481 | Cabinet Clutter

For the finale of their five-part Household Clutter series, The Minimalists are joined by Kristen Ziegler to talk about decluttering the excess stuff that's lurking in your cabinets, drawers, and other hiding spaces in your kitchen and throughout the rest of your home. Discussed in this episode: What can I do with all of the occasionally used appliances that take up a lot of space in our kitchen cabinets? (2:56) What's hiding in your cabinets? (18:00) Minimalist House Tour 101. (47:49) Listener tip: Ending the buy-declutter-buy-more cycle. (48:59) 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, hello, everybody. Today for the final installment of our five-part Household Clutter Series, we're talking about decluttering the excess stuff that's lurking in your cabinets and drawers and other hiding spaces in your kitchen and your bathroom and throughout the rest of your home. Joining us in the studio to expose your hidden clutter is our friend Kristin Ziegler. Kristin is an organizing expert with a bachelor degree of architecture from Virginia Tech. She is also the founder of the professional organizing business, Minima, which you can find at minimilonline.com. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about what to do

• 1:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  with all of those occasionally used appliances that take up a lot of space in her kitchen cabinets. And then we've got a question about the most common clutter that ends up hiding in cabinets. That's followed by our Right Here, Right Now segment and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 481. That's the full two-hour episode where we answer three times as many questions on Patreon. The link is in the description. 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 001. Full decade of podcast archives. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your

• 2:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

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

• 2:39Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Summer. I'm a weekly listener and a Patreon subscriber. This is about what's hiding in our cabinets and cabinet clutter. One area that we have not prioritized tackling in our home is the overabundance of small kitchen appliances that we have accumulated over the years. These include a large crock pot for meals, a small crock pot for appetizers, an Instant Pot, an air fryer, a stand mixer, a large blender, a small countertop bullet blender, a hand blender mixer, a juicer, a Ninja Creamy, an ice cream maker, a snow cone slash ice shaver machine, a waffle iron, sandwich press, and two different sizes of

• 3:24Speaker 03

  electric skillets. We are a family of five with three kids. We also have a neighborhood full of kids who often come over to our house to play. We often tend to feed them at some point. They enjoy the frozen treats from the frozen treat appliances. When it's hot out, I mean, we use most, we use all of the appliances and some more often than others, but they really do take up a lot of space and they're really hard to store. We don't have a large house. We don't have a large kitchen. We don't have a large amount of storage to keep them. So they're scattered around the house in various cabinets wherever

• 4:06Speaker 03

  we can find space. We definitely have an opportunity to pare these down and simplify what we use. Thank you so much. I find your podcasts and resources so valuable and look forward to new episodes every week.

• 4:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Kristin, I think the fundamental question here has to do with these occasionally-used appliances. Where does the Minima method come into play here? Because there's a lot of stuff. In fact, I was trying to write down furiously everything that was in her kitchen, from the waffle makers and the three blenders and the juicer and the crock pot and then another crock pot and then an Instapot, which I don't know the difference between some of these things.

• 4:43Speaker 04

  Ice cream maker, snow cone maker, and she uses them too. That's what makes it tough.

• 4:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's right. Because I think, Kristin, if we were to go into her kitchen, you're organizing business. You go into someone's home and you identify 80% of the things they're not using. We can say, yeah, let's let go of those things. But sometimes we use these things, but we hold on to them just for when we might want to make a snow cone, just for when we might want to make a waffle. And we might use it once or twice a year. How do we justify holding on to that, though?

• 5:15Speaker 05

  So whenever I'm working with a client and they have these specialty just-for-when items, I ask, first of all, does your space accommodate the ability to keep this comfortably? And then also, is this thing earning its keep? Because a lot of the times, something is taking up so much space and it's being used so infrequently that it's maybe easier on a day-to-day basis to just do without the snow cone maker or the ice cream machine and just go buy snow cones or ice cream. Because designed for the rule, not the exception. If the rule is that you need to cook healthful meals for your family every day or multiple times a week and these things are getting in the way of that,

• 5:58Speaker 05

  or even, I think she said, overflowing into other areas of the home, I would question, is that worth it?

• 6:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, TK, what I'm thinking about here is when I hold on to something just for when I might use it, but maybe I also don't want the result for which I use it for. There's a good reason I don't have an ice cream maker in my home. Because we would make ice, my daughter would try to make ice cream four times a day, every day, and that would yield a result that I don't want. We're all going to be eating ice cream throughout the house and it's going to make us feel like, well, you know, it's going to make us feel at least suboptimal. And so there is a world in which I'm totally fine with bringing my daughter out to go get ice cream from time to time, but that additional layer of friction actually makes it so that feels more like a treat than if I just have

• 6:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  access to it 24/7.

