516 | Hoarder Moms

The Minimalists talk about celebrating the holidays without consumerism, our craziest Black Friday stories, the willingness to walk away from anything, six often-overlooked spaces in your home to declutter right now, and much more. Discussed in this episode: Why are T. K. and Joshua opening fortune cookies on the podcast? (0:30) How can I deal with my hoarder mom's cluttered house? (10:18) Who's the biggest hoarder in your family? (24:39) Right Here, Right Now: the 30-Day Minimalism Game, Sunday Symposium, and Zoom calls with The Minimalists (40:36) Listener Tip: Getting into the school spirit. (43:45) Have a question for the show? Call 406-219-7839 or email a voice memo to [email protected]. 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.

• 0:39Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes. Hello, Simpletons. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Minimalist Podcast, where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life with the less. My name is Joshua Fields Milburn, and joining me here at Earth Eaten Studios in beautiful West Hollywood, California. The rain has slowed down. The clouds are parting. The sun is peeking through. My good friend TK Coleman is here.

• 1:03Speaker 02

  It's the season of holiday cheer.

• 1:05Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ah, yes, it's a brand-new month. But look what I have here in front of me. No, that is not page three, if y'all are just listening to the audio version of the podcast. We're on page one right now, and Savvy D. just handed me these fortune cookies.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  TK, I gotta be honest, I'm a little scared, because we don't have any safety net here. We're doing these for our last Sunday symposium of the year, and we've got these fortune cookies. Everyone gets one in the audience. I always wanted to be a fortune cookie writer.

• 1:36Speaker 02

  Is that right?

• 1:37Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That was my ultimate aspiration. Like, yeah, the Dow de Ching is pithy, but what's pithier than the Dow de Ching? Delicious fortune cookies. Actually, they're probably not that delicious. I'm not gonna eat the cookie, but I thought this was a great way to unwrap TK's profundity. So, we're gonna open these together, and then you're gonna tell me what minimal maxim is on your cookie. And we could talk about it a bit before we dive into this full episode here. So, gentlemen first.

• 2:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. After I'm done with this process, I'm gonna write an essay called "A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again."

• 2:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Shout out to David Foster Wallace.

• 2:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, for the audio listeners, he's opening the cookie right now. You can hear it. Oh, yeah.

• 2:20Speaker 02

  I'm so nervous about making a mess, man.

• 2:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's all right. Make the mess. Savvy D is here. He'll clean it up. All right. What do we got? What do we got? A piece of paper's coming out. What does it say, TK?

• 2:32Speaker 02

  If a thing amplifies your misery, let it go.

• 2:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Ooh. Yeah, so often our things, the material possessions in our lives, you could say this about relationships, you could say it about careers. That's why I like this word thing, because it can apply to physical things, material goods. But then also like, hey, what's your thing, man? It's like, oh, I like playing basketball. I like watching basketball. That's my thing. Or like, oh, yeah, like, anything can be a thing. But if a thing amplifies your misery, then it's a type of clutter. It gets in the way. The opposite of that is if a thing, a thing will never make you happy. It'll never bring you joy. There's not joy in the thing. But sometimes a thing will amplify the existing, the innate joy that is already in you. Anything to add to that?

• 3:20Speaker 02

  And sometimes, to another person, the thing that amplifies your joy might seem to amplify your misery. If you're watching a Denver Nuggets game and the ref makes a bad call, you may go, come on, ref. Or your favorite player misses the shot, you go, come on, Steph. And then someone looking at you goes, look at this guy. He's so miserable, but he says he loves basketball. But that's you just connecting with the energy of it. And you love that little flashing bit of misery because of the joy it brings you from your participation in the overall game, what you gotta celebrate later.

• 3:50Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. And so it's not like an existential dread that you get from that. You have this, this moment, this momentary valley that you're traveling through because I think basketball's a great example of that. Because like, yes, there are the moments where it's like, oh, no! Like, you full body cringe or wincing, right? That's not real misery. And that's obviously not what we're talking about here. But sometimes we hold on to things that maybe amplified our joy a decade ago. But they're just in the basement. Or worse, they're taking up space in our living room. And every, every time I look at it, it's a reminder of misspent money. It's a reminder of wasted time and resources and energy and effort and attention. And every time I see it, it's like, oh.

• 4:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  It amplifies my misery even slightly, right? It's a slight amplifier. But as soon as you get rid of that amplifier, all of a sudden you realize like, oh, wow. Yeah, that misery is turned down as well. I have a cookie for you here. You have to sing yours in the style of Luther Vandross.

• 4:56Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, all right. Here is my cookie.

• 5:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes. Oh, it's so satisfying. The minimalist ASMR.

• 5:09Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh.

• 5:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  That's all right. TK, I could put the pieces back together. There we go. Ooh, every disagreement is an opportunity for self-reflection.

• 5:24Speaker 02

  Well, I disagree.

• 5:27Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Well, let's reflect on that.

