Happier & Healthier—How to Declutter Our Lives & Environment

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Hi, everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and today we’re talking about how to declutter our environment and lives so we can be happier and healthier. I thought the start of the new year is the perfect time to cover this topic, as many of us are looking around at our homes and saying, “Oh my goodness, I need to get my house, my schedule, my routine in order again after the holidays.” There is something about the blank slate of a new year that invites us to take a closer look at our environments and habits, and this can be a really good thing for us and for our kids. Our physical environment plays a huge role in how we feel and function, and that includes how our kids feel and function too. So to help us explore this and to provide some practical and doable tips, I’ve invited Allie Casazza on the show today.

She is on a mission to eradicate the hot mess mom stereotype by empowering other women. She’s built a massive audience and a multimillion-dollar online business based on her proven family-oriented approach to minimalism. She’s also the host of The Purpose Show, a chart-topping podcast, and the creator of multiple online programs and courses. Her platforms continue to grow every day, as more women discover her life changing approach to an abundant life. She lives in Southern California with her husband, where they homeschool their four young children. Allie, welcome. It’s so great to have you here.

Allie Casazza

Hi, thank you so much for inviting me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

This is going to be a great conversation, perfect to kick off the new year, as moms everywhere are looking around at the post-holiday, post having kids home from school sort of a period of time, and going “Oh my goodness, I need to get things back in order”, right?

Allie Casazza

Absolutely. I always tell people, especially in my side of the internet, we’re always decluttering majorly this time of year. The day after Christmas is a really great day, and then really, for about two months after Christmas is primetime to get your kids onboard, get stuff out of the way, and make things simpler.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s so important, the simpler piece, that just resonates so much. I want to get into all that, but I’d love to have you share with our listeners just a little bit about your story about how it is that as a mom of four, you got really passionate about decluttering your life and helping other people do the same.

Allie Casazza

Yeah, so I’ll give you the shortened version, but basically, at this time in my life, it was about 10 years ago. I had just had my third baby, I had three under three, it was clearly a very overwhelming time in my life. But I was just really not okay. I was very young. I was extremely, extremely overwhelmed. I was definitely depressed. And I just kind of felt like I was just going through these days in a haze, in a fog. It wasn’t postpartum depression at that point. I had actually had that with my first, so I would have recognized it as that. It felt like “This is just the way it is,” kind of vibe. I started to just feel like “Okay, well maybe I just need to ask for help.” I kind of wanted to test the waters and see if this was normal. I’ve never had several kids before, toddlers and babies all at the same time. I just wanted to see what was going on. And so I kind of started talking a little bit more openly. I think as women, we can feel like if we’re struggling with something as primal as motherhood, there’s a lot of guilt that comes with that. And so I was really careful with my phrasing, but I kind of started to feel people out and see if this is normal, and making jokes, but kind of wondering, “Is this okay?” And really, what I got back from literally every single person, I asked women that were all ahead of me in life, some just a couple years ahead of me in motherhood, some whose kids were fully grown and they were older, there were grandmothers, relatives and friends, community members and neighbors that I was close to, and everyone said pretty much the same thing. And it was this message of like, “Oh girl, yeah, what did you think you were getting into? Like, that’s motherhood. Oh, just wait till they get older. And you’ve got a girl. Just wait till she’s a teenager, wait.” So it’s like just basically, “Yes, it’s supposed to be this hard. And it’s not even that hard yet.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

You are like “Is this supposed to make me feel better?”

