Ep. 254: How You're Making Decluttering Harder Than It Needs to Be

I want you to think about something you've been avoiding in your house.

Maybe it's a closet.

Maybe it's the basement.

Maybe it's that pile in the corner of your bedroom that has been sitting there so long you've stopped seeing it.

You walk past it every single day. You glance at it and feel that little flicker of guilt. And then you keep walking.

Now let me ask you a real question.

What if the reason you're avoiding that pile has nothing to do with the amount of stuff?

What if it has nothing to do with your schedule, your energy, or whether you have a "system"?

What if the reason you're avoiding it is because somewhere along the way, you convinced yourself that touching it means finishing it?

Curious? Let’s talk about it…starting now.

Check my substack here: 

https://substack.com/@jenniferroskamp

Get some powerful mantras to inspire, encourage, and life you up when you need as little something intentional to focus on. 

We have a beautiful pdf download of the 6 Mantras For Intentional Moms you can keep or print. Request them right HERE.

Visit The Intentional Mom

Follow us on Instagram HERE

Visit our YouTube Channel HERE

Rate & Review The Intentional Mom Podcast on Apple . We'd love to hear your thoughts on the podcast. If you listen on Spotify, you can rate & review us there, too. 

Transcript

All right, so there's that thing you're avoiding, the pile, the closet, the room. And there's this belief that if you open that closet or get started on that pile or enter the room and start working, that every single thing inside that pile, inside that bin, inside that closet or that room, it needs a final answer today. Because that's exactly what most women do.

They sit down to declutter and they unknowingly create a rule for themselves. And it's that everything that I encounter today needs to be decided today. Every item, every memory, every maybe, every someday, every sentimental object that's wrapped in guilt and grief and complicated feelings that you don't quite have the words for yet. And

Before they've touched a single thing, before they've pulled just one item out of that bin, they're already exhausted. The weight of all of those decisions hasn't hit them yet, but their brain has already started calculating the math. It has scanned the room or the bin or the closet. It has tallied up everything that might be hard. And it has sent a signal to your brain. And it says, this is too much. And so they don't start.

Or they start and they stop 30 minutes in. Or they declutter by shoving everything into a bin and pushing it into a different room. When it comes to clutter languages, we call that the hidden piler. But what happens is that when they shove it aside, then they feel worse because now the pile has just moved and the guilt has too. So last week on Wednesday, we talked about why decluttering feels so hard, about how

Women carry emotional weight into the physical work and why the stuff is rarely just stuff. And so this week, in this conversation, I want to talk about one of the biggest and most specific ways that women accidentally make decluttering harder than it needs to be. They're mixing decision types, and it's costing them far more energy than they realize.

Well, hey, if we have not met before, I am Jennifer Rosskamp. I am a certified s strategist and life coach. I am founder of Accomplished Lifestyle, and I am a real midlife woman who has stood in the middle of a cluttered room and felt completely frozen by it. So with that in mind, know that I am not speaking at you from some place of perfect organization.

I'm speaking from experience. And today we're continuing the conversation that we started last week about decluttering. If you haven't watched last week, Wednesday's episode or listened to it yet, then you need to go back and listen to it because then we talked specifically about why it feels so much harder than it should. In that conversation, I introduced a concept called the not now filter. And I told you that we would go deeper into it this week. And that's

So important, and that's what we're doing here today. Because here is something that I have come to believe. The not now filter, it's not just a decluttering hack or a decluttering tool. It is a decision-making tool. It is a capacity tool. It is a self-leadership tool. It shows up in your closet, but it also shows up in your relationships, in your boundaries, in your career transitions.

In the quiet questions you've been sitting with about who you are now and what you actually want. The conversation that we're having today, it's about all of that. So let's get into it. And I want to start with something that most women never see. Most women walk into a decluttering session carrying this invisible rule, right? It's the rule that sounds like if I touch it, I have to make a decision about it. Not later, not this weekend, not after I've thought about it, right now.

And in reality, this rule, I will admit, it feels logical. It feels efficient. It sounds like the responsible way to approach the work. But here's what that rule actually does to your brain. It tells your nervous system that every item in that room or in that bin or in that closet or in that pile is high stakes. It collapses an expired coupon and your daughter's first pair of shoes into the same category.

Both do require a decision, both require emotional processing, both require you to know right now with certainty what the right answer is. And that's where overwhelm begins. It doesn't begin with the stuff, but with the pressure that you have attached to the stuff. So I've done multiple declutterathons over a Saturday, even in a full weekend one time. And I've watched women sit and attend this virtual declutterathon.

