479 | Garage Clutter

For the third episode in their five-part Household Clutter series, The Minimalists are joined by Dr. Julia Raz to talk about garage clutter, including the excess stuff that is hidden in basements, attics, sheds, and storage areas. Discussed in this episode: What boundaries can my family establish to minimize all the excess stuff in our garage, basement, attic, shed, and other storage spaces? (2:37) How do you use your garage? (21:52) Listener tip: Improve seasonal decorations by making them functional. (43:30) Listen to the full Maximal episode on Patreon: patreon.com/theminimalists http://patreon.com/theminimalists Detailed show notes: minimalists.com/podcast http://minimalists.com/podcast Recorded at Earthing Studios http://earthing.com/simple.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:20Speaker 00

  Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing you think that you need. Every little thing that's just feeding your greed. Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it.

• 0:39Speaker 01

  You're listening to the Minimalist Podcast with Joshua Fields Milburn and TK Coleman, recorded live at Earthing Studios in sunny California.

• 0:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, thank you, Malibu, Alabama. Hello, everybody. Today, for the third installment of our five-part Household Clutter Series, we're talking about one of the most difficult clutter areas to deal with: garage clutter. Now, when I say garage clutter, I'm also referring to our basements, and attics, and sheds, and storage areas, and any other space that has transformed into a repository of excess. Joining us in the studio to help minimize these overwhelming spaces is Dr. Julia Raz. Dr. Raz is a professor with a PhD in Communication and the founder of Golden West Organizing. Coming up on this free, public minimal episode, a caller has a question about establishing

• 1:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  boundaries to help minimize all the excess stuff in our home. And we've got a question about the different ways you can use your garage to produce a clutter-free life. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 479. That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description. And when you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to episode zero. That's a full decade of podcast archives. By the way, big thanks to our patrons.

• 2:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we would love to hear from you. Give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839, or you can email a voice recording from your phone to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Rebecca.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Hi, I'm Rebecca calling from the great Pacific Northwest of Corvane, Idaho. I'm a Patreon subscriber. I'm calling because I am so overwhelmed with garage clutter. It seems to be a twice annual event that we go to clean out the garage. One morning each spring and again in the fall, my husband will gather all the kids and I, we will begin. Even with the best intentions to donate as much as I can and to only keep what I can use or what our family will use, there is still a pile of items that seem to make their way back into our home from the garage cleanout. After a few days, sometimes if

• 3:25Speaker 03

  I'm lucky, a few weeks, these items will start to pile back up, sometimes by the garage door and sometimes just in the garage. Often I find myself so irritated that the things ended up cluttering up our house, but I'm unable to get rid of them because we'll use them at some point. We have children from teenagers down to toddlers, and much of the items are things that our older children are too big for, but the younger ones aren't ready for. So we banish these things for the garage to wait until they are needed or until we clean out the garage again. How do I stop this back and forth of needed but not right now items? I hope you can help. Thank you so much. Bye.

• 4:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  So I want to think about this question in several different ways. By the way, Malibu, don't you think that Toddlers to Teens is a great like memoir title about parenting?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that that pretty much covers it.

• 4:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, Julia, you have a brand new baby. We'll talk about that in a little bit. You also have an eight year old, so you've gone through this as well. Last time you were on the show, we talked about professional organizing because you are a professional organizer. And so you help people with a lot of these cluttered spaces. And the fundamental question that I hear here from Rebecca, and I do hear some anxiety. I hear some stress in her voice and I there's almost like some hopelessness there. Like no matter what we do, it feels like all of the clutter keeps creeping back in. And even though we go in there in the spring and we go in there in the fall and we work together as a team to make this happen. For whatever reason, it keeps filling back up with clutter.

• 5:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so the question here is about boundaries and and what boundaries can her family establish to minimize all of the the excess stuff in their garage? And of course, this can apply to someone if they don't have a garage and it's their basement is filled with excess stuff. If it's their attic that is filled with excess stuff, or maybe it's a storage locker on the edge of town that keeps getting refilled up with excess stuff. Where do we start here?

• 5:31Speaker 04

  I hear this kind of question all the time, and I have a few thoughts on it. One of them is that having to regularly declutter a couple of times a year is expected. So a one and done thing, which is what many people want. They want to like me to come in and wave a magic wand and then never again in their life are they ever going to have to deal with clutter again? But it never really works that way. We always have an influx of stuff in our life and especially true with kids. And what I hear here, and I don't know for sure, but that the garage sounds like it's a go between space of things that really need to exit the home permanently. But it's scary to have to let go of things. And so so many times we put things into a shed, garage, basement, attic, any of the above, because we're we feel like we're not ready to let it go. We want to, but it feels safer to leave it there because it's not really gone yet.

• 6:16Speaker 04

  But eventually we have to deal with it at some point or another. When the clutter pile gets way too high. And so that's usually when we come in is we're trying to get them to finally get the things to leave. And to the point of the stuff that you're keeping for future children. Now, when I had my daughter, I did not know I was going to have my son eight years later. I did not keep stuff, but I also had no space to keep stuff. And that's kind of the philosophy I live by. I only keep what actually reasonably fits in my space for the purpose that I want to use the space for. So I wouldn't keep things from my teenager for a toddler. Like, and I think about this myself. Would I want stuff like clothes from a teenager when I become a teenager that are 20 plus years old? Maybe they're cool and vintage at that point. I don't know, things come back.

