Ep. 215: Clutter Help: The Missing Strategy When You’re Stuck in Your Clutter (without it, the clutter will stay)

Let’s talk clutter today.

Last week when we talked about clutter we talked about structure…what it is, why it matters, and how it gives your brain the external support it needs to finally let go of clutter.

We talked about why your brain keeps things visible as a protection mechanism. Why papers stay out on the counter. Why surfaces turn into work zones. And how structure creates the containers, routines, and clear next steps that allow your brain to exhale and trust that things won't slip through the cracks.

And if you implemented what we talked about last week…if you created that container, that inbox, that system you might have noticed something surprising.

You might have noticed that even with the perfect system in place, you still avoided it sometimes.

Or you started using it, but then stopped when it felt emotionally heavy.

Or you used it perfectly for a few days, but then life got loud and you abandoned it entirely.

And if that happened, I want you to know, nothing is wrong with you. You're not broken. You didn't fail.

What's actually happening is that structure alone isn't enough.

You actually need the second support that most women are missing when it comes to their clutter. 

Check the Clutter Languages Guide HERE. 

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Transcript

OK, so if you were with us last week, we talked about systems. We talked about why you needed a system to work in order to clear the clutter. But that wasn't the only piece. You also need permission. And this is what we're diving into today, the second half of what makes this work. And it's the piece that almost nobody is talking about, but it changes everything.

We're talking about permission today, what it actually means, why you need it, even when you have great clutter systems, and how to give it to yourself so that you can finally stop avoiding and start moving forward. So let's jump in. All right, well, last week we built that structure piece. We talked about creating containers and routines and clear next steps. And you might have set up your inbox or your basket or your system to help contain that clutter.

And maybe it worked great for a few days. Maybe you loved it at first, but then something happened. Maybe you looked at the basket and you felt overwhelmed by what was in it. Maybe you started sorting the papers and you got emotionally attached and you had to walk away. Maybe you told yourself you'd come back later, but days passed and you still haven't. And now you're wondering, why isn't this working? I have the system. I know what to do. Why can't I just use it?

Well, here's what you need to understand. Structure tells your brain what happens next. But permission tells your nervous system that it's okay to engage in hard things. And this is the piece that almost nobody talks about because even with great systems, many women still avoid the space or the box or the shelf or the closet. They avoid the papers. They avoid the clutter, the inbox, the surfaces. Why? Well, because permission

answers a different question than structure does. Structure says, what do I do next? Permission says, am I allowed to do this in an incomplete way? Am I allowed to do this messily and without needing to finish? And this is the permission your brain needs, because life likely demands that you will have to do this messily. You will have to deal with things in stages. You're going to have to stop before you're done, especially when it comes to papers.

They're continually coming in. You have papers you constantly need to deal with in some way. And so without permission to do it messily or in stages, here's what happens. You wait until you have enough time, or you avoid because you can't finish everything, or you leave when it feels emotionally heavy, or you tell yourself you'll come back later, but you don't. And if this sounds familiar, know that you're not alone.

So let's get really specific about what permission means in context, because it's not just a feel-good word. It's not just about being nice to yourself. Permission is actually a nervous system tool that lowers emotional risk so you can engage with the structure that you've built. Essentially, it is a nervous system tool that makes your nervous system less on alert so that it's not trying to steer you in the other direction.

So let me give you some examples of what permission sounds like. Sorting is enough for today. You don't have to process every paper. You don't have to fix everything. You don't have to make every decision sorting. Just putting things into basic categories. That counts. That's progress. Permission could also sound like putting these papers in this basket is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is the system. You're not cheating here. You're not taking the shortcut. You're not being lazy either.

You're using the system exactly as it was designed. The basket is there to hold things until you're ready to deal with them. Permission could also sound like I can stop. You don't have to finish. You don't have to power through. You can stop when you get tired or overwhelmed or when the timer goes off. Stopping is part of the process. It's not a failure of the process. Permission could also sound like I'm allowed to get back to this.

This isn't your last chance. You don't have to do it all right now. The system will still be there tomorrow. The papers will still be in the basket. You can come back. You will come back. Permission could also sound like this is good enough for now and your brain needs to hear this. The papers are just fine in the basket. Those things are safe in the container. Nothing is being lost or forgotten. The system is containing that stuff for you.

