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Alison Stewart: Today, we're discussing how to make room for some new things in your life by tossing out some of the old, in other words, decluttering. We are two weeks into 2023, and if you're like me, you want a cleanish slate in your home. There are things you can do while listening to me right now, maybe get rid of a box full of clothes or your shoebox is full of whatever. Whether you plan on moving to a new apartment soon or you want to clear space for a house guest or just want to reduce some of the stress in your life, our next guest can provide some guidance.

He is an OG in the world of decluttering. For the past two decades, Matt Paxton has been knee-deep in helping people rid their homes of stuff and free themselves from the burden of being surrounded by things that simply no longer serve them. You may have seen his work on the Emmy-nominated PBS show, Legacy List with Matt Paxton, and of course, his compassionate take on the show, Hoarders. He's also the author of the very helpful book, Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life. Matt Paxton, welcome back to the show.

Matt Paxton: Thanks for having me.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want you to join in on this conversation. Have you successfully decluttered your home? What's a tip you'd like to share? Maybe tell us how it affected or changed your life, or maybe you're just getting started and you have a question for Matt. Maybe you are an organizing expert, we want to hear some of your hacks, or maybe there's something you struggled to keep organized and you want to ask about it. Give us a call at 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or reach out to us at @allofitwnyc.

Matt, I know a lot of people know you and they know who you are and they've been watching you on TV, but they may not know your personal story that you started cleaning out houses after your father, stepfather, and both grandfathers died in the same year. Gosh, what aspect of that cleaning-out process did you find challenging before you got into this professionally?

Matt Paxton: It was not a crazy bar fight by the way, just bad luck they all died. [chuckles] I had four houses I had to clean. My grandfather always said, "If something sucks, do it as a job like people pay you to do it." I'm still doing it 25 years because it was awful, man. I was super sad. I was super depressed, but I had all the stuff I had to do to help my mom and my grandmas. I was doing it, but what I didn't realize, I always loved the stories. I got addicted to the stories, not the stuff, man. I loved the stories.

By the time that year I finished all those houses, all these old women at church were like, "I heard what you did at your grandma's house. Can you come do my garage?" Then before I knew it, I was just sitting in attics and living rooms and garages with all these fascinating people. I was hearing all these stories, and it took me probably 10 years to realize, "Dude, if you talk about this stuff and you talk about the people, then you don't need the stuff."

Alison Stewart: When you think about that personal experience that you had and those personal feelings you had in that year, what from that personal experience do you apply to your work still today?

Matt Paxton: God, all of it. Listening, reminiscing about the past. I'll tell you the one that did it for me isn't actually not my parents'. It was the next one I did. It was the fifth one. It was a neighbor, and we were cleaning out her garage. I thought she was 150 years old. I was a kid. I was 25. She's probably 70. We were working in her yard and her sleeve rolled up and I saw her tattoo. She was in the Holocaust, and I was afraid to ask her. I asked her, "Am I allowed to ask about that tattoo?"

She's like, "Oh, yes, sure." Then we sat down and we talked. It made me realize, dude, my life's not that bad. She'd lost her husband, she'd lost her brother. She was telling me all these things, and I was fascinated. We went through all of her magazines that day. I took a car full of magazines, but all we did was talk. I just always come back to, there are amazing stories of where we go. That's what I take with me. If all you hear me today say is, tell the stories behind the stuff, then the stuff will go away, believe it or not. You just got to tell the stories to somebody. You got to share it.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Kate, calling in from Montclair, New Jersey. Hi, Kate. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Kate: Hi. I have one personal thing that seems to symbolize the person. Unless it's really good stuff, then it's the only thing I keep. My aunt, her essence is this thing you blow into to do the tune before you sing a song. I keep it by my door-

Alison Stewart: A pitch pipe?

Kate: -and I think of her. Yes, a pitch pipe. It's her. She was very musical and she would-- "Okay, let's sing a song." We would and be on pitch.

Alison Stewart: The idea, Kate, is that you try to keep one thing for someone in your family that really reminds you of them, but just one thing.