• 7:01Speaker 04

  But it's very rare that I keep things for a future child so many years later or ever recommend that to people. Unless it's like one really, I don't know, sentimental thing that you want your future kid to have something small that you have space for. But not all of their clothes, all of their toys. You can get that later, get the space back now. But it has to be a regular process in your family and you have to involve everyone. Like so often when I hear these kinds of questions, I wonder how much of it is on just one member of the family? Or they're putting it all on themselves and that's why she's feeling so much stress. It makes me happy to hear that she involves the whole family. But so often it doesn't really work that way. And then it's one person that's really stressed about it. But don't be afraid to do this regularly. The more you do it, the less you're going to be in this situation.

• 7:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that's a good point because TK, even as the minimalist, like I'm still minimizing and we still play the minimalism game. And, and as a family, we find creative, interesting and unique ways to continue to let go and turn it into fun. Because what I hear, and this question is not fun. I hear anxiety, I hear overwhelmed. I don't hear a game or a playful way of approaching this. It feels like a duty, a responsibility, a I have to do this every. And I totally get it. If I had to come over to Rebecca's house right now and clear out her garage, it would feel like a duty. But I would also try to find a way to make it a bit more fun. I think Julia brings up a really interesting point here. There are two points that I find interesting. One is you want to

• 8:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Cover the space. Minimalism is the amplification of spaciousness. And so in a weird way, this is a problem because you do have the space for the clutter. And because you have the space for the clutter, or really you have the space, you might feel compelled to fill it with clutter instead of filling it with openness, with freedom, with that carefree feeling of spaciousness, that ah, that full body sigh that you feel from letting go of those excess items. But then there's this other side of it where she's calling in because this is mainly her problem. Maybe the rest of her family doesn't actually see this as a problem. It's not an issue for them. It doesn't mean that it's not an issue for you.

• 9:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, if Rebecca was one of your clutter counseling clients, TK, what words of wisdom would you have for her?

• 9:20Speaker 05

  Uh, first, I would say we don't have a problem until we have a purpose because problems are what they are precisely because they get in the way of these larger, higher purposes. So why is the garage clutter a problem? Because that garage is for something. There's something that we want to do with it and this stuff is getting in the way of that. So what's the garage for? Maybe this is an opportunity to talk with the family about how we want to use this space ideally. If it wasn't cluttered, what would we do with it? Additionally, sometimes we have these big events where it's like once or twice a year, we're gonna go through the garage and take inventory is because it's so overwhelming that we, we can only stand to do it once or twice a year. And we can only motivate people to participate once or twice a year.

• 10:03Speaker 05

  But here's the paradox, and this goes back to what Dr. Ross said. The more often you do it, the less time you have to spend doing it, the less stressful it feels when you do it. Imagine if we shifted from once or twice a year to saying every month, we're gonna go take inventory of what's in the garage. Two things are gonna happen. Number one, you're gonna spend much less time doing this. After two to three months, there are gonna be so many redundancies that it might only take about 15 to 30 minutes to go through the entire garage because you're doing it a lot. You're gonna have some months where you're like five, six months in. It's gonna take like five to 10 minutes because you're doing it so often and it feels less overwhelming. But also what happens is you begin to recognize the patterns of clutter emergence in your garage. Imagine if we did this with our finances where only once or twice a year.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  We took a look at how much money we have, how much debt we have. Well, we're missing out on the chance to see what our patterns are every month. What are those little things that are eating away at our expenses? And so I want you to have the opportunity to be able to detect that. I would consider doing this every month so that you can see those patterns. The last thing, you need a standard for what's coming in. You can't manage what is if you don't have a way of defining what's coming in. And so there are my four questions that I would ask about what's coming into that garage. And this is a standard that I would invoke for the entire family. What, why, when and how? So what's coming into the garage? Why is it going into the garage? Why is that not going into your bedroom? Why is that not going outside? Why is that not going into the kitchen?

• 11:33Speaker 05

  Why is that not going in a cabinet? Why is it coming into the garage? So what is it? Why is it coming into the garage? When are you going to use it? Because we're not going to use the garage, as Dr. Ross said, as a kind of purgatory, where it's just going to dwell there indefinitely until we decide to glorify it with our usage of it. But what's the actual goal here? And then how? How are we going to get rid of this or let it go if we don't meet that deadline? And that, that way, you kind of have a way to keep yourself honest and you're not slipping away into the ambiguity of, oh, just put it in the garage because we don't feel like thinking about it.

• 12:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I like that metaphor of a purgatory of stuff. And I think for many people, it's even worse than that. It's not just a purgatory. This is where dead things go. I don't have a place to put this in my kitchen. I don't have a place to put this in my living room. I don't have a place to put this in my bedroom or in my closet. I don't want to be confronted with it every day out in the open. So I'll put it in these bins or boxes. They're not actually bins or boxes, they're clutter coffins. And what happens is we put it in these because we feel like, oh, at least I'm organizing the clutter. And that must mean that I'm decluttering. I put up this video on Instagram recently. Savvy D, Jordan and I, we went to the Container Store. I'm sure you saw this one, Julia. And I, I was talking about the easiest way to, to declutter, right?

