Ep. 250: The Stuff You're Saving for Someday Is Costing You Today

I want to start today with something that happened to me not too long ago. I opened a closet — not even the big one, just a hall closet… and I stood there for a solid minute just staring.

It was full. Packed. And almost none of it was stuff I actually use.

There was a box of craft supplies I bought during COVID with plans of working on some fun art projects with my homeschooled kids.. Unopened. Still in the bag from Hobby Lobby. There was a stack of books I bought with every intention of reading. There was a workout program — the physical DVDs, which tells you how long ago I bought them…anyone remember Billy Blanks?

And I just stood there thinking: who did I think I was going to become?

Because that closet wasn't full of stuff. It was full of a version of me I kept meaning to become. The creative me. The disciplined me. The organized, inspired, finally-has-time-for-herself me.

And the weight of it…I'm not talking about the physical weight, I'm talking about the emotional weight hit me harder than I expected.

So today we're going there.

The stuff you're saving for someday is costing you today.

This is going to be a hard conversation, but it’s an important one that we’re having here.

So let’s get started.

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Transcript

Okay, so the stuff, right? The stuff that you're saving for someday is costing you today. How much space in your home is being taken up by a life that you keep meaning to start? The hobby that you swear you'll eventually have time for, the clothes hanging in the closet, waiting for a different body or a different season of life, the organizing bins. And I know you know what I'm talking about.

Stacked in the garage for the life that's supposed to be coming once things finally calm down. The projects, they're staring at you every time you open a door. And so it isn't just stuff, it isn't just clutter. These things they represent hope and identity, pressure, guilt, perfectionism, decision fatigue.

And most women, maybe even you, don't realize that you're living inside this visual reminder of everything you think you should be doing or becoming or fixing or getting around to. We think we're preserving possibility, but a lot of times, maybe even most of the time, we're preserving pressure. And so this is really what we're gonna be unpacking today. And I promise that by the time we're done, you're gonna look at that hall closet or that.

spare room or that storage unit differently. Not with shame, but with clarity. Okay. So let me define what I mean when I say someday clutter because I want you to see yourself clearly here. Not to feel called out, but to be essentially called up. Someday stuff is anything that you're holding on to for a version of your life that hasn't happened yet.

Or for a version of yourself that you keep expecting to show up eventually. It looks like craft supplies for hobbies that you never actually started. Books bought with the best of intentions that have been on the nightstand so long that they're basically furniture now. Workout equipment that now functions as a very expensive clothing rack. Clothes in the back of your closet for a future body, a future occasion, a future lifestyle that feels perpetually.

Just out of reach. Decor for the home aesthetic that you've been pinning for three years, but haven't actually made happen. Project supplies, waiting for when life slows down, which by the way, is not an actual thing. Life does not slow down. We just find different things to fill it. And then there's this catch-all category, the just in case pile.

The things you can't justify keeping, but you also can't quite bring yourself to release these things. Because what if? And here's what I want you to hang on to for just a second. And it's really kind of the underlying thread in everything that we're gonna be talking about. This is the thing that I want to make sure you don't miss. And it is this some someday stuff is physical evidence of emotional indecision.

Someday stuff is physical evidence of emotional indecision. It's not laziness. That stuff isn't there because you're lazy. And it's not there because you're failing. And it's not there because you're bad at organizing or because you are are bad at keeping a house or because you have something else wrong with your character. These things are there because of emotional indecision. And this is such a big thing because the women that I work with and the women listening to this right now are not.

Lazy women. They are functioning just fine in many areas, sort of women. These are the women who run households and manage schedules and hold jobs and show up for everyone. They're used to believing that they can and should do everything eventually. The word someday feels optimistic to them, but it also feels responsible. Like I'm not giving up on this. I'm just putting it on hold until I can get to it.