And here's why this matters so much. Without permission to do it messily or in stages, here's what happens. You wait until you have enough time, but you never have enough time, so you never start. Or you avoid because you can't finish everything, so the pile just continues to grow, and the guilt grows with it. Or you leave when it feels emotionally heavy because you don't have permission to walk away mid-process, and so you just don't start at all because you know that that box is filled with a

bunch of memories that are going to pull on your heartstrings. So you avoid it. You tell yourself you'll come back later, but you don't because later never feels like the right time either. So let me give you a real example from my own life. I used to look at my kitchen counter every morning and see the piles of papers. There were school papers, there was bills, there was random receipts, things I needed to deal with. And every morning I would tell myself, I need to deal with this today. But what deal with it meant,

in my mind was sort every paper, file everything, make all the phone calls, process all the decisions, clear the entire counter. So when I only had 15 minutes before I needed to leave for an appointment, I wouldn't touch it because I couldn't finish it. When I sat down with my coffee and started sorting, but got to this paper that required a phone call and I didn't have time for the phone call, I would stop and then I would feel guilty again for not finishing. When I got

three papers deep and found something emotionally heavy, like a medical bill that I was worried about paying or a form that reminded me I had missed a deadline. I'd shut down and walk away and I'd beat myself up for avoiding it. I had the structure, I had a filing system, I had a basket, I had a plan, but I didn't have permission. I didn't have permission to sort without processing. I didn't have permission to stop when it got heavy.

I didn't have permission to put something in the deal with it later pile without feeling like I was failing. And so I avoided the whole thing and the pile grew and I felt worse and worse and worse about myself until I learned this. Permission isn't optional, it's actually essential because your nervous system is designed to protect you from threats. And when something feels emotionally threatening, like that pile of papers that represents everything you're behind on, your nervous system says, no, no.

Don't go near that. It's not safe. Your brain sees the stress, the nervous system spike, the overwhelm, the anxiety that comes when you deal with that clutter, and it interprets that as an unsafe environment. And so it steers you away. But when you give yourself permission, real explicit permission to engage imperfectly, your nervous system can relax. It says, we're not trying to fix everything right now. We're just sorting. OK, I can do that.

That's when forward motion becomes possible. So let me give you some practical examples of how this works. So example one is the mail basket. You come home with the mail in your hand. Instead of leaving it on the counter where it's gonna call after you or trying to process every piece of mail immediately, which you don't have the energy or time for right in that moment, you put your mail into a cute little basket. That's it. That's the whole action. That's the whole system.

and you give yourself permission. This is what I'm supposed to do. The mail lives in the basket until I have time to deal with the mail. Later, maybe that evening, maybe on Saturday mornings, you sit down for 15 minutes and you go through the basket. You sort. You might not process everything. You might put some things into a bills to pay later folder. You might toss a lot of junk mail. You might even add a few things to your calendar because they're coming up. And when that 15 minutes are up, you stop.

Even if there is mail left, you don't process every last piece. You don't necessarily clear the basket entirely. You just work for 15 minutes and then you're done. The permission is 15 minutes is enough and then I'll come back if I need to. Example two, the kids' papers. Your kids bring home papers from school. They never end, right? Art projects, permission slips, graded work, announcements.

Instead of trying to make a decision about each one immediately, do I keep this? Do I file it? Do I toss it? Do I frame it? Do I scan it? You put them into a bin. And the permission says, I don't have to decide right now. These are going to wait here for me. And then once a week, you spend 10 minutes going through the bin. You make some decisions. You toss some things. You file some things. You take pictures of the art that you're not keeping.

But you don't have to process every single paper and you don't have to keep going until the bin is empty. 10 minutes and then you stop. And maybe you'll have to come back. But the permission says, this is progress. 10 minutes is progress. I can come back and finish. Example three, the counter clutter. There is a surface in your home. For a lot of us, it's the kitchen counter. But it could be a counter, a table, a dresser that always seems to collect stuff.

keys, sunglasses, receipts, items that don't have a home. Instead of trying to declutter and organize that entire surface, which probably feels overwhelming like it did for me, you spend five minutes putting like with like. Keys go in the key spot, sunglasses go in another spot, papers go in another pile. That's it. It's five minutes of sorting. You're not gonna organize the whole house or probably even the whole counter.