• 12:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We think the easiest way to declutter is to organize. But it turns out the opposite is true. And professional organizers know this. The simplest Way to organize is to declutter. And then, of course, yeah, if you have some bins or boxes after that, because you want them, the things that you actually use to be tidy. But it's so much more difficult, Dr. Oz, to, to deal with the things when we're just organizing everything instead of getting rid of the things that are in the way.

• 13:16Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I mean, there's, there's two things that I'm thinking about based on the things you said. One is, is about having the space and all, and filling it just because it's there. Of all of the content I've ever made about organizing I've done over the years, the one that is the most criticized, most hated, one might even say, is one where I didn't fill all of the shelves to their capacity, not in a garage, but in a closet. Where I had comment after comment, that's a waste of space. There's so much open space. You could have put so much more in the space. I don't know where that mindset comes from for so many people, where just because we have the space, we must fill it. But I really try to encourage people to counter that. Whenever they're feeling like, just because I have the square footage, I must fill it with stuff. It is wonderful to have open space. And then to your point about decluttering,

• 14:01Speaker 04

  and, and this is something that I've really tried to ingrain in everyone. To me, there is no organizing without decluttering. Organizing is all about making sense of your possessions, but you can't do that if you don't even know what your possessions are, where they are, what they are. And so we have to do that initial step. And this is why I think I have such strong feelings about garages. The reason I have such strong feelings about this space is the expectations that people have for what I can do are often very hard or even impossible to meet. And it's not as hard for me in other spaces of the home. But because garages are where things go to die, but they never fully decompose, although sometimes you do find actual dead things, like dead animals in there, things like that. But because things just stay there, sometimes 50 plus years. I remember when I worked with someone in their 90s

• 14:45Speaker 04

  who had all of the paperwork from the business he had more than 50 years ago. It was all in the garage. We brought a shredding truck. It was one of my favorite moments of this. A shredding truck? Because the capacity was so large. It was very emotional for him to let go of all of these papers that he had from a business he stopped doing a very, very long time ago. We watched in 10 minutes as all of these years of documents got shredded on a truck with a screen. It was, it was wonderful.

• 15:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And how did he feel afterward?

• 15:10Speaker 04

  It was really hard. It was hard. So for some, and this is why it's so hard is that, yes, they want the relief, but the letting go can be excruciatingly painful for people. And so, um, A big part of my role, even though I'm not a therapist, is just to stand there or sit there with that person and let them feel really uncomfortable, whatever it is that they're feeling, and let them know it's okay to feel whatever you're feeling. I understand that you held on to this all this time, and that's so hard to let go. But that business you had, it still existed. It's not gone just because we saw these documents shredded. I don't know how he is now, or if he's still alive now, actually. But I do hope eventually there was a sense of relief from letting that go and getting the space back. But yeah, it's quite a hard space for people. There's a reason why people shove everything in there, whether it's because guests are

• 15:55Speaker 04

  coming over. But it usually is things that people are just having such a hard time letting go, and they figure, well, I've got the space. Let's just leave it here for now because it's out of sight, out of mind. But then when I come, it's in sight, in mind, all at once. And so it brings up a lot of feelings for people.

• 16:10Speaker 05

  Dr. Ross, you said dead animals in the garage?

• 16:15Speaker 04

  So I see a lot in my day, and I don't say this to say that every day on this job is scary, because I don't think I would do this if I was in fear all the time. And I'm not bothered by bugs, by animals, by dirt. Like, all of those things don't bother me in a garage in general, which is why you might think I don't like the space. It's, but yeah, I've found, like, you know, dead rats, things like that sometimes surface in garages. But weapons that people didn't know about or where they were, we've found those. Now I have a very strict weapon policy for that reason, is that we had found a gun in a gift bag and uncovering things that was loaded. That was probably one of my scariest moments on the job ever, as I never want to be in that position again. Drugs, lots of things that you wouldn't expect to find that people forgot that they had,

• 17:00Speaker 04

  or maybe they even inherited the home, and then with all the stuff. And then I come in after that person passes away, and sometimes families are so overwhelmed with having to go through the stuff that they've inherited that we're doing that for the first time. But there's a flip side to it. It's like a treasure hunt, too. Like, we get to see very fascinating, interesting things on the job. But yeah, garages, things really do go to die there.

• 17:22Speaker 05

  Well, first, we need to report this to True Crime Garage.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Right, right.

• 17:26Speaker 05

  What's your favorite treasure you've ever found?

• 17:29Speaker 04

  Oh, I'm trying to think right now.

• 17:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Don't they like gold bullion bars? You guys can donate these. I'll take care of it for you.

• 17:39Speaker 04

  It wasn't in a garage. And I don't remember if this had happened before the last time I was on here, but the the most treasure I have ever found was $50,000 in cash in someone's bedroom. Sorry, what? Yeah, and he Oh, this old thing? It wasn't all it was strewn about, though. So this was

• 17:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  To the shredder truck.

• 17:56Speaker 04

  Did not go to the shredder truck, but it was in 100th and it was strewn about everywhere in this person's bedroom. And when I thought he was going to have an overwhelming happiness or joy when I told him, wow, here, look at all this money. He's like, oh, yeah, I know. It's there. He wasn't that surprised, nor did I get a tip. I'm usually asked like, did you get to keep? No, I did not keep any of it. But that was probably the most surprising thing I've found. And then I've worked with people who work in the government and things like that. And so I've seen a lot of very interesting government documents and photographs that I otherwise would not have access to, such as like post 9 11 things.