But here's this piece of insight that really can change everything. The clutter, this stuff, is rarely about laziness. It's about overloaded mental capacity and unrealistic expectations. You are not still buried in that clutter because you haven't gotten to using this stuff. You haven't used this stuff or gotten to this stuff because your life is full. You're doing other things. And for a lot of women,

They're mentally overloaded. We carry a lot of things, the invisible load. And when your mental capacity is already at its limit, making one more decision, even a small one, even about a box of Billy Blank's DVDs, it feels like too much. And so the item it stays and it stays and it stays. Keeping the item often feels safer than making a decision about the dream that's attached to it. Because once you let go,

There's a fear underneath that says something uncomfortable. It says something like, maybe I'm not who I thought I was gonna be. And again, this is not a clutter problem then. That is a much deeper conversation, which is exactly where we're gonna go next. And so let's talk about what's actually happening underneath the someday pile because it is not just about disorganization. It is emotional, and I think it deserves an honest look.

So as I see it, there are four drivers that resurface again and again in the women that I work with. And I'm guessing that at least one of these is gonna hit close to home for you. We'll get there in just a minute. But did you know, by the way, that I work with women as a coach through text messages? I offer Zoom call sessions too, but being able to text me 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and not

Having to wait for your scheduled time to get the help you need while it's still happening is really life-changing for a lot of women. My mission in the help that I give to women is to meet them where they are at, when they are there and texting with them. Often through spoken messages, which allow me to go even deeper with them than I ever could in just a 45 minute session once every week.

If this sounds like something you want to know more about, just shoot me an email. Just email me at jenniferroscamp at the intentional mom.com or check the show notes below. We've put my email address there for you too. I don't always have spots open, but it starts with an email. So just put texting in the subject line so that your email will come directly to me. Okay, now back to these four drivers or the four reasons that we have all of this stuff in the someday pile.

The first reason is hope. The first driver is hope. The item feels hopeful to keep. It's symbolic. It says, maybe, maybe I'll still become more disciplined. Maybe I'll finally have time. Maybe this version of me still exists somewhere inside the version of me who's tired and stretched thin. That's not irrational. That's human. We hold on to things because they feel like proof that we haven't given up on ourselves.

The problem is hope without a real plan, it isn't a strategy, it's just a feeling. And when hope lives in a box on a shelf, it starts to feel less like possibility and more like pressure. And friend, we can't move forward under pressure. So the second driver is guilt. It's guilt because there was money spent, there was good intentions, there were gifts that received.

Goals that got abandoned. We don't just keep the object, we keep the guilt that is attached to it. Think about the workout program that I mentioned, right? The DVDs. You know why I kept those so long? Because I kept them because I spent real money on them. And every time I saw them, I felt that sting of having spent that money. I didn't really think about the workout. I didn't really think about the goal of

getting in better shape, it was the guilt of the money I wasted by not continuing to use these DVDs that kept me stuck. Especially since I rarely used them in the first place. And we do things like this all the time. We keep things because getting rid of them feels like admitting we spent money for nothing. But I want you to hear this clearly the money is already gone. Keeping the item doesn't bring it back. It just makes you pay an emotional tax

On it every single time you see it. So the third driver is identity. And I think this one is the deepest. And I think it's the one that we talk about the least. Some of that someday stuff, it represents old versions of ourselves: the organized woman, the creative woman, the fit woman, the ambitious woman, the homemaker you thought you'd become, the version of you from before.

Before kids, or before burnout, or before the health struggles, or before life got so loud. And so letting go of the item can feel like officially closing the door on that woman. It's like saying that woman isn't coming back. And I want to say something that might feel a little bit hard, but I but I am saying it full of compassion. A lot of clutter is grief that we haven't acknowledged yet.

We're not holding on to objects. We're holding on to who we were, who we meant to be, or who we thought we'd have time to become by now. And grief doesn't always look like crying. Sometimes it looks like a storage bin, this in storage bin in the spare room.