Kate: No, anybody. I have people going through my life all the time and that have passed and I just keep something that, "Oh, that reminds me of so-and-so."

Alison Stewart: Kate, thank you for calling in. Let's talk to Jamie on line two, calling in from New Jersey. Hi, Jamie. Thanks for calling All Of It. Tell us about your stuff. [silence] Jamie, are you there?

Jamie: Hi there. Thank you. Hi, I was on mute. Hello.

Alison Stewart: Oh, okay. You're on the air, Jamie. Go for it.

Jamie: Hi. Thank you. I'm calling because I love organization. I love this conversation, and I've thought about going into actually a business of my own organizing others' homes. That's how much I love it. Clutter really gives me anxiety. My fiancé who I live with has ADHD. I diagnosed him and he is very much sentimental, has been at times called the hoarder. I'm just trying to figure out how best to work with him to build the right routine to help us stay organized.

Alison Stewart: Jamie, thank you so much for calling in. Matt, I'm sure you see these spouses, partners, where one person is super organized and the other is challenged in that area. What's a good way for them to have conversations about this?

Matt Paxton: I love this and I've done it twice now. Both times I got married, I married messy people. [laughs] It's what we're attracted to, right? Opposites attract. Now here's the deal. You got to communicate. It's two things. You got to communicate positively. Then here's the tricky part. You got to do it at the right time. Communicating about the mess while you're arguing about the mess, not a good idea. My advice is, talk about the mess when you can't see it. If you can see the mess, it's probably the wrong time to talk about it because you're not going to be unbiased.

I see this with families. I see it with couples. I see it with estates when I clean out estates and siblings are fighting across the country over a piano that neither of them really want it but they're fighting over it because what they're upset about is that dad loved me more than someone. It's never about the stuff. There's an old video out there called It's Not About the Nail. If you've ever seen that, Google It's Not About the Nail, and you'll laugh so hard. The point of this, it's never about the stuff. It's always about other emotions. I want you to talk about those emotions but you got to do it in a healthy space.

With your partner, that might be in therapy, man. That may not be in the living room. It's definitely not in the living room, honestly. You need to go on a walk. You need to get away from it to chat about it. Then you need to both be heard. I think that's the other part. A lot of times only one person talks about it and the other person feels beaten down and they choose not to discuss it because I'm the clean one and as much as I want it clean, you have to understand that the messy one also prefers it messy. That's also their point of view, and you have to allow that.

Then you have to remember why you're together. You're not together because of clean or messy. You're together for something much bigger. I love what Kate said on the first call. She's doing it right. She celebrates the one awesome thing about each person. Now, she's probably got a ton of people in her life. It sounds like she's pretty exciting and welcomes a lot of people in her life, but I dig that. What she's not doing is she's not keeping 100 items for each person. I think that's one of the tools we talk a lot about as a Legacy List on my TV show, Legacy List.

She's basically created a Legacy List for each person. That's amazing. If you keep that one item-- That pitch pipe was a really cool story. You could hear her light up. She got excited talking about her aunt. That's the whole point. I want you to tell one awesome story about each person. When we get to the garage and we're going through the aunt's tools and old lunch boxes and things that don't really have any emotional value, you can let go of them easier because you've celebrated them so much with the pitch pipe.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Matt Paxton. He's host of Legacy List with Matt Paxton on PBS. You should also check out his book, Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life. We are talking about cleaning out. Listeners, if you want to get in on the conversation, maybe you've successfully decluttered your home and you'd like to share a tip or maybe you are thinking about doing so and you just want to get started, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Maybe you're super organized and you have something you want to share with team All Of It.

We love to help each other out in the show. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC, or maybe you have a question for Matt. I want to follow up on something that our previous caller, the word she used is she gets anxiety from messiness. I understand, I've talked to you before about this in the past, people do get stressed out by their stuff, that there is a benefit to clearing out things that no longer serve you, that it really can be a stress reducer.