• 18:36Speaker 05

  Are the UFO cover ups real?

• 18:38Speaker 04

  I can't.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  I wish I had more information on that. But yeah, I've seen some interesting government related things. I think that's probably some of the most interesting things I've found in people's garages.

• 18:48Speaker 05

  It's official. You've heard it on the minimalist. She can neither confirm nor deny the existence of aliens from outer space.

• 18:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Or those could be the dead animals they find in the garage. You know what's fascinating is the guy with the $50,000 like, yeah, I knew I had that. But with the other stuff, it's like the gun or the things you don't think about. We have something called the didn't know rule. And it's a pretty simple rule, especially for the things that are in all of those clutter coffins in your basement or garage or attic, or all the stuff that is just dead in your storage locker that you're paying for every month. What's the alternative to? Because we talk about like, where else do these things belong? But also, where else does the money belong? Where else does the space belong? Where else does my contentment and peace and equanimity belong? Because these excess things, the clutter is robbing me of the money, time, attention, peace that I

• 19:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I might otherwise feel if those things were gone. So the didn't know rule is simply, hey, I didn't know I owned this. Now I found it in this bin. If I didn't know I owned it, if I didn't even remember it, that is a definite sign that it is okay to let go. Now Rebecca, there are several other rules that I recommend you check out, like the seasonality rule, obviously for your garage. That is super helpful. Also, you talked about they're needed but not needed now. Sometimes that's a story we tell ourselves. We have three rules to help you differentiate that. There's the just in case rule versus the just for when rule versus the emergency items rule. Emergency items are just, just in case items that you hope you never have to use. Like I have jumper cables in my car. Now for someone else, a firearm could be an emergency item.

• 20:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Like I hope I never have to use this, but I have it in a locked safe and it's, I know my kids can't access it. No one else, a professional organizer can't come into my home and, and start playing around with a loaded gun, sort of thing. For someone else, that's an emergency item. For other people, that is like junk. I'm never going to use it. I don't want it. And so the question is, is this a just for when item? Or is it a just in case item? I'll hold on to it just in case I might need it someday in some non-existent hypothetical future. Also, the no piles rule, that one's really helpful as well. You can check out the minimalist rulebook. It's 16 rules for living with less. You can download it for free over at theminimists.com. Just click resources there at the top. We have a resource page with a whole bunch of free resources, including the minimalist rulebook. I'm Alabama.

• 21:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Before we get back to our callers, what time is it?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  You know what time it is. It's time for the lightning round where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week.

• 21:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Now during the lightning round, Julie, I'm sure you remember, we attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes over at theminimists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever at minimalmaxims.com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox, including seven new maxims every Monday for free. If you sign up for our email newsletter at theminimists email. We'll never send you spam or junk or ads, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. What's the question of the week this week?

• 21:54Speaker 01

  How do you use your garage?

• 21:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  How do you use your garage? Now, this question elicited so many responses. And I do want to have some pithy answers here in a moment, but I thought we'd hear from our simpletons. Malabama, what did some of our listeners have to say?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Alexis said, "Our garage was used to store all the crap we didn't need. Then we moved to our last place and I was determined to store our car because it's one of our most expensive assets. I read somewhere that people would rather store their $5 trinkets and not their $50,000 car, and that totally changed my mindset."

• 22:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now TK, what is the economic perspective behind this sort of irrational mindset? Like, I've got this really nice asset, this car. A car can also be a liability as well, but assuming you own the car outright and you want to protect it from the weather, especially if you live somewhere in the Midwest where it snows all the time and there's all the elements. But we can't put it in our garage because I need to hold on to a bunch of trinkets, as she said. She talked about having all of this useless crap we didn't need. Why block out the car? What is the fallacy behind that?

• 23:02Speaker 05

  Well, the things that you don't want are getting in the way of you cherishing, appreciating and protecting the value of what you do want, right? And so we have a case of misplaced valuation. So I have all of these trinkets and I just don't want to have to take the time to figure out who I'm going to give it to, when I'm going to get rid of it. But I know that I don't actually use it. But I have this car that's really precious for me and I use it every day. And I'm just going to let it sit outside and it's probably going to last a little less long. It's probably going to look pretty for a little less time. But it saves me from having to look at the things, confront the things that I need to say no to.

• 23:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Julia, how often do you see people in your work as a professional organizer, they crowd out their assets, their useful assets, their precious assets with worthless trinkets?

• 23:53Speaker 04

  So I would never use the phrase worthless trinkets with anybody that I work with because I never, I never know what anything means to anyone. Actually, as a result of being on this show, I worked with someone in St. Louis, Missouri, and I flew out and worked with her in her home, which was wonderful. She had tons of coffee stirrers, like from Southwest Airlines for stirring coffee, strewn about her house. I collected all of them. I did not throw them away immediately, though. She, of course, had a story associated with them. They were very meaningful to her. So I never call anything worthless. And even when it comes to things that are, I deem as trash, I will always make an area of things that I think are trash, because you really just don't know what something means. So I would never say that to someone.

