'm just gonna come out and say it. I think you should start with Goodwill. If you just don't know about any other donation centers, haven't done the research, haven't gotten the time, Goodwill is a great place to start. So, I did a ton of research on this and I looked into their financials, I looked into some of the negative press that they've had, not only more recently, but in the past. I also looked into how they were founded and what they do for the community they are actually a not for profit company. So, here's the thing. Goodwill, you see them everywhere. And I know I've heard people say like, well they just take their stuff, and they mark it up, and then they sell it for ridiculous prices, and I looked into some of the debunking articles and I thought what was really interesting is they're getting hit with inflation too. They actually even have a blog They talk about how they've helped the community. they even talk about how the current administration and past administrations have affected their business and the different changes that they have to make along those lines. One other thing that I knew was a concern for me was them not paying the disabled workforce a minimum wage. And I learned that In some states, there is a law or a code written where if you hire someone who is disabled, you can pay them a certain amount underneath the living wage. it was a compromise because People with disabilities also need jobs, but then some of these places were not willing to pay the full minimum wage in order to hire them. But we're not getting into politics. I am just telling you what I know. That, to say, is that Goodwill also does some really cool things to help people find jobs and to help different communities in their area. So some of this information I found from the Ohio Goodwill, but you can actually look up the different Goodwills in your community to see what organizations they're supporting and how they're helping your community. But here's why Goodwill is easy. they're open seven days a week as far as mine is they don't make you sort anything at least mine. I know my digital sidekick said that hers in her hometown makes her sort. you can drop it off normally at any time of day. So this prevents you from having to plan on a specific day. There's another place that I really love to donate to up in Castle Rock, Colorado. It's called Help and Hope and it feels like they have a really good mission behind them and their donation center is only open during specific times. I think it's before noon during the week. if you're in that area, just look on their website. It's really easy to find their hours, but that presented a barrier. I would sometimes drive around with more donations in my car because that was the donation place that myself and my client had agreed on. here's what's cool about this is that when you start to donate to goodwill, you start to train yourself on how to get things out of your home and When you get into this habit of getting things out of your home on a regular basis, you will have had this on your mind so much, and you will be talking about how you're decluttering and letting things go, and guess what will happen? You're going to hear about newer and cooler things. That will come your way. And guess what? I'm going to tell you about some newer and cooler things that not only I have done recently, but could inspire you to make some decisions on the things getting out of your home as well. one place I heard of, it's called thread up. what you do is you sign up for their program and you order a bag and the bag is sent to you and then you fill the bag with all of your stuff that you would like them to try to sell on their website and then you send it all in and they'll post it and all of the different pricings and then what you would make from that price It's all listed on the website. So it's one way to easily get things out of your house and to possibly make a little bit of extra cash. I've never tried this, but I love the premise. I think it's great. I think it's easy. And for a lot of you out there who don't want to let go because you want to try to sell things and make a little cash back, this is a really cool and easy way for you to start doing that. Another one is to have a clothing swap. Now you could do this with friends. You could do this with your neighborhood. I ended up doing it with my community with another local business owner. And we invited people to bring. They're bags of clothes gently used. We hung everything up over the yoga studio. This is my friend's business and Everyone got to come in, shop clothes, we had places to try on things in the back, and anyone who came donated 10 to get in. They could leave with whatever they wanted, and they got to leave their bags of clothes as well. And I've done this twice now. The second time, I did some additional research on where to bring the clothes, because originally, the place that we were going to bring them, we found out that they don't actually accept clothes. So we made a cash donation to them instead, and this time around, I found a really cool charity down in Colorado Springs called Charity Hope. called up Shirley, who runs the place, and she said she'd be so happy to accept the clothes. this has been such a cool adventure because I started with a clothing swap and then I got to do these other fun things. Now, I'm an organizer, so I'm always thinking about this. This is constantly on my mind, but this is something that you can evolve to as well. I also found out that H& M has a box at most of their stores. You might have to call or, check before you go in. But H& M has a place where you can recycle all old textiles. So they have a company that comes in and then sorts them into three different categories. The first category is things that could be resold. And so they could go to thrift stores or they could go to other places, maybe online somewhere to be resold. The second Avenue are things with stains and holes, but could be used for rags or maybe even pet beds, things like that. And then another way that they recycle is anything that can't be used for the first two categories gets put into a recycling option to be turned into an installation of some sort. So it's really neat because there's a ton of companies out there ethically trying to rehome our clothes that normally end up in a landfill. I have another client right now who said that her friend takes clothes and donates them to Africa. And so she'll come and pick up any of the clothing bags she leaves on her porch and she takes them and she ships them off. And that's another really cool way of getting things out of your house. I texted my brother the other day because I remember when he was in the army serving in Iraq, he took a picture with