Ep. 219: How We Made Decluttering Suck Less & What Happened Next

We just finished our Declutter-a-Thon.

And I want to tell you what actually happened.

Not just the cleaning. Not just the organizing. Not the before and after photos. Not the perfectly folded towels or the labeled bins.

But what shifted in the women who showed up.

Because I've run events before. I've taught systems before. I've handed out frameworks and checklists and step-by-step guides. And I know the difference between an event where people walk away with information.. and an event where people walk away different.

This was the second one.

The feedback wasn't just, "My counter looks better."

It sounded like this:

"I am so thrilled with the progress I made in my office today."

"I really benefited from doing this with other people."

"I would have given up before this."

"My bedroom now is set up for success with organizing."

And one of my favorites one that really helped me know we were on to something.

"Seeing the tasks BEING done rather than on the list TO BE done!"

Read that again.

Tasks being done. Not on the list to be done.

That is the shift. That is what we're chasing. Not a cleaner house, though that happened too. Not a prettier space,  though that happened too.

Momentum. Relief. The feeling of actually finishing something. The evidence that you are capable of more than you've been giving yourself credit for.

That's what happened in the Declutter-a-Thon.

And today I want to tell you exactly why. Because it wasn't hype. It wasn't magic. It wasn't a personality type or a level of motivation that some women have and others don't.

It was structure. It was simplicity. And it was doing it together.

Let me walk you through all of it.

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Transcript

Okay, so before we get into what happened during the declutterathon and why it worked, I want to share this. The women actually asked to do this again. These are the women who just spent three hours decluttering and they want to spend three more hours decluttering. So let me ask you a question. How often have you spent three hours decluttering and thought it was so amazing?

that you couldn't wait to do it again. I'm going to go with that has never happened before. And so we're doing it again tomorrow night on Tuesday, February 24 from 5 to 8 p.m. Eastern. We're doing the Declutterathon again and we'll be offering the replay for purchase too. So outside of that event, you can still experience the same thing. You can follow the same instructions.

I read all of the chat comments for the benefit of those who are watching the replay so that you can still partake in the conversation, so that you can still see all of the wins that you're a part of. You can't lose with this one. If you need clutter movement, these ladies and what they experienced are all the proof you need that this is three hours of clutter movement you can't afford not to be part of. And it doesn't even feel like work.

Visit jenniferroskamp.com and look for the Declutterathon tab so that you can learn more there. OK, back to this conversation. Let's talk about something that most decluttering content skips entirely, the stuff. Not the physical stuff, the emotional weight of the stuff. Because here's what I know about midlife women. We're not just messy. We are not lazy.

We are not disorganized because something is wrong with us. We are just mentally overloaded. And midlife women are mentally and emotionally overloaded for that matter. And clutter, real clutter, the kind that accumulates over years and years and sometimes decades even, it's not just a pile of objects. It's a pile of unmade decisions. These are boxes and bins.

and shelves of unmade decisions. And these unmade decisions are one of the heaviest things that a person could carry. Think about what a single drawer actually contains. If you've got a cluttered drawer, okay? There's the thing that you bought for a version of yourself that you haven't been in five years. There's the thing that belonged to someone you loved and lost and you don't know what to do with it now.

There's the thing that you're keeping because getting rid of it feels like giving up on a future you're not quite ready to let go of. There's the thing you don't need, but could it justify the money you spent on it? And so you keep it as evidence that you didn't waste that money. Every single object in a cluttered space represents a decision that has not been made yet. And when you're already making hundreds, thousands of decisions a day, what to cook, what to say,

How to respond, what to prioritize, who needs what from you. The idea of standing in front of a drawer and making 50 more decisions about objects that carry emotional weight? Well, your brain just shuts down. And again, it's not because you're weak, but it's because you're human and your brain's job is to protect you from harsh realities, even if they're actually true. Here's another thing. Decision fatigue is real, and it hits

It hits midlife women especially hard because we are making decisions for multiple people all the time, constantly. And by the time we get to that drawer then, we have nothing left. So we close the drawer. And then we feel shame about having closed the drawer. And the shame makes the drawer feel bigger. It makes it feel more impossible. It's more evidence that we can't get it together. And so...

the piles and the drawers and the boxes and the bins, they grow. And it's not because we're messy, but because we're maxed out. And so the real problem is not the clutter. It's decision fatigue wrapped in shame, wrapped in avoidance, and wrapped in this never ending spiral. And that is exactly what we solved during our declutter-a-thon. So here's what we did different.

