This week I’m talking with Star Hansen, a Certified Professional Organizer (CPO©) and Clutter Whisperer on a mission to help you banish your personal Clutter Monster. Her methodology focuses on helping you take control of your stuff and create a life you’re truly proud of. Star looks at the deeper meaning of your stuff to help you figure out why you feel overwhelmed by your clutter in the first place. Star’s best selling book, “Why the F*#@ Am I Still Not Organized?”, has inspired countless individuals to tackle their clutter head-on and find lasting solutions.
In our conversation, we discuss the significance of having clutter-free spaces and the impact it has on mental and emotional well-being - how clutter can create stress, affect decision-making, and hinder productivity. We also delve into the emotional attachment people often have to their belongings, how clutter can impact relationships, and how clutter can highlight personal values and emotional struggles.
Check out Star’s Freebies on her website: Podcast - Star Hansen
William Curb: All right, well, to get started, could you tell us about your book? “Why the F*#@ Am I Still Not Organized?” And a little bit about your approach to organizing and this de-cluttering and stuff?
Star Hansen: Absolutely. So I'm a clutter whisper, which means that I can read into people's clutter and see how it's actually helping them in their lives. And this is kind of strange because most of the world has decided that clutter is bad and we are bad for having it.
And I am the exact opposite of that. I'm like your clutter fairy godmother, where I am all about helping you discover your genius through your clutter because the challenge we're trying to solve is actually often the gift. And that's really what my book is about. So my book is called “Why the F*#@ Am I Still Not Organized?” And it is literally everything I've learned in the last 20 years of being a clutter whisper, how your clutter is helping you, what the major roadblocks are that are stopping you from getting organized. And this is just allowing you to kind of unpack clutter in a new way so that you're not doing the same old thing.
Because those people have not been struggling with clutter for a week or a month. This has been decades of their life. And I don't care if you cuss or not, most people see the title of my book and they're like, exactly. And it's what am I doing wrong? What am I missing? What's happening? And my point of view is you're not doing anything wrong. You just are looking at your clutter in a different way. And I'm here to help you view your clutter in a new way with a new lens so that you can get different results.
William Curb: That sounds great. And a lot of times exactly what you said is not something new that we've been dealing with. It's something that people have been trying to fix for their entire lives. And it's like, why has this not happened yet? I've tried all these things. They don't work. And if you look behind, you can see my lovely stack of things.
Star Hansen: But it's in bins. It looks beautiful.
William Curb: Those are bins I moved there because I didn't know where else to put them. So yes. They're essentially doombox bins where I just have tossed stuff because I'm like, OK, where else does this go?
Star Hansen: Yes. We call that the room of abyss or the room of doom. Like I'm just shoving stuff there because I don't know what to do with it. So I'm just going to put it here in the meantime.
William Curb: Yeah. We definitely have a hall of closet that people are coming over. Everything is going to go in there for a little bit.
Star Hansen: The shove spot!
William Curb: Yeah. And then some of it's just going to live there from then on.
Star Hansen: Yeah, totally. I think most people have that, especially when it comes to people who've experienced clutter a lot, because if you grew up with clutter, I'm thinking for your listeners, you have spent most of your life feeling misunderstood. Right. Most people were diagnosed later in life. I find that more and more with a lot of my clients. So that means that during your formative years, you were just trying to keep your head above water and keep up with everybody else. And then you were probably doing a version of that in your adulthood. And you're looking around thinking, why is everyone else doing it so effortlessly and what am I doing wrong and how do I fix this? And that kind of panic and insecurity and adequacy that is just flooding us when we're experiencing our clutter. And the truth is we just have never been taught. And if you've never been taught and if you've never experienced a completely organized house, everything feels like that doom box because it's like, well, I don't have any idea where it goes. And in order for me to find a home for that, I have to find a home for X, Y, Z, ABQ.
It's so big. And especially for my neuro-spicy babies, like it really is tricky because we have to figure out how your brain works and what you need in order for you to thrive with your organizing systems and 90% of the books and resources out there are not made for you. And that can be so frustrating. And so finding how do we find the systems that really work so that we can create and achieve that baseline homeostasis and know where things go and know what to do when someone comes over at the last minute. And it just takes time to explore that.