So the fourth driver is fear of closing doors. Keeping the item feels like keeping the option alive. If I still have the supplies, the possibility isn't gone. If I still have the jeans in a size that I haven't worn in years, I haven't officially let go of that dream. The door is still open, it's still a possibility. But here's the truth an open loop is still an energy drain. Possibility is not.

Free. It costs mental bandwidth to maintain, whether you're consciously thinking about it or not. And I know that a lot of us underestimate how much energy we're spending just holding open doors that we're never actually meant to walk through. And letting go of these things, it doesn't make you a quitter. It makes you someone who is ready to be honest about the season of life that you're actually in, not the one you're still hoping to arrive at.

So just when you thought we couldn't go any deeper, surprise we are going a little bit deeper because I I know that this is the piece that most decluttering advice completely misses. We tend to think of clutter as a visual problem. It's messy, it's disorganized, it takes up physical space. Fix the visual and you'll feel better.

But what nobody talks about is what clutter does to your brain, even when you're not looking at it, even when it's tucked behind a door, even when it's boxed up in a storage unit 10 minutes from your house. Your brain is constantly scanning for unfinished decisions. That's just how it works. It's not a character flaw, it's neurological. Your brain is wired to notice open loops.

And unresolved things. And it doesn't just notice them once and move on, it revisits them, it categorizes them, it mentally negotiates with them. Psychologists actually have a name for this concept. It's called the zygarnic effect. This is the brain's tendency to fixate on incomplete tasks far more than completed ones.

The brain's tendency is to fixate on incomplete tasks far more than the completed ones. Your mind holds on to unfinished things with a kind of sticky attention that it doesn't give to the things that are actually resolved, which means that every item in that someday pile is, neurologically speaking, an unfinished task. And your brain, it's gonna keep returning to it whether you want it to or not.

And so that pile that you walked past this morning without even really looking at it, your brain registered it. It filed it under the unresolved category, and it will file it again tomorrow and the next day and the next. Your brain is continuously trying to manage that pile even when you aren't. The clutter may be physically still, but mentally it is very loud. So here's an analogy that I

I love. I think about the tabs that you leave open in your browser, the ones that you mean to read later, or the articles that you keep saying you'll get back to. Even when you're not actively on those tabs, they are running in the background. They are using up memory. They are slowing down the whole system. Ask me how I know about the open browser tabs and shout out to all of my coaching clients, all of my accomplished lifestyle.

members, because you guys see my open tabs on my computer on an on a daily basis. I truly do need a 12-step program for this. But anyhow, now imagine though, back to those open tabs. Imagine that you had those tabs open for three years. Imagine you open a new browser every single morning and those same tabs are still here, still running, still quietly draining resources while you get actual work done.

That is what someday clutter does to your brain every single day. Your some your someday stuff, it's consuming processing power that you need for everything else. That's why everything else feels harder, too. You need that processing power for yes, doing things, but you also need it for patience and for creativity and for presence and intentionality and for decisions that actually matter. And here's the part that makes this even harder for the women that I work with.

You are already at capacity. You are already managing more than most people see. You are already making hundreds of decisions a day about your family, about your home, about appointments, about your work, about your relationships. The research on decision fatigue tells us that the quality of our decisions, pay attention to what I'm saying here. Let me start over because I just want to call you out a minute. If you are half listening, fully listen to this piece right here.

The research on decision fatigue tells us that the quality of our decisions degrades or breaks down the more of them we make. By the end of a full day, the average person is running on fumes mentally, even if they don't realize it, because of all of those decisions, which means that the mental load of all of those unresolved someday items, it isn't just annoying. All of those

Someday things are actively making you worse at the decisions that matter most. It's chipping away at your patients before before your husband even gets home from work. It's draining the creative energy that you need for the things that you actually want to pursue. It's costing you focus and presence in moments that you cannot get back. And this is why cluttered homes create the feelings they do. It's not just visual overwhelm, but irritability.