Matt Paxton: Absolutely. It's a valid feeling for all parties involved. I actually got invited in by a medical group this summer. They have data that prove you're healthier with less junk around. Now, they haven't released it yet, but they can prove it, that you're healthier with less stuff. It's a real feeling, but it's just not as easy for everybody else. You and I met at a hoarding conference, good lord, a decade ago.

Alison Stewart: Exactly, yes.

Matt Paxton: Like walking around a [unintelligible 00:10:37], a few people talking about how it affects us mentally. The reality is we all see piles differently. I've actually seen the data, if 10,000 of us look at the same room, we all see it differently. When I look at a pile and I say to my wife, "You don't see that?" she actually sees it different mentally. She sees it differently than I do. I want to caution people on that. Then things in our lives have helped us see things differently too. The anxiety is real, but it's for all sides of the party and it's at different levels. You just have to be patient with it, but yes, clearing your house does make life better. Absolutely.

Alison Stewart: We should also make the point, and this is something that I learned talking to you and other experts is that people throw around the word hoarder, but hoarding is really an illness. Hoarding and being messy are two entirely different things.

Matt Paxton: Okay. I get a call all the time, "My seven-year-old daughter is a hoarder. She's got a hundred purses." That's not hoarding. That's actually bad parenting. No seven-year-old should have a hundred purses, but yes, the word hoarding is way overused. It is a protected mental disability as it should be. It's caused by trauma. It's caused by grief. Bad things have happened to them. They're looking for happiness and self-worth in stuff. You and I look for happiness and self-worth and [unintelligible 00:11:52] in work or exercise or faith or education or drugs, alcohol. I'm putting all those things in the same bucket because we look for positivity in something, or hoarders happen to look for it and stuff. We don't know why they do, but it's real and it's not a joke, and they really can't help it.

Alison Stewart: Let's go to line three. Stephanie from Bellport. Hey, Stephanie. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Stephanie: Hi. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking my call. Thank you for doing this show. My goodness, I'm so grateful I happened to turn on. I am a person who tends to acquire too many things and attach memories to things, et cetera, but I've recognized I don't have a problem giving things away. Where I seem to get tripped up is I'll bag things, box things, and I get too caught up on trying to have them really beautifully folded, organized, packed and getting them to the right place.

I'll make it to the point of, yes, I can let these things go, and then I seem to just stall. I sometimes ask for help like, "Hey, once I pack these up, can you just don't let me see them again? Remove them." Unfortunately, I'm rarely able to get the help. I just wondered if there's a tip for someone where I feel really bad to see good things ruined or thrown out. Is there any advice for me?

Alison Stewart: That's interesting, but yes.

Matt Paxton: Yes. Oh my God, I love it. You're brutally honest with yourself, which is really important in this journey. What I really love what you're doing is-- Believe it or not, hoarders are very kind people. They're giving people. Typically, their careers are nurses, social workers, and teachers. They're giving, they're caring people. We've found, over my 20 years of cleaning houses, it's easier to donate than it is to sell an item. We feel better about it being given away. You're already doing what you need to do. You just need to do it more, which is give it away.

I would try this. I would back the volume down. Don't worry about a box because then you need someone to come pick it up. Pick up an item, one item, that you know you could give away and see who you can give it to. Now, don't give it all to the same person. If one person is receiving all this stuff, it's probably a bad idea. Find places that you like. Anywhere you work with donations, you've got to find a donation place that you jive with, you really love their mission, you love what they're doing. If you find that, it's easier to give it away. For you, the lady who just called, I would do it more often in smaller volume.

If it can fit in your backpack, then donate it. If it can't fit in your bag or your backpack, you went too big. That's my advice. Just keep doing it and feel good while you're doing it. There is an awesome release. It's just like losing weight. When you put on those pants and they feel like they're too big after you've worked really hard, it feels great. It makes you want to diet more and exercise more. Same thing with donation and downsizing. The more you get excited about it, the more easier it becomes, and the best way to do that is through donation.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Matt Paxton. The name of the book is Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life. We'll take more of your calls, and we'll talk to Matt about the maybe pile, and I need to know about what to do with some pictures after the break.