Allie Casazza

Also, the message that goes along with that is always kind of like this “Carpe Diem” situation where it’s like, “And you’re supposed to like it! Soak it up! It just goes by so fast.” It counteracted itself and it wasn’t resonating with me. I was not okay. And no one would say it, so I’m always the one to just say it when I’m interviewed and asked about my story, I will always just say it: I was not loving being a mom. I was not doing okay. And that is not where we belong. Speaking from hindsight now, I now know that nobody belongs there. It absolutely does not need to be that way, and if you are not okay, it’s okay to not be okay; it’s not okay to accept the idea that you’re supposed to stay there. What I was experiencing was survival mode. And survival mode has its place, it is sometimes just necessary. We need to just get through until whatever wave we’re currently under passes, but my issue is that mothers, somehow along the way, collectively decided that that is where we’re going to set up camp and raise our families from, and that’s the toxicity. That’s the problem. It’s this acceptance of mediocrity and misery, constant servitude, a lack of fulfillment. And that’s just like, “Well, that’s just being a mom, that’s what you signed up for.” So that was what I was facing. And after I got that message from everyone I asked, I just really got to a place where the depression fully took over. I was just so hopeless. And then, I eventually got to a place where my personality kicked in. And I was just like, you know what? I cannot get behind the idea that this is it and this is what I’m supposed to feel, and that it’s going to get harder. I just refused. Just no. I’m just going to find my own way of doing this. And so I started to just kind of keep a journal and notice and pay attention to what it actually was that I was struggling with. And I saw it wasn’t really actually the kids at all. It felt like it was, just because their demands are so emergent, like if they need something, they’re screaming at that age, like right now, oh my god, the baby pooped up his back in his diaper. It’s an emergency. So it feels like “Oh, it’s the frickin’ kids.” But what I actually noticed was the mundane stuff, the silent things, the house, the environment, the space I was in, was actually taking all of my time and most of my energy, and it was all stuff that I noticed. I’m picking up these things, and I don’t even know where they came from. This is stuff we don’t even need. The babies are just pulling stuff out because that’s what kids do. And it’s like, I’m picking this up and putting it back every day. And they don’t even play with these toy, they just pull them out. They don’t even need this. I just began to notice how much random stupid worthless stuff was taking up my time. And then the kids would have a regular basic need. And I’d be like, “Oh, my God, again!” And so it wasn’t actually the kids though. And so then I just kind of had this epiphany moment of, well, if that’s the case, what if there was just less… I can’t get rid of everything. What if there was just way less? If this is equally my time and my energy drain, then what if it wasn’t draining so much? And that was a decade ago, little more than a decade, actually, there was no trending minimalism. I didn’t know that was even a thing or a label to call it. There were no documentaries about this or trending books about it. I just was trying, kind of stabbing in the dark. And I did it. I got rid of a bunch of the kids’ toys. I really just kept what sparked their imagination, what I felt kind of lined up with the type of childhood play I wanted them to be experiencing. Didn’t really have any solid guidelines for that, just was kind of a gut thing, I guess, and got rid of almost everything. I got rid of almost all of my things, kept only the clothes that really made me feel beautiful and were worth a space, worth doing laundry. That’s kind of how I looked at it. And in that season of life, not much. I just kept going, and pretty immediately, my life completely, completely changed. My depression lifted and did not come back. My anxiety was so much more reduced. My mood improved. My relationships improved. When you’re not constantly living in an environment spiking your cortisol, that will happen. I ended up homeschooling my kids, and I never thought I’d have time for that. I ended up starting a blog that turned into a business that turned into an empire that retired my husband and saved my family from financial ruin, created jobs through that. This changed my life and started this wildfire among women because we’re sick of it, we’re done. And we’re no longer available for living that stressful, unnecessarily chaotic life.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Allie, so many things you said in there that I think are just such gems for us to consider. I mean, just even the basic idea, that sort of story that we’re sold around motherhood needing to be this constant process of martyrdom and drudgery and “Well, it is misery and it is hard, and don’t expect to sleep well or feel good, or have joy”, or whatever. That’s got to go. And so I’m so glad that you focused on that, because so often I work with moms who just like you said, they “say, Well, it’s the kids that are the issue”, and it’s like, no, no, it’s all this other stuff, and at the root, it’s this idea that we hold on to that this is how it’s supposed to be, that well, really we don’t have any control over this. It is just hard, and it is something to slog through, and we can’t really make it better, which is so disempowering to us, because it’s like, “Oh, I can’t do anything, so I might as well, just get through the day and scroll Instagram and whatever, because this is as good as it gets.” And I love that you really framed this as: No, my journey to what I do now was really to get out of that story.