• 6:52Speaker 04

  My heart really goes out to Summer here because I know that joy that can come from being a great host. When people come over and it's not just your children, but they bring their friends over and you have that snow cone maker and that ice cream maker and your house can become a center of like real fun. And that's a value add for your kids too, right? Because, you know, it brings them joy when they can bring their friends over to a fun home where you can do really cool things. One of the principles we've talked about before is how the existence of a need is not evidence of our ability to fulfill it. And there's room to acknowledge how awesome it would be if I were the one to make something

• 7:32Speaker 04

  available for others while at the same time saying, but it's not feasible or affordable or sustainable for me to be able to do that. And so we can say, you know what, it's fantastic that when the kids come over, you're able to make all of these amazing things. But if you don't have the space and that lack of space is creating strain in your relationships, it's creating stress when those children are not around, then we have to step back and say, how can I organize my living space for the everyday life that I'm living rather than the occasional exceptional experience? And then where Kristen comes in is how do we get creative, right? Maybe we can go out for these things. I know with our 400 square

• 8:14Speaker 04

  foot space where we just don't have room for anything, it forces us to get creative. We were able to have a lot of things in our place and make it a center of entertainment and we can't do that anymore. So now we have to do things by saying, well, maybe we get Together with friends to go do that. Maybe we go out and buy that. Maybe we don't buy anything, but we go take a walk instead. Maybe we learn to be satisfied with something different. Maybe we do an activity that isn't consumption based, but it's creativity based. And so when we're honest with ourselves about our limitations, as awesome as it would be to not have them, then we're able to start thinking creatively about a sustainable way to serve others.

• 8:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think about having access over ownership, although there's a bit of a dilemma here for Summer, because some of these things that she owns, it gives her access and her family access to create these waffles or snow cones or ice cream or blend things. But the question is, some of these things are duplicative. We have something we call the no duplicates rule. And I think it applies not to everything. Obviously, I don't apply this rule to rubber bands in my house. I have more than one rubber band. I always say, well, you know what? I don't want any duplicate rubber bands. Those are some consumable items. Same with toilet paper. Or you can look at the staples that you have in your office. Like, it may be that I have multiple items,

• 9:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  but there are some things where it is unnecessarily duplicative. And so if you have two or three blenders, and one would be enough for you, and the others just feel like they're getting in the way. And maybe you are getting some marginal utility, but there's diminishing marginal utility from each blender. And if you take it further out, you can see that pretty easily, right? If I say, well, if I give you 15 blenders, how are you going to feel? Are you going to feel like? Now, you might feel compelled to hold on to them, because now you have these 15 really nice blenders that you've been gifted, but they're simply getting in the way. There's nothing evil or wrong about having a blender. In fact, it's a great tool, because it's not just about consumption. You're actually creating something.

• 10:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And you're even doing it with your family. So you're connecting while you're creating the things that you consume. And how wonderful is that? But you're not 15 times more creative if you have 15 blenders. In fact, you might even argue that that diminishing marginal utility eventually ends up getting in the way, where one additional unit. Ceases the productivity, the utility that you get from those things, the joy you get from those things, the enjoyment that you get from those things.

• 10:51Speaker 04

  That's absolutely right. And this may sound a little cliche to say, but sometimes in our temporary experience of scarcity or even discomfort that we might refer to as suffering, we learn to come together and connect with each other in ways that are far more meaningful. My wife and I don't have laundry in our place anymore. We have to go outside for that. Man, that stinks. I hate that. And there are so many other things like that. Our kitchen is so small that if the two of us are in there at the same time, one of us just has to yield to the other. If I wanted to make a coffee right then and there, I've got to yield to my wife and just let her have it until she's done

• 11:31Speaker 04

  what she's done. That stinks. And at the same time, you learn to share. You learn to be more considerate. You learn to be more humble. You learn to be vulnerable. You learn to not only be the one who has the power to do what they want, or the power to help others, but you also get to experience the privilege of allowing others to help you, of being someone who can create a good time even in the absence of power and control. And so there is another benefit to minimizing some of these things, especially when you can identify one of these five skillets that's capable of doing the job, one of these five blenders that's capable of doing the job, even if you got to clean a little more, even if you got to work a little harder.

• 12:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I often apply the no duplicates rule to things like spatulas in the kitchen, or if we have too many plates or glasses. Is this too duplicative for how we use these things? So let's get practical for a moment, Kristin. I think about summer and this dilemma that she has. And then I think about where does minimalism fit into the picture? And sometimes I'll say that minimalism is the amplification of spaciousness. And that is especially true when I go into your home in Richmond, Virginia. It feels incredibly spacious and airy, but it doesn't feel deprived of anything. I don't feel like, oh no, poor Kristin, she doesn't have anything. I look at Kristin's home and I'm like,

• 12:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, wow. She has just enough and she's amplified the space and it feels so much calmer and freeing because you got rid of some of those things that might otherwise be construed as duplicates. So if you were in her home, working with her, what would you do to help her sort out what is duplicate, what stays, what goes?

• 13:14Speaker 05

  Well, I would ask her what her vision for her life is and how the space is going to support that. And if having some of these specialty appliances really aligns with that, then maybe they aren't clutter. But also to what you all were saying, you can make ice cream without an ice cream machine. My husband did it. And there's, you don't need an air fryer to make something that tastes good. I sent TK our home fry recipe that tastes like something that you would get at a fried food place, but it's actually healthy. And so if there's a desire, there's a way and you can get really creative without any specialty tools. We own a small hand mixer, a toaster oven, and like, maybe like

• 13:57Speaker 05

  a chopping machine. And that's it. I don't, we don't even have a crock pot. And my husband is an amazing cook. He loves to get creative in the kitchen. That's his means of expression. And it's actually easier if we don't have all of those once in a while use items cluttering things. And I think a lot of the times we're sold by advertisers, this idea that the air fryer, I mean, how many air fryers are going to be in goodwill or already are because that trend is kind of going away now. I think we're often tricked into thinking, I'm going to eat healthy or serve my family better if I buy this thing and it takes up a ton