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Alison Stewart: You are listening to All Of It at WNYC. My guest is Matt Paxton. Name of his book is Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life. Of course, you watch his show, Legacy List with Matt Paxton on PBS. Let's talk to Richard from Brooklyn. Hi, Richard. Thanks for calling in.

Richard: Hi. How are you, Alison? Thank you. This is such an amazing topic because years ago I was downsizing. I'm 58 now, but I was downsizing, and unfortunately, it was around the time that several elderly relatives started to get old and needed someone to take care of them. I jumped in because I had the time. I can't begin to tell you what a great experience it was basically. Suddenly, when they passed, going through all their stuff, looking through their papers, it's not just financial stuff, it's family mysteries that are resolved. I had a relative who had a reverse mortgage, and we realized her husband never signed on any of the papers.

Only my aunt signed on it, so had he not passed first, she would've been thrown out of her house. You learn about people very much when you go through their stuff. The other thing I would say from a financial standpoint is lots of old people still have, believe it or not, hard copies of stock certificates. You don't want to just throw things out randomly because you could deposit them on the people's behalf. I found that as well with my own mother's stuff.

Alison Stewart: Wow. Richard, thank you so much for calling in. Matt, what is important paper and what is paper that's just in the way?

Matt Paxton: Everything he just said was dead right. Thank you for sharing that, Richard. I have found millions of dollars in the stock certificates. They just weren't digitally converted. Bonds are important, the stock stuff is important. You really just need the last date on all the bank statements. You don't need all of them. The tax papers, you really only need the seven years. I got a train coming right through my front yard, so I'm going to pause and let you go to the next question.

Alison Stewart: [laughs] That's okay. I wanted to actually dive into the idea about storage because anybody who knows that there's a multi-billion dollar storage industry, whether it's storage units or whether it's cute bins or whether it's cool things that you can put labels on. How do you know you're misusing storage, Matt?

Matt Paxton: This is my favorite topic. If you are buying stuff to get rid of stuff, you are doing it wrong. That means baskets, storage bins. You have everything you need to store it in your house. I'm not big on storage unless it's for a finite time. If you are downsizing, and I understand it's different in the city, but if you are moving and you're going somewhere and you have it for three months, fine. Pay it for the three months and then get rid of it. It is meant to be temporary. It is not meant to be forever.

I am not big into buying lots of-- Again, I keep going back to exercising. If you're going out and you're buying $5,000 in new exercise equipment and then you just put your coat on it, you don't work out, it's not really anything helpful. Same thing with stores. Stop buying so many supplies and just start decluttering.

Alison Stewart: What about photos? Now, there's two camps of photos. There's physical photos, the ones when you used to peel it off and wave it until it developed. We have the physical photos, and then we also have people with 10,000 photos on their phone. Let's start with physical photos first.

Matt Paxton: All right. Physical, I'll go through the big ones. Just so you know, an inch-high stack is a hundred pictures. Now, think of how many hundreds of thousands of pictures you have with 10 shoe boxes full of pictures. I want you to go through them quick. I want you to get rid of the negatives. You never used them. You don't need them again. Get rid of the negatives. Get rid of the duplicates. We all grew up. Go into Fox Photo and go into [unintelligible 00:19:09] and get all the doubles. Get rid of the doubles. Get rid of the generic landscape. If it's just water or just a beach and you don't even know which one it is, get rid of that.

Then my favorite is, get rid of the one that it's pictures of people you don't know, you have no idea who they are, or worse, you know who they are and you don't like them. I just moved last year and I was going through my attic and I found a bunch of pictures with people from high school that I couldn't stand. I'm like, "Why are they taking up physical and mental space in my brain and my house?" You're allowed to let go of these. If you really don't know who they are, I think it's okay to let go of them. Just because they were in your life at one point doesn't mean they need to stay in your life.

Alison Stewart: Digital photos, where does one start to organize all the photos on our phones?