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's good. I mean, every time you disagree with someone, that's because what they're saying makes you feel some kind of tension or incongruence, some sense of like, ah, that's not right. And that's an opportunity for you to not just refute the other person, to not just challenge them or push back, but it's an opportunity for you to discover something interesting about yourself. Why does that bother me so? Why do I feel a need to respond to it at all? What is it that I care about so much that I see this as wrong? Is it possible that both things could be true? Even if what they're saying is wrong, is there a different way for me to respond? Is there a non-response for me to have? These are all interesting questions that don't take away any of the freedom you have on your ability to say, hey, I disagree.

• 6:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I completely disagree.

• 6:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I have a meme on my phone. It's from one of the Instagram reels from back in the day when Danny Unknown was here, and he sent it to me. And it's just like a quick one-second clip, and it's just TK saying, I completely disagree. I'm like, yes. I send it to my wife all the time. She'll send me something like, just jokingly, I completely disagree. Anyway, if you want to agree with us or disagree with us, we have our next Sunday symposium. It's the last one of the year, and it's the last one we're gonna do for a long time. It's here in Los Angeles. We have people who come to these from all over the world, from Switzerland and Germany and Iowa and Canada and Mexico and Arizona and Hawaii and all over the place. And we limit it to 200 people. And then we're taking a break from our live events for a while. We're going to spend some time sort of reconstructing, reimagining,

• 7:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  reconceptualizing our events, what they're going to look like in the future. So it's my favorite thing that we do. And sometimes when you have this favorite thing, it's good to set it down for a while because cheesecake is delicious. But if I'm eating cheesecake at every meal, it becomes commonplace. It becomes an everyday thing. And so we're trying to figure out where are we going next year and beyond with some of our live events. You can join us for this one last live event, the final Sunday of the year here in Los Angeles, Sunday Symposium.com. If you want to grab your free tickets while they're still available. Coming up on this episode, a caller is overwhelmed by her mother's clutter. Several listeners have identified the biggest hoarders in their family. Plus, a pound of

• 7:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  experiences is worth more than a pound of stuff and much, much more. Also, TK, on page three, we'll review five sneaky ways that stores get you to spend more money on stuff you don't need. I think that's especially true this time of year where the holiday shopping frenzy. Last week you were out, he called me and he was like, hey, I need off on Black Friday. It's a special day for me. I said, I think you misunderstand the, I said, it's fine. You can take the podcast off.

• 8:17Speaker 02

  Then I was like, no, brother, you misunderstand. I have a black Hyundai.

• 8:24Joshua Fields Millburn?

  No, TK was just out at, it was in Tennessee. You were on, you're doing the whole Ramsey Car Wash, we call it.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Is that what you call it?

• 8:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yes, yeah. You're on Ken Coleman's show.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  How'd that go? It was excellent, man. We finally got the Coleman Brothers collaboration that the people wanted. Everybody wanted to see the twins get together in the same studio, but we've been trying to conquer the world coast to coast. So it was good to be in the same room.

• 8:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You came back together. We did a live event with him years ago in Washington DC, me and you and Ryan and Ken Coleman, and that was. Really special. I'm glad you got the opportunity to go back there and you're on Deloney Show, George Camel. We'll put links to those in the show notes if they're out by now. I'll be happy to share those with everyone. You can take a listen and a look at TK over there at the Ramsey HQ. Let's start with our callers TK. If you have a question for our show, we'd love to hear from you. You can give us a call. Our phone number is 406-219-7839. Or you can email a voice recording right from your phone. That's the easiest and clearest way to do it. Just send it over to [email protected]. Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message. By the way, big thanks to our patrons. Your

• 9:31Joshua Fields Millburn?

  support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free because sing along at home, y'all. Advertisements suck. Yes, they do. TK on page three, advertisements suck. I gotta talk to you about this. You know about this, but we need to have a whole conversation. YouTube just started turning on ads on our videos and I found out from my barber, actually a very long story. We'll cover it on page three, but I was pretty unhappy about it. And so I want to talk to you about the whole ordeal and what we're doing because of it and some of the realizations, the some of the learnings that I've had over the last few weeks with respect to my own expectations around ads on that front because they just started turning them on randomly without our permission. And I want to talk to you

• 10:15Joshua Fields Millburn?

  about that. Maybe you have some insights for me as well. But first, let's get to our callers. Our first question is from Alexandra.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  Hello, I'm from Sydney, Australia. My name's Alexandra. I've got a huge question to ask, please. I would love to declutter and become more minimalist, but I live at my mom's house, which is filthy and full of clutter. What do I do? Please help. And if I do anything, then I might get in big trouble because she really is attached to her things. Thank you so much for your help.

• 10:51Joshua Fields Millburn?

  There are several questions embedded in this, right? Like, how do I help my mom detach from her things, right? Because she's so attached to them. It's probably making her miserable. It goes back to the amplifying your misery. Quite often, hoarders are rather miserable. And they're not miserable necessarily because of the stuff, but the clinging to the stuff is a byproduct of the misery. And then that stuff then amplifies the misery. It becomes a really vicious cycle. And it sounds like Alexandra, your mom is a probably a stage four or stage five hoarder. Those tend to be the people that we see on our TVs. And it's a big problem because right now you feel like you have to live there. I think back to, we did an episode with Destiny, the YouTuber. And you had some really interesting debates with him. It was a great episode.