a kid who was wearing a t shirt from his elementary school, from my brother's elementary school in the States. And there was a little boy in Iraq wearing this t shirt. clothing is getting recycled, it's getting to different places, and is there more that we can do? Absolutely. All the time. what's so interesting, is that we've got these barriers on the items that we want to let go of. Because we want to be able to re home these things in the most ethical of ways. If we've lost weight and we have clothes that are too big for us, we want to give them to someone else who could fit into them because you had some really nice clothes. If we've gained weight and we have all these skinny clothes that we're waiting to try to fit into, but you finally are like, Oh, they need to leave. But again, I spent a lot of money on these. I feel like I need them to go to a friend or they've got to go to the perfect person and I don't know who they look good on. You are preventing yourself from the clarity that comes with having less. And so the more barriers you put on the things that need to leave your home, the longer it's going to take for you to realize that you have a lot of the stuff that you need and there's not a lot more that you need to bring into your home. I am at a point right now where I walk into my closet. And I love almost every single thing that I see hanging. I can also very clearly see what I have. I can tell you where it's at. I can tell you where it's hanging. And not because I'm trying to memorize things. It's just because that's the way that I've coordinated my closet to work for me. because I am at that point. I now walk into my closet with a feeling of peace, strength, and control in a way that I never did previously. And what's interesting is I had so much more before, but I could never find anything to wear. I would always pull out the things that didn't look great on me or weren't my size anymore, but I felt like I had to keep them because they were cute or I liked the way they looked on me at one point or another in my life. But when I got my clothing down to the space I am in now, that every single shirt that's hanging up right now fits me. Every single pair of pants I have fits me. Every dress I have fits me. So if I'm going to find something that I want to wear. I feel pretty good about it. I'm describing this to you because, it took me a minute to get here, right? That was a lot of decisions I had to make in order to get to a feeling that I just described to you. But to get there, I had to break down the barriers. I had to say, Oh my gosh, I cannot sell all of these clothes. It's exhausting. Everything that you own is a decision waiting to be made. So when it comes to your closet, when it comes to clothes, when it comes to things with holes in it, when it comes to things with stains on it, when it comes to your favorite items that may be too worn to wear anymore, but you remember how good it looked when you first got it. To the dresses that you really love but don't know if you're ever going to wear them again. To the fat clothes, to the skinny clothes, to the summer clothes, to the maybe clothes, to the might be nice clothes. Every single one of those items is a decision that has to be made. In order for you to get to the item that is waiting for you, the perfect outfit, the outfit that you've been longing for. The more decisions you have in front of that outfit, the harder it is for you to find it. And the harder it is for you to keep anything organized because none of our brains are built to have to manage hundreds of thousands of articles of clothing. the last thing I'll leave you with about letting go and reducing the barriers is that just because I told you and just because I gave you advice and explain this doesn't make the next part any easier because you still have to make a full decision on what you want to do to get things out of your home. And the only person that can make that decision is you. So I challenge you to make a full decision. I challenge you to say, Hey, the first thing I'm going to do is ensure that I have a regular way of getting things out of my home. And if I'm bringing them to goodwill, so be it. I there is going to be emotions involved. You might cry. You might feel a little bit of a yucky pity feeling in your stomach. Your chest might feel a little bit tight, but just because something feels uncomfortable doesn't mean that it's not the right thing for you to do. In fact, when you feel uncomfortable, when you're put in the position of feeling uncomfortable, and then you get to make decisions in that. uncomfortability you get to grow you are welcome enjoy your uncomfortableness But seriously, you get to grow, you get to see the benefit of what letting go does, and here's what's even crazier and cool and so awesome about our A DHD brains. When it is not in your hands anymore, you will not remember. You just won't remember what you let go. I was cleaning my office the other day, and I was vacuuming, and I was remembering all of the things that I had let go of last year. Not individual items, I couldn't remember like specifically what I had let go, but I was just thinking about like these piles and, and like boxes of stuff that I had loaded in the back of my car, and even my client's stuff, and I was like, oh my gosh. There's not one thing I regret letting go to the point that I wish I never started. Not one thing, not one thing that has ruined my life in a way that I can't go on living. And is it still hard for me to sometimes make these decisions? Also yes, I think it gets easier because I know what the feeling is like on the other side, but it's also, this is still the way I'm wired. I'm not curing ADHD. You don't coach with me for me to go, poof, it's gone. You remember everything. You're welcome. No, you just learn that it's okay to feel some of these feelings because you start to realize what the incredible feeling is on the other side from not having to manage so much in your life. I'm super honored to be having these conversations with you. Thanks for tuning in. You guys, I have to shout out my incredible community of beautiful people. Tina Noren Amanda Guadalupe, Alison Sher, Rosalyn Hartman, Kristen Thorne, Jen Peterson, Christina Lee, Mary Beth Massey, Brittany Flank, Maria Adlam, Lisa Radaganga, Jen Hart Tony Masso and Bernadette Robinson. These are the founding members of the organizing and ADHD brain community. Come check it out. We're having a really great time. And next week, I'm releasing the episode I did with Sam from could it be ADHD, the podcast. She's incredible. You're going to fall in love with her and I will see you next week. Thanks for tuning in. That was organizing an ADHD brain. With my mom, Megs. We'll see you next week.