And shame and exhaustion and decision fatigue. That constant low-grade feeling of being behind. The avoidance that kicks in when you think about dealing with it, the way you close the door instead of opening it. And here's something else that's really important. Your home starts to feel less like a place to live and more like a storage unit for postponed versions of yourself.

And when your home feels that way, you can never fully rest there. Because rest requires your nervous system to feel settled. And your nervous system cannot feel settled when it's surrounded by things that represent unfinished business and unmet expectations and unresolved guilt. This is not about being a minimalist. I am not suggesting that that's what you do here. This is not about white walls and empty shelves and getting rid of everything you own.

What we're talking about here today is understanding that the stuff you're keeping has a cost, even when it sits untouched. And that cost is showing up in your energy and in your mood and in your capacity to show up for the things that actually matter to you. And here's the truth that most organizing systems won't tell you. You cannot organize your way out of an emotional problem.

You cannot organize your way out of an emotional problem. You can buy more bins and you can label everything. You can rearrange and color code and create beautiful systems and it will work for about three weeks until the real issue, the postponed decisions and the emotional weight underneath all of that stuff, catches up with you again. Which means this conversation isn't really about your closet at all. It's actually about you.

As a person. And so I want to offer you a reframe that I think might be one of the most re relieving things that you can hear today. Keeping the item does not preserve the dream. I'll say it again. Keeping the item does not preserve the dream. Because the dream of using all of those things in the craft bin, it does those dreams don't live in the craft bin. The dreams they don't live in your planner.

The dreams, they don't live in the treadmill in the corner of your bedroom. It doesn't live in the storage toast tote at the in the in the basement. The dream, it lives in you. And this is actually good news because it means that releasing the item does not release the dream. It means that you are not giving up on yourself just because you let it go. You're becoming someone who, you're becoming someone who is wise.

You are not closing a door on who you could be. You are making a practical decision to stop storing pressure. There's that word that we started with a little bit ago. To stop storing pressure in your closets and feeling less pressure every day. I don't know about you, but I feel enough pressure coming from every which way. If I can have less pressure, yes, please show me how to do that. Let me make this super practical. I mean, if I were to ask you, hey,

If there was a way that I could help you feel less pressure every day, guaranteed, would you be open to hearing what I'm saying? So if you would answer that yes, if you would say yes, I want to hear more about that, you want to really focus on what I'm saying here today. Because following these things that we're talking about here today will help you feel less pressure in your everyday life. And this is probably gonna be one of those conversations.

That you want to make sure that you save so that you can go back and listen again because there is a lot here. And if you want less pressure, if you want less stress in your life, this is this is an episode you can't afford to not pay close attention to and take good notes. So let's get back to the thing I said a second ago. When I said you are making a practical decision to stop storing pressure in your closet.

Because here's what I want you to notice about that. Keeping all of that someday stuff, it isn't actually making you more likely to do those things. If anything, the weight of all of that accumulated guilt and obligations, it makes it harder to do the things. It makes those dreams feel like should do's instead of want-to-dos. It makes the possibility feel exhausting before you've even started.

And this is where I think a lot of us are carrying outdated expectations, expectations that we set for ourselves in a different season of life before we had as many responsibilities or as much on our plates or as clear a picture of what actually lights us up at this stage in life and what doesn't. And I also want to say this again with so much compassion because I have been here too. Some of those someday some of those someday dreams just don't fit your life anymore.

And it doesn't mean that you failed. It's because you grew. Because your values shifted. Because you you tried and you found out it wasn't actually what you wanted. Because the season changed. Outgrowing something doesn't mean you did anything wrong. It doesn't mean that you're failing. It is maturity. Friend, you don't need permission to stop storing pressure in your closets. And the reframe I want you to really hear is this.

Decluttering is not rejecting your future. Decluttering is making room for your actual life. Not the life you're supposed to be living, not the life you meant to build five years ago, not the life that looks a certain way on the outside. Your actual life, the one that's happening right now in the season you're in, with the capacity you actually have. There is something, probably a lot of things in you that are worth protecting.