• 14:37Speaker 05

  of space and maybe is used for a while. But you never needed the thing to do, to achieve the goal. And so a lot of times it becomes clutter. And I think part of the issue too, something that I've learned, a friend of mine, Rebecca Thomas, her business is Not Another Diet. She teaches this amazing minimalist cooking course. And she teaches people basic

• 15:02Speaker 05

  Kitchen skills. She's like, look, you need like two or three good knives, a mixing bowl, you know, extra virgin olive oil and like a few capsule wardrobe type ingredients and you can make anything. And it's simple. You do not need all of these crazy ingredients, all of these crazy tools to be a good chef and to make delicious tasting food. So sometimes,

• 15:23Speaker 05

  not necessarily in the caller's case, but for a lot of us, I think we clutter our kitchens because we don't have the understanding of what we really need.

• 15:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I think that also applies to our bathrooms and other cabineted areas. Just because we have the space, we feel compelled to fill it as opposed to embracing the spaciousness for what it is and creating some of these constraints that feel restrictive at first, but then you realize you're restricting the clutter. You're setting boundaries to keep those things out. Somewhere, I'd love to give you a copy of the minimalist rulebook. You can download it for free on our website at theminimalists.com. Just click the resources page there at the top. We have a bunch of free resources, but the minimalist rulebook has 16 rules for living with less, but they're not really rules, they're boundaries. We already talked about a few of them here today,

• 16:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  including the just for when rule, identifying some of those items that you hold on to just for when you're going to use them because you do use them semi regularly. But then also identifying, I suspect most of these items are just in case items. And maybe you're even using them because you feel like I have to use them. You're forcing yourself into using them. And then do you have any emergency items in your kitchen? Probably not, unless it's a fire extinguisher or something like that. Emergency items are just in case items you hope you'll never have to use, but you keep them there in case of an emergency. So for example, in my car, I have a set of jumper cables. Now, that works in my car, but if I kept my jumper cables in a cabinet in the kitchen,

• 16:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  they may be way less useful for me if I actually need them when I'm on the road and my battery dies. So another thing to think about, we'll be talking about this throughout the episode here, is placement of these things in our cabinets. You can download that minimalist rulebook for free at theminimalists.com or if you want the Audiobook, we'd be happy to send that to you as well, Summer. Before we get back to our callers, Malabama, what time is it?

• 17:18Speaker 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.

• 17:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Now, Kristin, you're familiar with the lightning round. During the lightning round, we attempt to answer your question with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.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 theminimalists email, we'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements. We'll never send you clutter for your kitchen either, but we'll start your week off with a dose of simplicity. What's the question of the week this week?

• 18:02Speaker 01

  What's hiding in your cabinets?

• 18:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, TK. Before we get to our pithy answers, I want to hear from our simpletons. Malabama, what did some of our listeners have to say?

• 18:11Speaker 01

  Jessica said, "The cabinets that stay cluttered for us are the ones with random crap, like batteries, chargers, vitamins, matches, car keys, pens, notepads, paperwork, et cetera. The junk cabinet, I despise it."

• 18:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We went from junk drawers to junk cabinets. I saw Kristin's junk drawer in her home, but you don't call it a junk drawer, do you?

• 18:33Speaker 05

  No, I call it a convenience or utility drawer because I feel like when we call it a junk drawer, it gives it permission to be just that.

• 18:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, very nice. I do something similar. I call mine the junkless drawer because I don't give myself permission to put junk in a drawer. Junk goes somewhere else. Junk has to leave the house. I'm not going to send it to this little purgatory that we will then clear out four years from now. And I remember when I was helping Ryan with his packing party, which, by the way, if Summer, we go back to Summer's question, she could obviously do a packing party for her kitchen just with those appliances and put them in a different room for a period of time, maybe put them in your garage or in your trunk of your car, somewhere else. And then you ask yourself over the course of 30 days or 90 days, do I actually use?

• 19:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This or does this space feel better, calmer without it? And I think the same thing is true with what Jessica is saying here. Do you have any insights for Jessica? Because she has a lot of random crap, the batteries and the chargers, the vitamins and the matches and the car key pins and the notepads and the paperwork. There's a lot of stuff that she's holding on to.

• 19:43Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that maybe those items just haven't found a proper home. If they're ending up in like a junk cabinet. You know, I think of things like there's like office supply categories. There's home utility categories, maybe even some like cleaning supplies. I don't know. I don't remember the whole list, but it seems like they maybe need to be rezoned throughout the house if they are not clutter, if they are things that are adding value, rather than just sort of a catch all cabinet. So empty it out, get everything out in the open.

• 20:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, the out in the open rule.

• 20:14Speaker 05

  If you can't see it, you can't solve it. It's TK Coleman.

• 20:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's fun on, you know, by getting everything out in the open, you actually are forcing yourself to deal with it, to see it and instead of hide it. Because the cabinets are one of the most dangerous areas. And when I say cabinets, it can be the shelving that you have in the living room, credenzas and sideboards and kitchen cabinets and drawers. And then you go into the bedroom and the nightstand has a drawer. And then you go into your bathroom and the guest bathroom. And all of these different places become these repositories for clutter because of what Kristen just said. These things don't have a home, so we just cram them. We try to make it work. We wedge it into this junk drawer.