And you don't find permanent homes for everything. You don't solve the root cause of why things land there. You're simply sorting what is there. And the permission is reminding you that sorting is enough. This is progress. Do you see the pattern? Permission allows you to take small, contained actions without committing to finish the whole thing. And those small actions add up. And when they add up, that creates momentum.

And even bigger than that, they prove to your brain that the system works and that you can trust yourself to come back to it. So let me talk a little bit about why most of us struggle with this concept. We've been trained to believe that starting something means we have to finish it. That if we're going to clean the kitchen, we need to deep clean the whole thing. That if we're going to organize, we need to declutter every drawer and every shelf in the closet.

that if we're gonna deal with papers, we need to process every single one until the pile is gone. This is that all or nothing or black and white thinking. And it truly is, whether we're talking about clutter or anything else, it truly is the enemy of progress. Because when you only have 15 minutes, when you only have a little bit of energy, this all or nothing thinking tells you, don't bother, you can't finish it, so don't start. And so you don't start, and the pile grows.

and you feel worse. But here's the truth, you don't have to finish to make progress. Sorting is progress. Putting things in the basket is progress. Working for 10 minutes is progress. Making it through three papers instead of 30 is progress. Progress doesn't have to be complete to count. And this is where permission becomes powerful. Because permission says you don't have to finish, you just have to show up.

and even small steps move you forward. When you can truly internalize that, when you really and truly believe that, everything changes. And you can stop waiting for the perfect three or four hour block of time or weekend to devote to decluttering. You can stop avoiding because you can't do it all. You can stop beating yourself up for not finishing. And you start taking these small imperfect steps again and again.

until one day you look up and you realize, wow, that pile is smaller. The counter doesn't have much clutter on it. The system is working. And it's not because you did everything at once, but because you gave yourself permission to do it really in the way that reality demands, which is in pieces and parts and stages. When both structure and permission work together, this is the secret sauce. Because then you stop avoiding, you stop scattering.

You stop relying on visual clutter to remember that you have to deal with it. You can deal with things one step at a time. And when I say one step at a time, I don't mean slow progress. I don't mean low standards. I don't mean dragging things out. I mean contained progress. One step at a time matters. You only deal with what's right in front of you. You don't carry the next five steps mentally.

You don't have to decide the ending before you begin or before you get there. Most overwhelm doesn't come from the task itself. It comes from trying to figure out every little thing that comes after it at the same time. But when you have structure and you have permission and they work together, you don't have to do that. The structure creates the clear starting and stopping containers like 10 minutes or 15 minutes or

10 papers or three things from the counter. It's these clear stopping and starting containers so that you know you're only dealing with this small part. I'm putting this piece of mail in the basket and I empty this basket at the end of the night. That's the system. These are the clear containers. They're clear boundaries. They're clear stopping points. And permission says you don't have to do more than that right now. This that we did is enough.

That's when forward motion becomes possible. And that's when we have to stop visibly looking at all of the things. That's when out of sight no longer has a chance of being out of mind because you already have the system in place and you have permission to stop, to start and stop and start and stop.

One of the things that a lot of times we rely on when we're dealing with clutter is willpower. So we need to spend a minute talking about that because what has likely been happening with this stuff that you have is again that you have been relying on keeping it visible. Your stuff has been visible. There's papers on the counter so you don't forget. There's items on the table so that you don't forget that you need to return those. And there's things scattered around.

And to make it not visible anymore, you have been relying on your willpower. Just work with it. Just do it. Just deal with it so that you don't have to look at it all over anymore. But here's the problem. Willpower does not work here, and that's why it's still there. But let me explain why willpower doesn't work. Willpower essentially makes assumptions, and it assumes three things. You can push through emotional discomfort. That's thing number one. Just push through the emotional discomfort.

Thing two, you can ignore nervous system signals like, this is just too much, this is too many decisions today. And the third thing that it assumes is that you can force yourself to finish once you start no matter what. But when emotional weight is high, willpower actually backfires. It increases pressure, it increases avoidance, it turns small tasks essentially into threats.

in your brain and your nervous system. That's why just try harder never sticks because your nervous system isn't responding to the physical task of sorting papers or clearing a counter. It's responding to the emotional weight that is attached to those tasks. At home, everything is personal. Everything is tied to your identity as a capable person, a good mom, a responsible adult, a good host.