It's it's my guided decluttering experience. And they spend 45 minutes on one object, not because the object was complicated, but because they decided that it needed to be decided right then before they could move forward. Now that is not decluttering, that is emotional hostage taking. And the exhaustion that comes from it, well, it doesn't signal a willpower problem. It's not a character flaw.

It's the predictable result of demanding immediate answers from a brain that isn't always ready to give them. But here's the truth: you need to realize pressure doesn't produce clarity. Pressure produces freeze. It produces avoidance. It produces the kind of overwhelm that sends you to the couch with your phone 30 minutes into a project that you really did legitimately want to finish.

And here's what makes this extra frustrating. Women often, usually even, blame themselves for this reaction. They think, I just can't stick to anything. Or I don't know why it's so hard for me when other people seem like they can manage it. But friend, this again, I will say it again, this is not a character flaw. It is a predictable neurological response to an impossible demand. Neurological response. This is a physiological process.

When your brain perceives that every single item in a room requires a high stakes decision right now, it goes into self protection mode. It does what it is designed to do, which is slow down to seek safety, to avoid the thing that is threatening you. Your brain actually isn't broken. It is actually doing its job. You just gave it an unreasonable assignment.

And this invisible rule, the one that says, if I touch it, I have to decide it today, it is to blame. And most women have no idea that they even have this expectation or rule. Now, this whole concept was one of the biggest light bulb moments inside my declutterathon one time when we did this. Women come into an event like that and they come into it thinking they're sorting stuff, but they're not. They're sorting

Decisions. And not all decisions are the same. Some items in your house are trash. They're expired, they're broken, they're outdated, or something that you've already replaced. That sort of decision for that sort of stuff takes two seconds. Done. Some items are obvious keeps, right? You love them, you use them, they belong where they are. Those are easy decisions too.

And then there are some items that are obvious donations. They're the kinds of things that you don't use. You don't love them. You've been meaning to drop them off there for three years easily. But then there are items that don't belong to any one of those categories. Not because they're impossible to decide about, because they're not ready to be decided about today. Maybe it's something connected to a chapter of your life that hasn't fully closed yet.

Maybe it's something that involves another person, a grown child, a spouse, a parent who has passed away, and you just just don't have enough emotional distance yet. Maybe it's something that requires a conversation before you make the final call. Maybe you're just genuinely not sure what you want. And the honest answer is that you just need more time. None of these are decluttering failures. These are legitimate reasons to pause.

The problem isn't that you can't make decisions. The problem is that you're treating those pauses that we need as though they're an emergency. You're forcing your brain to solve this hard problem under pressure in a room full of other hard problems on a Tuesday morning when you also have four other things to do on your list. And then you wonder why you feel exhausted after just an hour or less of decluttering. You haven't been decluttering.

You've been making a hundred small emotional decisions while standing up. This is why the not now filter exists. It doesn't exist to let you off the hook when it comes to making a decision. I'm not giving you permission. The not now filter doesn't give you permission to avoid making a decision about that item indefinitely. But here's what the not now filter does: it helps you sort decision types.

Correctly so that you can move quickly through the easy ones and give appropriate space to the harder ones. So let me be very clear about something because I know that a lot of a lot of you are hearing this. Not now means avoidance. Well, not now actually is not avoidance. Not now is not procrastination. Not now is not giving up or falling short or proving that you can't follow through.

And I know, I know the way that your brain works. And I know that the second that I introduced this concept of not now, part of you hears never. Because that's what happened the last 10 times you set something aside. You never came back to it. So let me separate out that experience from the one I'm proposing here with the not now filter. Avoidance, what you've done before, avoidance says, I don't want to deal with this. I'm going to pretend it doesn't exist.

Not now says I will deal with this. I am choosing to deal with it at a better moment. One when I have more clarity, more capacity, or maybe more information. Those are two fundamentally different decisions. Avoidance is passive. Not now is an actual active experience. Avoidance hopes the problem just disappears. Not now creates a real return date.

Inside the declutterathon, not the not now filter, it came with a very specific structure. We weren't making a someday pile, we weren't making a when things calm down pile, we weren't making an eventually maybe we'll see pile. It was a pile that we were gonna revisit somewhere between seven and 14 days from now. There was a real date, there was a real return point.