• 21:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then eventually what happens is every junk drawer becomes a junk drawer if we are not intentional. What else we got?

• 21:08Speaker 01

  Lorenza said, nothing is hiding anymore since being more intentional. I love opening up the cabinets and drawers in my home and being greeted with minimal, well curated spaces. Each utensil, dish and plate has a purpose.

• 21:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  This to me sounds like Kristen's home. When I was there, it's like everything is intentional and it feels like you have planned things out, but and it takes a lot of work. But once you've done it, you don't have to keep worrying about it.

• 21:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I feel like this is a good time for me to answer this, the question of the week. What's hiding in my drawers? Nothing. That's not literally nothing, but nothing is hiding. Like Josh, when you saw when I gave you the home tour, that was part of it. I was like, open any drawer, any cabinet. Like this is part of the art. And I always think about, so I was an architect before starting my home organizing company and we think about design in terms of scale. So there's the scale of the city, that's urban planning. There's the scale of the building. That's what we think of as architecture. Then there's the scale of interior design, which is the inside, but architects often also do that.

• 22:19Speaker 05

  And then there's industrial design, which is the scale of the objects in the space. And then we kind of stop there. And I think that that is a really missed opportunity for beauty and design and joy. So the way that I've designed my home and the way that I encourage my clients to think about their spaces is, or their cabinets and drawers, the things behind doors that you can't see when you're in the room, is give it the same amount of intention and thought as you do the interiors of your space, because that is an opportunity for joy and peace and calm. And no joke, when, I mean, you went in one of my closets and you were just like having the most zen moment. And every time I'm at home,

• 23:01Speaker 05

  you know, life is really stressful. So if I can get that little pinch of joy from opening my convenience drawer in my kitchen or looking at my office closet or putting something away really, because there's a space, there's a very precise space for it. That feels good. That keeps my, you know, my nervous system at rest and calm.

• 23:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Where does this live? Right? And if we're asking that, like, think about you or someone else who lives in your home, I think of my daughter, I wouldn't just cram her into a drawer. I wouldn't just put her in a random room at night. She has her own bedroom. She sleeps in her bed. I wouldn't say, well, tonight you're actually sleeping on the coffee table.

• 23:41Speaker 05

  Wherever we have space.

• 23:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, just find a place to sleep tonight. But we do that with our items. We put them to rest in these places that they don't belong. We know we don't want them there, but like, I don't want to take the time. The difference is, I noticed that Kristin took the time so that she doesn't have to keep taking the time to rehouse these different items.

• 24:03Speaker 04

  Wow, I love that. That reminds me of when I worked at a particular restaurant, they had what's called like, hey, whenever you ring in an order, no matter how busy you are, just take two minutes, even though everyone behind you who wants to use that computer is freaking out, and reread that order to make sure you got it right. Because that two minutes of slowing down and stressing out in that way is going to save you from an hour of having to run back and fix the situation because you got it wrong the first time.

• 24:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and so it feels like more time upfront, but it actually ends up saving you time. It feels like more effort upfront, but it actually ends up saving you effort. It feels like more stress upfront, but it actually makes tomorrow much calmer because you've reduced the potential for future chaos. What else do we have?

• 24:46Speaker 01

  Sarah said, while remodeling my kitchen, I decided not to have any top cabinets at all. If they aren't there, I won't fill them. I have drawers at the bottom so I can see everything clearly and nothing gets hidden. But for bigger items, I have a small pantry. I realized that cabinets can be clutter coffins, too.

• 25:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Cabinets can absolutely be clutter coffins. We put this video up on Instagram of me going into the Container Store and saying, hey, how do we organize our homes? Obviously, we go buy more boxes and bins. And I'm like, well, wait a minute. To declutter your home is not to organize it. To organize your home is to declutter it first. And Kristin does a great job with that, but then with what is left, you do an impeccable job of organizing the thing. So it's not that you're against, you know, having cabinets or having containers for certain things, but if we're just trying to shove everything into containers, it doesn't work.

• 25:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, you're wasting a lot of time and money. There's this quote from Benjamin Franklin, that's one of my favorite organizing quotes. Y'all might have heard it. For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.

• 25:52Speaker 05

  And when I think of organizing, decluttering is an essential step. There's no organizing without decluttering.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, and if a client has a specific aesthetic vision, like they really, really crave like, oh, matching, whatever, like, I get that. You've seen my home.

• 26:08Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 26:09Speaker 05

  I love Muji. Get your stuff from Muji if you're going to get containers. It's so beautiful.

• 26:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But also recognize that if you just go to Muji right now and you have a house full of clutter and you put it all in Muji containers, it hasn't fixed the problem.

• 26:23Speaker 05

  That's right. So, containers are the last step of the process. The minimum method that I use goes, plan, create an action plan, sort, get everything out into the open, minimize, which is decluttering, and then organize. And organize is container optional. I find that 80, maybe 90% of the time when we complete those first steps, and by complete, I mean actually address all the things. Our process is so thorough. We're, we touch everything, you know, unless the client has said this is off limits. It's incredibly thorough. If that process has been completed, they usually don't need organizing containers. But if they do, it's very, very clear

• 27:08Speaker 05

  exactly what's needed at that stage because this is what we're keeping. This is where we've given it a home. And you know what? A drawer divider or a bin actually would make accessing it every day a little bit easier. But you can't know that until you've gone through the other steps.

