Ep. 209: Clutter Help: The Most Common Reason Women Are Stuck in Their Clutter

This is Episode 2 in our three-part clutter series. 

If you haven't listened to Episode 1 yet—where we walked through all 10 clutter languages—go back and start there. Because today we're going deep on one specific language. And it's going to make a lot more sense if you've got the foundation.

It’s the episode right before this one - and they all start with Clutter Help

But if you're already caught up? Let's go.

If I had to pick one clutter language I see over and over again in women—especially in midlife, it's this one.

Sentimental Saver.

And it has nothing to do with being messy or lazy.

It has everything to do with grief. Transitions. Identity shifts. And emotions you've never fully processed.

This isn't about stuff. It's about seasons. It's about who you were, who you are, and who you're becoming.

And no checklist can solve that.

So today, we're not talking about bins or labels or organizing hacks.

We're talking about the story your clutter is holding. And how to honor it without drowning in it.

So, let’s dive in!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Clutter Languages Guide

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Transcript

Well, let me guess, you've tried decluttering, you've tried mustering up more motivation, you've watched the videos, you've read the books, you've taken the courses, you've bought the bins and the baskets, but the stuff barely moves. And if it does, it just keeps coming back. And every time this happens, you tell yourself the same story. I just need to try harder. I just need to be more disciplined. I just need to care more. But what if that's not true? What if the reason you can't keep up

is because you were never actually meant to. Not because you're broken, not because you're lazy, but because you're operating under a system that doesn't account for your capacity. Well, what's that? Well, emotional load. The amount of decision fatigue that you feel. Your season of life. And that's what we're unpacking today. This is the episode where we are going to start, where we are going to stop blaming you.

and we're going to start looking at what is actually going on underneath the clutter. So let's do a quick recap of all 10 clutter languages because this is what is underneath the clutter first and foremost. But this time I'm gonna frame them a little bit differently. If you've listened to me talk about these in the last couple of episodes, you'll hear a little bit of a different reframe this time because here's what I need you to see. Every single one of these languages falls under low capacity. I'm sorry.

Every single one of these clutter languages fails under low capacity conditions. When you are operating at a low capacity level with let's be honest, a lot of women are operating with pretty much all the time, right? You're stretched thin. I feel like I'm in survival mode. I feel like I'm burning out. I feel like I can't keep up. I feel like I'm drowning. I hear these things from women all day, every day. Most women are in a low capacity season.

simply because there are so many expectations and demands and roles and responsibilities. But know that each one of these clutter languages, they are really going to become a problem if you are in a low capacity season. These are really, your clutter is really gonna challenge you when you are in a low capacity season. So let's walk through these 10 clutter languages. Language number one is guilty keeper. And the thing is, when you're already overloaded,

guilt becomes paralyzing. You can't make decisions. You can't process emotions. And so the stuff just sits there. If you are an overwhelmed avoider, low capacity makes everything feel like too much. And so you avoid. If you normally would feel overwhelmed by the clutter in an overloaded, low capacity season, you're gonna be even more overwhelmed. And so you shut down. You walk past the piles of stuff because looking at it, just,

it makes this tightening happen in your chest. What about sentimental savor? Well, when you are emotionally depleted, you don't have the bandwidth to process grief. And so you hold onto the items because you can't deal with the feelings because you're emotioned out already. What about the all or nothing thinking? Well, if you're an all or nothing thinker, when you're running on empty, perfectionism only gets louder.

You can't start small because your brain tells you that it won't count and so you don't start at all. What about the fantasy future planner? Low capacity makes you escape into the future because the present is just too hard, it's too painful. And so you keep the stuff for some day because today is already too overwhelming. By the way, if you don't know these 10 clutter languages, you should probably pause this episode right here and go to clutterlanguagesguide.com, download it.

and read it real quick because you will see all of these clutter languages that I am talking about right there. So that's the fantasy future planner. What about for the bargain hoarder? Decision fatigue makes you grab the deal because making a quick choice feels better than thinking through, do I actually need this? What about if being the hidden piler is one of your clutter languages? Well,

When you're depleted, you don't have the energy to actually organize. You just shove it somewhere so that you don't have to look at it. What about if you're an indecisive over-thinker? Well, low capacity seasons make every decision feel massive. And so you freeze and you spiral. You leave it for later because your brain cannot handle one more choice. What about the aspiring perfectionist? Well, when you're already overwhelmed,

Perfectionism becomes a shield. You don't start because you're afraid of doing it wrong, so nothing happens. What if you're a resentful reluctant? Low capacity makes resentment sharper. You're already carrying too much, and now you're expected to clean up everyone else's mess too? Mm-mm. It is just too much. So do you see the pattern? It's not the clutter language that's the problem, it's the capacity.