• 11:36Joshua Fields Millburn?

  In fact, let's put a link to it in the show notes, Savvy D., so that we can point people toward it. It was a wonderful discussion. But we started off that conversation. The first thing I said to Destiny are, "Hey, are your parents hoarders?" Now, I didn't know that his parents were hoarders. But it's a question I often ask at live events or just the people if they ask about minimalism. I say, "Hey, are your parents hoarders?" And I usually get one of two answers. "Yes!" "How did you know?" Or, "Yeah, I guess they are, right?" Now, I think there are a couple of reasons that we might judge someone that way. Is maybe they are actually a hoarder and it's just a diagnosis, not a judgment at all, right?

• 12:18Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Just, "Hey, I understand that you have a particular mental illness." Hoarding is a mental illness. It's on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum. And so recognizing that actually gives us compassion for these people. It's not pointing to say, "Oh, how could you have all this stuff?" It's like, "Yeah, that stuff is residue from this illness. It is a symptom of something that's going on inside me." And then there are other people say, "Yeah, my parents are hoarders, but their parents may not actually be hoarders. They're saying, 'If I owned all their stuff, it would be totally inappropriate for me and it would get in my way.'" So if Alexandra was one of your clutter counseling clients and she came to you and she said, "Hey, I have to live with my mom right now and my mom's a hoarder

• 13:03Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and it's really making me miserable. What do I do?"

• 13:07Speaker 02

  Makes me think of the words of Sartre, "Hell is other people." Or Mother Angelica, "Being a saint would be easy if it wasn't for other people." All of us are living this life in our own way. There is something we can imagine that would be so much easier or more feasible if we didn't have this person in our lives who's complicating it in some kind of way. And this person can be someone that we love. And we can have an attitude that says, "I refuse to end my relationship with this person. They're necessary to me. I don't want to give up my children. I don't want to give up my marriage. I don't want to abandon my parents." But gosh darn it. They're just so difficult to work with or live with in this particular way. Just know that the rest of humanity stands with you on that issue, even if it doesn't have to take,

• 13:51Speaker 02

  even if it doesn't take the form of dealing with a clutter problem. Here's one thing I would suggest. Whenever you have a situation like this, try to form a positive conception of what it is you would like to do for you. Then express that to the other person in a way that preserves their dignity. And then form a specific ask for what that would require of them. And then ask, "Would you be willing to?" So for instance, if I came to Josh and I said, "Hey, man, I want to do some different stuff with this podcast, but you're so obsessed with minimalism." That has two shortcomings. Number one, it puts him on the defense because I'm making it about how obsessed he is with minimalism. And he's likely going to justify himself

• 14:36Speaker 02

  by saying, "Well, that's what the show was about." And I'm also being so vague that he couldn't possibly be passionate about what I want to do because I haven't given him anything other than frustration and general sentiment. But suppose I were to say, "Hey, look, man, I would love it if during our show, we could work a way for us to talk a little bit more about sports. It's something that we have in common. I feel like our conversations have like this interesting quality when we talk more about sports." So what I'm thinking is if we can have like a two-minute segment where I say TK's sport lesson of the week and just for a couple of minutes identify something cool that an athlete said and then you give me your thoughts on it. Would you be willing to consider something like that? Would you be willing to try that out for one episode?

• 15:21Speaker 02

  Now I've given something specific. I haven't put him on the defense. I framed it in a way that doesn't involve him believing that there's something wrong with him and I've identified what we can do and I've made it testable. This is something that is so important to learn with people that we live with because it's so easy to be like, you know what? Your filth just gets in the way of my life. Well, their reaction's gonna be predictable, even though I have a lot of sympathy for why you would feel that way. So maybe you can go to your mom. Actually, before you go to your mom, maybe you can go to your room. Maybe you can go to your own soul and you can say, hey, forget about her for a second. What specifically do I want? Well, I want a space in the home where I can sit and I can do my work without having all this clutter in the way. I want a space in my

• 16:05Speaker 02

  home where I can do exercises without having to go to a gym, but there's just so much stuff. Okay, great. We're partway there. And now we go to mom and we say, hey, mom, is there a way you can work with me to create a little space in the house where I can have some space to exercise and where I can have some space to do my work? And we don't say a word about what we think of her character and what we think of her habits. And we don't just leave it up to her to work together with us and come up with the ideas. We do all the work for her because we want to make it easy for her to give us a yes. Not because that's the noble thing to do, but because that's the self-interested thing to do. Because we're so passionate about what we want that we do things in a way that give us the probability of getting what we want. And so we say, and here's what I'm thinking, how we can go about

• 16:48Speaker 02

  it. If you let me, I can take these boxes of yours or I can take these things and I can put them here or I can store them here. Or if you're willing to, I can organize this in this particular way and that way you still have your things and then I get to have my space. Would you be willing to let me try that out? If you don't like it, I get it. But would you be willing to let me try it out? And that's not a formula because relationships don't work on formulas. But probabilistically, that's a much better chance of getting what you want than orienting the conversation around your judgments about her flaws.

