472 | House of Clutter

The Minimalists talk about that overwhelming feeling that most of us experience when our homes are full of clutter. Discussed in this episode: Is a junk removal service the best way to deal with a house full of clutter? (2:38) At what point does your home feel cluttered? (22:23) When is The Minimalists' next live event? (39:11) Listener tip: T. K. Coleman is the new Oprah for decluttering! (40:51) 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, Alabama. Hello, everybody. We're back and today on the show, we're talking about that overwhelming feeling that most of us experience when our homes are full of clutter. Coming up on this free public minimal episode, a caller has a question about whether junk removal services are the best way to deal with her excess stuff. And then we've got a lightning round question about the point at which your house feels cluttered. That's followed by our right here, right now segment and a listener tip. You can check out the maximal edition of episode 472. That's the full two hour episode where we answer three times as many questions and we dive deep into several simple living segments. That private podcast is out right now on Patreon.

• 1:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You can find the link down in the description. When you subscribe, you'll get a personal link so that our weekly maximal episodes play in your favorite podcast app. Plus you'll gain access to all of our podcast archives. That's nearly 10 years of podcast archives. Big thanks to our patrons, by the way. Your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. So let's start with our callers. If you have a question or comment for our show, we would love to hear from you. By the way, we're getting ready to start this new clutter series with a bunch of special guests, some professional organizers and all of your favorite famous minimalists. We're going to Do an episode about garage clutter, another one about living room clutter, one about cabinet clutter.

• 2:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  How are your cabinets looking today? What about your closets, closet clutter? Is your wardrobe brimming right now? Or bedroom clutter? If you have questions about any of those topics, we'd love to hear from you as well. You can give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839. Or you can just email a voice recording right from your phone to [email protected]. Our first question today is from Lisa.

• 2:40Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Lisa. I'm from Washington State. I moved into my parents' house right before I started going to a healthcare program at the age of 38. So before I moved in, I was very organized and I didn't have clutter. After I started the program in school, it had a really heavy toll on my mental health. And I wasn't sleeping much and I started losing organization and they got cluttered. And then after school, I got depressed and started correcting a lot of things. And I thought maybe hobbies would help. I collected a lot of hobby materials.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  And now I'm at the point where I, all this stuff is overwhelming me to the point that I cannot box it to give it away. Cause if I plan on donating it, it just sits in the corner for forever. And so I finally got set up with it and I thought the donating thing is not working for me. It's too much planning and I'm too overwhelmed to do that right now. So I decided I'm gonna schedule a junk removal company to come and take everything away. And they said they would box it all. And I have a lot of guilt in doing that. And I haven't listened to all these podcasts.

• 4:08Speaker 03

  And I was wondering if there's a lot of people that wanna do this junk removal company, um, like big step in just getting rid of everything and not looking at anything before it goes. And if there's a lot of regret in doing that, cuz I'm not quite sure if they're gonna take away things that I'm gonna regret them taking away, but obviously I'm not gonna take what I need. That's necessarily my everything else. I'm just, I'm not gonna look at it. I'm just gonna have them take it. And that, so I thought, is this too much? Is this a good idea or a bad idea? Thank you so much.

• 4:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, Lisa, I hear the overwhelm. I hear the anxiety in your voice and I identify with it because that's exactly where I was when I started simplifying my life. In fact, it was dealing with my mom's things. I was so overwhelmed by this house full of clutter. I had this house of clutter and it wasn't even my clutter, but of course I couldn't let go of my mom's stuff. It was so precious and everything was precious, but if everything's precious, then nothing is precious. And so I do wanna address that question head on here in a moment. Is a junk removal service the best way to deal with a house full of clutter?

• 5:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But first, TK, I'd love to talk to you about that, that emotional clutter, that sense of overwhelm or anxiety that Lisa has and it's keeping her frozen. She doesn't know what to do. She says, I can't donate it. I can't sell it because every time I try to, to dive into it, it's just so overwhelming that I give up and I just sort of hold on to everything.

• 5:49Speaker 04

  Yeah, emotional clutter in many ways is very analogous to physical clutter. It may start off as something small, which is relatively simple to get rid of. Then if you sleep on it, if you wait too long and procrastinate, it begins to accumulate and you've got a whole bunch of stuff that needs to be cleaned, decluttered, organized and so on. And then you walk into that house and you don't even know where to start because you're just so overwhelmed. That's what emotional clutter is like. It's a collection of many different things when separated by units, when, when, when, when isolated can appear to be very simple, but when they all come together, it just creates this overwhelming sea of ambiguity and you don't even know when and where to start.