Matt Paxton: We all have the box with five old cell phones. Same mentality, go through-- The good thing is I put it on a realistic thing on my computer and I scroll through them and I just grab over the few that I want. There are professional photo organizers, believe it or not. That's all that they do. If you have so many and it's that important to you, you might want to hire. Just like you'd hire a professional organizer, you might hire a professional photo organizer. There's lots of good classes online. It's thephotomanagers.com. Check them out. You can take the class on how to do it, but at the end of the day, you got to put effort in.

Again, I keep going back. If you want to lose weight, you got to work out, you got to diet. If you want to have a cleaner and emptier house, you got to do the work. It always comes down to-- I'm really big on doing baby steps. Do 10, 15 minutes a night. Don't save it all for a Saturday because that's why you're in this situation in the first place. We've postponed it for 20 years. Honestly, tackle the physical pictures first, and you won't even go into your phone at that point. You'll be so done with it. You won't even open the phones. You can just strip them clean and recycle them and get some money for them.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Darren, calling in from Brooklyn. Hi, Darren. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Darren: Hi. Thanks for all of this. I can appreciate all of this about photographs. I'm a professional photographer and by definition a collector because I collect photographs and images. I have hard drives and many prints, but I'm also a hobbyist and I collect bicycles and motorcycles. What comes with that are parts and magazines and logs. I find it hard to live a minimalist life because I'm a collector and a hobbyist.

Alison Stewart: Interesting question.

Matt Paxton: Man, do we have an hour for this one? I love it. Here's the deal. One, you've got to have different expectations than the rest of the world because your hobbies, you're doing them, they're active. Actually, it's a part of your daily life, and so you need a little more storage. If you're just holding it on for a rainy day and you've never touched it, you're not helping anybody, you're not sharing it, you're not showing it, then that's a challenge. I would encourage you to sell them at that point because you've got items-- I've been talking about donation all day.

I think his name is Darren, he's got some situations where he's going to sell those things because they're unique, there's not a lot of them, they're there, but if you're going to keep them all, go for it. Now, that is a situation where you might want a warehouse or you might want to a workspace. That's not storage. Storage is, I'm not looking at it, I put it away forever, I'm not touching it. A workspace is a place that people are coming to and it's an active part of my life. I am a minimalist, Darren. I converted two years ago. I married a woman that is a minimalist.

I had to make very hard decisions. I got rid of 75% of my stuff. I have five shirts. I have three pairs of jeans. I actually do have six pairs of shoes. I don't have a lot because I have learned that there's more to life than stuff and less is more. That being said, I have seven kids, guys, so my hobby is children. I'm a dad. That's my whole hobby. My hobby is their hobby. I don't need stuff for my hobbies. I just got to be there for my kids. Your hobbies have to align to the way you want to live.

You don't have to be a minimalist. It's not realistic for everybody, but you can have a little bit less stuff and enjoy it. The point is, you don't want your stuff to weigh you down. If your stuff is holding you back from living, wherever you are in your life, if it's holding you back from living, then you got too much stuff. I would focus on donation or selling.

Alison Stewart: Collection has intent behind it. It has curation.

Matt Paxton: Collection is something you do with friends and family and strangers. It brings you life. It brings you activity. It brings you joy. It brings you some action. If there's no action in your collection, then it's not a collection, it's just storage.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Wanda, calling in from New York. Hi, Wanda.

Wanda: Hi. I moved across the country and my particular thing is books. I have nine boxes of books. I've been looking to digitize them. By the way, I have gone through them, gotten rid of some of them, and I'm now down to nine. I've been looking into digitizing things because there are things that are really important to me to keep. I'm just having trouble finding affordable digitization, particularly of textbooks.

Alison Stewart: Yes, that's one of the big problems I think in digitization is it's expensive, Matt. That's a tough one.

Matt Paxton: Yes, she's right. You've done the research, Wanda. There's no other answer. It is expensive. You either have to do it yourself. If you've actually gone through all your books and gotten down to nine, then you have the energy and you have the ability to do it. The only way to do it affordably is to get a nicer scanner. Go spend, say, $1,000 on a really nice scanner. Look online. You can find a really good one. Then you're the digitizer. The difference is, you're not doing one page by one page. You're going to be able to scan through this because you have a nicer scanner.