Instead of asking women to make unlimited, open-ended, emotionally loaded decisions about every object, I gave them a framework. Just four options. That's it. They had four different decisions that covered every single thing in the box or the bin or the drawer or the shelf they were working with. That is the whole entire declutter-a-thon. Four decisions.

When you reduce the decision tree, you reduce the cognitive load. When you reduce the cognitive load, you reduce the overwhelm. When you reduce the overwhelm, that's when you start moving. And when you start moving, momentum comes in and it lends a very big hand. So here are the four decisions that I gave them, the four different categories. Everything they touched had to fit

into one of these four different categories. And actually there was a fifth one and we started there. We started with the trash. That was the easiest filter of all. But the four official filters are this. Filter number one, decision one they could make. And we started after we worked with the trash, this is where we started. Decision one is the things that are yes, a clear yes.

This belongs in my life right now. It has a place. It makes sense. It serves me. I use it. I love it. I need it. It stays. And here's what I want you to notice about this one. There's no justification required. There's no internal committee meeting with yourself. There's no debate. If your gut says, and your gut is being honest, if your gut says yes, then it's a yes. Trust it. Move on.

But there's no lying allowed. One of the things that slows women down is the justification spiral. They pick something up and they know it's a yes. And then they start arguing with themselves about it anyway. Why do I still have this? Do I really need this? Should I need this? Is it OK that I do need this? Stop. Stop that right there. If it is a yes, put it down. Move on.

This builds something really important quickly. It builds decision trust. The more fast and clean decisions that you make, the more your brain starts to believe that you can actually do this, that you are capable of this, that it doesn't have to be as hard as it has felt for probably a long time. So decision category yes or decision filter, or decision filter one is yes.

Decision filter two is no. This is a clear no. It doesn't fit. It doesn't serve me right now. It's not who I am anymore or who I'm interested in becoming anymore. And here's the thing I want to say about a no, because a lot of women struggle here. No doesn't require a funeral. We treat things letting go like a loss, like

We owe the object something. Like getting rid of it means we're erasing a memory or admitting a failure or confirming that we wasted money or giving up on a dream. But no can just be no. It's not a loss. No is power. No is actually clarity. No is deciding what your space and what your life are going to hold and deciding it intentionally, not by default.

No is not a loss, no is forward movement. And this is where women started feeling lighter fast because every no is a weight that you're choosing to put down. Every no is breathing room that you're creating. Every no is space, physical and mental, that didn't exist before. No is a powerful decision category. Decision category or filter three is not

Now, now, let me explain this because this is where it gets nuanced. And the game totally changes here because the two decision filters that I'm about to give you, they have previously been filters that have been shamified. These have been shameful decisions prior to this point, anytime that you've dealt with clutter. And the shameful category or filter,

that these two filters have fallen under is avoidance. It's the, nope, can't do it. And so you don't and you avoid. You walk away from the clutter that your brain and your heart says that you have to avoid. And that's why it sticks around for years and years, maybe even decades, because it's all about avoiding it. Okay, so back to the not now. I wanna explain it carefully because most people misuse this category. And when you misuse it,

it becomes a dumping ground that creates more shame than it does relief. So not now is what I call intentional deferral. It means I'm choosing to revisit this within a defined timeframe. We put things in this category into a container, a literal box or a bag or a basket, but also a figurative container. And when we set a specific

When we have this specific container, we close that container by setting up a date to revisit the things in that container. And that date can be no more than seven to 10 days from right now. It's not a, I'll get to this someday. It's not about eventually. It's about a specific day. And the fact that you'll get to it within seven to 10.

Maybe it'll be more than one day, but you are going to open up that container by seven to 10 days from now, today. Not now is not, can't deal with this. Not now is I am choosing when I will deal with this. And that's a completely different thing. So what you've had up until this point is avoidance. But what you have,

with the not now category or filter is agency over yourself and your stuff. When women understood that distinction, something shifted. Because for a lot of us, not now has always meant never. We've used, I'll deal with it later, as a way to avoid the discomfort of the decision entirely, and later never came. And so that's why the piles and the boxes and the bins

have gotten bigger and bigger and the shame gets louder. But when not now has a container and a date, a deadline, when it is a deliberate choice rather than an escape door, it actually reduces pressure instead of creating more of it because you're not avoiding your scheduling. And that's something that your brain can work with. So that's the third.

decision, filter, or category. The fourth one, the fourth one is overwhelm. And this one is different from all of the others, and it might be the most important one. Overwhelm is not a decision category. Overwhelm is data. When you hit overwhelm in the middle of a decluttering session, it means that your nervous system is at capacity. It means that your brain has hit its processing limit.

and it cannot handle another emotionally or mentally loaded decision right now. And here's what most people do with that signal. They push through it and then they burn out completely or they quit. And when they quit, they feel like a failure. Here's what we do instead. We shrink the scope. When overwhelm hits, stop making decisions about hard things right there. Go find the trash.