• 27:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, because what you'll run into, if you just go to the container store, Muji or wherever, and you buy 40 bins, now you have 40 bins full of stuff.

• 27:30Speaker 05

  Right.

• 27:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And then you're still trying to deal with the things that are in those bins. Let's do a couple more.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Julie said, "If it were up to me, there would be no doors on the kitchen cabinets. I find it annoying to open a door, to put glasses and plates away just to close it again. It's an extra thing to do every time you have to take something out. I prefer to have the doors off for easier access."

• 27:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Now, Kristin, you know, I've been, well, we've been remodeling our kitchen, but just repainting the cabinets and replacing the backsplash. We didn't like tear the whole kitchen out like something that Kristin Ziegler would do. Just tear, anytime she moves to a new place, she tears everything out. And, and she's really good at making herself suffer for extended periods of time. And but we just just with the repainting of the cabinets. The prep work is insane. You have to pull the doors off and you have to tape everything off and you have to basically zone everything. And for a while now that we have some of our things back in the kitchen, but the doors aren't on the cabinets yet. And I feel a little bit like Julie, like it is easier to reach those things, especially

• 28:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  if they're well organized. It also prevents you from just hiding things behind doors. But at the same time, I do like having doors on my cabinets. When I go to your house and and see like these Ikea cabinets that you have there in your kitchen. In fact, your fridge is behind one of those. It looks like you don't have a refrigerator in your kitchen. And how wonderful is that? Because it's it's hidden there. It's streamlined. What is your philosophy behind these doors on cabinets?

• 29:02Speaker 05

  So funny story, before we renovated our kitchen, we had these decent wood cabinets and I thought about painting them. But because I, you know, I'm not going to rip something out just to rip it out. I want to try to be thoughtful. I ended up giving the cabinets to my handyman to repurpose in his workshop so they didn't go to the dump. But for a while I was trying to make that work and the layout was just, it did not make any sense. So we really did have to start from scratch. But in the interim, I took all the doors off the cabinets because I didn't like the design and I would rather see my stuff. And it was really convenient. And I think about things as though the doors aren't there because I want, I'm not trying to hide anything.

• 29:43Speaker 05

  You know, I want that to be, like I was saying before, really a pleasing design moment.

• 29:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. So when I open a cabinet at your place, it's like I opened up a cabinet at a retail store or something. Everything is is well aligned and you keep the spices in a drawer now because it's more accessible. Bama, we were talking before we started recording and you have this corner in your kitchen that has become the bane of your existence. Tell me a bit about that.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  I was trying to figure out how to describe this for audio listeners, but essentially I have way more kitchen space than I know what to do with because I don't have a bunch of appliances. And in this new space- I've moved into, there's a corner cabinet that I just kind of felt like this is probably the best spot to be my pseudo pantry because I don't have a pantry. And what I'm finding is I have this corner and things just kind of go in there into a different void and I have no idea what happens. But it feels weird to put them anywhere else. I was explaining to Joshua that I have an older apartment, so I have one outlet in my entire kitchen. So you know, you look at that and you're like, okay, well, then that's where the kettle and the coffee grinder has to be. And so it makes sense to put the mugs in, you know, right above that.

• 30:52Speaker 01

  And so like, when I look into the Feng Shui of my kitchen, I just kind of felt like that was the, that was what was left for things like mung bean noodles and rice and, you know, oats and nuts and chia seeds and things like that. But they just, it's not a well-designed space. And I even, I even ended up going into the container store yesterday with a friend of mine who was going in for specific things. And I looked for things to fit that space. I'm like, maybe there's like a half eaten lazy Susan I could put in here to make this work. And they just, I'm just forcing something that just doesn't work, but it feels weird to just leave it empty, you know?

• 31:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I imagine if Kristen was in your space, and I might be wrong about this, but you have identified Bama, you don't have a bunch of excess things that you're not using. The mung beans and the rice and the pasta, whatever else you have there in that space, you would just like a way to make it look a little bit tidier, nicer with those things that you use regularly. And it seems to me like this is a perfect use for going to Muji or one of these other places, not a sponsor by the way, and getting a few containers so that you can display these things that you're using regularly.

• 32:03Speaker 01

  It could be, or it could be that maybe the kitchen could be zoned in a way that works better. So corner cabinets are tricky.

• 32:11Speaker 05

  And I so many times will go into a client's space specifically in the kitchen and they have one of those corner late lower cabinet lazy Susans or the upper cabinet like Mallory was talking about and there's a million tiny things like pantry items or usually pantry items are like really small kitchen gadgets and in a space like that where there's a void and things can get lost, I recommend going with larger items. So like a set of bowls or a set of cups or just a few larger things and putting smaller items on a shallower space where it's not going to get like lost in the depths. And I think this is a good

• 32:53Speaker 05

  time, since we're talking about kitchens, to mention that every kitchen has six core zones. And so this is something to think about as you're laying your kitchen out. And with a smaller kitchen, I don't think you have to be as precise. It's more about, okay, this needs a drawer and this is the one drawer I have. So that's where the cutlery's going. But with a larger kitchen, it can really help distinguish the different areas. So the idea of a zone in a kitchen is that you can plant your feet and access everything you need for that activity without having to like run all over the kitchen and waste time and create a chaos mess in the process. So the zones are serving, prep, cooking, baking,

• 33:38Speaker 05

  food storage, and cleanup. And so if you were to do the out in the open rule, like just try to reset and see what happens, you would make those six piles and then see it also shows duplication. And then generally, serving is best near the sink or the dishwasher, prep, largest counter surface, cooking and baking near the range stove oven, food storage near the fridge or pantry, and cleanup under the sink. So it may be that if something isn't working before going to whatever container product store you have in mind, see if there's a way to rezone things better. And that applies to any space in the home. There are there are zones that we all have. And sometimes, even if something has a home, it may not

• 34:23Speaker 05

  be the most optimized home for the way that you're using it.