Something that you could put in your calendar because not now without a when is just avoidance dressed up a little bit. The not now filter works because it gives your brain permission to keep moving. Instead of getting stuck on one item for 45 minutes, you make a simple low-stakes decision. Essentially, you say, I'm not ready for this right now, or I'm not ready for this today. I'll revisit it.

In the next seven to 14 days. And you put it in a designated space, box, bin, basket, and you keep moving. You have just now, when you've done that, you've just now cleared a bottleneck. You have just freed up cognitive space for 30 items that you were actually ready to decide about. That is what momentum looks like. And momentum is what makes decluttering feel possible instead of like punishment.

Not now is a commitment. It is a promise to yourself that you're not running from the hard thing. You are just instead approaching it strategically. You can see how this is not a weakness signal. This is actually a self-leadership signal. So here's where the conversation is going to get a little bit deeper because there's a distinction that I want to draw that most people are going to miss.

Not now and overwhelm are not the same thing, but they feel similar. They can look similar from the outside, but they are very different signals and knowing the difference matters. Not now is about pausing so that you can gain clarity. Overwhelm is about recognizing capacity. When you pick up an item and you think, I need more time to make a good decision about this, that's not now.

You have the energy to keep going then. You're just not ready for this particular decision yet. So you set it aside thoughtfully, intentionally, and you move on. When you're 45 minutes into a decluttering session and your chest is tight and your thoughts are scattered and you can't make a simple decision to save your life, and everything suddenly feels urgent and impossible. Now that is overwhelm.

And overwhelm is not a failure of willpower. Overwhelm is simply information. It is your body telling you something important. It is a signal that your nervous system is at capacity and that you've hit a wall and that this has nothing to do with a lack of character. Most women treat both of these situations the same way. And so they push harder. They tell themselves just to focus.

They set a timer and they force themselves to keep going. They stay longer, they work faster, and they refuse to stop because stopping feels like quitting. But here's what actually happens when you push through overwhelm. You make bad decisions. You end up donating something that you'll regret. You keep something that you don't actually want because you're too mentally depleted to evaluate it clearly. You make the whole decluttering experience miserable.

Which means next time you're even less likely to start. Pushing through exhaustion doesn't make you stronger. It makes you less capable. It doesn't make you more capable. Now, I want to share something that I've observed working with women on this kind of stuff because it's important. The women who push hardest through overwhelm are often the ones who have the most mental shame that is attached to stopping.

They've internalized the belief that needing a break means they're failing. That if they if they can't just power through, something is wrong with them. And so they stay longer. They stay in the decluttering episode longer than they should. They make decisions when they're not equipped to do so. They make decisions when they're depleted. They finish the session technically, but they don't feel accomplished. They feel wrung out. And the next time that the closet or the bin or the pile needs attention.

We're gonna remember how awful that feeling is right there. And it's just sitting there waiting to convince you not to start next time. Know that this is not you making progress on decluttering. This is you creating a cycle. And one of the most radical things you can do as a midlife woman, someone who has spent decades pushing through and overriding her own agenda and prioritizing everyone else's needs above her own capacity.

The best thing you can do is stop. Not as evidence of defeat, but as a strategy. One of the most mature, self-aware things that you can do in that moment when you are just pushed too far is to recognize the signal and respond to it honestly. Respond to it like you heard the signal. Sometimes, not now, is gonna apply to the entire session.

Sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is close the door, pour yourself a glass of water, and schedule 30 minutes tomorrow when you're actually ready. Know that that is not giving up. That is knowing what you need and how to lead yourself with what you have discovered about yourself. The women who make the most consistent progress in decluttering and in life are not the ones who push the hardest. I'm gonna say that again.

The women who make the most consistent progress in decluttering and in life in general are not the ones who push the hardest. They're the ones who have learned to read their own signals and respond appropriately and respond wisely. Overwhelm is not the enemy, but ignoring the overwhelm absolutely is. So I need you to stop thinking about your closet or that pile or that room or whatever it is that you've been thinking about.

Because this is where the real conversation begins. What I've been describing, the invisible rule, right? The mixed decision types, the not now filter, the difference between needing more time and running out of capacity, all of these things, it's not just about decluttering. It's about how you are living. I want you to think about the decisions that you have been trying to force right now in all kinds of situations and opportunities, not just decluttering.