William Curb: I mean, it's something I've been looking at a lot for my kids recently because as much as my clutter bugs me going into their room and being like, could I at least walk to your bed to put you to sleep? Could we do that at least? You know, I would like to be able to then turn off the light and be able to walk out in the dark and not murder my foot on a Lego or something.
Star Hansen: Absolutely. And you know, it's so tricky. I mean, I think back to your childhood, were you ever taught how to organize? You all are listening. You can't see the bug eyes he just gave me. He was like, on what planet would that had been possible. You know, most of us were not taught how to get organized. And when we don't have the practical, fundamental, simple tools, and yet we're supposed to wander through the world acting as though we've been taught this when we've never been taught this.
And so education is always the first place that I start with people. I have a class that teaches people the 10 steps to getting organized because organizing is actually quite simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. The steps are simple.
The process is simple, but most of us have never been taught. And that would be the equivalent of me asking you to sing to me in Cantonese if you've never learned that language. That would be a ridiculous ask. And yet we ask ourselves that kind of ask all day long. We ask that of our kids, of our partners. And so getting education is normally the first step in creating this foundation for ourselves.
William Curb: One of the things that I've talked with one of my friends about who also does some organizing stuff, we combine a lot of ideas into like one thing where we're like, this is cleaning, organizing, and decluttering, all in one thing and it doesn't work.
Star Hansen: So people just say, oh, you got to get organized. Well, getting organized means creating categories of what you have, making decisions if you're gonna keep it or get rid of it, getting rid of it, donating. It means cleaning the space. It means decorating the space. It means putting it into a container with labels or however you need it to be organized, right?
It means creating a maintenance strategy. There are so many elements to it that we never talk about that we're just like, just get organized as though it's a simple one step process. When it's not even a 10 step process, 10 steps are kind of the steps to guide us, but we have to do these things over and over again. It's like brushing our teeth.
You don't brush your teeth once and say, they're clean. You have to do it every day and it's the same thing and that becomes challenging when you struggle with executive function because we all have our day-to-day executive function, like activities we need to do, but then you've got this history of clutter, of years accumulation of stuff that needs to be handled on top of our day-to-day activities. Mix in with that, all of the deeper emotional stuff, right? You have a death in your family and there's items from that person sprinkled around or you've got a big medical bill that you don't know how to pay and unopened mail pieces or bills around the house. These things add to the anxiety and so it becomes this very messy thing where, I always like to tell people, like, don't beat yourself up. Like we are so hard on ourselves and the truth is that it's not easy because there are so many layers to this and we really have to acknowledge and name the layers because when we see the layers, we can start dissecting it and confronting our clutter differently and confronting our executive function differently because we're not, like you said, lumping it into one thing and being like, there, it should be better.
William Curb: Yeah, there's all the emotional attachments to things and you're not gonna be able to just walk in and be like, well, fix this room by cleaning it. And it's like... Exactly. Instead, you walk in, you go, okay, and now I'm overwhelmed. Not doing anything.
Star Hansen: Totally. Your brain just goes like into full shutdown. Like, no, thank you very much, boom. One of the best things we can do, I look at organizing as a healing art. I'm not a left brain, practical, logical person when I work with organizing.
I am all about that right side of your brain, that creativity, that flow, that joy. Most people set themselves up for failure and the fact that they say, I've got to organize my giant room, my garage, the entire first floor of my house. Like, we set ourselves up with these giant projects and I'm gonna do it in two days. And if I, as a professional who've been doing this for 20 years, was there, we couldn't do it in two days.
So why do you expect yourself to do it in two days? So it's like we have to break it down into small pieces, organizing first and foremost as a way to learn to trust ourselves again. Throw on a song and just organize during that song or grab a garbage bag and look for trash that you can get out of the room. Or spend three minutes taking your dishes to the kitchen, like micro, what we need to do is experience completion.
How do I start, proceed and complete in a small amount of time and doing that will help us learn to trust ourselves again. Because a lot of people have had so much experience feeling like they failed at their organizing attempts that they don't even wanna try anymore. and it does feel overwhelming. So I just always say, start really small, put on a song, set a timer for 20 minutes, make a goal very, very tiny, and call in reinforcements.