But it's not the old version of you. And it's also not the someday version. The version that we need to protect is the right now version, the woman who is showing up every day and doing her best, holding on to a lot, and deserving a home that feels like it's peaceful and a place to rest, not just a to-do list that you you can't ever get out from underneath. You don't need to become someone new. You need to revisit.

Who you actually are right now in this season. Not a different one, not a someday one, and not a past one for that matter, either. But this starts with being honest about what is actually serving your life right now and what is just taking up space in it. Okay, so let's get practical because I know some of you are already thinking about that pile, and I don't want to just leave you with this conversation all fired up and without direction, because it leads to.

A Sunday afternoon of dragging things out of the closets and then feeling more overwhelmed than when you started. And we don't need that. So I'm gonna walk you through four filter questions. These are some questions that I use with clients, and they're the ones that I ask myself sometimes. They're simple, but they're not easy because they require honesty. And honesty, as you know, is where the real work lives. Okay, question one: Would I buy this today?

Not could I imagine a version of my life where I might want this? Not, do I feel guilty about the money I spent? Just if I walked into a store right now, inside the actual life I'm living, with my actual schedule and my actual priorities, would I buy this today? If the answer is no, it's worth asking why it is still earning space in your home. Question two: Do I have a real plan for this in the next three months? Not a fantasy.

Not an eventually, but a real, realistic plan. Something on the calendar, something attached to an actual intention that lines up with how you actually live. Not I keep meaning to, or once life slows down, or someday when I have more time, a real plan in the next 90 days with the time, the capacity, the health, the limitations, the rules, the responsibilities, everything that you have right now. And

If you can't name what that plan is, that's information worth paying attention to. Question three. If I let this go, what am I afraid it means? Now, this is a coachy question and it goes beneath the surface, but I it you need to hear it. This is the question I would ask as your coach. These are the hard questions that you don't know to ask yourself because no one ever taught you how to look below the surface of what you can visually see.

So when you look at this stuff and as yourself, what are you afraid it means if you let go of it? Are you afraid it means you failed, or that you gave up, or that you wasted money, or that you're becoming someone who doesn't follow through, or that you're officially leaving behind a version of yourself that you're not ready to say goodbye to? Whatever the answer is to that question, name it. Because the fear is not actually about letting go of the object.

It isn't ever about that. The object is just holding the fear for you. And you deserve to look at the fear directly instead of keeping it neatly packed in a storage bin. Question four: Is this supporting my actual life or an imaginary one? Is this supporting my actual life or an imaginary one? Again, not the life you planned.

Not the life you think you should be living, not the ideal world version where everything is calm and you have the time and the bandwidth for everything you've ever wanted to do. Your actual life, the one that is happening right now. Is this thing supporting that life? Or is it essentially a prop for a life that you haven't actually stepped into? Now I want to give you one small action challenge before we close this conversation, okay? Do not try.

To declutter your entire house this weekend. That is survival brain behavior. That's the all or nothing thinking that leads to a giant mess and total overwhelm and giving up by Sunday afternoon. That is not what we're going for here. Instead, I want you to choose just one category of someday stuff. Just one. It could be books, it could be craft supplies, it could be clothes, it could be the workout equipment, just one category. And then pull out 10

items from that category. And for each one, ask yourself the four questions that we just covered. Keep only what has a near-term purpose. That means in the time and space right around you here. It it has to have genuine value or real alignment with your actual life in this actual season. Everything else. Donate it or toss it or relocate in relocate it intentionally, but make a decision.

A real one because every decision that you make is one less open tab. Remember when we talked about those? It's one less open tab or open loop running around in the background. One less tab, one less thing that your brain has to manage when you would rather be resting or more present with your family or just done.