• 6:33Speaker 04

  I think one important thing to keep in mind in moments like this is to just recognize that there's no right or wrong starting place.

• 6:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  And so you're free at that point to choose the easiest place to start, the easiest place to focus on. Sometimes, and I heard a little bit of guilt in this question too, sometimes we psych ourselves out with guilt by saying, well, it might be easy for me to start here, but if I were the right kind of person, I would pick a superior starting point. And since I can't figure out what that is, well, I just have to be stuck because it's better to be righteously stuck than to be sinfully, you know, engaging the wrong starting point.

• 7:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Right. And so what we do is we, we stay frozen there because if I were a better person, then I'd be able to let go of these things that are so difficult to let go of.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 7:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But the truth is, there are some things in your home that are really easy to let go of because you've already identified them as clutter. They are already in the way. And I found for me, it wasn't just identifying the what needs to go and it wasn't even identifying the how to. I will talk to you about the how to side of things and this, these junk services in a moment because I have some nuanced thoughts on, on those. But for me, it was understanding the why. What is your why? And what is the freedom that is underneath the clutter? Because there is a type of freedom that is hidden underneath all of those things. What does your freedom look like? Is it financial freedom? Is it the freedom of, oh, my house

• 8:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  is less cluttered, less disordered? Is it the freedom of, oh, you know what? I'd rather have more time to spend on actual hobbies that I enjoy doing because I heard, she talked about all the things she collected for hobbies. You don't collect things for a hobby, although collecting can be a hobby, but if you have a hobby, the reason that you acquire items is because they're useful. They aid- You in the progress of working on that hobby. If it's knitting, then you don't go out and buy a bunch of bricks for knitting. Why? Because they would simply get in the way. But there are materials, you need yarn, you need the needles or whatever materials you need that allow you to do the thing.

• 8:44Joshua Fields Millburn?

  But if you get more of that, if you get a crate of yarn or a truckload of yarn, then even the things that could serve the hobby of knitting there would end up becoming clutter because they would get in the way. TK, what else is hidden underneath all of that clutter? Besides the freedom, what else do you see is hidden beneath the stuff?

• 9:07Speaker 04

  Possibility. And by possibility, I mean possibilities which cannot be imagined until we declutter. Oftentimes, we think of vision as that which provides the energy for discipline. It's my vision for the life that I want that motivates me to make the hard choices and sacrifices I need to make. But sometimes it's the other way around. Our discipline creates the space for vision. It's my willingness to do hard things without knowing ahead of time how it's going to benefit me that opens the doors for things that I could not previously imagine. My wife and I just experienced this the other day. We were doing some decluttering and we come up on this cabinet and there are some things in there we clearly don't need. And I say, how about we get rid of this stuff?

• 9:52Speaker 04

  And she says, what are we gonna put there? I go, I have no idea. And she says, why don't we just leave it then? And I go, well, I think we should start with the fact that we don't need it and we don't really want it. And if we choose comfort, then it's just gonna be there taking up space. But what if we just got rid of it on faith because we don't need it or want it? And we allowed that space to be without knowing what we're gonna do with it? And who knows, it might come in handy at some point in the future. And she goes, alright, let's do that. And so we take that out of the cabinet and put it on the table where we're putting the things we're gonna get rid of. Fifteen minutes later.

• 10:28Speaker 04

  We're working on another cabinet and she says, I just can't find the right place for this. I just hate where this is, but I don't know where else to put it. And I said, what about the cabinet we just cleared out? She goes, yeah, that's perfect. And we put it there and we're like, yeah, we got a nice little win. But that's a metaphor for how life works too. If there's something in your life that's bothering you, you know, you don't need it. You know that you could live without it, or at least try to live without it. Even if you don't have a concept of how it's going to improve your life and what's going to replace it. Just get rid of it and let it go because that can create the room for some creative thinking that might take your life in a positive direction.

• 11:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  When we do interviews, sometimes people ask us, what's your definition of minimalism? And if you saw our last Netflix film, the thing that we said is minimalism is the thing that gets us past the things.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  Well, that's wrong.