Go find the obvious trash, things that require zero emotional or mental processing. Go find the easy yeses, things that clearly belong, that just need a home. Reduce the intensity in that moment. Let your nervous system come back down. Let it settle. And then when you have a little bit more capacity, you can go back to the harder stuff, whenever that is.

Overwhelm is not failure. Overwhelm is a signal that you need to adjust. You need to pay attention to something. In reality, you need more to deal with the things that feel overwhelming than what you have right now. That is understanding. It's not abandonment. And when women in the declutter-a-thon understood the difference of not now and overwhelm, which both are very strategic choices, and

When they understood that overwhelm simply means capacity limit, the whole dynamic of the session changed. They stopped just white-knuckling their way through those hard things. They stopped quitting when it felt uncomfortable. They just adjusted. And then they could keep moving. That's the framework. That's what we did during the Declutter-a-thon. Everything that they touched, there were four options.

They only had to make four different decisions. Yes, not, yes, no, not now, and overwhelm. It's simple. And because it was simple, it worked. So I want to stay in this moment and kind of expand on things a little bit here because I think this is the most important teaching from the whole event. Most women think that deferring, right,

They think that the not now or the I'm too overwhelmed to deal with this right now category equals avoidance. They think that they're actually avoiding. And the difference between difference and avoidance is everything. Avoidance sounds like I'll deal with that someday. Deferral sounds like I will revisit this next week when everyone is out of the house and it's quiet or

I'm just going to set this down for now and I will revisit it later. Avoidance has no container, it has no plan. Deferral has structure. Avoidance is open-ended. Deferral has a deadline. Avoidance increases guilt because the undone things, they're hanging over you indefinitely. Deferral reduces pressure because the

This is handled. This is going to be handled. It's just going to be handled on a different timeline on a different schedule avoidance grows and multiplies piles deferral contains and controls them and Here's why this matters so much for midlife women specifically we have become masters of avoidance That feels like deferral we tell ourselves. I'll get to that

And we do mean it in the moment. We genuinely intend to come back to it, but there's no structure around it. There's no container. There's no date. And so it lives in the back of our minds as an open loop, one of dozens, maybe hundreds, maybe even thousands of open loops, quietly draining our energy and generating low grade shame around the clock. That

background hum of shame, it's exhausting. And most of us have gotten so used to it that we don't even recognize it as shame anymore. We just think we're tired. We just think we're behind. We just think this is how life feels now, but it's not tiredness. It's the weight of uncontained, unstructured, unfinished loops and things. And so

When we gave women that not now category with a real container and a real date, I watched decisions speed up. I watched anxiety come down. I watched momentum build because suddenly every item had a place to go. Nothing was left floating out there in the someday category. Nothing was left as an open loop.

Even the things that they weren't ready to decide about right now, they were handled, they were covered. They were just handled on their terms, on their timeline. That's why one woman said, I think I would have given up before this. Because quitting usually happens inside that spiral of overwhelm or the I just can't deal with it right now. When decisions feel endless and the shame is loud and there's no structure to kind of hold it all together,

Quitting is the most natural thing in the world. And so we stopped that spiral. And when the spiral is gone, quitting actually stops making sense. It doesn't even make sense to quit anymore. So let me tell you what I saw over and over again during this declutterathon, because what was happening on the surface, the sorting, the deciding, the moving of objects, the throwing of stuff away, the deciding I'm gonna donate some of this stuff.

It was not the whole story. It wasn't even close. Women came in, I think, a little bit apprehensive, right? They probably came in with their shoulders a little bit tense, their energy felt a little bit scattered and hard to contain. Some were thinking about how far behind that they were, how long this has been going on for them, how many times they've tried and quit. They were actually coming into the declutter-a-thon already a little bit defeated before they'd even touched a single thing.