Not just about stuff, but about your life. Is there a relationship that you're trying to resolve? Before you actually have clarity about what you need from it? Is there a boundary that you keep trying to set, but the timing is always wrong, or you're always too depleted to hold it? Is there a conversation that you've been avoiding? Not because you don't want to have it, but because every time you try, you're already running on empty. Is there a next chapter question?

About who you are now that the kids are older, about what you want now and and what this season is that you keep trying to force an answer to? How many of these are actually waiting for a decision? That's the question.

So, how many of these are actually waiting for capacity? This is something that I see constantly in midlife women. The questions they get bigger, the transitions they get more significant, the identity questions they get louder, and women respond the way that they always have by trying harder, by thinking faster, by deciding sooner. But you cannot think your way to clarity when you are running on empty.

You can't make a good decision about your marriage or your next chapter or your relationship with one of your adult children or what you actually want your life to look at when you're in a state of overwhelm. Some things need more time. Some things need more space. Some things need you to first put down the 17 or 17 other things that you're carrying before you can actually hold this one clearly. What if you stopped demanding immediate

Certainty from yourself. What if you trusted yourself, actually trusted yourself enough to say, not someday, not never, but not right now? What if you settled on the not right now and you actually meant that it was okay to say that? What would that free up in your mind? And I'm asking that honestly, it's this is not a rhetorical question. What would it free up if you allowed yourself to say, you know what, not now, but I'm gonna return to that in the next seven to 14 days? What does that do in your mind?

Because I think some of the decisions that you've been forcing are not ready to be made. Period. And the energy that you're spending trying to force them to be made is energy that you don't actually have to spare. So the not now filter, it isn't just for your closet or your pile or that room. It's permission to stop making every open question a crisis. Now, let's zoom out a little bit more.

Because I think it's really easy to hear everything that I've said so far today and think that this is just about a decluttering strategy. It's not. What the not now filter is, it's actually teaching you something that is much bigger. It's teaching you how to trust yourself. Let me say that again because I don't want you to miss that. Learning to use the not now filter is an act of self-trust because here's what it requires.

It requires you to believe that you actually will come back. That you're the kind of woman who sets something aside and and doesn't forget it for forever. That when you say seven to 14 days, you actually mean it and you'll follow through. A lot of women struggle to believe that because they've set things aside before and let them drift into the someday and then into the never category.

And now every time they try to give themselves grace, that old pattern is right there, whispering, you're not gonna follow through. You never do. You're never gonna get to this. And so instead of trusting themselves, they force themselves to make the decision. They white knuckle through it. They demand certainty when certainty is not available because at least it feels like they're doing something. But forcing decisions you're not ready for is not self-trust. It's actually self-doubt.

Real self-trust says, I know what I can handle right now and I know what I need to set down. I know the difference between avoiding and pausing, and I trust myself to pause and come back. That skill, the knowing when to decide, when to pause, and when to stop entirely is called self-leadership. And it transfers everywhere outside of clutter. It transfers to how you manage your time when things get overwhelming.

It transfers to how you navigate hard conversations with your spouse. It transfers to how you handle your own emotional capacity during big life transitions. It transfers to how you treat yourself when you're struggling, whether you respond with shame and self-criticism, or whether you respond with honest assessment and a real plan. This is not about organizing. This is not about your basement. This is not, this is not about the pile in the corner. This is about learning.

To lead yourself in a way that is honest and strategic and kind. As much as you thought you were coming here to listen about decluttering to decluttering, information about decluttering, this is the real work that we're doing. The closet is just where you practice the skill. So let me give you something concrete to do with all of this because awareness without action keeps you stuck. And I'm not here to keep you stuck. So here's what I want you to do this week.

Step one is to name your decision types. The next time you sit down to declutter in that pile, in that room, in that closet, or honestly, the next time you sit down to tackle anything that's been feeling overwhelming, before you start, take two minutes to acknowledge that not everything on the list or in that pile is the same kind of decision. Some things in that pile or that closet or that room will be easy, some things will be obvious.

Some things are also just genuinely not ready. Just naming the difference between those different things changes how you approach the work. It reduces the pressure before you start. So step one is to name your decision types. Step two is to create a not now space. Now, this is this is physical if you're decluttering: a bin, a shelf, a designated spot where not now items go for the next seven to 14 days.

But you can do this mentally too. If there's a relationship question, a boundary, a life decision that keeps nagging at you, write it down somewhere specific. Give it a real revisit date. Not someday, don't leave it hanging. A real date. That's not now with a return point. That's the filter at work. So step two is to create a not now space. Step three is to learn to read the signal. Now.