• 17:21Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, that those five words changed my life. Would you be willing to? And then there's an ellipsis there, right? And it's the exact opposite of how dare you energy. And sometimes I think we show up with the how dare you energy without even realizing it, because we've been stewing on something like, my mom's got all this stuff, I can't believe she's not considerate about me, or the family, or the people that come over here, and she's not even considerate of herself. And before you know it, in your mind, you're saying, how dare you, without maybe even articulating it. Now, eventually, it can get to that point where there's the equivalent, and we accidentally become self-righteous

• 18:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  because we stew on something for so long. This little kernel of misery gets amplified, and then what happens? We let it get bigger, and bigger, and bigger. It's the Tony Robbins analogy, that you want to kill Godzilla when he's a baby, not wait till he's taking over the city. But now, we're talking about her mom, and Godzilla has taken over the city. The stuff is there in the home. And there are a couple of things that would be really freeing for me to realize in this moment, because the energy she called in with is, I have to be here right now. Okay, I understand that that's how you feel right now, and I don't discount that at all. And of course, it's not that you get to be there right now. It certainly doesn't feel like you get to, I don't want to say, turn it around to say,

• 18:46Joshua Fields Millburn?

  oh, you get to live with your mom in this hoarder's house. No. But at the moment, you choose to be with her, right? And TK said something profound a moment ago about like, you don't have to abandon your mom, and I agree, but maybe leaving the house is the best way to not abandon her, at least having a plan to leave. It doesn't mean that you pack your bags today and you're out of there immediately, but what is the plan to get out of this situation? And maybe creating that distance will also give you enough distance to help her and allow her to maintain that dignity without the how dare you. It's the would you be willing to let me help you?

• 19:23Speaker 02

  That's right. You know, you gave the example of a dog, and so I'm gonna just stick with that. Imagine if, you know, you're going over a friend's house, and you know their dog, you have a relationship with the dog, but the dog does what dogs sometimes do. They're caught off guard, they're surprised, and they, argh, argh, they bark at you as you're standing far away. Part of it's like saying, come play with me. The other part's like, hey, what's your problem? You know, and so what do you do when you have a moment like that? Do you look at the dog and go, hey, why are you always barking at me? Like, this is not conducive to a good relationship? That just antagonizes the dog, right? But what do you do? You change your voice to go, hey, man? You know, what's up dude? And then you kind of kneel down and you hold out your hand, hey man. And the dog's like a little nervous, you know, like, alright. And then he comes up to you, smells your hand, licks your hair, what's up man?

• 20:08Speaker 02

  And now you pet it. And next thing you know, dog's rolling on the floor and you're playing and you're doing well. Why? Because this moment wasn't about being right. This moment was about connecting. And whenever you're connecting with someone that is in an antagonistic mode or a defensive mode or a fearful, insecure mode, you don't exacerbate that by responding in like kind. You adjust your own vibration so that you can reach out in a spirit of love, in a spirit of invitation and you make them comfortable with you. That's a self-interested thing. I'm all about the morality. I'm all about doing the right thing. But what, but what I want to be heard out of this is this isn't about just some abstract conception of doing the right thing.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  This is how you get effective in your relationships so that you can get what you want. When you treat people with respect and with kindness and charity and you give them the benefit of a doubt, you're most likely to win.

• 21:02Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, yeah. And right now it feels like you're losing, right?

• 21:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:06Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You've paid this cost of admission. The, to be at your parents or to be at your mom's house. The cost of admission has been misery. But if the cost of admission is misery, then I would say the cost of admission is too high. The price is too high. And maybe you didn't realize that was going to be the price when you moved back in there. And maybe you moved in with grand intentions to help. But you can't, also you can't help someone who doesn't want help. And so if they're not asking for help, yes, you can invite them. But you can't show up and remove the stuff for them. She said, I'll get in trouble. Well, yeah, that's called theft. You can't just go into the, the house and start removing things.

• 21:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  You don't want to do that because let's say best case scenario, that you went in there and you made the house perfect. You removed all the clutter and at the end of it somehow miraculously, this wouldn't happen, but let's just pretend. Your mom was like, oh, thank you so much. That's so freeing. No, she'd probably panic and lose her mind, but let's just say that she did. Oh, that's, that's so freeing. Thank you so much. Guess what's gonna happen six months from now? The house is gonna be right back to where it was, or at least approaching where it was. And six years from now, it's gonna be, oh yeah, there's the hoarder's house again, because you did it for her. It's one of the most maddening things about parenthood. I could do all of my daughter's reading and math homework for her, right? I'm so much better at math than she is.