• 34:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What about that?

• 34:27Speaker 01

  I can't wait to go home and redo my entire kitchen. This is amazing. Thank you.

• 34:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What I like about that is those zones can apply to if you have a 400 square foot house or a 4,000 square foot house with a giant kitchen. It sounds to me like those zones are applicable to either one of those scenarios.

• 34:44Speaker 05

  For sure. And if anyone's interested, I wrote all about this and listed what lives in every single zone on a blog post on my website.

• 34:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Talk to me real quick about cabinets in the bathroom because it's different. You're not going to have the prep zone and the serving zone and all of these things. People's bathroom setups tend to be different. Sometimes there's a mirror on the wall. I remember when I was a little kid and I went to a friend's house and they had a medicine cabinet and I thought they were the richest people in the world.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  They feel like magic if you've never had one before.

• 35:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes. Yeah, especially because I'd just seen Candyman recently, the horror film. And so I'm opening it up, trying to see if Candyman's in the medicine cabinet.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  Oh, God.

• 35:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And, and he wasn't, but what was in there was just a bunch of stuff crammed into a medicine cabinet and then a bunch of stuff crammed into the drawers and crammed into, and we just, we have space for things and instead of amplifying the spaciousness with minimalism, we, we just find ways to hide our things in those drawers in the bathroom. What's your philosophy around the bathroom cabinets and drawers?

• 35:52Speaker 05

  So I recommend identifying your everyday versus your infrequent and then looking at the space you have, can it all fit into your bathroom or does the infrequent stuff need to live in like a linen closet or something like that? The everyday stuff, always put that in the most accessible area. And for both everyday and infrequent, this might sound a little weird, but I recommend zoning it by body part. So think face, body, hair, eyes, teeth. And that just makes it really simple to sort things out.

• 36:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. Your toothpaste is going to be near your toothbrush, et cetera. You're not going into your, your walk-in closet to grab your toothpaste or your toothbrush or whatever. Although you might, if we're not thinking about these things, all of a sudden, we're running all over the kitchen, or we're running all over the bathroom, we're running all over the house because I don't have what I need because it doesn't have a home that I planned intentionally. Let's hear from one more simpleton.

• 36:50Speaker 01

  This is from Caitlin. Most things stay easily decluttered and organized around here for day-to-day items, but what feels like clutter are new bulk grocery purchases. We have our food streamlined, so it's easier and cheaper to buy in bulk. But I don't want to stare at 36 juice boxes for my child at one time, so I have to store away the extra new boxes until they're needed. It feels so nice when we almost need to go grocery shopping.

• 37:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, if I were in your shoes, I'd buy less bulk. I'm not saying I wouldn't buy in bulk, but let me just illustrate it with a parodic or absurd example here. So yeah, 36 juice boxes is a lot. But let's say that they're really on sale at Costco, and if you buy 3,600 juice boxes, you actually get them all for one penny each, or maybe you even get them for free. What if I gave you 3,600, a lifetime supply of juice boxes? What the hell are you gonna do with them? You just gonna stack them all throughout your kitchen? Are you gonna take out all the stuff, your blender and your toaster and all these things, and just fill it with juice boxes? Of course, you're not going to do that. You wouldn't even accept 3,600 juice boxes for free, most likely.

• 38:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And well, why is that? Because they would get in the way. So TK, I'm wondering if you have any insights here for Caitlin? Because I think it's totally fine to buy in bulk unless those bulk purchases are getting in the way.

• 38:17Speaker 04

  Yeah, I think you hit on something. I think many people who don't need or want the juice boxes would accept them. Because that's part of the lie that gets us, right? It's the idea that, well, it would be a waste for me to say no.

• 38:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I'd be dumb not to.

• 38:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. I saw a guy who made this video. He said, "It's me on the first day of a fast." And he's really motivated, and he goes to work. And some guy says, "Free pizza! We've never done this before, and I promise you, we'll never..." Do it again. Free pizza today only. And he's like, are you kidding me? Right. But that's how many of us feel, right? We try to make a decision to minimize, to live with less. And it's as if the universe is testing us, right? And says, and says, I'm gonna give you a whole bunch of free stuff, a whole bunch of abundance. And we say, well, it would be irresponsible. It would be privileged of me to say no. There are some people that would kill for that. There are some people who couldn't afford that and they're starving. How bad of me to say no to that.

• 39:17Speaker 04

  And then we take these things on. The guy eats the pizza when he really would rather be fasting. And in the name of taking advantage of an opportunity, he deprives himself of the real opportunity for growth. We take these items into our home because they're made accessible in an inexpensive way. And in the name of saying yes to an opportunity, we're saying no to an opportunity for deeper connection with our family, for greater freedom in our living space. So you're always saying yes to something when you say no to something. And you're always saying no to something when you say yes to something.