It's the capacity that is present that is only accentuating all of these clutter languages and in making them even more of a stronghold, more of a stumbling block, more of an obstacle than they are under normal conditions. So let's talk about capacity because what exactly is that? Well, capacity is the missing piece. Essentially what it means in relationship to clutter is that you can't ask a depleted system to do something that is more high level.

And having to make the decisions about clutter is a high level ask. You just can't do this when you're in a low capacity season. And yet that's what you have been trying to do over and over again every time you've tried to do anything with the clutter. You've been trying to declutter your house while you're carrying the emotional weight of your family or your aging parents or your shifting identity or your chronic stress and your decision fatigue. And then you beat yourself up when the clutter doesn't actually move.

But it's not you. It's about the load of everything else that you're carrying. And so here's what capacity actually is. It's your bandwidth. It's your energy. It's your ability to think clearly, to make decisions and follow through. It also incorporates the time that you have and how the time that you have available to you aligns with the energy and the bandwidth that you have at any given moment. And the thing about capacity is that it isn't fixed. It changes.

based on your season, based on your stress, based on your emotional load and your nervous system state. And let's not forget about the physiology of changing hormones and changing bodies and changing pretty much everything. And when your capacity is high, well, you can handle more. You can make decisions more easily. You can start projects and move them closer to the finish line. And you can think clearly and act intentionally.

But when your capacity is low, everything just feels harder. Decisions feel impossible. Starting feels overwhelming. Following through feels out of reach. And clutter, clutter just thrives during low capacity seasons. And here's why. Clutter is actually what I call decision debt. Everything that is in your home, every single item that doesn't have a place,

It doesn't have a purpose or it doesn't bring you joy. That is an unmade decision. One of the things I always say is that a pile of clutter is just a pile of unmade decisions. And when you're already overloaded with all of the decisions you make every single day, what to cook, what to say, what to prioritize, how to manage all the schedules, you don't have the bandwidth to make more. And so the stuff just sits there piling up and weighing you down, not because you're lazy.

but because you're already overloaded just with the regular day-to-day life. So let me give you a real life example, paint you the picture of what this could look like. You wake up already behind and you didn't sleep well and you've got a full day ahead, work, kids, errands, obligations. By the time you get home, you're tired, mentally, emotionally, physically. You walk in the door and you see the pile of mail on the counter, the stack of papers on the table, the basket of laundry that needs to be folded. And your brain says, I should do that.

But your body says, nope, not happening. And so you don't. You walk past it. Maybe you pour a glass of wine or a cup of tea, and you sit on the couch, and you scroll. Not because you don't care about any of those things, but because you are just plain out of capacity. And so all of that stuff, all of that clutter just stays there. And it's not a motivation problem that is keeping you from dealing with it. It is a capacity problem. And until you understand that, you're going to keep blaming yourself for something that's not actually your fault.

And here's where it gets messy because if you don't understand capacity, you turn it into shame. You look at that stuff and you think, what's wrong with me? Why can't I keep up? Why does everyone else have it together? And that shame is the biggest momentum killer you will find because shame doesn't motivate. A lot of times we think we're just gonna shame ourselves into taking action, but it actually does the exact opposite. Shame actually paralyzes. Shame.

makes you avoid, it makes you hide, it makes you give up before you even start. And that's why you keep resetting. That's why you keep starting and stopping and starting and stopping over and over and over again. You get a burst of motivation and so you declutter for an afternoon and you feel amazing because you did that. And then life happens. Your capacity drops and the clutter comes back. And the shame, it hits harder this time because you already tried and it didn't work. It didn't stick and so you tell yourself,

I'll never be able to get on top of this again. And so you stop trying. But here's the truth. The reason it didn't stick, the reason that you stopped and started and stopped and started wasn't because you failed, it was because essentially you were trying to maintain a high capacity ask, dealing with the clutter, in a low capacity system and during a low capacity season. And it just doesn't work.

So let me tell you about a client that I worked with. She came to me exhausted, burned out, and full of shame. She'd been trying to declutter her house for eight years. She'd done three big purges, and she made progress. But each time, it came back, and it didn't take very long. And each time, the shame got worse. I keep failing. I don't know what's wrong with me. But when we dug in, here's what we found. She was working full time. She was managing sick kids.