• 11:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Sorry. So we can make room for life's most important things. What you're talking about there is making room. So if I were to give an updated definition for minimalism, at least for me, it's minimalism is the amplification of spaciousness. And that's what you talked about. It wasn't about what are we creating? Well, what are we going to put here? We may not know what we're putting here, or you might not have to put anything here at all. I think about a coffee cup. I have this coffee cup here in front of me, right? And you know what's just as important as the ceramic that this mug is made of? It's the space that's inside the cup.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 12:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The space is just as important. You might say, well, that's crazy. What, well, no, how can that be crazy? Because imagine if I filled up the whole cup with ceramic, then I couldn't use it at all. It would be useless. The thing that makes this coffee cup that's in front of me useful is the ceramic, but it is also the space inside the ceramic. Otherwise I couldn't fill it with coffee. You know, I'm thinking about Lisa's actual question here about the junk removal service, right? And sometimes on this show, we'll talk about the best ways to declutter your home. Maybe it's the 30-day minimalism game. You can start with the easy stuff, as TK said.

• 12:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And the first day of the 30-day minimalism game, which by the way, we have a calendar you can download for free over on our website at themineralists.com. Just click the resources page. You can download and print out the 30-day minimalism game calendar. It just means start with one thing on the first day, two things on the second day, three things on the third day, so forth and so on. It gets you that momentum, starts off really easy. But as you build up your muscles, guess what? You're able to lift more weight. And the weight of your things, you're able to lift the heavier things, the things that weigh you down more as you progress. But the easiest thing for you to do in a case like this where you are just paralyzed by decision fatigue, I don't know what to let go of, I feel like I can't let go.

• 13:28Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It may be that hiring some sort of junk removal service. They have national brands like the 1-800-GOT-JUNK. But I tend to recommend, I don't have a problem with a junk removal service like that, but usually there are local services where you are. And this is why I can't put a link to a specific one in the show notes. But if you simply Google your city name, so let's say you're in, where was Lisa at? Do you remember? I don't remember off the top of my head, but let's say she's in Cleveland. You just, you say Cleveland, and then you say junk removal in your search bar. And all of a sudden, you'll get, you'll start getting, once you get past all of the damn ads that are there, you will start to see the local junk removal services.

• 14:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And even beyond that, you'll often see people in your neighborhood, they have just an old trunk that says, or old truck that they're driving around says, "Remove your junk," or "Junk Removal," or "Carlos's Junk Removal." And you can just give them a call, and they will come and remove anything that you want removed. And in some instances, if you have things that are worth paying for, they may even pay you for that. I wouldn't, I wouldn't go in with that expectation. If you want to earn money from Those things you have to find a way to sell them. If you want to get them out of your house immediately, you'll want to go donate them and you could even call a donation place. Quite often they'll come and pick up things from your home. But if you just want one fell swoop because you know I, I can't deal with these things, but I need someone else to do it.

• 14:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Then yeah, a junk removal service is a great place to start. One other thing, when you're dealing with other people's things, sometimes you might have a parent or a grandparent who passes away. And they have this house and the house is full of clutter as well. It's a lot of junk and maybe it wasn't even junk to them. But now it is junk to you. You can also do an estate sale for something like that where you don't have to deal with the things. You can go in and grab the few things that you want. And you can even put a limit on that. You know what, I'm going to go in here and I'm going to take home 20 or fewer things and that is it. That is my boundary. That is my limit. Everything beyond that, and it could be 50 things, 100 things. You get to identify what that boundary is. But then an estate sale will actually sell the things

• 15:40Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and they'll take a large chunk of that. But you don't have to deal with it anymore. And what happens is you get the peace of mind by allowing them to let go of it for you.

• 15:51Speaker 04

  That's right, and don't be afraid to donate or give things away without making money. Sometimes people will guilt trip others over taking something that's really valuable and letting someone else have it for free. Well, that's irresponsible because you paid a lot of money for that and you can make money for that. Well, look, if you're, if you really, really want that, you can commit to it, but it is a commitment. The difference between you and a store is that a store has a longer time preference. They exist for selling retail goods and they can afford to have an item on the shelf without someone buying it today because they're going to be there next week. And if no one comes in and buys it next week, that's okay. They're going to be there the week afterwards

• 16:35Speaker 04

  and it's not going to affect their identity as a store. You, on the other hand, with each day and each week, you're hanging on to something that your mind is being driven crazy for having to look at. Every day, you're compromising who you are. You're compromising the healthiest version of yourself. So you've got a lower time preference than the store. You have different needs than the store. And sometimes it's worth sacrificing the opportunity to make money or spending money in order to make it happen. Because you're thinking about cost in terms that are other than financial.

• 17:07Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, and sometimes those costs are immeasurable. What's the, how much is your anxiety worth? Lisa, I hear it in your voice. How much is that overwhelm worth to you? Because if you could let that go right now, wouldn't you? And I think the answer to that is obvious. But also getting back to your retail store analogy. I used to manage 150 retail stores. And I can tell you something else. If something doesn't sell for a long enough period of time, guess what? We also got rid of that. And we were able to let go of that as a retail store without having any of the emotions tied into it. Even if it's a product I really wish this product was selling, it's not. And therefore, it's getting in the way. If it gets in the way, it's clutter. So we are going to let it go because why?