• 24:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, but, but let's just say that Alexis is recognizing, she's even saying-

• 24:34Speaker 04

  Right, so she knows it's that. I see this all the time. So I always ask people either to FaceTime with me so that I can see what's going on, or send me photos, which no one else has to ever see except for me. And that will give me a sense of what's going on. So I see floor-to-ceiling packed garages constantly, constantly. I don't get afraid of this. I get excited by these kinds of spaces because I know what's possible. I was thinking about what you were saying, TK, about it depreciating a little bit outside, and I was thinking about the outside space. If we decided to flip this and put our car in there, but we still wanted to keep all that stuff, we pile that all the way in front of our house. Let's say you have that. It's not going to be socially acceptable for you to have all of that clutter from your garage in front of your house, right, at all times. Your neighbors are going to say something to you. You might even get like citation from the city. You can park

• 25:18Speaker 04

  your car on the street or in your driveway, though, without a problem, right? So I think that that also helps us to justify it, like it's acceptable socially, to keep it. If we start and I have someone who is hoarding on my block, his stuff is creeping out in front of the home, and I am worried that he's going to get cited for this soon. But you're getting into real danger with like your neighbors and just what's considered socially acceptable. But we have made it socially acceptable to have these clutter coffins in our homes. So I see this constantly, and it does take time. So that's one thing I really want to impart, is that it doesn't happen really quickly. We didn't clutter a whole garage floor-to-ceiling overnight, probably. It's not going to get decluttered overnight either, even if you want it to. So I just recommend people to be very patient with

• 26:03Speaker 04

  And if you do have help, patient with them too, because the process of undoing that does take quite a lot of time. But yeah, see this constantly. Grateful it's not my own garage, though. My garage is purposely for storing vehicles. I do have some supplies for my small business on a shelf in the garage, some car wash supplies. I was thinking about this too. Some tools on one thing of shelves and the other walls are bare. We do plug in cars because they're electric vehicles and that is the priority, though. I also didn't have a garage up until the place I live in now, which I've been in since 2017. So I was used to not having that space. And in some days, I wish I didn't even have it because I'm like, I'd have even less if I didn't have this garage.

• 26:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because they become this repository. They're a magnet for stuff. And that goes back to the no piles rule we were talking about earlier is like, having fewer flat surfaces that clutter can then just collect on, because it does feel like these flat surfaces. And so if you have a bunch of shelves, those become just ripe for clutter to grow on these shelves. Now, I think it's important, you brought up an important point here, is starting in the garage is probably, because it's so overwhelming, not the best place to start. We talked about the with Joshua Becker in the first part, first installment of this Household Clutter series, where we talked about starting with the living room, because it is the place where you'll see the most benefit

• 27:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  immediately. But eventually, you'll get to these spaces, you'll get to the garage, you'll get to the basement, you'll get to the attic, you'll get to your storage locker, and it will be overwhelming, because as Dr. Ross said, guess what? It took you 10 years, 20 years, 70 years to accumulate all of this clutter. It's not going to go away overnight, but it can go away when we put the appropriate boundaries in place. What else we got?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  This is one from Stacy. She said, "My garage is for vehicles, motorcycles, bicycles, and a few tools on the wall. No stuff allowed on the floor in my garage."

• 28:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ooh, I like that as a boundary. You can't put anything on the floor. And as soon as you have that boundary, and you can have any boundary you want, I'm not going to hang anything on the walls, or I'm not going to put anything in here beyond these three containers, or 10 containers, whatever it happens to be. But having these boundaries, then you know, this is something that we as a family don't do.

• 28:21Speaker 04

  Absolutely. I think it's so important to set boundaries in any space that you're working in, well, and in life, in any relationship. Right? It can be really hard to do that, though. And a lot of what I do when I go into people's homes is to just coach them as a family on how they're going to even talk to each other about the stuff in their home. Because, and I was listening to Joshua Becker's episode about that exact topic, too, and thinking through how many times I've had to just sit down with a married couple and say, okay, we're going to talk about this. For the first time, we're talking about it, and I'm kind of their intermediary party.

• 28:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What does one of those conversations look like?

• 28:56Speaker 04

  Usually, it's just each person, kind of, it starts often by them venting to me. That's usually how it starts. Sometimes, it even turns towards blaming me, which is okay, because it's always easier to let other people, you know, have the responsibility and not yourself.

• 29:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Wait, how do they blame you? That's so interesting to me.

• 29:14Speaker 04

  And this is why garages are really tricky for us in this industry, is that a lot of times, they'll say, well, you're not going fast enough. Like, you said that this would be done in this amount of time, right? When, in fact, what's going on is that they're needing to spend 10 minutes talking with me about every individual object, and there are thousands. But about the kinds of conversations that go on, it's usually, and I'll just say, like, a husband and wife situation, where the wife says, my husband never picks up after themselves. Like, they're, look at the pile of all of his clothes on the floor. You see the hangers that, like, they will do this in front of me, right? And then I will hear their perspective in front of them. And then I try to reframe it as much as possible and remind them that they both equally live in this space, and all the spaces belong to both of them.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  And so trying to come up with some, as I was hearing in Joshua Becker's episode, some sort of middle ground. And also, I try to remind them about picking your battles, too, in a marriage, that, like, is this, is this the biggest issue? Maybe it is, right? But maybe it's not, and maybe you are going to let them be themselves and allow that one pile to be there, because it's not worth it to make that the biggest marital struggle that you have. So, and then if it gets to a point where I think it's beyond my capacity, I might make recommendations for other types of professional help, because I am aware of the scope of what I can. And can't do.