• 22:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And, and yet, that would be robbing her of the dignity of figuring out on her own. Now, I can help her with it. And if she has questions, I can point her in the right direction, and I can be there for her. But if I do it for her, I'm actually doing a disservice for her. Alexandra, I'd love to, two things. One is, I'd love to give you a free copy of the Emotional Clutter book. You can download it for free over at theminimalists.com on our resources page there. We have a bunch of free resources, including Emotional Clutter, because there's a lot of emotional clutter that's in this moment with you and your mother right now. It's tangled in there. Those, those material possessions, it's not about the stuff. It's about what's going on inside you, and also what's going on inside of your mother.

• 23:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And so I think Emotional Clutter will help you with that. You can download it for free over at theminimalists.com. Or if you want the audiobook version, we'd be happy to send that to you as well. Also, I'd love to give you a free clutter counseling session with TK. It can help you unpack some of these issues with your mom. Obviously, us having a, a quick 15, 20 minute conversation about it is a good on-ramp. But this will take some more unpacking. So I'd encourage you to do that with TK. We'll give you a free clutter counseling session. Anyone else who wants a clutter counseling session, head on over to theminimalists.com and click Counseling at the top. You can book an appointment with them anywhere in the world, via Zoom or here in Los Angeles as well. Before we get back to our callers, TK, it is time. It's time for the lightning round. This is where we answer the Patreon community chat's question of the week

• 24:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maxim. You could find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com, or maybe at a fortune cookie near you. Or if you're not coming to one of our live events and you want all of our minimal maxims ever, you can find those at minimalmaxims.com. com. We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox every week, including seven new maxims every Monday. If you sign up for our email newsletter over at theminimalists.com, we'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements, but we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity. All right, TK, question of the week this week. A lot of discussion on Patreon with this one. By the way, you can, you can join

• 24:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  the Patreon community chat for free, even if you don't support the private podcast, but head on over to patreon.com/theminimalist for that. Question of the week is, who's the biggest hoarder in your family? Who is the biggest hoarder in your family? So many people had a lot of comments around this. Before we get to our pithy answers around this, let's listen to what some of our listeners had to say. Robin, this is my favorite one. He said, I'm the biggest hoarder in my family. I'm still working on my scarcity mindset and the fact that I might need that thing someday. There are many times that I've gotten rid of things and regretted it, which only feeds my hoarding tendencies. I'd like to

• 25:30Joshua Fields Millburn?

  live with much less because all this clutter interferes with my happiness, but I get overwhelmed when I try to declutter. So I often avoid it, which just perpetuates the cycle. Well, kudos for you taking responsibility, Robin. Bravo on that. TK, what does Robin need to understand about regret that might help her get unstuck here?

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Don't hoard the regret. Regret is just your moral compass letting you know that it is unsatisfied with a past result that you created. The proper response to that isn't to hang on to it as if it's some sort of valuable possession that makes you rich the longer you have it. The proper response to that is to say, what can I do differently in the future? What adjustments can I make in my strategies? What room can I open up for more accountability in my life? Those sorts of things so that I can achieve the kinds of results that I want to achieve. Your regret is there to make you better, not to make you feel bad because of how terrible you once were.

• 26:34Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And when we hoard the regret, when we cling to it, then it no longer serves its purpose, right? It's like, I'm beating myself up with regret. I'm not even learning the lesson that I was supposed to learn from it in the first place. Jeanette says, "My sister is the biggest hoarder in my family. A year ago, her family moved to a huge house with over 900 boxes." Who even took the time to count 900 boxes? I used to run retail stores for a living, and I'm trying to think if any of them had 900 boxes of inventory at a time. Our warehouse did, but there's a whole retail store with a dozen or two dozen employees

• 27:19Joshua Fields Millburn?

  and thousands of customers didn't have 900 boxes. And that's not a judgment, it's to put things in perspective. 900 boxes is almost unfathomable. I want you, if you're listening to this right now, I want you to imagine a room with 900 boxes in it. Talk about overwhelming, wow. Return to text here. "There are boxes still unpacked in the living room, kitchen, two bedrooms full of boxes, plus two storage rooms in the basement. Wall-to-wall boxes. Personally, I would get a large dumpster and trash most of it. I mean, my sister is 70 years old.

• 28:01Joshua Fields Millburn?

  She is never going to unpack those boxes." TK, is it possible for Jeanette to help her sister here?

• 28:10Speaker 02

  Yes, if she lets you. You know, you can only help someone within the context of having tremendous respect for their free will. And so often, for many of us, the true test of our character is our capacity to love and respect and endure someone when they don't want our help, when they don't agree with us about our ideas for how much better we could make their lives. The hard part, though, is sometimes we are right. Sometimes we can see that a person is doing something that is objectively unhealthy, and we want to intervene, and we know they're gonna be defensive and resistant about it. And there are some things we can do to soften that resistance. One thing we can do is frame everything in form of questions rather than criticisms. "Hey, you need to do this. You need me to help you with that."