• 17:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We're making room. We're creating that spaciousness for whatever we're going to put on that peg or on that shelf or on that counter next. Now, this conversation is a pretty heavy one. It's been kind of serious so far. So I'd like to make it a bit more playful before we move on to the lightning round. When I think about Lisa, she's so overwhelmed by this stuff. It feels like it'd be impossible to be playful in the moment. But it seems to me, knowing TK Coleman, one of the best ways to deal with this clutter is to find a way to make it joyous, to make it more playful.

• 18:24Speaker 04

  That's right. And letting go of guilt is so essential to that. You see a lot with habit formation. When people are unmotivated to do things that they need to do, they approach it from such a standpoint of morality that even when they find a way to motivate themselves, they don't allow it to be part of the conversation. Because it's, well, that's not sufficiently enlightened. So maybe you just can't motivate yourself to exercise. But you kind of start to realize that, well, if I bought some nice workout clothes that I felt really good in, and I got myself a gym membership or I went walking in a really nice neighborhood that I enjoy in, then I feel motivated to work out. But you know what? David Goggins doesn't need that. A person that's really serious about working out, they don't need that. So I shouldn't need it either.

• 19:09Speaker 04

  You know, I want to read more and reading is so hard and so serious and so responsible. I can't motivate myself to do it. But you know what? I actually do like comic books or children's books. I do like a lot of fiction. I do like silly goofy novels, novels that no one takes seriously. But you know, if I were sufficiently serious and really cared about learning, I wouldn't need those things. And the need to take it so seriously just gets in the way of doing it in a manner that's fun for you. Yes, you are free to be frivolous with it. In fact, that's almost necessary.

• 19:43Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Malibu, you have read the most books of your entire life this year.

• 19:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think it's because you were able to be more playful and it wasn't as serious. I need to, like, being in school, you're forced to read the books. And here's the ones I have to read and here's my deadline, as opposed to just enjoying the reading.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Absolutely. That was something we were talking about before we started the podcast this morning. And it was such a neat observation over the holiday weekend. I had sat down and just felt compelled to write down all the books that I've read. And looking back on it, most of it was fiction. Some of it was comics. And I was able to, to connect with this past part of me that really enjoyed reading because it was just fun. I wasn't trying to read to learn, whether it was a textbook or, or a nonfiction piece. I wasn't trying to do anything productive. I, it was just enjoying the reading. And I found when I was having more fun with it, I got way more read than I could have possibly imagined.

• 20:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's absolutely right. And so my question here for Lisa is, what would make this more fun? I know that seems impossible to you right now. I hear it in your voice. You're so far away from fun. But okay, here's what my daughter might tell me. She might say, I, there's nothing I could do to make it fun. And I would say, yeah, I know, Ella. But if there was something you could do to make it fun, what would it be? And eventually she starts coming up with one or two or three answers. And then the thread begins to unravel and she has all of the answers to make that thing that is over. Overwhelming, a bit more fun. Also, Lisa, I'd love to give you a copy of our ebook. It's called Emotional Clutter. You can download it for free over at theminimists.com,

• 21:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  up there on the resources page. TK wrote this book about letting go of some of the emotional clutter that is underneath that physical clutter. If you want the ebook, you can download it from the website, or if you want the audiobook version, it's on the website as well. We'll send you a copy of that for free, Lisa. Before we get back to our callers, Malibu, what time is it?

• 21:43Speaker 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.

• 21:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, indeed. Let's have some fun with this one. Y'all already know this. During the lightning round, we each have 60 seconds to answer your question with a short, shareable minimal maxim. You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimists.com/podcast and every minimal maxim ever over 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 is the question of the week this week?

• 22:25Speaker 01

  At what point does your home feel cluttered?

• 22:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  At what point does your home feel cluttered? Now, before we get to our pithy answers, TK, let's hear how some of our listeners answered this question.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  Lori said, "My home feels cluttered when I'm packing for a trip. Things are out of their usual places, and I am making choices and moving the items I want and need into other places. For a few days, my apartment looks and feels visually overwhelming until my bags are packed with my essentials."