• 30:32Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, when you're fighting over napkin rings that have been stored in the garage for 15 years and you haven't used, but there's some sort of story behind it. The thing is never about the thing. What else do people have in their garage?

• 30:44Speaker 01

  Louise Marie said, "We converted our garage to a self-contained studio apartment for my mother, who's in her late 80s. She loves the apartment and loves to see us on the weekends. This enables her to keep her independence of living in her own home."

• 30:57Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, what I love about this is it's completely different from how Stacy uses her garage. Stacy's identified the boundaries and also the what and the why behind all of that. You know what? I want to use my garage to park my cars in. But it doesn't mean that's how you have to use the space. I'm actually similar to Louise Marie here, where my garage, detached garage, but it's not a garage anymore. It's a guest house. It's been converted into a guest house because we live in California and I don't have as much a need for covered parking, although in our driveway, we have some canopies over top of our cars just to keep some of the debris from the trees and other things off of our vehicles. But I don't need a wintertime garage the same way I would have when I lived in Dayton, Ohio, for example.

• 31:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so you're identifying, how do I want to use this space? And there isn't a right answer that you have to park your cars in the garage. And in fact, if you want to use it as a storage unit, that's totally fine, but what are you storing in there? Are you just storing a bunch of dead things? Or are you storing things for your hobby that bring you to life? What else we got?

• 32:04Speaker 01

  Liz said, "As a Realtor, garage clutter is a huge pet peeve of mine. I wish I could convince people not to make a garage a deal breaker when looking for their next house, unless they either plan to park their cars in it or finish it and make it a glorified climate-controlled storage unit. Saying we need a garage and then all we do is fill it with junk we just don't use allows us to ignore our own hoarding problems."

• 32:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. It is easy to have these liminal spaces, the garage, the storage locker especially. It's easy to ignore the things because they are out of sight, out of mind, or so we think. But they're still there in the back of your mind. You're thinking about it. You're worrying about it. I love what Julie was saying a moment ago, and if I were to make it pithy, I'd say you can't have garage clutter without a garage. Quite often, like, the garage becomes the excuse to hold on to those things. But if all of a sudden, the garage was just torn off of one of your client's houses, they wouldn't have a place to keep all of this clutter. And they may feel more compelled to let it go because they've lost their de facto storage unit.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm. And I do actually have a lot of people who call me because they want to convert their garage to an ADU, but it's currently a storage unit. So they have, here in California, they have that idea, "Oh, I see a lot of other people doing this. Let's do it." Okay, well, now I actually have to finally deal with this stuff for the first time in my life. And sometimes, they just want me to find homes in their home for it. But the reality is, most of the time, that's not gonna work. That's not gonna work, and a lot is gonna have to leave.

• 33:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And why isn't that going to work? What kind of things are pretty common in a garage space?

• 33:39Speaker 04

  I think there's a lot of different things that people store in garages. Anything from holiday decor to childhood memorabilia, to collectibles, tools. I mean, it goes, the list goes on and on. But it's so many things that people just don't want to deal with in whatever that moment was in life, whether it was now, or whether it was 50 years ago, that they just kind of go to die. And it's so many of those "what-if" items that people believe, "I'm going to use at some point." There's a quote from Dr. Robin Zazio that I say often to clients who are having a hard time letting go, and that's, it's a book on hoarding, The Hoarder and You, which I recommend everyone on my team and any professional organizer to read, actually.

• 34:21Speaker 04

  But she says that hoarders have a distorted perception in, of the positive potential of everyday objects. And I say, repeat that often, to validate the experiences that my clients have, because they see the possibilities in things that you or I, people who don't have as much clutter, would see as, quote, "junk" or "trash." But they're like, "You know what? I could use that mason jar for this party I'm gonna throw for my kid at their sweet 16, which is 10 years from now." And so, in a way, it is a positive reframing of it, because they see the possibilities through the "what ifs." But that also hinders them from achieving whatever their dream is of that space.

• 35:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right, right. And so what happens here is those things in a very real way get in the way of your dream. That's how we define clutter. I don't pathologize any of these particular objects. If you want to hold on to sentimental items, what's the boundary for that? Because everything is sentimental if you tell yourself a story about why it's meaningful to you. And so do you want 10 totes full of sentimental items? Do you get 10 times the value from those 10 totes of sentimental items? And if you had one, I might argue the opposite. For me, watering down one small box of sentimental items with 10 giant totes actually extracts value from those items that I might otherwise be getting. And so identifying what the boundary is, same thing with tools.

• 35:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We have a question coming up on page two about how do I deal with my husband's tools? He's got so many tools in the garage. And it's not that tools are bad. Tools are tools, quite literally, by definition. That's a tautology even. But many of the things that we keep in these storage spaces, we pretend they're going to be tools. In fact, Rebecca said that during her question. She said, "I need them, but don't need them now." But the truth behind that is, "I want them, but don't need them now." And what's behind that one? What's behind that desire to hold on to these things for some nonexistent hypothetical future? It's worth considering. Let's do one more.

• 36:22Speaker 01

  This one's from Sarah. "Honestly, the garage ends up being the interim space before finally letting things go."