Allie Casazza

And I also want to just highlight how dangerous that is. First of all, it’s very accepted. It’s pretty much status quo, it’s normal to go to a playdate at the park, and basically spend the entire time with your girlfriend complaining, while you watch the kids on the slide. It’s normal. I’ve joined Bible studies in the past, and empowerment, encouragement groups that were basically just a husband bashing session, a motherhood complaint-a-thon, and it’s very negative, it’s normal. And when you do that, and you accept it, you basically are unconsciously subscribing to this, “It’s just the way it is,” what happens is, you basically become void of enjoyment. You decide that you are going to live a life that is void of enjoyment, of pleasure, of feeling good and having happiness. And we need that. Human beings need that. And when we don’t allow ourselves to have it, or we tell ourselves that we’re in a season where it’s not going to happen, “Oh, when the kids are grown, I’ll start that business, when the kids are grown up, we’ll travel, when I retire, I’ll do this.”, basically, you’re going to start gathering pleasure and enjoyment from unhealthy sources. This is why the mommy wine, that whole way of being, and “Coffee to wine, and then it’s nine, and the kids are finally the F away from me, I finally have a moment. You’re basically always trying to avoid your life, and waiting until the next time your kids are away from you so you can have enjoyment. And this is why mothers are the most alcoholic group of people. This is why they overeat. They are literally trying to stuff themselves to feel pleasure. Food is pleasure for them. Alcohol is pleasure for them. They often have affairs. They’re looking for enjoyment. And we have to break this cycle, we have to break the cycle, because it leads to addiction and trauma and pain. You are not a mother, you’re a person, you’re a soul and a body, and one of your roles is to raise up the next generation. There should be enjoyment in that, and you should have enjoyment in other parts of your life. It is not healthy. And that’s why my method spans across quite a few areas of life. But we start with clutter because it is your physical environment that is constantly pinging enjoyment or stress. You are in charge of which one.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Oh, that is such a good way of putting that: It’s constantly pinging enjoyment or stress, and we’re in charge of which. That’s perfect for all the moms, all the parents listening to just really hear this, that we have got to address this for ourselves if we want to be the kinds of parents we want to be to our kids, right? It pains me, all the parents out there surfing the internet, scrolling social media looking for the next parenting strategy and the next thing, and what am I going to do, and still feeling really frustrated with their children and with themselves. And you have to start from the foundation of what you’re talking about, because if we are coming from this constant depleted, helpless, disempowered, “this is just the way it is” kind of space, all the parenting strategies in the world aren’t going to help us get where we want to be with our kids, right? We’ve got to take stock of our own stuff first. It’s so critical. And I want to jump into this environment piece, because you just said our environment is pinging us all the time. And that’s very much a subconscious thing, I think, right? We’re not aware of what’s speaking to us constantly in our environment, but it is, right?

Allie Casazza

Once it enters your actual awareness, we’ve all had these moments, I’ll paint a picture, and every mom listening will be like, “Oh, my God, yes.” You walk in after a long day, and the house is just a disaster. And you’re just like, “What the… get in here, we are all cleaning this up! This is unacceptable.” You go on your rampage and you start scrubbing and cleaning. And as you’re doing that, you’re starting to notice even more and more and more messes, you become aware of them. It doesn’t happen in five minutes, they’ve been building. But once it comes into your conscious awareness, it’s so far gone. It’s going to take so much work. But on an unconscious level, your environment is affecting you so much. There are countless studies done on this. There’s an entire book by Marshall Goldsmith called Triggers. And in that book, he says one of my favorite quotes ever, “If you do not create and control your environment, your environment will create and control you.” And that is basically a summary of what every single scientific study, every single — everything they’ve done to figure out how much impact our physical space or the environment we’re in, our offices, our kitchens, our bedrooms, the bedroom is huge, especially for your kids, especially if they’re younger than seven. It’s huge. It’s so important because that is constantly sending messages. What do you think it does to your subconscious beliefs about yourself, if you walk in your closet to get dressed for a Friday night, date night and you’ve got rows of clothes that don’t fit you anymore because your body shifted and got a little bigger when you had babies? It’s not positive, I’ll tell you that. It’s all unconscious, all the time; all the clutter, all the drawers, you know, even if they’re closed, your unconscious mind is picking up every sound, everything, every trigger, all the time. You know what’s in those drawers. It’s triggering stress, it’s spiking your cortisol. Then we have the issue where women specifically are triggered more by clutter. Their cortisol levels were more affected than men’s. A UCLA study did that one. They basically found that when you are constantly triggered, when your cortisol is constantly being messed with like that, you basically get into a place where your nervous system is so used to living in a state of stress, it does not know how to experience peace. So then when there is peace, you are addicted to stress. These are the people that are constantly just grabbing their phone and checking it for no reason in the middle of a task. They can’t just be present, they are addicted to stress. This is all coming from the source of the physical environment, contributing to stress so much, that you literally don’t know how to function without it. This is a huge problem. And then to raise your kids in that? You’re just perpetuating the cycle, this generational cycle of too much stuff and not enough space to live.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s so true. And we’ve got studies showing the impact that the physical environment has on children, on developing brains, and even more so for those of you who are parenting children who maybe have some type of neurodivergence, maybe they have an ADHD type of condition, maybe they’re on the autism spectrum, maybe they have high anxiety, those types of things, the physical environment becomes even more important because those kids have sensory systems and nervous systems that are even more susceptible to the effects of what’s going on in the physical environment. But I think for all of us, if we really think about it, and my kids are much older now, but I can think about when they were younger, so much of the conflict that comes up in our homes between us and our kids or even between us and our partners is around the management of stuff, right? Where are things? The finding things, the getting things together, the cleaning things up, all of that. I think it would be interesting, maybe you may know somebody who has done a study on this, but I have to believe that it’s a pretty high percentage of the interactions we have with the other people in our home on a day-to-day basis, and the conflict that we experience with our kids is around things and stuff and the management of the environment. And so if that’s the case, then it makes all the sense in the world that a simple starting point for that is to look at what we can control around the environment.