• 22:52Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, that's interesting. Before a trip, I tend to spend 15 minutes packing the night before. And that's all I need now as a minimalist, because I have a routine in place. And I have a checklist on my phone as well, so I don't miss anything. Oh, I need that charger. Oh, I need this travel bottle of shampoo or whatever. And now, all of a sudden, I have my list there, and it takes me about 15 minutes to pack up my bag, and then I'm done. I'm wondering, though, like, maybe you could make it fun here, but it might just... Be that you need to attenuate that process if you want your home to feel less overwhelming while you're packing for a big trip.

• 23:30Speaker 04

  Robert Fritz calls that structural tension that somewhere along the way in the middle of the creative process, there's going to be a certain amount of clutter that is a necessary condition for creating. It's sort of like when you get ready to paint, what do you need to do? Pull out the materials, right? Spread them across the floor, spread them around the table. You can't be too focused on being neat at the early stages of the creative process.

• 23:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes.

• 23:55Speaker 04

  But then that tension motivates you to keep going because now you're in the middle and you can't go back because you've already started and it's too tense. So even going back is going to require a lot of work. It's just less work to go for it and experience resolution. And that's a part of music too, right? You got the dissonance, but then you got the resolution. And so I would say embrace that tension as serving a purpose to motivate you to complete the task.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Mindy says, if I don't clear the kitchen countertops before I go to bed, I feel like the house is falling apart. Girl saying.

• 24:26Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, actually, you know, what's funny is I have three rules for this. You know, we have the minimalist rule book, which you can download for free on our website, theminimalists.comrulebook. There's also an audiobook version of this as well. It's 16 Rules for Living with Less. But I'm working on an updated version, not of that book, but a second book with some more rules that we have compiled over the years that didn't make it into that. And there's three of them that really stood out to me. The first one is the no piles rule. I'm going to read that to you real quick. This is a synopsis. Excess accumulates quickly throughout your home because every flat surface seems to attract clutter between our desks and coffee tables and countertops and dressers and credenzas and benches and sideboards and end tables and media consoles.

• 25:12Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Our homes are outfitted with boundless surface area ripe for the accrual of stuff. Of course, you pay it no mind until one day the detritus has metastasized to cover every flat surface. Stacks of unread junk magazines and unwanted junk mail, piles of unfinished projects and unattended toys, hordes of untidy appliances and unremarkable junk, not to mention the bills, receipts, notes, packages, bags and pocket scraps, all of which accumulate with ease. It didn't happen overnight. But fear not, the chaos can be addressed relatively expediently with the no piles

• 25:55Joshua Fields Millburn?

  rule, which contains two key ingredients. The first ingredient is fewer surfaces. Whether you live in a tiny apartment or a McMansion, having fewer flat surfaces means fewer places for the rubbish to collect. Ergo, if a piece of furniture has a flat top, you can do what my wife and I do: refuse to bring it into our home unless it's functional and critical. Sure, we have a desk, a dresser, and a table in our home, but even those items remain clutter-free when not in use, thanks to the next ingredient. So the second ingredient is what I call clear surfaces.

• 26:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Even with the appropriate amount of surface area, clutter will still find its way to... the surface. It's as if our level surfaces are a magnet for miscellaneous. So I have one more rule in my house, and that rule is this: unless a possession is used every day, it doesn't belong on a flat surface. It must find a new home in a drawer, or a closet, or better yet, in the donation bin. Thus, our desk remains empty, and our kitchen counters contain only a hot water heater and a coffee grinder, while our blender, food processor, and other appliances dwell inside their respective cabinets.

• 27:17Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so, when I think about this no piles rule, I do have some exceptions. There is some art that we keep on our shelves or counters, and artwork tends to be the main exception for me: coffee table books, things like that. But this no piles rule helps me so that I'm not just allowing those receipts and bags and everything to pile up. The other one is the out in the open rule, which we have mentioned in the past, and in fact, there is a video on our cluttering/ decluttering series. We'll put a link to it in the show notes. We made a video about the out in the open rule. But I'll just summarize it like this: out of sight isn't really out of mind, because all that material clutter hiding in your cabinets creates mental clutter.

• 28:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you saw the minimalist most recent Netflix documentary, Less is Now, you'll remember that our packing party concept was in it. And that concept was where you box up all of your possessions as if you're moving and you unpack only the items you need over the course of three weeks. Well, the out in the open rule is almost this reverse packing party. You take everything that's hidden in those cabinets and closets and drawers. We like to do it here at the studio at least once a year. We're going to do it in January coming up. We just pull everything out and you put it there. You create clutter. Yeah. You put it on the floor because it isn't out of sight, out of mind. It's in sight and now it's top of mind. I have to do something with this clutter now. So get it out in the open.