And know this forward momentum should feel peaceful, not like a punishment. So make sure that you are maintaining your own, that you are paying attention to your body's signals. And if as you are working through these 10 items, it feels like you are at your capacity or you've hit the wall, then press pause, give it a 20-minute break, and then come back and finish those 10 items.

pieces. Now I want to slow this down just one more second because I think some of you have been doing a lot of nodding as this conversation has been going on. And I want to give you a moment to actually feel kind of lean into what may have come up for you. And so I want to ask you a few questions and I don't want you to answer them quickly. I want you to just kind of let them breathe. Think about them for the rest of the day today, maybe part of the day tomorrow and maybe even the day after that.

Question one, what dream are you still storing in object form? What would your space look like if it actually reflected your life today? Not the life you're working toward and not the one that you used to have, but the one that you're living right now. Question number two, what are you ready to stop postponing? And maybe most importantly, what are you exhausted from carrying mentally that has nothing to do with how busy you actually are?

I'm gonna leave you with this. You do not need to keep proving who you could become by hanging on to the stuff. You are allowed to accept and support the person that you are right now, the woman who is here right now. She's tired sometimes, she's stretched sometimes, she's figuring it out most of the time, but she deserves a home that feels like rest. She deserves to open a closet and feel nothing, no guilt, no pressure.

Not a list of things that she meant to do, just space. She deserves space.


So here are a few takeaways. I want to make sure I've got four of them. I want to make sure that you take away from this conversation. Number one, someday stuff is physical evidence of emotional indecision. It's not laziness, it's not failure. The clutter exists because making decisions about the dreams attached to things, it feels hard. And know that it it feels hard because you're human. But it is something that we can work with, it is fixable.

Second takeaway, your brain is managing the clutter even when you aren't. The pile, it isn't sitting there quietly. It's running in the background. It's draining your mental bandwidth every single day. Clearing it isn't just about physical space, it's about reclaiming your mental peace. Third takeaway keeping the item does not preserve the dream. The dream lives in you, it's not in the bin.

Releasing that object does not mean giving up on yourself. It means making room for the life you're actually living. Maybe later, maybe later you'll have room. And the fourth takeaway: start with one category, 10 items, and four questions. Don't try to overhaul everything. Choose one someday category this week. Over the period of the week, pull out 10 things.

And run each one of those 10 things through the four filter questions from today's conversation. And it's just one honest decision. That's all we need in order to start. So let's circle back to where we started. The stuff that you're saving for someday, it's costing you today. Not just physically, though it is absolutely taking up physical space, but emotionally and mentally and energetically.

Every item that represents an unfinished decision is a drain on the woman who manages it all every day. And you're already managing enough. So here's my challenge to you this week, not this month, not someday, but this week. Pick one drawer, pick one shelf, pick one category. Again, we're not looking to become a minimalist here and we're not looking for perfection, not to earn some sort of gold star for having a magazine-worthy home, but

Stop living inside this constant postponed pressure. One small release can create more relief than one storage bin will ever be able to hold. You don't have to fix this all at once. You just have to make one honest decision at a time and then another. That's how the weight starts to lift.

That's how the clutter begins to feel like something I could actually let go of and know that it's not going to happen all at once. It is just still this one decision at a time. Know that I'm proud of you for showing up in this conversation, and I hope that you are too. It's not a small thing to look honestly at what we've been talking about here today. And it's not easy to look at yourself honestly either. But it starts there.

If you know of someone who needs to hear this conversation, will you please share it with her? We have these conversations here every single week on Tuesdays. There is always a new conversation where we talk about clutter, but we don't just talk about the stuff clutter. We talk about identity clutter and emotional clutter and mental clutter and schedule clutter and so many other things. Make sure that you are following along here so that you can continue to learn more about what's actually underneath that.

Stuff. Because when we understand what's actually underneath, when we diagnose the problem as I call it, then we can find the right solution. We can finally move forward. We can stop feeling strangled. We can stop feeling overwhelmed. We can stop feeling hopeless. And we can start to work towards, you know what? This actually could be different. And you deserve that, friend, just as much as I do. And so until we talk again, make it a great day.