• 28:55Speaker 02

  "Hey, you know what? I'm gonna do this for you." "You know what? This has to end. Enough is enough." If you've tried that before and that's not working, maybe translate "you should" into "how can I help?" Or "wouldn't it be nice if?" Or "what if I did this? How would you feel about that?" Another thing you can do, which is much more fundamental, is you can find out the information that you need to incentivize a person to change their behavior. And that is a knowledge of what they care about. "Hey, Mom. Hey, Brother. Hey, Sister. I noticed that you've had these boxes for a long time and they haven't been open. I'm not mad at you. I'm not judging you. I'm curious. What do you plan on doing with all this?" Not like, "Hey, what are you gonna do with all these boxes?" You're already frustrated, and they can feel that, and that's gonna come through much louder than the words.

• 29:39Speaker 02

  But like, "I'm curious, man. What do you wanna do with those boxes?" You know, I did the clutter counseling video on how to get out of an argument spiral, and I talked about the power of curiosity for, you know, de-escalating these conversations. And someone said, "But what if I'm not curious?" My answer to that is never accept that illusion about yourself. You are curious. It's part of your nature. You knew this when you were a child. You may not be curious about another person and why they do things, but you certainly are curious about your own possibilities in life. That's why you're even asking a question like, "What if I'm not curious?" That's an expression of curiosity. What kind of space did that question come from? The part of you that wonders about your own possibilities in life.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  And so be so curious about your own possibilities that even when another person is uninteresting to you, you can see the possibility that learning more about them can more readily move you in the direction of what you want. "Hey, man, you've had this stuff for a long time. What's up with that? Talk to me. What do you plan on doing with all that?" And they might give you insights that can help you know the best way to make suggestions for them that they will like.

• 30:47Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And sometimes that pause and then figuring out the appropriate tone is the difference between... What are you gonna do with all these boxes? Which is, which is, how dare you? Right? How dare you own all these boxes? And like, oh, man. I'm curious. What do you, what do you plan on doing with all these boxes? And it's like, okay, that's an invitation. That's not a, I'm on a pedestal and I'm looking down at you because you have all these damn boxes and I don't, so clearly I'm a better person than you. And obviously that's not Jeanette's perspective here either. You can tell that she has some serious sympathy for her sister who's 70 years old. And she's like, oh, I wish I could help her see. I see you.

• 31:29Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And I think that's the, what I would say ultimately is you can show up and see her. You can see the misery or the grief that is attached to this in some way. Because it is. It's not possible to have 900 boxes of, of, of things that you're holding on to and refuse to get rid of and would feel completely devastated if you lost them. It's not a, it's not possible to have that level of hoard without having a severe level of grief or anxiety or stress or overwhelm. A lot of these unpleasant emotions that are being covered up by the things. Yvonne says, "My husband is the biggest hoarder in my immediate family." Finally, we get the guys involved in this. This isn't just about hoarder moms. It is true.

• 32:13Joshua Fields Millburn?

  A lot of guys own a lot of things and we often hoard differently. Right? And sometimes it's easy to justify, as Yvonne will point out here. "He has the proverbial, quote, 'I might need that one day' mindset, especially when it comes to his extensive toolset. Who needs 53 screwdrivers? Yes, I counted."

• 32:38Joshua Fields Millburn?

  "He also owns a collection of drills that he will never be able to use again due to a physical limitation. He is a mathematician, so he probably has close to 500 academic books, both in bookcases and trunks in the attic. Did I mention the 40 years of paper files containing tax returns, credit card statements, and investment account paperwork? Think it's possible for Yvonne to show her husband how to maybe be more considerate?" I believe it is.

• 33:12Speaker 02

  It's a matter of motivation, though. The space from which we communicate with him cannot be a space of, "I think you need to make some changes because it irritates me when you are this way." "I think you need to make some changes because I think all the things you're doing are unnecessary, "and it just bothers me that a person can do that sort of thing." It has to be something deeper. What do you believe becomes possible for your interactions with him? Or for him? If that clutter is out of the way? Do you see a version of your husband that's healthier and happier? That's more in align with what he told you he wants to be? Do you see a version of interacting with him that brings more joy for the both of you? That's the vision. And you gotta sell the vision.

• 33:56Speaker 02

  You gotta lead with the vision. You've gotta say, "Love. Here's what I'm saying for you and I. Here's what I want." And you bring that vulnerability, right? Like, that vulnerability is that sense of humanity. People just aren't motivated by our, the feelings of irritation that we have with them and their shortcomings. But, boy, are they motivated by that capacity they experience within themselves to be helpful to the people that they love. "Here's what I would love to have out of our marriage and our time together. Here's what I would love to see. The man that I married was so fired up about this. And I've been seeing you look worn down. And I've been seeing you look distracted. And I would love to just see you on fire again. And I feel like these sorts of things are getting in the way.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  Would you be willing to have a conversation with me about some of the ideas I have? So that we can get back on track? Or so that you can get that thing that you tell me that you need?" That's just a much more effective starting point than like, "Why do you have so many frickin' pans, man?"

• 34:53Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah. Two questions that have helped me out a lot are, "What do you want? Like, what is your outcome here? What do you desire beyond what you have right now?" And that is the vision you're talking about here. And then like, what is upsetting you? What's frustrating you? What's getting in the way? What disturbs you is the way I often phrase that? Because sometimes we don't know what we want, but we can very quickly tell you, "No, we know what we don't want. And I can tell you what I don't want." Even if I don't know what I want in the moment, I could tell you that I don't want ants in my pants, right? I could tell you a bunch of things I don't want immediately. And those are the things that cause you pain.