• 28:45Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And you realize like, I didn't realize how many things I had in my drawers and my cabinets and those boxes and bins. And when I dump it all out on the floor, I'm forced to deal with it. And so whether it's coffee mugs or placemats or utensils or appliances or expired food, cookbooks, hard drives, electronics manuals. Sometimes we hold on to these manuals to like our toaster. Why do I still have this manual to my microwave? Do I, I use the microwave all the time. I don't need the manual for it. Yet we hold on to these things, cables and cords that are way out of date. We're never going to need. We hold on to just in case, which is one of the rules in the minimalist rulebook, 16 rules for living with less.

• 29:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We hold on to a lot of things that once we get them out in the open, we start to let them go. We realize how much clutter is hidden away in those boxes and bins and drawers and cabinets. And finally, I have the setting the stage rule. So you know what? If you're like me, you hate waking up to a cluttered bedroom or a cluttered living room or a cluttered bathroom in the morning. And so I use something, my wife and I both use this called, and my daughter too. We get her involved with this. It's called set the stage rule. And we use it to start our day by setting the stage the night before. It takes only five minutes because we do it every night.

• 30:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And it's a great way to simplify our tomorrow. And here's how it works in two quick steps. First, you take five minutes, you could take maybe up to 15 minutes at first before bedtime. Identify any household clutter that might disrupt your next morning. If it gets in the way, it's clutter. Just remember that, right? And you can look at the dishes in the sink, or maybe there's kids' toys and art supplies that have been left out on tables or on the floor. What about your, your keys and, and your wallet, or your purse, or your chapstick, and all of these pocket, pocket accessories that are strewn throughout your house? Or what about your watches, and jewelry, and belts, and ties, and any ornamental items

• 30:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  that you use to decorate your person, and now they've just found their way all over the house, and the counters, and everywhere else? What about socks and shoes? When I lived with Nicodemus, I used to joke that he was the messy minimalist.

• 31:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  He owned about 12 items, but they were just strewn all throughout the house. As soon as he walked in the door, one shoe would go here, another shoe would go here. He was just at my house recently, and he and his wife are both the same way. As soon as they walk in, they just like toss their shoes, and, and I'm like, how do you do this, right? And so you don't even have to own that many things. It's easy to have clutter. You're just dropping things as, oh, take my socks off here in the hallway. Then they're just sitting there in the hallway. And what about all the, uh, the clean laundry that's still in the dryer that you haven't folded yet? Oh, I'll just deal with that tomorrow. No, deal with it right now, so you don't have to deal with it tomorrow. We call it setting the stage, and it takes us about five minutes to do each night. It might take you a little bit longer than that at first, but then it's just a practice that we have.

• 31:49Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We wake, wake up the next day, it's a clutter-free home. It's a calm way to start the day. And I turn it into a game with my family. And so all of us sort of play it together. Let's see if we can identify what items would be cluttering our tomorrow, and let's get it out of the way. This is especially true with my daughter, when I'm going into her room, and it's like her backpack's on the floor, and there's clothes on the closet floor, and it's like, hey, let's set the stage for tomorrow.

• 32:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What about Joy? What's, uh, well, at what point does her home feel cluttered?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  She says, "Our house feels cluttered when there are projects that need attention." For example, "The game my kid built at school, the shoes we're trying to repair before buying a new pair, or the papers I want to review with my husband before I recycle them." There seems to be a steady stream of these things that sit out so we don't forget about them.

• 32:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, leaving things out so we don't forget about them. I think you could add that into the "set the stage" rule or the "no piles" rule as well. This happens to all of us, and I think the reason it happens so much, this just happened to me yesterday as a matter of fact. I had three things on my desk, neatly stacked there, but there are things I've been putting off because we closed the studio last week, so I'm like, "I'm not gonna do any work on these things this week." And they just sat there, and they become burdensome. Now, it's a little burden. It's not like a rock fell on my head. It's like a pebbles in my shoe. And I don't like pebbles in my shoe. I wanna deal with that pebble. But what do we do? We treat that pebble as though it's a boulder, and it's gonna be so difficult. And so I found the first thing for me was this paperwork I needed to file.

• 33:25Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I literally just needed to open it up, get a new folder, write the name of the paperwork on the folder, and put it in the file cabinet. Now, that took me maybe 45 seconds, if that, but let's say it would've taken me five minutes. So what? In my mind, it was like an hour-long task, and oh, I'll just wait until I have the perfect time to do this. But maybe now is the perfect time if you realize that it's not gonna take me nearly as much time as I think to deal with that project. What about April? At what point does April's home feel cluttered?

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Honestly, my house feels most cluttered right after receiving Christmas gifts.