• 39:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right. So if you go to my house and you see 3,600 juice boxes, Kristen's actually coming up there this week. Don't judge me. They were on sale. I would have been dumb not to buy them. What's your philosophy around bulk purchases?

• 39:59Speaker 05

  If it's gonna disrupt my peace, I'm not gonna go for it. Because ultimately, peace and freedom and a home that supports that are my core values. And so bulk purchases don't really align with that for me.

• 40:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  They do, but to an extent, right? You don't buy your toilet paper one square at a time.

• 40:16Speaker 05

  You're right.

• 40:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so there is a type of bulk that works for you. In fact, imagine if every time you had to use the bathroom, you had to go walk to the store to buy a roll of toilet paper. That would also disrupt your peace and calm.

• 40:30Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 40:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And yet, so what you found is a comfortable middle. Now, it may look much closer to owning nothing than it is to owning a pallet of toilet paper. But you have some, some level of bulk that you're comfortable with.

• 40:43Speaker 05

  Right. And it is kind of specified. And I also want to mention that. Organization isn't like a fixed, static thing. Our lives are always evolving. And so, setting up systems that can accommodate the evolution. There may be a time in my life where I want to keep more toilet paper or toothpaste or whatever than I do now. But right now, I know that I like to have 12 rolls of toilet paper, max.

• 41:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I have the same number. That's wild.

• 41:12Speaker 05

  What?

• 41:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah.

• 41:13Speaker 05

  Did you know when you came over, I hid the two extras in our...

• 41:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, I put them in my luggage. It's fine.

• 41:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Hey, Kristin, we talked the other day, and you had some really interesting stuff to say about how sometimes in our everyday lives, we're so hard on ourselves for not feeling motivated, or we're so hard on ourselves for not making the choices that we want to make. And sometimes, it's not even a matter of a lack of discipline, a lack of positive thinking, or that we're bad people. Sometimes, it's just our spaces aren't organized in a way that supports us. What do you have to say about that?

• 41:50Speaker 05

  That's 100% true. And our spaces can support, you know, our sleep. They can support eating in a healthful way. They can support quality time with our family. Or they can not do those things, and they can drain and exhaust us. And we may not even be aware of that. And so, for me, and when I'm working with clients, I always ask, how do you want to feel in this space? And how can we set that up to serve that? And TK, you and I were also talking about like the design of a space. How like a hallway can feel really narrow and oppressive, or a space can feel grand and wonderful and inspiring. And those are things, like, those are things that, you know, as someone with, who's studied

• 42:35Speaker 05

  design, I can walk into a room and point it out. But we all feel it, even if we can't pinpoint it. So, you know, I think if you're feeling a little bit off in your space, if you're feeling oppressed, that might be an extreme word, but acknowledge that and look for ways to creatively solve it. Because most spaces, unless you live in like a dungeon, can be designed to feel good.

• 42:58Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, although there are some aesthetically pleasing dungeons, I'm sure.

• 43:02Speaker 05

  Probably.

• 43:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Have you seen the new show Severance? You sound a little too sure.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 43:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Come on over this weekend, TK. Take a look at my juice boxes.

• 43:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  How about you listeners? What is hiding in your cabinets? 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. What's hiding in your cabinets?

• 43:32Speaker 04

  How can you make juice boxes sound creepy?

• 43:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is pithy.

• 43:39Speaker 04

  Okay, out of sight isn't out of mind. Qualifier. Out of sight is out of mind if you've already carefully looked at it and decided that it's fine. But out of sight isn't out of mind if you're dealing with the monster that has the power to attack you from behind. So it's like in those horror movies, right? Monsters chasing you around an empty school like in Nightmare on Elm Street, or you're in a seam and scream and the monster's chasing you around the house. As long as you hear that monster growling and things are falling over as you're running around the house or the school screaming, you're okay. You're definitely in danger, but keep fighting and you can survive. But you know when you really need to be scared? It's when you no longer hear anything and you say hello and you walk around and you

• 44:21Speaker 04

  don't see anything. Hello? That's really scary because the monster's hiding. And when it's hiding, you're in danger. In an analogous way, we create an adversarial relationship with the things in our home when we use our cabinets not to have things, not to hold things, but to hide things. Because when we hide them, we don't eliminate the stress, we just give it the power to attack us from behind. Because the presence of that thing, the incongruence in our relationship, the tension that results from not being definitive and intentional about how we want to use it compromises our ability to be creative and composed and at peace in other areas of our lives.