• 35:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  An often unnecessary pain, right? Pain is part of existence. It is necessary. But then there's the unnecessary pain of clinging. And quite often, we get into a pattern over years, or in Yvonne's husband's case, probably decades, patterns of collecting and hoarding. And we get stuck into a pattern. And we don't even realize we're in the water anymore. It's the David Foster Wallace thing with the two fish swimming in water. Morning, boys. How's the water? What the hell is water, right? Because you're steeped in it. And sometimes, what the hell is clutter? Because we're steeped in it. What the hell is a hoard? I'm steeped in it, right? But then you realize like, oh, yeah. What disturbs me?

• 36:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  What frustrates me about what's going on right now in this present moment? And that points to what I want to let go of. And if he understands what frustrates him or what disturbs him, then as he starts clearing, he may be able to form a clearer vision of what he wants beyond the material hoard. How about you, listeners? What's? Who is the biggest hoarder in your family? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat. Okay, give me something pithy, TK. Who's the biggest hoarder in your family?

• 36:47Speaker 02

  It's not what you notice. It's what you do with what you notice. If you want someone in your life to notice your flaws and call you out for them, you don't need a friend for that. You can just go to a comedy club, sit in the front row, and you'll get plenty of that. You'll learn an awful lot about yourself. But what's the difference between a friend and someone who notices your flaws and calls you out on them? Because a friend can do that, but an enemy can also do that. The friend is the person who chooses to walk through life with you. They don't use your flaws as a basis for exploiting you. They use that as a basis for encouraging you to either get better or get the people and resources in your life that can compensate for those weaknesses. A friend is someone who looks at you

• 37:32Speaker 02

  through the eyes of love and through the eyes of redemption. And they say, hey, man, I see where you're struggling. I see why your life is cluttered with so many things that are getting in the way of what you want. Not just what I want from you. And I don't want to call you out on that. I want to call you forward on that. I want to call you to forget those things that are behind so that you can press towards the mark of a higher calling. And so for me, it's not about noticing if that person's the biggest hoarder in my family, or this person's the biggest hoarder in my family. Because my ability to notice that just makes me more accountable. It just raises the question, okay, well, what are you doing about that? What are you doing to help support them? What are you doing to help love them?

• 38:10Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, that's beautiful. Well, for my fifth answer, I have a quote here from the Bible. It's JFM, chapter seven, verse three.

• 38:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Why do you look at the particle of clutter in your brother's house, but fail to notice the stockpile in your own house? I think very often it's easy. And I noticed this in my own house, obviously. Like, my daughter is the biggest hoarder in my family, but she's 12, and she's not a hoarder at all. But that's because of the boundaries that we've set up for her over time. I remember when she was three years old and her favorite pastime was to collect rocks and sticks and bring them home. And eventually, we had a little stool. That was the boundary. She couldn't, and she just put the rocks and sticks on the stool. And if they no longer fit on there, she had to remove certain rocks and sticks. And then, because she couldn't put them beyond that. Now, my preference would be, let's not have any freaking rocks or sticks in our house, right?

• 39:04Joshua Fields Millburn?

  And the same is true with her things. We still have boundaries there. You know, she has a rather large dresser that all of her toys go in and things that she plays with. But the boundary is she can't keep things on the floor. Things have a home, and the floor is not their home. When you're done playing with it, done using it, it goes back to where it goes. But regularly, I'm asking her, hey, before we do this, before you can do that, before you can do the thing you want to do, you're going to do the thing that you have to do in order to get that, right? And that's a life lesson for all of us. But instead of me just being like, how dare you? You better clean this crap up. It's helping her understand what the boundaries are and why those boundaries are there. Because if I don't have boundaries in my own life, it's true.

• 39:48Joshua Fields Millburn?

  I will have a stockpile before I notice it. The reason that minimalism was so appealing to me wasn't because I was born a minimalist. I mean, I guess we were all born minimalist. We didn't own anything at the time. But it's because I had a lot of stuff, man. And I needed some boundaries because I lived a life without any boundaries. I was willing to accept anything. And if you accept anything, eventually you'll end up with everything you don't want. Oh, you could tweet that, Professor Sean. Yeah, so ultimately, it's easy to point, hey, there's the speck of dust in your eye, right? But I've got a plank in mine. I've got a stockpile in my own house. Let me, let me start here before looking outward and saying, you need to change your life. That's almost the end of page one, TK.

• 40:33Joshua Fields Millburn?