• 34:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You know, so getting things that you didn't necessarily plan on getting, right? My house feels cluttered that way as well, but I wouldn't call it with Christmas gifts. Anytime I get something in the mail, I hate getting stuff from Amazon or just boxes because then I have to do something with it. I have to take it out of the box, I have to find a place for it. And so even if it's something that I know I'm, I'm looking forward to, or something that I need, and my phone broke, I needed to replace my phone, or replace my case, or whatever, I need it, but now I have to deal with it. So I like bringing as few things into my home as possible, that way I don't have to deal with those things later.

• 34:45Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely, man.

• 34:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh man, well, we have so many people that responded to this topic. You can read dozens of other listener responses in the Patreon community chat. Did you know, by the way, that you can join our Patreon community chats for free? Of course, we'd love for you to support our work financially, but if you can't afford the private podcast episodes, you can still join our community chat, so you're becoming a free member on Patreon. The link is in the description. How about you, listeners? At what point does your home feel cluttered? Let us know in the comments. Okay, give me something pithy, TK. At what point does your home feel cluttered?

• 35:22Speaker 04

  Clutter starts when purpose stops. So I'll use King Midas as an example. You know the story about the Midas touch, where everything that Midas touched turned into gold? I think one possible interpretation of that story could be that everything in life is capable of being transformed when you engage it with the right kind of mindset. Well, I think the opposite is also true. There's an anti-Midas touch, where even things that are valuable can be transformed into junk by engaging them in an unhealthy way. And where I experienced this in my life is that everything in my home is capable of being transformed into clutter if I lose touch with the aspirations and the ideals and the

• 36:05Speaker 04

  values that caused me to allow that thing into my home. I bought that coffee mug because it looked cool in the store, and I imagined how good it would feel in my hand, drinking it on Christmas Day or something along those lines, but I never actually get around to using it. It weighs on me. It becomes a burden. And so sometimes you have clutter because you have the wrong things in your home, but sometimes you have clutter because you have the wrong relationship with the right things.

• 36:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That burden word is so applicable here. When you think about clutter, that can be really nebulous for folks. I mean, you could walk into a really cluttered room and you could say, wow, this is cluttered for me. And I think that for me is really important, right? If I were to walk into Jackson Pollock's art studio back in the, when was he, around 50s, 40s? If I walked into his art studio and it was my studio all of a sudden, I'd say, wow, this is really cluttered. cluttered for me, but not for him. And I think it's important to, to point out that clutter is contextual, right? And sometimes the context is, what is my relationship with these things? And it could be that I had a relationship with these things and now I'm just clinging to them.

• 37:14Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And as the Buddha said, that clinging is suffering, or clinging leads to suffering. He also called it clinging of the mind. So we're not just clinging to those things literally, we're mentally clinging to those possessions that are no longer serving us, which brings me to my pithy answer. And it's simply this, anything that gets in the way is clutter. And maybe if I were to pin that now with what you said is, anything that feels like a burden is clutter. So I can either let go of the clutter, or I can let go of my current relationship to the thing.

• 37:50Speaker 04

  That's right.

• 37:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's the end of page one, y'all. We have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to on pages two and three. But first, real quick for right here, right now, here's one thing that's going on in the life of the minimalist. Shout out to Jackie, one of our patrons in Redding, Pennsylvania. You know, she donated 10 audio plus memberships for folks who want to become members of our private podcast. If you want to dive into our private podcast every week, she's donated a year long subscription. How are we handling this, Bama?

• 38:22Speaker 01

  I think the best thing to do is just have the first 10 people email us at [email protected] and put in the subject line, Jackie, you're awesome.

• 38:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Jackie is awesome. Yes, I agree with that for sure. So put that in the subject line, the first 10 people to hear this, and if you need it, meaning, oh, you know what? I'd really love to get a subscription to the minimalist private podcast with the thousands of other people over there in their Patreon community. I just don't have the means to do it right now. Jackie is giving 10 memberships to folks. She already, she already took care of it because Patreon's doing the, the gifting thing now. So we have a way to do that, to give you that membership. Shout out to Jackie. You are awesome. And you get a front row seat to any of our live Events. I know you're out in Pennsylvania, but if you want to come out to Los Angeles,

• 39:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Jackie, our next Sunday Symposium, it's the last one of the year. It's on December 29th, and it's here in Los Angeles. And by the way, this is our last one in Los Angeles for a while, because next year, we're going to Santa Barbara, we're going to Orange County for a bit. So we're expanding Sunday Symposium. Hope to see you there. Jackie, if you get a chance to make it out, we'll make sure we save you a seat in the front row. And this one's going to be special. We'll discuss letting go of this past year. And what does that mean for you? For me, it means making room for the important things. Let's identify what some of those important things are together for 20, 25, and beyond. You can grab your tickets over at SundaySymposium.com.