So when you look at those piles of paper, your brain doesn't just see papers. It sees evidence, evidence that you're behind. It sees proof that you can't keep up. It's this constant reminder of all the things you haven't done. And it's this fear that you're failing and you'll never get on top of it again. And willpower can't override those things. No amount of just suck it up and do it will make that emotional weight go away. But support...

removes that need for willpower. And again, support looks like a system. It's a container that holds what you're not touching yet. It's a routine that tells you when you're going to return. It's permission to stop before you're entirely done. And it's a system that remembers for you. You know when you're coming back to it. It already knows. With a supported system, your brain doesn't need to scan ahead.

It doesn't need to figure out every step. It doesn't need to commit to finishing. It can say, I only have to do this one thing. Again, that's when forward motion becomes possible. The system creates that emotional support that you need to not default to this must stay in sight so that it doesn't move out of my mind. When support is present, your body can stay regulated. Your thoughts can stop racing. You don't

flee from the space and you don't need a burst of motivation. You can take a step and then another because that's all you're required to do at any one time. Now this might look like discipline or willpower from the outside, but in reality you've removed the need for discipline because you've created safety and support within this system. That's the difference and that's what makes it sustainable.

Now I want to shift gears and talk about something I hear all the time from women inside my coaching community, accomplished lifestyle. They say things like, I was so organized at work. Why can't I do this at home? And if you've ever had that thought, if you've ever felt confused or frustrated because you were capable and organized in your career, but can't seem to get your home life together, this is for you. There's actually a reason for it. The answer isn't discipline. It's emotional containment.

That's what's missing. So let me explain what I mean. At work, the systems hold the emotional weight for you. Think about it. At work, typically your tasks aren't personal. Your expectations are clear. Your routines already exist. There's a definition probably from someone else about what done looks like. And the responsibility is shared or it's clearly assigned. Everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing at work.

They know how to do it and they know how to get help if they don't and they know what the outcome should look like. And so even when work can be stressful, the emotions are buffered by that kind of structure. This is your job. This is your co-worker's job. This is what we do. This is the order we do it in. This is how it's done. That's that structure. And so

You're not left to question your worth or your capacity. You're just there doing the job. If you mess up a report, it's not evidence that you're failing as a human. It's just a report that needs to be revised. If you don't finish something today, there's a clear plan for when it will get done. There's a project timeline. There's a team. There's a system. The structure holds your emotions in check. But at home, that structure disappears.

And probably so do the guidelines that others have put in place. It's all relying on you. And because the structure has disappeared, now the emotions get ramped up and they start spilling out. Paperwork at home represents things like care for other people, fear of forgetting something important, guilt for getting behind, pressure to keep it all together and go all the places and do all the things and pay all the bills, no matter what the checkbook looks like.

It's evidence of how well or how poorly you're managing your life. And so avoiding that stuff, again, it doesn't signal laziness. It's legitimately self-protection. It's yourself, your nervous system, protecting you from hard emotional feelings and essentially these stories that we allow our clutter to tell ourselves about how much we're failing.

about how much we're not doing it right and about how lazy and unmotivated and undisciplined we are. And so at home, your nervous system is responding to emotional overload. It's responding to all of these heightened emotions. It's not responding to the task itself. That's why you can sort and file things at work without a second thought. But at home, you walk past the same pile for weeks. It's not that you don't know how to file papers. You've proven that you do.

It's that those papers carry different things than the papers at work do. When emotions aren't contained, clutter becomes a coping strategy. Leaving things out feels safer because visible equals remembered. Scattered equals I'll deal with it later. Hidden equals risk. The clutter that you're allowing to sit there and be visible

It's trying to help you not drop the ball. And until you can rebuild the emotional container that exists naturally at work and the willpower, until you can build that container, willpower and discipline are not gonna solve your problem, but that's what you've been relying on thus far. So how do we fix this then? How do we recreate essentially the work container at home? How do we create that emotional containment that we have at work? How do we do that at home?