And it was probably about 45 minutes in when something actually shifted. It was easy to see that there was this calmness among the women who were there. I even asked them, do you feel escalated at all? Do you feel any anxiety? And the answers came back, no, no, no, I feel calm. Even farther into it, do you feel escalated at all? Have your emotions been triggered? The answer was no. And it wasn't because

they necessarily solved every problem. It wasn't because their whole area or their whole house or the whole box was done, but because visible progress had started to actually regulate their nervous system. And here's the science behind that. To put it simply, when your brain gets evidence that things are changing, that things are moving forward, it stops sounding the alarm.

The anxiety that was keeping you frozen, it starts to quiet and your body gets the message that you're not actually in danger. You're actually moving. You're actually doing hard things and you're okay. Your brain is realizing and being sent the signal that progress is happening and that shift in your nervous system, it makes the next decision easier. And the next one after that becomes even easier. Visible

visible progress, it's not just satisfying, it's actually regulating. And midlife women who essentially live in this constant state of overwhelm are often very much dysregulated, not in necessarily a clinical sense, but in the everyday sense of a nervous system that has been running on high, on overload for too long with not enough completion of things.

In reality, it's really hard to finish things. That's, think, one of the quiet crises of this season of life. We start, we get interrupted, we pivot, we respond to someone else's need, we come back, we start again, we don't finish, over and over. And the cumulative effect of never finishing is a brain that doesn't trust itself to ever finish anything. And a brain that starts things with this shadow of doubt already present

Will I actually complete this or am I going to give up again? That's what we live with. And the declutterathon, it gave women completion, real, visible, tangible completion. A surface that was clear when it wasn't before. A drawer that closed when it hasn't before. A room that felt different to walk into. And that completion, it shifted identity. These women moved from I never finish.

to, just finished that. From, I can't do this to, I actually did that. And that is not a small thing. This is the evidence your brain needs to start trusting you again. That is the foundation on which every other habit and system and routine gets built. That is what makes next time easier. One woman said, my bedroom now is set up for success for organizing.

So she didn't say her bedroom was clean. She said it was set up for success. She was already in a state of forward thinking, of thinking what came next, already thinking about designing her space for the person that she's becoming, not just managing the mess and the stress of the person she's been. That's a mindset shift happening inside a decluttering session.

And another woman said, after three hours of sorting and deciding and moving, she said, it's time for a nap. Thank you so much for this. That was her nervous system releasing. The completion of something real allowed her body to actually think about rest. She's probably never felt a nervous system that was at peace after decluttering before because

Completion allows rest in a way that exhaustion never does. When you're exhausted but unfinished, rest feels guilty. It feels stolen. It feels like you haven't earned it. But when you've finished something, rest. It's actually the next natural step. Your body knows it, and it allows it to happen on a deeper level. So many midlife women never reach completion.

They only reach exhaustion. That's what made this whole experience so different. One woman said, I really benefited from doing this with other people. And another replied immediately, me too. I think I would have given up otherwise. And I want to let that just kind of sit for a minute, because I think we underestimate, dramatically underestimate, how much the presence of other people matters when we're doing hard things.

Most women don't quit because they're lazy. And I want to say that very clearly. Most women don't quit because they lack discipline or motivation or willpower. They quit because it feels endless, because it feels lonely, because it feels unseen, because in the silence of doing it alone, the shame, it gets loud and the doubt creeps in and there's nothing to counter it.

But when other women are in the room, when other women are in the trenches doing it too, even virtually something happens. You borrow momentum. You hear someone else making a decision and it reminds you that you can make decisions too. You see someone else has filled up a box or a bin or tossed a bunch of stuff and you actually pick up your own bag and you do it too. And you stay in it 10 minutes longer than you planned because

Someone else said that they were on a rule and you don't want to be the one who quits. And so you make five more decisions. You finish one more drawer. You get one more area across the finish line. The thing about momentum is that it's contagious. And isolation is one of the primary reasons that midlife women stay stuck, not just with clutter, but with everything. We are not built to do hard things alone. We were built for community. We need it.

We need someone to see us, for the experience to be seen in our struggle and cheered on in our effort. And somewhere along the way, somewhere between the responsibilities and the roles and the endless putting of everyone else first, a lot of us have lost that. We've been doing the hard things alone. We've been carrying the weight of everything alone. We've been struggling quietly and calling it strength.