• 39:54Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We'll put a link to that in the show notes. Hope to see you there. We just released a few tickets. These things always sell out, so make sure you grab your tickets while you can.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  And Jackie, thank you so much. I had the pleasure of doing a free clutter counseling session with Jackie. And what an awesome time that was to meet her and just connect with her. You're a wonderful person. We appreciate you. I'm sure everyone else who is able to experience the Patreon membership appreciates you as well. And shout out to Patreon for making this possible.

• 40:23Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, absolutely. They've been super helpful in creating this and the gifting experience they've created as well. So you can give a gift of our private podcast as well. So Jackie has given out 10 subscriptions for an entire year. It's not just a month, an entire year. Shout out to Jackie. Jackie is awesome. Put that in the subject line, [email protected]. First 10 people to email us, ask for that subscription. We'll make sure you're taken care of. Malabama, what else you got for us?

• 40:51Speaker 01

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

• 40:54Speaker 05

  My beloved minimalist, this is Amy A. Yood from fabulous Las Vegas. I'm a Patreon subscriber and a proud cult member of TK Coleman. I know this is usually for questions, but I'm calling to share about being coached by TK, because I know there are many others who would benefit from his coaching and

• 41:16Speaker 05

  Since he won't let me keep him online 24/7, like I want to, he probably has a little time for some other clients. When I first received a notice about his coaching, I jumped on that offer immediately. I was sure somebody accidentally left off a zero when they listed the fee, so I moved on it. I've had two sessions so far, and it's ridiculous how much I've benefited. There isn't anything cookie cutter about TK's coaching. He's completely present. He has the innate ability to home in on what I need at the time. He creates those aha moments, but they're actionable aha moments, which is rare, and

• 41:58Speaker 05

  it's what I've missed with other coaches. During our last session, he challenged me on something that has completely transformed a lifelong habit of how I speak to myself and others. It's been amazing. And I can hear the question being asked, but Amy, what's, what is it specifically about him that makes his coaching so powerful? And my answer is, I have no clue. What is it about the Beatles, or Martin Luther King, or Oprah, that has millions of people changed by them, still impacted decades later by all they sing, say, and suggest, without ever knowing them personally? It's that certain it, and TK has it.

• 42:41Speaker 05

  Maybe it's magic fairy dust, I don't know. I don't care. He's a special human being and the wisest, most thoughtful, most intuitive coach I've met. I'm taking advantage of any chance I have to be in his presence, and I encourage others to do the same. Give yourself the gift of his coaching brilliance. You absolutely will not be sorry. So TK, if you haven't gotten a restraining order on me yet, I'll see you next week. Thank you.

• 43:11Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Amy from fabulous Las Vegas. Thank you for that fabulous comment. TK is also my personal Oprah. Hey, man, I am from Chicago. Wow, wow, wow. Amy, I'm speechless. I truly am. If words could only express, I appreciate you so much. Thank you for that. Those are the kindest words that anyone could say about me. And no way in the world am I getting a restraining order for you. I'll see you next week.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Thanks, Amy.

• 43:41Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, if anyone else is interested, you can book a clutter counseling session with TK Coleman over at theminimist.com. Just click Counseling there at the top. And for anyone else who has a listener tip or insight about this episode, or any other episode, leave a comment on YouTube or Patreon, or better yet, you can send a voice memo to [email protected] so we can feature your voice on the show. All right, that's the first 32% of episode 472. We'll see you on Patreon for the full maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, why do I keep buying more stuff after letting go of my excess things? Are corporations like Amazon destructive to the well-being

• 44:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  of local communities? When does mourning the death of a loved one turn into extended self-pity? Plus, a million more questions and simple living segments over on The Minimalist's private podcast on Patreon. By the way, Patreon has made it possible to gift a subscription of The Minimalist's private podcast to anyone. So if you know a friend or a family member who might benefit from our private podcast, visit patreon.com/theminimalists/gift to give them a month, or several months, or a year of The Minimalist's private podcast. 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,

• 45:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Inspire Dave, Savvy D, and the rest of our team, I'm Joshua Fields Milburn. If you leave here with just one message, whether it be this, love people and use things.

• 45:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Because the opposite never works. Thanks for listening, y'all.

• 45:26Speaker 01

  We'll see you next time.

• 45:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Peace.

• 45:29Speaker 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'd be fine without it.