Allie Casazza

There was one study that was done, I don’t remember who did this one, but it was showing that it would be about 40%, less time spent maintaining your house if you just didn’t have clutter, and clutter in that study was defined as anything that isn’t adored or used within 60 days or something that. That’s pretty loose. I would even say 30 days, unless it’s a holiday item or something, why is it there if you don’t need it? So it’s pretty incredible to think, if you had 40%, less time required if you buy your space, just 40%. That is so much energy and mental space and emotional space, you don’t realize how much it’s pulling at you. And in my book, Declutter Like a Mother, I outline, okay, let’s use the toaster as an example. And in the book, I go through your toaster. You need it. Everyone needs a toaster, toaster oven, whatever, it’s fine. I’m not telling you to throw your toaster. But let’s just use that as an example because it is such a necessary, normal thing to have sitting on the counter. That toaster, just by sitting there, is requiring some amount of your time and energy, because you have to empty out the crumb tray and wipe down the fingerprints, and pick it up and clean under it when you detail your kitchen. And you’re using it, because it’s there, you’re using it. If you didn’t have it, you wouldn’t use it. So even though it’s helpful, it is taking some time. Fact. And in the book, I don’t remember the exact numbers, but let’s just say it’s this many seconds for this, this many seconds for that. And it adds up. And it was something over two hours of your year on your frickin’ toaster. So now imagine all the old trophies, and photos, and photo albums, and books, and socks, and pens, and papers, all of it. That is why you’re stressed out. You’re not bad at this. This is just math. It’s too much. At some point, it has to give.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And for our kids too, I’m thinking about that, how overwhelming that is for kids, how many parents get so frustrated around “I tell them to clean their room and they don’t.” And when I delve into that with the parent and say, “Well, talk to me more about what your child’s room looks like?” Or I say “send me a photo of that.” I’m looking at it and I’m going, “Of course your kid can’t manage that. It is so overwhelming. There’s way too much stuff. They don’t have the skills yet and the brain capacity to be able to figure out what to do with all of that stuff.”

Allie Casazza

They literally cannot.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

No, they can’t. And I’m sure you hear this a lot. Moms who are constantly frustrated and anxious and complaining about how their kids get too much stuff out all the time. And one of the first things I say is, “Well, let’s have less stuff to get out”, because if you pare that down, you’re not constantly creating this cycle every single day where your kids are overwhelmed and taking too much stuff out, and then you’re overwhelmed with trying to get them to clean it up. So I just think what you’re talking about fundamentally makes so much sense in shifting so much about what goes on in our homes.

Allie Casazza

Yeah, it’s become normal. In America, at least, it’s become normal that we have a lot of things. People have these 2,000 and 3,000 square foot homes that are full to the brim of stuff, their garage is just loaded with stuff, and they’re paying for storage facilities extra per month for more square footage, or “Oh, I’m just going to put the holiday stuff in there.” That’s what the garage is for, what’s in your garage? The closets are full, everything is so full. And that is normal, that’s standard. So of course that makes sense that some of it is the kid stuff. So it’s normal to us that our kids would have this much stuff, because at this point, we’ve lived a couple, at least, generations where materialism has gotten to this level and it’s pretty normal. After the Depression era, it kind of swung the other way. And it’s really just done more harm than good. And so just because it’s normal to us to see this much stuff in a home or in a space doesn’t mean that it’s okay or it’s good. And that is why your child is often not lazy. I have ADHD, my daughter also has ADHD, and the only thing that has alleviated some of these symptoms and made things doable and easy is simplicity all the way through. And you don’t even have to have ADHD as a kid to not be able to clean that up. Whatever “regular” functioning child cannot handle that, it’s overwhelming. And that’s just maintaining and cleaning it. Even just having the options, the abundance, the “blessing” of so many toys is not good for them. The studies show, there’s one that was out in Germany on kindergarteners, it’s my favorite, maybe first graders, but around that age, that they literally cannot, they’re so overstimulated, it shuts down their natural brain cognitive ability to play. Too many options is overstimulating. You’re not doing them any favors. It is better to go through the cons and the tough parts of undoing this way of being than to think that you’re giving your kids a gift by having them have an abundance of things.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Oh, so beautifully stated. Let’s get into how we do this, because you’ve made a really compelling case for why we need to be thinking about the environment, for simplifying, for why that matters and makes a difference. But I think that a lot of our listeners are probably like, “Okay, I’m on board with this. But I’m also sitting in my minivan/standing in my kitchen right now and going, help me know, where do I start? What do I need to be thinking about? How do I do this?”