It's not strength, it's actually isolation. And isolation makes everything harder than it needs to be. The Declutterathon, it didn't just help women declutter. It reminded them what it feels like to do something hard alongside other women who are doing the same hard thing. And the reminder that you're not alone, that other women are in the trenches too, that your struggle is not uniquely yours. It's more powerful.

than almost any strategy that I could teach. Community is not something that's nice to have. It's actually the thing that makes everything else work. And so I want to talk to you about why this particular kind of support matters so much during this particular season of life. By midlife, most women don't lack information. You've read the books. You have saved all the pins. You have bought the courses. You've watched

the YouTube videos and you've downloaded the free guides and you have followed all of the accounts. You know what a capsule wardrobe is. You know what the con Marie method is. You know what a take one in, put one out strategy is. You don't need more tips. What you need is a container. A container that simplifies the decisions. A container that gives you structure.

when your brain is too full to create structure on its own. A container that holds you accountable without shaming you. A container with other women who are here, who are doing the same work alongside you because here's what happens without a container. You have a burst of motivation, usually on a Sunday afternoon or after watching someone else's organized pantry video. And so you start, you pull everything out.

The pile gets bigger before it gets smaller, which is normal, but it feels like failure. Someone interrupts you, or your energy runs out, or you need to make dinner, or the decisions get hard and there's nobody there to help you through them, and so you stop. And so all that stuff, it stays out. And now it's worse than before you started. And so the shame, it creeps in, and then it doubles. And you swear you'll try again when you have more time, when you have more energy.

when you have more motivation, when life slows down, but life doesn't slow down. And all that stuff, doesn't go away. And so the shame, it keeps building and it's gaining speed. That's not a motivation problem. That's a container problem. Containers create safety and safety creates action. And action, even imperfect and slow and messy action, creates confidence. And confidence is what

finally makes the change stick. It's not willpower. It's confidence. The evidence built slowly over time that you are someone who does the things she says she's going to do. That you can start something and finish it. That you can do hard things. That you can make decisions without spiraling. That you can move forward even if it looks different from how you wished.

that it would. That's what a container allows for. That's what a container builds. And that's what this declutter-a-thon was. Whether you were in the room with us or you're hearing about this for the first time right now, I want you to hear a few things. First, if your home feels heavy right now, it's not because you're messy or lazy or incapable. It's because you're carrying all of these unmade decisions in a season of life where your bandwidth is already challenged.

Maybe it's already maxed out. That's not a character flaw or anything wrong with you. That's a capacity issue. when capacity issues, they have solutions. That's the good thing. Second, the solution to all of this is not willpower. The solution is not motivation. The solution is not waiting until you feel ready or until life calms down or until you have a whole weekend free with no interruptions.

The solution is a simpler decision framework, a clear container and other women alongside you. That's it. Third, you are not behind no matter what your home looks like. You are not behind. You are not failing. You are not uniquely broken because your house isn't the way that you want it to be or because you've tried and quit before. Every single woman who showed up to the Declutterathon had tried and quit before.

And every single one of them made progress. Not because they suddenly became different people, because they finally had the right structure. And fourth, momentum matters more than perfection. You do not need to finish the whole house, the whole area. You do not need to do it all at once. You need one session that gives your brain evidence that you can do this. One drawer, one surface.

one area that is genuinely better than it was before you started. Because that one thing, that changes what you believe about yourself. And what you believe about yourself changes everything else. And here's the part that I really want you to hear. We're doing it again. DG Clutterathon is happening again. And if you missed the first one, or if you were there and you wanna do it again,

Or if you've been listening to this and thinking, need that, this is your moment. You do not need your whole house to be ready. You do not even need a plan. You do not need to know where to start or how long it will take or whether you're doing it right. You just need one small area. You need a counter. You need a drawer. You need a box. You need a corner of a room that's been quietly stressing you out for longer than you want to admit. And you need the four decisions that I just gave you. That's it.

That's the whole system. And we're doing it together. If three hours sounds like too much, remember what one woman said. Many times this would be too long, but today it worked for me. And why did it work? It worked because of the structure. It worked because of the container. It worked because she wasn't alone. And you don't even have to stay the whole time. You don't have to be perfect. And by the way, we do have breaks built in. You don't have to impress anyone.

or show up with the right supplies or know what you're doing. You just have to show up. Because sometimes the difference between behind and moving forward is one structured evening. It's one room full of women doing the same hard things at the same time. One decision framework, one that is simple enough that you can actually use it. One finished drawer that gives your brain the evidence it needs to believe you can do this.

And here's what I know to be true. You can do this and you don't have to do it alone. Find out about the Declutter-a-thon at jenniferroskamp.com. Just look for that tab. It will tell you everything you need to join us. There's also a link down in the notes below. Come just as you are. Bring your mess. Bring your overwhelm. Bring that drawer that you've been avoiding for six months. We'll tackle it together. And so, I'll see you then.