  We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to, but first, real quick for right here, right now, here's two things going on in the life of the minimalists. December, it's often the best month to play the 30-day minimalism game. This episode comes out on December 1st. Can you believe it's the last month of the year now? So is the game like 30 Days of Christmas version? Oh, yeah. So how would that work? I don't know. What I like about doing it in December is December is often the one that a lot of things start showing up that you didn't really ask for, didn't plan for, whether it's Christmas gifts, or seasonal decorations, or people are bringing a tray of cookies over and now

• 41:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  there's an extra plate that you have in your house randomly, or people are just stopping by and they leave their coat or their scarf there. Now, I'm not saying get rid of that stuff, but what I'm saying is now is a great time to open up the space. Maybe there's been an accumulation all year, just a little thing here, there's a thing from Amazon, there's a thing from Target, I got this thing from a local boutique, and just sitting around the house. There's a lot of things I'm not using right now. In the 30-day minimalism game, we've had tens of thousands of people play it, and it's a great way to get started with simplifying. Head on over to theminimalists.com/game. You can figure out exactly how to play. It's absolutely free, and you can download our free minimalism game calendar, so you can figure out exactly how many items you've gotten rid of throughout the month.

• 42:00Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Play with a family member in your house, and then you're getting rid of twice as many things, or maybe the whole family plays together, and you're getting rid of three or four or five times as many things. And it makes decluttering a lot more fun, because for me, just thinking about spending a weekend decluttering. It makes me want to pull my hair out, but just a little bit of decluttering every day with the people I love and turning it into a game and making it playful. Yeah, that's way more appealing to me. So, download the free minimalism game calendar over at theminimalists.com/game. We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. And speaking of December, the final FAMs of the year is this Friday, December 5th. We do a monthly Zoom call, the first Friday of every month with all of our patrons.

• 42:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  If you want to join us, theminimalists.com Zoom for all the details. We do that at noon Pacific, it's 3:00 PM Eastern. It's a perfect time because we have people who join us from Germany and from Australia and from Canada and even from California.

• 42:57Speaker 02

  And hey, there is not a day that goes by without someone being like, "Yo, where's Ryan Nicodemus? Remember, y'all, he moved two months ago to Montana, two years ago, but he's still part of the family and shows up every once in a while, but on FAMs, he's there just about every time. So, come get some Ryan Nicodemus, too. That's one of my favorite parts.

• 43:16Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Yeah, me too. I love bringing his perspective back into it. And obviously, whenever he's in town, we drag him into the podcast studio or drag him out to the live events. And in fact, who knows, maybe we'll be planning some live events with him next year as well. And so, yeah, if you want to have a Zoom call with Ryan Nicodemus, also with TK and Josh, but with the trio, Savvy D is typically there, Professor Sean is often there as well, you can join us, theminimalists.com Zoom. The final Zoom call of the year. Much more coming up, TK, but first, here's a minimalist tip from one of our listeners.

• 43:50Speaker 04

  Hello, minimalists. My name is Arielle and I'm from Northeast Pennsylvania. I'm calling in response to Alyssa from episode 471, who is anxious over the 12 Days of Christmas cheer, where kids were encouraged to dress in spirited costumes, etc. I loved everyone's ideas and would like to share one more. If your child wants to participate in a school spirit week, prioritize one of the days and ask what day interests them the most. Whatever that day is, go all out. There were ideas to raid closets and get creative, but also considered to turn it into an experience. When I was in school, friends and I had a mismatch day for a spirit week and we went to our local thrift store and made a game out of who could create the tackiest outfit. Treating it as an experience also allows you to let it all go when you're done.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  I don't remember any of the other days from my spirit week, but that mismatched day has memories in my brain forever. I hope this helps.

• 44:42Joshua Fields Millburn?

  Oh, thank you so much for that helpful comment, Ariel. You know, TK, on page three, I've got this. I want to show you a real life example of a pound of experiences is worth more than a pound of stuff. And that's exactly what she was talking about here. It's like, I remember the experience, not the stuff. I'm holding on to the experience, the memory of it, without clinging to it. I hold on to it. It's beautiful. I'm grateful for it, right? And it shaped me in some way that a thing can't really shape me. Yes, it can amplify the experience, but it's really about the experience ultimately. For anyone else has a listener tip about this episode or any other episode, you can

• 45:22Joshua Fields Millburn?

  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.

• 45:30Speaker 02

  (sniffing) For some cookie break, we'll be right back.

• 45:35Joshua Fields Millburn?

  All right, y'all, that's the first 33% of episode 516. We'll see you on Patreon for the full two-hour maximal edition, which includes answers to a bunch more questions. Questions like, when is discipline helpful for decluttering and when does it get in the way? Why do people buy so many gifts that their loved ones don't actually enjoy? And we'll also tell a horrible story, unfortunate story, about YouTube and why they started putting ads on our YouTube videos without our permission. We're going to discuss that, sort of break it down. TK, you had a phenomenal perspective on that as well. Plus, a million more questions and simple living segments over on the Minimalist Private Podcast on Patreon.

• 46:20Joshua Fields Millburn?

  The link is in the description. When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Plus, you'll gain access to all of our archives, all the way back to the very first episode, more than a decade of podcasting now. And that is our minimal episode for today. Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space. On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, post-production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan No More, Tom Cat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, 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. We'll see you next time. Peace.

• 47:07Speaker 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.