Allie Casazza

So the first thing that I always have people do — to physically go in and declutter, there’s a different process, and we can cover that for sure. But when you’re thinking of the overwhelming feeling of “Oh, my God, I’ve got to stop where I’m at, I don’t want to keep going down this rabbit hole. I don’t want to raise them this way. What do I do?” The first thing you need to understand is the idea of what I call family culture. So everybody listening has a family culture around things in their home already. You have a family culture around a lot of things. Let’s use food as an example. Your family culture around food already exists, your kids are already tuned into it and it’s very strong. For example, if you eat meat all the time, it would be very strange for your family to just go vegan all of a sudden without any explanation. Your kids would probably notice. Or the opposite if you’re vegans and then all of a sudden you have Meat Monday and you don’t say anything, you just do it. There’s a big slab of steak in front of your family. They’re going to notice and probably say, “What’s up?”, because your family culture was to have no meat, or meat is very much a part of your family culture. This is all unspoken, it just is because of the way you have brought something into your family culture through your actions. You’ve never even had to say anything about it. When I was growing up, I had a best friend whose mother was married to someone that did not share her faith and didn’t want the kids to be taught it or the faith to be talked about. So she lived her faith on her own. Every morning, she got up, opened her Bible, prayed, and the kids simply saw her doing this every morning. And they naturally started to just do that and kind of ask her who she’s talking to when she’s doing that, what she is reading, and naturally, that was part of the family culture just by her action. So this is something that we’re doing all the time without trying. So when it comes to things, you have a family culture right now. Maybe at this point in time, it is normal in your family culture for your kid to get a little toy every time you went to Target to keep them busy while you’re running errands because it’s easy. But now you just built it, you reinforce that things equal reward. We get things, we look forward to getting things. It’s kind of like instilling an unhealthy relationship with junk food with your kids. We want to try to not use that as a reward system or whatever. Things are the same way. You have that family culture now. So what you can do is begin to shift it. And in our family, for example, it is normal for us to kind of touch base with how much stuff we have. We have set places for things, and if these drawers start to get full, it’s time to declutter. It’s not “Hey, I need a bigger dresser, mom/I need a new toy bin, mom”, it’s “I need help decluttering, mom.” So that’s normal. That’s our family culture because of the way I’ve acted in my own things and the way that I’ve spoken about things at the dinner table and while we’re at Target and whenever I’m shopping. So you can begin to bring this shift into your family culture very subtly, and mostly by practicing it yourself at first.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

That modeling is so important for everything. We talked about that in so many ways on the show, and so I’m glad you started there because it’s true. And this gets to probably one of the big objections that I imagine you hear all the time from moms, and that I hear around things all the time, which is “My kids won’t do it” or “I can’t get my kids to do it.” Well, we start with ourselves and we start with what we’re doing and what we’re modeling, and that becomes a powerful anchor for that.

Allie Casazza

It’s so funny how when you as a person, as a mom, decide that you’re on board with something, it’s such projection. We always go out, “Oh, look at my husband has this much stuff. Oh my gosh, my kids are out of control”, instead of looking within and starting with your own self. Do you know how many clothes in your closet you can probably get rid of? It’s probably mostly your kitchen, right? It’s mostly your clothes. You have a lot of shoes, you can do the entryway, the doorway, a lot of stuff in the garage. You have control over a lot of things before you even need to speak to your partner or your kids. So go there first, let them see you. And talk to them about it if they’re little kids, or even if they’re a little older. Have them help you with your things. Model this for them, begin to let them see this is normal. This is a new way, I’ve been learning this. This is helping me feel x, y and z. Now I’m going to do the laundry room next if you want to come and help me, or I used to pay my kids, I’d be like, “Hey, $3 for everyone that helps me with the laundry room today.” And it was just normal. That’s a part of our Saturdays, to just check in: How are the toys? How are your clothes? Every season, when the seasons change, we declutter anything that needs it. It’s normal.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

No, that’s great. And start starting to set up those routines, but starting with ourselves. So in the process that you teach, do you suggest that people start with a certain room? Assuming okay, if a mom, or a parent is saying, “Alright, I’ve done some of these things with my own stuff, I’ve gone through my own closet, I’ve done the things I could do. Now I’m looking at the house. Do I tackle it all at once? Do I start with one room? How have you found it most effective for people to sort of approach that?