• 36:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is it. It becomes the purgatory of stuff. And I can't let this go yet. And this is super honest, Sarah. You know what? I'm struggling to let this go. And I would say that's great if there's another boundary set up there. I'm going to put it in the garage for 30 days or 90 days, whatever your boundary is. And then after those 90 days, this happens to me all the time where it's like, you know what? I applied the seasonality rule. Haven't used this thing in the last 90 days. You know what? I'm going to hold on to it for 90 more days because I think I might. But I'm going to be honest with myself. And if I'm not going to use it in the next 90 days, I'm going to give myself permission to let it go. Because the story I'm telling myself about the thing and how useful it is,

• 37:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that story was true, but it's not true anymore. Do you have any thoughts on the stories behind those things?

• 37:18Speaker 04

  I relate to this a lot. I think what drew me to this industry and to minimalism to begin with was my inability to let go of things that I experienced for so many years, that I felt sentimental towards everything. And I've shared this story with almost everyone that I specifically had a hard time letting go of my deceased grandmother's possessions. Then she died in 1998. And it wasn't until 2019, when I discovered minimalism, that I let it go. Where did it sit? In the garage. Before that, it was closets, before I had a garage. And it was probably five large storage totes of random possessions of hers. And when I pared down, like you were talking about, it wasn't even to one tote. It was to a few objects that I selected that are now on display in my home. It was so, so hard for me to do that, though.

• 38:00Speaker 04

  I was telling all of these stories in my head about the memories of her. And I was afraid that I would lose the memory of her, even though she had died so long ago, if I let go of these objects that just sat in the boxes. And I know that that is an irrational fear, and I can say that now. But in the moment, when I was holding on to it, it felt very real. And I want to share a little more with those who are listening, just because they may feel like this too. When I finally donated them and I was able to sell some, I went to an antique shop. I cried so much to the random person in the store because I felt like I was letting her go. It was that hard. But then, when I came home and I let the feeling sit with me a little bit longer, and now it's been years since then. I'm so grateful I have the space back. And I'm also so grateful that the few things that I do have those stories associated with, I see them every day in my home.

• 38:45Speaker 04

  There's a couple of them. They're sprinkled in my home. That brings me so much more happiness than feeling weighted down by all of those boxes in the garage. For me, that was the hardest kind of thing to let go of. And then the other one, and this is kind of funny. I probably at one point had about 200, yes, 200 Beanie Babies. I was in the Beanie Baby craze, yes, when that was happening. And the garage in my childhood home was just for storage. And after my mom sold that home, everything got delivered. To my apartment. So for years I had several hundred beanie babies. And when I decided to make my own sentimental bin, I kept two. I'm thinking of it. Yeah, I kept two of the 200 and the rest were donated. I don't mind that at all. That one was much easier for me to let go.

• 39:26Speaker 04

  It's just a funny one of an example of how we, you know, hold on to things, collections from childhood. Because we think that they still have meaning to us because at a time it did.

• 39:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. I think the law of marginal utility comes into play here as well. Because having two beanie babies, you might say, oh, look at these. And they're a trigger for the memories that are inside me. But having 200 doesn't give you 100 times more memories. In fact, it might even get in the way of of those memories. How about you listeners? How do you use your garage? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat, which by the way, you can join for free, even if you don't subscribe to our private podcast. Okay, give me something pithy TK. How do you use your garage?

• 40:07Speaker 05

  An idle garage gathers dust and act of one fuels dreams. So I think about garage, things I've seen them used for. I've seen them used as a fitness center where you go work out. Podcast studio, actually recorded in a garage before. I listened to the True Crime Garage where they record in a garage, I believe. I've seen it used as a frog, or maybe we should call it a frig. A frig, a frog, you never heard that acronym frog? It's like, the last two are something over a garage. It's sort of a something room, family room or something like that over a garage. Yeah.

• 40:46Speaker 05

  Or how you use it, Josh. I've seen garages used for lots of meaningful things, but what I've seen them used the most for is to just place things that we don't want to face the challenge of having to think about. And for me idle, for something to be idle, it means that it's in a state of rest or emotion without purpose. And when you allow things to occupy your garage in that state of rest or emotion without purpose, then not only do those things gather dust, but your life begins to gather dust. Because you're kind of losing sight, losing sight of, losing connection with the reason why you bought those things. It's not the things being in your garage that's that makes. It clutter, it's you being disconnected from that why that made you excited about getting it in the first place. I don't really have garage space. So I can't say how I use garage

• 41:30Speaker 05

  space because you can't really use what you don't have. But what I do have is a sense of purpose that I try to bring to everything that I do. And I'm glad that you told those stories about things that you took personally, because this isn't a show about garage condemnation, where we condemn people for keeping things in their garage. It's about garage clutter, where we help them, you know, deal with the things that are getting in their way as they define the way.