Like, do you have a buddy who you can say, hey, I have this great idea, I have a buddy like this, by the way, that I'll say, oh my gosh, I had this great idea. I'm gonna do my entire garage and storage unit and shed this weekend and let them have a come to Jesus with you and be like, my love, maybe not this weekend. We get excited and we wanna create this magic and right now you're learning to heal through clutter. And we do that by going a little slower, a little smaller, learning the skills, strengthening ourselves before we move on to those big projects.
William Curb: It's so easy to look at it and be like, I have an idea of what I want. I don't have a complete vision yet. That's often what I find, I will be like, I'm just gonna get started, I don't know where I'm going and then kind of lose steam on that thing because I didn't assign the scope of what I was working on or I'll be like, okay, I'm just gonna take out this one box and then I'll like pull something out of the box and go, well, now what do I do with this thing? Now it's out of the box. Do I just put it on the floor here until I find a space for it or what? And then I'm like, well, no, put it back in the box.
Star Hansen: Yeah, it's so tricky because also our spaces are intertwined so that thing you find in the box belongs in the kitchen and in the kitchen you can't fit it because there's too many cookbooks. So in your brain, you have to now start a new project to put this one item away. So now you're all over the house, you're in every room, you've got 20 projects going and we wanna keep it as simple as possible. Like I don't let my clients lead the room. Like you can have like little boxes that you create to like run to other rooms when we're done but we stay in the room, we start no new projects, we just do the best we can.
I always say whatever belongs in another space, you put it as close to its future home as possible. Like I don't need you starting any new projects but it is so tricky because there is that moment where we get flooded and overwhelmed and then we just kind of, you know, our brains burn out. There's also the other side of that is people who over plan who are like, okay, I'm gonna do my garage and then they wanna spend 15 hours mapping out the most perfect plan for organizing their garage that they ever could create. And I see this a lot in productivity with tons of subcategories with filing or email systems and what we want is somewhere in the middle.
We wanna be somewhere in the middle that feels really strong and going slow and almost like parenting ourselves as we go. Remembering that organizing is not just a task to complete. For someone who has experienced clutter for years, I'm not talking about like your kid comes home, dumps a giant pile of paperwork from the year and you've gotta handle that, that's a project. That's like you handle it, it's done in a couple hours. I'm talking about the clutter that recurs over and over and over again.
That clutter didn't happen overnight, it's not gonna get solved overnight. So we have to be really kind with ourselves and almost like how would you treat little William? What do you wish people had said to you when you struggled with clutter as a kid? And cause I would imagine you speak to your children with a lot of love and kindness in their struggles.
So it's can you do the same for you of just having patience with yourself while you figure this out? Because all your listeners, you all are smart. I mean, my friends and clients who have ADHD are some of the smartest people I have ever met. I am a dumb, dumb compared to the people that I know who have ADHD. So this is not a capability thing. This is an exercise thing. This is like strengthening a skill. This is knowing that we need to ask for help sometimes. Body doubling is huge for helping get organizing progress going. Like I have a membership and that's what we do.
Once a month at least we get together and we organize together because there's something that just happens. You just turn on in a different way. Your brain sharpens, your focus clarifies, you're more accountable. So there's no shame in knowing that you need that and asking for that and setting yourself up. Like when I am brainstorming projects, I need to hire someone to talk things out with. I'm a verbal processor. I don't do well sitting alone in my office thinking. I'm not ashamed that I need to ask for help and pay someone.
I wish that I didn't need to, but I do, so I do it. Same with body doubling with organizing. Knowing what you need is huge. It's a major part of what makes this a healing journey.
William Curb: It's amazing just how much having that little bit of external accountability can be just completely change how you look at what you're doing. Yeah. I know sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm resisting asking someone to help me with this. I'm like, oh, okay, that's an even bigger sign that I need to have that person there. Totally.
Star Hansen: I love that. I work with a lot of clients virtually and I'll give them a task and I'll always say to them, how long do you think that task will take? Let's be clear. That question is very annoying when you have ADHD because you're like, time doesn't exist, lady.