Allie Casazza

The best room to start in, honestly, is the bathroom. It can be your own bathroom, guest bathroom, whatever you want. I suggest the bathrooms go first mostly because most people don’t keep things that are hard to make decisions about in the bathroom. This isn’t really a place where you’re going to find sentimental items and old photo albums. These are hair tools that just broke really early that you forgot to return and kind of feel weird throwing out just because the waste of money bugs you. Clutter is always, always, always only going to come down to unmade decisions. And as parents, we have enough decisions to make, we have decision fatigue like crazy. So of course you’re going to avoid it, you don’t want to go into clutter because it’s making more decisions. But you don’t understand that in avoiding making those decisions. You’re actually creating more decisions for yourself to make, and more stress throughout the day, making your regular decisions you can’t avoid more stressful to make. It’s like looking at the ROI. Start in a bathroom, make that space better, go to the next bathroom, and next, and then move on to the laundry room from there if you want, or do the kids toys with them, whatever, but see it as the return on investment that you’re getting by investing that time and just getting those decisions out of your way, you literally are getting more time back in your week. Time is the most precious un-replenishable resource. And this is one of the only things you can do to get more of it.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

You touched on that earlier. I’m so glad you came back around to that because if there’s one thing that most parents or people in general complain about, it’s not having enough time, and I love that you are really spotlighting for us how much of our time is spent on managing stuff, things, belongings, spaces. We don’t realize that, even as I’m sitting here thinking about it, I’m like, yeah, there are there are several things that I deal with repeatedly in my own space, whether it’s in my office or my home that I could totally eliminate if I just got conscious about it and decided to do that. So I think especially in a time a lot of you who are listening are probably feeling like, “Where do I find more time?”, especially if you have really high needs kids or you’ve got a lot going on, it can feel “There’s no way to get the time I need for things”, and Allie, what you’re talking about is such a tangible way for us to literally take time back in our day.

Allie Casazza

Yes. What would you do with 40% less on your to do list? There’s the time, and then this is only part one of my method. We haven’t even gone into your phone and quieting the noise in tech and how you’re spending your time. We haven’t even gone over there. Just the first step, the physical space alone, there’s the time to start that business, there’s the time to work on your marketing, to read those books you have been wanting to read, to go to those Pilates classes. There’s the time to do everything. I mean, I’ve had people reach out and message me that their kids with special needs literally are almost symptomless from how much better they are functioning with their space this, that they have literally been able to have another baby because they feel so de-stressed, and they thought they could not handle another baby. There were lives that weren’t going to come into the world because of this, this stress. This is a very real, very big problem. And I know that none of us want to purposely raise our kids to continue it. So somebody has to stop. And I believe it’s us.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Yeah, I want to get into what you just touched on about other things to declutter with, but I think one big question a lot of people probably have around this with stuff is “Okay, I’ll start with the bathroom. I’ll start with the things that are not emotional, whatever.” But how do you help people think about decluttering things and spaces where maybe there is some emotional pull or there’s a concern about what the kids or what somebody else is going to think about removing stuff? Do you have a couple of tips? I know your book goes into it in detail. Friends, the book is great. We’re going to tell you where to get it, you need to get that, but just share maybe a tip or two around that, because I think this stops people, women in particular, from even starting this process, because it automatically brings up uncomfortable feelings that we feel we’re not going to know how to handle.