• 41:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And one of the things that often gets in the way is organizing. And that sounds weird. Well, that's why we have a professional organizer on the show. One of the things that people often misunderstand when I say organizing is well planned hoarding. They misunderstand. They think that I'm condemning organizers. That's the opposite. Professional organizers know better than anyone that the easiest way or the fastest way to organize your space is to let go. If you have fewer things to organize, you're going to spend less time organizing. On page two, I want to get practical. I want to talk a bit about the no junk rule. I want to talk more about clutter coffins. We've got some questions about tools. And also, I want to

• 42:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  talk to you about the clutter that comes with having a newborn, since you have a newborn recently, Julia, congratulations on that, by the way. Plus, we have a bunch more questions. But first, before we get to page two and page three, we still have an entire switchboard of callers to get to as well. Real quick, for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalists. We've been doing these decluttering tips over on Instagram, also purchasing tips as well. If you want to follow the minimalist on Instagram, we're at the minimalist over there. We're also put on other social media platforms, Facebook and TikTok and X. We're at the minimalist on all of those platforms. We've been filming original videos just for social media, going out to these different retail

• 43:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  stores, also doing some reaction videos to different clutter reels and clutter TikToks that we see out there to try to help inspire you to let go of whatever is in the way. We're at the minimalist on all of those platforms. If you want to follow along. Alabama, what else you got for us?

• 43:32Speaker 01

  Here's a minimalist insight from one of our listeners.

• 43:36Speaker 06

  Hi, my name's Maddie from Arizona, and I wanted to share a tip that I have found.

• 43:44Speaker 06

  I don't put up too many seasonal decorations, but I do love fall the most. And what my husband and I have started doing is, well, it's mostly me, making a cornucopia on our table. We eat a lot of squash and seasonal vegetables and fruits during the fall. So we buy a lot of them at one time and display them all on the table. I enjoy walking by and seeing them.

• 44:28Speaker 06

  And it's kind of fun that the cornucopia constantly evolves throughout the week because we eat it bit by bit and then we can refresh it. And it's a way to introduce some, something new and exciting into our home without, without other more traditional seasonal decorations. Thanks for all you do and I really enjoy listening to your podcast and I've found immense value in it.

• 45:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I love the idea of edible decorations. I mean, I guess I need to think about how, how I can apply that to every room of my house. And, and maybe it doesn't apply to the garage or maybe it does. I don't know. You can let us know. Maddie, thank you so much for that useful comment. Improving your seasonal decorations by making them functional. Of course, functional doesn't mean that they have to be edible, but I like the idea of having functional decorations. I'm also all for decor that is simply aesthetic and it makes the space more beautiful. I believe that beauty is essential. And so to me, having just a, a aesthetic that, that is there, that, that amplifies the living space is, is super helpful. It allows me to come home to a, a calm home that is, is peaceful.

• 45:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But also if I have a bunch of decorations I'm storing in the garage, then maybe that actually disturbs my peace. It may even get in the way. Julie, I assume you deal with a lot of people. One of the things we tend to hold on to are these so-called seasonal decorations. Do you have any insights around the things that we hold on to as seasonal decorations, but then quite often don't use for several years?

• 46:18Speaker 04

  So I love seasonal decor myself. I feel like it's maybe the home that I grew up in, that we had quite a lot of that. But it always goes back to the amount of space that you have and how you're prioritizing that space and what the purpose of the space is. So I like setting boundaries with the quantity that we're going to have. And whether it's seasonal decor or a garage full of children's toys, which I've seen, like an adult collector of children's toys, you just have to make that conscious decision as to what the purpose of the space is and what your goal is for the space. So if you're going to go all out with decor, then your garage is going to be just holiday decor. That's your choice that you're making. But we can't have everything that we want at all times, right? Which is sometimes a very hard pill for people to swallow.

• 47:01Speaker 04

  But we can't have that car in there and the plethora of holiday decor. I think the idea of the cornucopia is a really nice family tradition, may not be for everyone. But the way that I personally manage it in my own home is that I have a selection of some of my favorite things. And I also, as we were talking before the show about how much you love Halloween, Mallory, like I happen to love like Christmas and Hanukkah time, so I have the most of that. But I also have decided one storage tote is my boundary that I am having. All of my favorites, but that's what works for me with the space that I have. It's okay for me to deprive myself of what I love, even if I would love to have much more. But honestly, if I had more, it would be overwhelming for me. But yeah, we go through holiday decor constantly. There's a funny video of someone from my team dancing with a skeleton, like not a

• 47:45Speaker 04

  real skeleton, but like it's a Halloween skeleton in a garage and waltzing with them because we just, we see this all the time.

• 47:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Who knows, it could have been a real skeleton.

• 47:53Speaker 04

  Maybe.

• 47:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  With all the stuff that you're finding in these garages. Maddie, thank you so much. Anyone else, if you want to talk about the skeletons that are in your closet, feel free to send in a listener tip. We'd love to hear from you. Just send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on a future episode. Up next, pages two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 48:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that's the first 35% of episode 479. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition with Dr. Julia Raz, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, "What's the best way to manage that overwhelming burden of getting rid of the camping equipment and sporting gear that's taking up space in my home? How do I let go of the unmade memories that I associate with my physical clutter? How can I apply my minimalist principles to caring for a newborn? What percentage of Americans can no longer park their cars in their garages because of clutter?" Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast

• 49:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  on Patreon. Big thanks to our guest today, Dr. Julia Raz. You can check out Golden West Organizing Her Company. We'll put a link to that in the show notes. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Malibu, Post Production Peter, Spire Jeff, Inspire Dave, Savvy D. on the board, and the rest of our team. I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, let it be this: Love people and use things, because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 49:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.