Man, the volume you're talking, you're talking tens of thousands of dollars. Honestly, the other alternative is just to go buy three-digitized copies online. It's probably still cheaper than paying someone else to do it. If it's pictures, I encourage you to look at digitization services. If it's books, you're probably better off doing it yourself. I've been looking for five years. There is not a cheaper solution out there. Unfortunately, your answer is exactly what you think it is.

Alison Stewart: Let's go to Mila from Brooklyn. You'll appreciate this call, Matt, having seven kids. Mila, thanks for calling in.

Mila: Hey, Matt. Thank you for having me. What do I do with all the stuff that comes in the door for my kids? Everything from artwork they've made in school to junky party favors that they get at birthdays. It's just filling up my house.

Matt Paxton: Yes, mediocre art is what we call this topic and we have it. Let's start with all the [unintelligible 00:25:53] and all the things coming in. Don't let them in. You got to have a firm rule. They get to keep one item out of it. We have a cubby. Each kid has a locker. Each kid has a one-foot by four-foot locker. If it fits in there, they can do whatever they want. I give my kid a space for all that junk from the birthday parties and stuff. Once it's full, then I make them sort through it and decide if they want something coming in, something else has got to come out.

Believe it or not, after the first time, the kids started to do really well with that. They'll come and they'll say, "Oh, well, I'm going to get rid of so-and-so because I want this to come in." Let the kids participate. Give them a very secure space. On the artwork, it's usually you and me that are having a problem with the artwork. I give each kid a foldable frame that opens up. Each month, they get to decide which art goes in there. I digitize the rest. I have a folder for each kid on my phone. I digitize every photo that comes in that I like, but we only keep one a month.

At the end of the year, we've only kept one. We throw the rest away. It is digitized and we're able to share it. There's lots of apps. Artifacts is a great app that we use. Artifacts, it's really cool. Check it out. You can actually put your stuff. Everything you want to do, you can put it on there, and you can share it with family and friends. That is an easier volume that we can all digitize and still share. I have that one frame for each kid, and the kid picks what art goes in there, not you and me. You have to be diligent. Don't let the junk in. It's like poison ivy, man. It'll take over the house if you don't. It'll absolutely drive you crazy. We have seven, so we just don't even let it in.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Leia from New Jersey, who I think is in the business. Hey, Leia.

Leia: Hey there. I had about 10 years working with hoarders who were threatened with eviction in Manhattan. I was actually on hoarding [unintelligible 00:27:48] as a professional organizer. This was about a decade ago, but I wanted to just share. I'm sorry I haven't heard the whole show, but what I think is an overlooked perspective when it comes to decluttering now that I have about 20 years of experience working with neurodivergent people, specifically people who are really overwhelmed, which is that people often come at it from a perspective of just get rid of it.

If you don't use it, get rid of it. What I have found is the most effective and sustainable, it's a little bit slower and less dramatic but actually fends off recidivism of having this happen again, is to really focus on what feels important like doing all the things that you'd always wanted to do, like to look through the memorabilia. It sounds crazy, especially when people have so much, but I literally worked with hoarders going through every single piece of paper, which no one thinks is possible. When you really honor what's important to people, it goes so fast and it actually is aligned to what people had always wanted to do.

Alison Stewart: Leia, thank you for calling in.

Matt Paxton: Hey, the important word she said was honor. She's 100% right by the way, just so everyone's clear. I'm on a show that jams it all into one week and does a super-fast cleanup. That's really one of the least effective ways to do it. What she said is 100% right. You want to take your time and you want to honor that person in that space, in those stories. If you do that, she's right, it doesn't come back. If you don't do it, it does. It comes back, usually worse than what we cleaned up.

Alison Stewart: When you're thinking about clothes, you shared with us that you've gone super minimal in your process, maybe people don't want to get down to as minimal as you've gotten, what are the questions you should ask yourself when you put your hand on a piece of clothing?