She was raising teenagers and she was dealing with chronic health issues of her own. Her capacity was essentially zero. And she was trying to run this high-maintenance, nuanced system of interwoven roles and responsibilities and expectations and demands and problems that appear out of nowhere pretty much all the time and then asking herself to take care of the clutter at the same time. No wonder her decluttering marathons weren't working. And so we didn't start with decluttering. We started with

Capacity. We started figuring out what she was carrying. The visible, the invisible, the emotional load, the mental load, the physical load, all of it. And once we saw all of the directions that she was being pulled in, we lightened her load some. We simplified her systems. We gave her permission to do less, to change her expectations in one of my favorite ways. Shooting for 80%, 80 % completion, 80 % effort, 80 % success.

This is B minus C plus work. That's what we're shooting for. I've got a course called Winning It Being Average, and it's full of all of my imperfect life hacks, since no one can ever do it all, especially when it comes to clutter. But when we applied this 80 % lens to the things that she was doing, then she had the bandwidth and capacity for the clutter to start to shift. And it wasn't because she tried harder, but because she had the underneath it all.

to maintain and to deal with her clutter. All right, well, let's zoom out for a second because here's the big picture truth. Listen, listen if you're multitasking, this is really important. Clutter is often the first place, the first place that we notice our life isn't working. Not because it's the biggest problem, but why? Why is it what we notice? Because it's the most visible. Here's the thing.

You can hide your emotional overwhelm. You can mask your burnout. You can push through your exhaustion, but you can't hide the pile on the counter. The closet that won't close, the garage that you can't park in, it is all right there in your face every single day. And it becomes the thing that you beat yourself up about. But the clutter isn't the problem, it's only the symptom. It's the symptom of chronic responsibility, of emotional overload, of decision fatigue, of...

season mismatch. And when you treat the symptom without addressing the root, it's going to keep coming back. So here is the most important thing that you need to hear. You are not failing at clutter. You are not failing at keeping or maintaining your home. You're failing at capacity management. And that's not your fault because no one taught you how to manage your capacity or that it was even a thing. No one taught you that your bandwidth matters, that your energy, it's finite.

It's limited that your season determines your systems or it needs to. No one taught you that it's okay to do less, that it's okay to simplify, to let go of all that pressure and to stop shaming. But that's what I'm teaching you now because sustainable change, doesn't come from motivation. It comes from building systems that fit your capacity, not the capacity that you wish you had.

Not the time that you wish you had or the energy that you wish you had, the capacity that you actually have right now in this season. So let me give you one more real life example. You've been trying to keep up with the morning routine that you saw on Instagram. Something like wake up at 5 a.m., meditate, journal, workout, meal prep. But you're exhausted. You're not sleeping well. You're managing a full household. And every morning you don't do that routine, you feel like a failure.

But the routine isn't the problem, the expectation is. Because that routine, it requires high capacity, lots of bandwidth, and you're in a low capacity season. And so instead of beating yourself up, what if you just adjusted? What if you gave yourself permission to do a five minute version or skip it all together some days? Again, one of my favorite principles is, what if it looks like this? What if you asked yourself to do this modified version of your morning routine?

more often than you skip it. Meaning, instead of expecting that this is gonna be the routine that you follow every day, you'd only ask yourself to do it four mornings a week, since that's the tipping point in a seven day week. It means that you'll hit the mark if you're doing it four days a week. It means that you will hit the mark more than you'll miss it. What if you allowed that to be success? Because friend, it's not failure if you're not hitting that every day. It's not missing the mark.

Asking yourself to do it four out of seven days, for instance, is wisdom. Wisdom is in knowing that you have 100 % permission to be human, because guess what? You are 100 % human. And once you understand about your capacity and your bandwidth, and you adjust how to live within the amount of those things that you have each day, well, that's when you're gonna have enough left to show up for your clutter sometimes.

And that's what sustainable change looks like.

Well, friend, if this episode reframe things for you, here's what to do. First, go download the Clutter Languages Guide at clutterlanguagesguide.com. It's got all 10 clutter languages broken down for you, plus some reflection questions and strategies for each one. Second, stick with this channel because this is where sustainable change starts. We are having a clutter conversation every single week. And we're not gonna be talking about bins. We're not gonna be talking about checklists, but...

with understanding yourself and your capacity and your season, and then maybe diving into some of those other things. Because friend, if clutter is in your home, you're not broken. It is just evidence that you are overloaded. And that is something that is fixable. So thanks for being here. I'll see you in the next episode.