The two things we have talked about in this episode and the last, structure and permission. Just to review, structure, it rebuilds that external container. There's a cute basket or a bin. There's a routine. There's a planned, scheduled time block. And again, the routine of what you do with the mail and things like that. This is the physical system that holds the task.

permission is going to reduce that emotional exposure. And it does that by, again, reminding you, I don't have to finish. I can stop. Partial progress counts. The mail in this cute basket is where it belongs for now. This doesn't define my worth. This is the internal safety that allows you to engage with the task without spiraling emotionally. And together,

both the structure and the permission, they contain both the task and the emotion. And that's when your home can start to feel manageable again. So let's bring this all together. If home feels harder than work, if you've been beating yourself up for not being able to transfer your professional organizational skills to your personal life, listen carefully, nothing is wrong with you.

You didn't lose your skills. You're not broken. You haven't suddenly become an incapable person. You've just been carrying emotional weight intertwined with all of that stuff without a container. And that's exactly what we've been building here. Structure gives your brain a system that it can trust, a place for things to live, a routine for when you'll come back, a clear next step. That's what we talked about last week. Make sure you have checked out that episode from last week.

Permission gives you emotional safety to engage with that system, to stop when you need to, to do it in stages, to not have to finish everything right now. And when you have both, when structure and permission work together, that's when the clutter can finally start to move. You stop avoiding, you stop spiraling, you stop white knuckling your way through with that willpower that never carries you far enough. And you can start moving forward just one small contained step at a time.

And it's not because you suddenly became more disciplined. It's not because you finally got your act together, but because you gave yourself what you actually needed, a system and permission to use it, even if it's messy, even if it's just a progress system. So here's what to do this week. Let's do this permission challenge that I've created, okay? You're gonna pick one cluttered area or surface in your home, not the whole house.

Not every room, just one surface, one counter, one table, one spot where papers go and tend to pile up. Step two is to create one simple container for that area. Could be a basket, a tray, a folder, a box. It doesn't matter. Just something that holds the things that land on that surface. Step three, give yourself permission to use it messily. This is the key. When something lands on that surface, you're allowed to just put it in the container.

That's it. That's the whole system. You don't have to process it immediately. You don't have to file it perfectly. You don't have to finish dealing with it right in that moment. You just put it in the container. And then here's that permission part. You schedule one time a day, one time every few days, one time a week for just 10 minutes to go through what's in that container. Not to finish everything, not to process every item, just to sort, just to look, just to deal with.

to do what you can in those 10 minutes. And when the 10 minutes are up, you stop, even if you're not done, even if there's more in the container. You stop because that's what the system asks you to do. And then you can repeat that process. You schedule another time to work for that same 10 minutes. There's a step four though. Notice when your brain wants to tell you it's not enough. Notice when you want to keep going because you should finish.

Notice when you want to avoid it entirely because you can't do it perfectly. And then practice the permission part. Practice saying things like, this is enough, this is what I'm supposed to do, I can work in stages, partial progress counts, 10 minutes counts. That's what permission looks like. You're retraining your brain to look at clutter differently and to manage clutter differently and to allow your relationship and your

processes with clutter to look different from maybe how they have looked for decades. So if you take nothing else from our time here today, take this. You don't need more discipline. You don't need to try harder. You don't need to be more organized to take care of your clutter. You need structure and permission working together. Structure to hold the task, permission to engage with it imperfectly. And when you give yourself both,

clutter stops being this massive overwhelming thing that you have no choice but to avoid. And it becomes something that you can deal with, one small contained step at a time. So try that permission challenge this week. Pick the surface, create the container, give yourself permission to use it messily. And then come back and share. Leave a comment here.

This is all about rebuilding trust with yourself. It's about creating systems that actually work for your real life. It's about giving yourself what you've needed all along. And in this case, it's structure and permission to be human while you figure all that stuff out. So if you haven't yet diagnosed what your clutter language is, that is an excellent place to start. You can go to clutterlanguagesguide.com and see all 10 clutter languages

that can help explain why the clutter is there and why it's so hard to get rid of. Make sure you go download that because that is going to give you an excellent foundation and key insight into yourself and what is making it so hard to get rid of those things. And then work with this permission challenge this week. Until we talk again, make it a great day.