When you hit a wall, when the decisions suddenly feel impossible and your brain starts to fog, I want you to pause and ask yourself: is this not now or is this overwhelm? If it's not now, set that specific thing aside and keep going. If it's overwhelm, stop. Not as punishment, not as failure, but stop as a strategy. Give yourself permission to come back when you have capacity.

And then actually come back.

And that brings us to step four. Practice self-trust. Now, this one is the hardest. It's gonna feel the most unfamiliar. It's probably gonna feel a little bit woo-woo, okay? But here's how it works: when you give yourself the not now option, honor it. Create the reminder, block the time, write it on your calendar, show up for yourself the way that you show up for everyone else. Every time you follow through on a not now thing.

Every time you come back, like you said you would, you create and you build evidence that you are someone who keeps promises to herself. And that evidence, it compounds over time. And one day you'll realize that you trust yourself in a way that you didn't used to. Not because life got easier, but because you got more honest about what you could handle and when. That's the goal. It's not a perfect closet. It is a woman who understands.

And leads herself well through responses. Now, if you remember one thing from today's conversation, let it be this: not every item needs a final answer today. Here are four specific takeaways that I wanna make sure that you have today. Number one, the invisible rule is costing you. This rule that says

It's the rule when most women walk into decluttering and decision making in general, with this unspoken rule that if you touch it or if you start to think about it, you have to decide it today. That is pressure that has nothing to do with the stuff or the decision itself. This is what creates overwhelm before you've even started. Takeaway number two: not all decisions are the same, and treating them like they are is exhausting.

There are easy decisions, there are obvious decisions, and decisions that aren't quite ready to be made yet. The not now filter helps you kind of sort decision types correctly so that you can move quickly through the simple ones and give appropriate space and let the hard ones breathe a little bit without stalling the whole process. Takeaway number three.

Not now is not avoidance, but it requires a real return date. The difference between strategic deferral and plain old procrastination is specificity. Not now means seven to fourteen days from right now. It means a real date on your calendar, a genuine commitment to come back. Without a when, it is just.

Avoidance with a more dressed up word. Takeaway number four, this skill extends. You can utilize it far beyond your clock, far beyond your closet or your bin or your pile. Knowing when to decide, when to pause, and when to stop entirely is called self-leadership. It applies to your relationships and your boundaries and your identity questions and every season of life that you're navigating.

The closet, the pile, the box, the bin. This is just where you're gonna practice that not now tool.

So, what I want you to do is take away this idea that some things are gonna be a yes, some things are gonna be a no, some things need a not now with that date. And some are simply showing you that you're just too overwhelmed right now and you need to step back before you step forward. The goal isn't to force clarity upon yourself, the goal is to recognize what type of decision you're actually making.

And to respond appropriately. Is it an emotional decision? Is it a logistical decision? Because when you stop mixing decision types, then that's when something real can finally happen.

That is when things can get easier. That's when decluttering can get easier. And it's not because you become more disciplined or because you have a better system, but because you stopped creating unnecessary pressure. Decision making does get easier. Not because the decisions get simpler, but because you stop treating all of the decisions like they are urgent emergencies.

Life can then get lighter, not because your circumstances changed, but because you stopped demanding that you have all the answers right now. It's one honest decision and then another and then another. That's how progress actually happens. It's not through force, but it's through wisdom. You don't have to have it all figured out today. You just have to know what kind of decision you're actually making. So here's your homework for this week.

And I mean it with all the love in the world. Notice one thing that you have been trying to force yourself to decide could be one item to declutter. It could be one project, one life decision, and run it through the filter. Is this a yes? Is this a no? Is this a not now with a real date attached? Or am I actually overwhelmed? And what I need is just a break, just a rest, not an actual resolution.

That question, it might it might change more than how you handle your clutter. It might change how you approach your whole life. And know that if you want support in doing this kind of work, the mindset piece, the practical structure, the place where all of this comes together, this is what we talk about here every single week.

You can also read about Midlife Clutter Explained and Solved over on Substack. It's where I write on Substack every single week. Conversations just like this one. They go deep. It's a great place to read. Make sure you check the show notes down below. The link to join is there. And it's free to read Midlife Clutter Explained and Solved. I would love for you to join me over there on Substack.

jennifer (02:17.931)
It's great conversations like these. Friend, until we talk again, lead yourself well.