Matt Paxton: Did I wear it this year? It's pretty simple. I love the coat hanger trick where you put all your coat hangers going one way and then when you wear it, you turn the coat hanger going the other way so at the end of the year, you can see very clearly what you did and did not wear. Then you have to be honest with yourself, "I didn't wear this this year." I'm not saying everything has to be worn, but you can get rid of some of the stuff. My size is 28 jeans. I'm a tight 36. I can get rid of my 28s, my 30s, and my 32s. Like my Bell Biv DeVoe T-shirt, it's time. I can get rid of it. My daughter doesn't even want it. It's time to let go. Get brutally honest.

I let the facts speak, man. Let the timetable tell you. If you haven't worn it, it's time to let go and donate, donate, donate, donate. The more you donate, the easier it is to get rid of. Some of the clothes can go to vintage shops. There's actually some cash in it too, especially in New York. You got some incredible vintage shops up there. Don't be afraid to take stuff away, but you've got to get realistic with yourself where you are physically. If it's your mythical me-- What's my wife always calls it? My future self, what I think I'm going to be versus your actual, where are we really. That answers a lot of the questions.

Alison Stewart: Let's go to Myra, calling in from Newark, New Jersey. Hi, Myra. Thanks for calling in.

Myra: Hi. Thank you so much. Matt, I'm so excited because I love watching your show.

Matt Paxton: Thank you.

Myra: I've got a lot of stuff, and I know where it started. I used to watch all these hoarding shows. I know where I started collecting this stuff. I've been trying to get rid of stuff for years, and I do. Actually, right now, I've got five contractor bags in my driveway to go. My problem is, right now, my living room is cluttered. I've got two kids. It's just two of them, but they bring in a lot of stuff, and I have a lot of stuff. My problem is, I'll stand in the middle of the room and I can't focus. Mentally, I can't focus when I have all this stuff. I try to figure out the best technique to be able to focus to get rid of it.

I've drawn diagrams of my room, drawn little pictures going all the way around. As I get a little corner done, I erase it off the dry-erase board, it makes me feel accomplished, or I'll list per room in the dry-erase board and tasks to do. That makes me feel better, but I can never actually follow through on a full technique. I wasn't sure if you had advice on a good technique that would work to get through the mess without getting overwhelmed because I feel like that's my problem right now. I can't get one full room done.

Matt Paxton: All right. You're already doing really good work. You're doing it, you're in it, you're motivated, you're committed. You're doing all the good stuff. What we're going to talk about here is we're going to change techniques. That's all we're changing here. I think what you're doing is you're spending more time planning about the cleanup than actually cleaning out. That's the thing a trick does. Our brain tricks us that way. I used to do that with workout. I'd go buy shoes and I'd do all these planning things to run, but yet, I wouldn't go run.

I want you to just back off. Don't worry about the technique. I just want you to pick five items a day. That's it. Five items, no more, no less. Actually, I'm okay with less, but no more than five items. I want you to start on one side of the room, and maybe two items the first couple of days. The deal here is you've got to do those two items. It's not going to be enough for your brain. You're going to want to do more, but I'm telling you, stop. Do the two, be proud of yourself. If you need a check mark, go get some gold stars at the store and put the gold stars on your chart.

I'm not joking. Get some gold stars and reward yourself mentally because you might need to see that calendar of the days you've done. I want you to do 30 days of two items a day. If you can do that, you're going to see the visual. You just can't do too much and you can't do too much planning. It is all about taking baby steps and making it realistic and being proud of yourself. That's the hardest part. We're Americans, we don't know how to be proud of ourselves. We just weren't raised that way. I'm telling you, if you get two items out of the house, give yourself the gold star.

It's part of the process. It sounds silly, but you've got to build the confidence back up again that you're doing well because you are. You're doing great. You're doing better than most people that call me. I want you to practice rewarding yourself and being proud of yourself.

Alison Stewart: The name of the book is Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff: Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life. Callers, thank you so much for sharing your stories. Matt Paxton, thank you so much for sharing your time and expertise.

Matt Paxton: Thank you. Thank you. I'll see you next time.

 

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