Allie Casazza

Yes, you’re so right. And this is such a perfect example of it’s never about the clutter. It’s never about the stuff. It’s always unmade decisions and it’s always got all this emotional charge underneath it. So one thing that I always like to point out is these women I work with, they’ll say, “Oh, well, my mother-in-law gave me that.” And it’s like, okay, hold on. We’ve looked at all the studies. We know that what takes up your space is also taking up your time. When you buy something or someone buys something for you, there’s a financial charge to own it. But then there’s a recurring fee of your time, how many minutes it’s taking from you and that fee is recurring as long as you own the item. So what you’re saying is because you might hurt someone’s feelings if they happen to notice this gift they gave you that apparently came with some kind of unspoken contract, that you have to keep it for X amount of years or forever, that if they notice it’s gone, or are rude enough, them being rude, not you, them being rude enough to ask if you still have it, that they’re going to be hurt, and that that is a reason for you to keep paying the recurring fee of your unreplaceable resource of time when you’re raising kids and doing whatever else is on your plate? Some women are running empires and raising multiple kids, and they have blended families ,and they’re trying to adapt to that and be a good stepmom and all these things, all of that, just throw it all out because we don’t want to hurt Aunt Molly’s feelings. The societal programming of never doing anything for yourself and making everyone else happy, making sure that you’re good, that everyone likes you, this is not about clutter. It runs deep. I always joke that I wish I would have known that this is what I was going to end up doing. I would have gotten a psychology degree because I need it. This is some therapy, it’s crazy. And so I always say we want to remove the emotional charge. So when we get into a closet that’s got a lot of baby clothes, a lot of photo albums, things that, there’s an emotional charge attached to these things. You gave those things that meaning. They’re just things, they don’t hold anything that we don’t give to it. So we want to look at what is the emotional charge, and can it be neutralized? I realized I’m people pleasing by keeping this quilt that I actually hate that someone made me when I was having a baby. I’m going to keep the picture that I have of my baby girl wrapped in it when she was born. Maybe I’ll even blow it up and frame it and put it on the wall in my collage, but I’m going to go ahead and get rid of the quilt. If you can get to that point, great. Sometimes you don’t want to. I have a little red pea coat with a pink tulip lining that my daughter wore when she was a baby. That’s adorable, it’s classic, practically speaking, it could definitely be handed down and reused. I have lots of pictures of her in it. But I don’t want to get rid of the coat. It’s worth the space. I’m okay with that taking up some space in my little keepsake box and moving it from house to house. So there we go, that’s fine. You can kind of feel it naturally. I just don’t want to remove the charge, but sometimes you are kind of pissed that it’s got an emotional charge or that you kind of feel obligated to keep it, and you don’t want to feel that way, but you do. Those we can undo. And that’s kind of the inner work, I guess. That’s why I always say decluttering is kind of spiritual. It’s heavy, it brings up stuff. It’s something to work through.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And in realizing that because it does bring that stuff up, that means that even having it our environment is triggering those deep-rooted issues, emotions, relational, unresolved things, that just having that knickknack that somebody gave us that we feel obligated to keep, whether it’s conscious or subconscious, there is an emotional hit, a triggering that happens every time we walk past that, every time we see it. And to your point, to really look at “Okay, why are we keeping that stuff around?” We have enough that drains us and enough stressors anyway. And so I think you’re really opening people’s eyes to just more of this. You had mentioned earlier a study that looked at decluttering that kind of had a general rule if you haven’t used it or whatever in 60 days. Do you have a general rule of thumb, let’s say when it comes to kids’ toys or things like that? Or maybe kitchen stuff, whatever. Do you have a general rule of thumb that you have people think about in terms of how to determine just if that’s even something we need to have around?

Allie Casazza

So with kids toys, I actually have a little bit of a different process. And we can just put a pin in that and come back to it if you’d like. But for pretty much everything else, I have a few key questions that are in my book. But one of the main ones is, “When was the last time I used this?” It’s not about getting a very specific, perfect, correct answer. It’s kind of an internal gauge, of if you can’t even remember, or if you’re like, “Oh, well, this is my little black dress and it looks great on me. And every time I get invited to a wedding, it’s what I wear. So I want it.” Or if it’s like, “Oh, I don’t even know if this fits me, or if it did fit, it’s kind of tattered. I’ve been meaning to go take it to the tailor to get fixed.” Are you going to or are you not? Set a timer in your phone for three days from now, if it’s not fixed by then, you’ve got to declutter it. There’s little “If this, then that” sort of rules. They’re not even rules, they’re just helpful pushes for you because it’s all unmade decisions. So make the decision. Then there’s some things, I have holiday plates and bowls that are so cute, that I’ve invested in. They take up space in the back of one of my kitchen cupboards, and they only come out once a year. It’s fine. But those are those things. Everything else, I don’t have seven sets of dishes. The average house has three different sets of daily dishware. Unless you’re the Duggars, you don’t need all of those dishes, right? You only need one. So just removing the “normal” excess. And then with the kids’ toys, if they’re 3 years old or younger, I would maybe say two or once they hit three, it’s kind of up to the parent, but younger than three, it’s okay to kind of make these decisions for them, in my experience. I’m not going off of a study, just going off of 10 years that I’ve been living this way and the 7 years that I’ve been coaching in this, you can make the decision for them. I did it like this: What kind of childhood do you want for your kids? What toys align with that? Probably not a bunch of plastic, cheap, loud toys that do all the imagining for them. So I kept a lot of blocks, I kept a lot of Thomas the Trains and dolls and dress up. Oh my gosh, the dress up, every Halloween, I still go and let my kids pick as many costumes as they want, we get them all on clearance, and they still pick that stuff. And so things like that. What’s going to help them imagine? Also, for me, what’s gonna get them outside? I purposely have always lived in a climate where we can go outside all the time because it’s so important to my mental health and so important for my kids. So things like that. What do you want for them? Once they get to age three and older, bring them into that conversation. What are your favorites? Some kids are naturally very empathetic. I showed my kids some video footage of just kids that were all living together in this little orphanage and they were getting presents from other people that had mailed them in through Operation Christmas Child. They were so excited, literally connecting them to “These are the kinds of kids that they don’t have parents. Or if they have parents, their parents can get them presents. Let’s give them birthday gifts, let’s give them Christmas gifts, let’s do something. This is where your stuff is going. I have taken them with me to women and children’s safe houses. And one time, this has never happened, again, but I wish it would, but this one center actually let us come in and hang around the women and their kids. And my kids were literally seeing it. Bring in empathy. Use this to teach your kids that this materialistic consumeristic society is not good. As you can see, I like nice things. I’m an interior decorator at heart. I love beautiful things. I’m going to get a new handbag, I’m going to make sure I wait and save and get the really nice one that I actually want. I love nice things. But I don’t have an excess of crap in my way, stealing my energy, my time, my joy. It is intentional. And if it can’t be intentional, I will make sure I go and take it somewhere where it can be intentionally used for someone else. And that’s what I’m teaching my kids.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