• 44:59Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I totally agree with the out of sight isn't out of mind. In one way, it is out of mind. It's out of the front of your mind, but all you've done is take it and put it in the back of your mind. And now it's going to start weighing on you. Because as it wait, as you hold it back there, you're not thinking about it right now, but it starts to bother you. It starts to itch a little bit. You get the itch to declutter at some point, but oh, that that task is going to be so overwhelming. And we really, we prop it up in our heads as being this big thing. This happens to me all the time. Like, oh, I've got that stack of stuff on my desk. All this mail arrived in one day. I don't want to, I'm going to spend hours going through it. And then 14 minutes later,

• 45:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I've completely made it through the whole thing, except I put it off for three days. And where was it? It was there in the back of my mind that whole time. It was oppressing me. It was suppressing my joy and my freedom. Had I just dedicated the 14 minutes, I could have let it go, not just from the front of my mind, but the back of my mind, which brings me to my pithy answer. A cluttered home produces a cluttered mind. Quite often, our material possessions are a physical manifestation of what's going on inside us. So if I have a lot of external clutter, including cabinet clutter in my bathroom and kitchen and hallways, sideboards and credenzas and media consoles, I have a lot of clutter there. There's a

• 46:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  good chance I have a lot of mental clutter, emotional clutter, spiritual clutter, psychological clutter. There's a lot of clutter that's going on inside me. And I can try to hide the things in my cabinets, but it's always going to come back. And so by dealing with the excess stuff, I found it opens up space for me to start looking inside and dealing with some of that mental and emotional clutter that haunts us. Because those, those monsters, you want to kill them when they're babies. You don't want to wait till Godzilla is taking over the city. But unfortunately, that's what we do. When Kristen goes into someone's house, Godzilla has already been there quite often.

• 46:59Speaker 05

  Yeah. Don't wait until your closet bar collapses from the weight of the clothes or your pantry literally explodes when you open the cabinet, because that can happen.

• 47:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, man. You can see that. You can see a picture of, of folly. And like, you can see it in a sitcom because it's funny, but when it happens to you in your real life and in the morning, you're just trying to get the kids ready and then let me just grab this out of the cabinet and then 17 Stanley mugs fall on you from the cabinet because you've stored all these extra juice boxes back there. It becomes a real problem.

• 47:33Speaker 04

  By the way, I demand a sequel to Buffy called Kristen, the Dragon Slayer. That's all.

• 47:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That is the end of page one. We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to, Kristin, but first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. Over the last couple of months on Instagram, we came back to social media. On my personal Instagram account, I've been sharing some updates from my home, some home tour photos on my Instagram stories. The problem with that is they go away after 24 hours, which I really like the ephemerality of it. You can follow me over there if you'd like, @JoshuaFieldsMilburn. You can also follow the minimalist on all platforms, @TheMinimalist. We're sharing some pictures there as well. But for folks who don't have social media, don't worry, we're not leaving you out. We're doing another home tour over on Patreon. This is minimalist home tour number 101, which actually sounds

• 48:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  like a good class to take. Home tour 101. But it is our 101st home tour. Kristin, we did a home tour of her home over on Patreon as well. You can check that out. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. So by the time this episode comes out, you can check out minimalist home tour 101 over on Patreon. It's patreon.com/theminimalist. If you want to see photos of my remodeled kitchen, the before and after and the during, the chaos. And I've had to deal with the chaos for the last few weeks. And I've learned some lessons. I want to talk to you a bit about that on pages two and three coming up. But first, Malabam, what else you got for us?

• 49:00Speaker 01

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

• 49:03Speaker 06

  Hello, minimalists. My name is Amandine. I'm a Patreon subscriber. I'm French, but I currently live near DC. This is a follow-up of some sort to Victoria's question on the House of Clutter episode. She said that she was in a constant cycle of buying and purging and buying again. And TK asked her to...

• 49:30Speaker 06

  Ask herself what void she was trying to fill. And that really struck a chord with me. I also find myself in those cycles. And I think my issue is with purpose or passion, however you want to phrase it. A lot of my friends and people around me have something, quote unquote, thing that defines them. And I do not. And I'm really trying to find that purpose in my life or that passion that I will carry with me till the day I die. For example, I tried watercolor and that's not working out. So I'm going to give away the equipment and I will try acrylics.

• 50:14Speaker 06

  And the cycle just continues. Or workouts. Maybe I am not enjoying this type of workout. So I'll buy that equipment. And maybe this new exercise will be the thing that I love to do for the rest of my life. And rinse and repeat. So, thank you very much for that insight. It really made me think. And just thank you in general for all you do. Bye.

• 50:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Amandine, thank you so much for that thoughtful comment. You might want to check your microwave in the background. It sounds like you're microwaving a Hershey kiss.

• 50:47Speaker 01

  A dog like tap dancing in the kitchen.

• 50:49Speaker 05

  Or rain was my theory.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  Ooh, both of those are lovely.

• 50:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Don't microwave tinfoil. TK is looking at me, he's like, I did that when I was a kid too. I love this idea, the, the ending, the, the buy, slash declutter, slash buy more cycle. And also this question, what void are you trying to fill? We'll talk more about that on page two when we answer Vicky's question that's coming up. She has a question about keeping the clutter from coming back. It's a big problem for her. For anyone who has a listener tip or insight about this episode or any other episode, just send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. Up next, page two and page three. But first, let's take a quick pandiculation break. We'll be right back.

• 51:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, that is the first 38% of episode 481. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition with Kristin Ziegler, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, "What does Kristin do to prevent cord and cable clutter in her minimalist home?" "How can I let go of my OCD and need to control everything so that I can live calmly in my imperfect living space?" "What are the upsides and downsides of open concept homes?" Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon. Big thanks to Kristin Ziegler for joining us today. You can find her at minimalonline.com. You can also follow her on Instagram. It's

• 52:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the most beautiful, well-curated Instagram account on the internet. 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, and Spire Dave, and Savvy D over there 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.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 52:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.