So perfect. Awesome. I know we need to wrap up, But I want you to talk about the book, where people can find the book, and then the other supports and programs that you offer, because, as you mentioned, you teach systems that focus on more than just the physical environment. And that’s what we focused on today. But as you mentioned, decluttering our lives with our technology, decluttering our schedules and routines. This idea of decluttering and simplifying applies to so many areas of our life, right?

Allie Casazza

Yes, there is so much. The decluttering gets people in because everyone wants to get organized or whatever. But it’s really opening a can of worms because once you see, you can’t unsee how much precious time and space in your life and in your energy you have been wasting and giving up. You have been giving your power away all this time and didn’t know it. So once you know it, you can’t unknow it. So yeah, all of this, Declutter Like a Mother, the book, I have a program called Your Uncluttered Home that has something over 13,000 people subscribed and enrolled in it. It’s done so well. That’s just the surface scraped. That’s just the home. Then we get into rhythms, routines; I call it the rhythm and anchor method, where we’re automating yourself, automating your day, we’re clearing out all the unnecessary, all the extra to do’s on your list. Everything that you touch can be made simpler. I even started doing this in my own business, and now I teach that: How do you simplify your online business? How do you simplify starting a business? How do you run this and raise a family at the same time? It’s hard. So everything can be made simpler. And there’s so much for your friends listening. There’s so much for you. There’s an entire method. The best place to start is probably the book. And then there’s even a book called Be the Boss of Your Stuff that I wrote that is Declutter Like a Mother, but it’s for your kids aged 7 to 12, I would say. And my two oldest kids are in the audiobook, the audio version, they’re in that with me. So if you want to get that, you can just push play for your kids and let my kids kind of teach them how to take control of their space, and it kind of gives kids power and choice, which you definitely know they love that instead of you hounding them and nagging them. So there, I would start there. But there’s programs that I run several times a year. Follow me on Instagram and you’ll always kind of stay in the loop. Get on my email list and see what’s happening and when, but this is all I do, is help people live lighter in different areas.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

It’s such an important mission. So valuable. Every single one of us can benefit from this. The book is great. I actually have gone and read the book way before you and I were connected and met and scheduled this, so I can definitely vouch for it. Tell them what’s the website? What’s the Instagram? Where can they go?

Allie Casazza

Yeah, so my Instagram handle is @allie_thatsme. And the website is alliecasazza.com. You can also go to declutterlikeamother.com. That’s where you can find you can get the audiobook, you can get the book at any website you choose, and then bethebossofyourstuff.com as well, is the kids book.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I love that you have the kids book. I didn’t even know that. That’s fantastic. I’m going to recommend that too.

Allie Casazza

It’s so cute. Do you see right there behind me?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

I see it behind you. That’s amazing!

Allie Casazza

It is the happiest little book and it’s so cute. It’s very photo-heavy.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

Awesome. Well, perfect for kids. That’s amazing. So Allie, thank you for being here with us today, for sharing all of these great tips, and motivating too. I feel motivated with the start of the year: Okay, let’s do this, you have just a really wonderful way of talking about this. So thank you for all the work that you are doing for moms and women everywhere and for spending time with us today. We appreciate it.

Allie Casazza

Thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens

And thanks as always, to all of you for being here and for listening. We’ll catch you back here next time.