Are you not paying attention? I know time doesn't exist for a lot of people who have ADHD and it's really, really an important skill to acquire. I'll ask and a lot of times when I start working with someone, they might quote half the time that it really takes. Oh, I think that'll take me 15 minutes, but it takes them 30. I'm timing them. I'm tracking what they're doing.
I'm processing what's going on. And I have never worked with someone whose timing didn't improve. Instead of needing twice or three times the amount of time to complete something that they thought it would take, they get down to their estimated time. I worked with someone yesterday who literally like within 30 seconds, she was right every single time. And she used to need twice as much time as she thought she did. So just the process of that accountability of saying, okay, I'm going to set a timer and do this and have someone who's going to hold me accountable. Her brain is starting to sharpen and really kind of experience time in a different way.
And so sometimes, yes, our bodies and brains can be challenges, but also there are ways that we can start to explore them, understand ourselves better. Because I don't mind if it still would take her twice as long, as long as she knows every time I set an estimate, I need to double it. Like then she knows how long it's going to take. That's a power.
William Curb: Yeah, it's so important to work on developing just because when we're planning things out then, it's so easy for us to just be like, okay, this is how long it's going to take. I have two hours to get this done in. I'm going to do these 25 things. And it's like, oh, I got to have one of them? Well, I'm a failure.
Star Hansen: Right. Oh, we're so good at being in ourselves up, aren't we? Yeah. I think there is something powerful about using this as an experience to get to know ourselves. Instead of rushing to judgment, I always say, choose curiosity over judgment. Like really start to use the experience. Like if you start to be a detective or an anthropologist of your own behavior, if it's like, okay, great, I thought it was going to take this long, but it actually took me that long.
You might also ask the question differently. Instead of I have two hours or I'm going to do this in two hours, you might say, how long am I willing to give this? Because the challenge is, you know, you might have been able to get it all done in two hours, but your brain was like, ooh, I hyper focus here.
I'm going to like make this step one, the best step one I've ever seen in my life. But if you know that you're like, I've got to get all these done, it becomes like a game. Like how do we gamify it, make it interesting, make it fun and playful and we will take however long we give ourselves. Like when I was writing my book, I remember I was writing it for three years before I wrote it. And I was like, I'm writing it and I wrote it in a week.
I was like, this is happening. So we will fill the time that we allow ourselves to take. So sometimes asking yourself, how long am I willing to give to do this can be helpful, because then we don't have infinity to create. You know, it's like, I got a week, do it, get it, whatever version it's going to be, it's good enough. Let's go.
William Curb: Yeah, having some sort of deadline, real or imaginary can often be very helpful there. And I love this concept of being curious with it too, because we can expand that to so many things because you can be like, oh, why am I feeling so much resistance to doing this? Is it because I feel it's boring or a lot of our objects have this big emotional attachment to them that we aren't thinking about?
Star Hansen: Yeah, and author one more out there, and this is the thing I focus most on in my business is if you have a recurring clutter, it's meeting a need. It is doing something to help you or it perceives that it's helping you. And this might be it's helping you experience safety and security. Maybe it's comforting to you. Maybe it's setting a boundary.
Maybe it's punishing. There are so many ways that our clutter is happening. helping us and it's really interesting. Like for some people it's empowering. Like I have clients who grew up with very little, they experienced food scarcity, they had one pair of jeans growing up. So when they became adults and provided for themselves, they were like, great, I can buy jeans and I won't ever struggle like that again.
And they ended up with over 200 pairs of jeans and no space in their bedroom because it's like, oh, they just forgot to stop. What I do that I think is most different than the organizing wisdom that's kind of floating around out there is I'm looking for how your clutter is helping you. And then I help people determine how they can get that need met without the clutter. Because once you do that, the clutter just kind of falls away.
And that's really exciting. And the truth is that if you don't know the root cause of why your clutter's there, no system that you apply is really gonna work. And if you know the root cause, any system will work because you are not being kind of strong held by that root that is keeping you connected.
William Curb: I love the idea of looking at what was once an adaptive behavior and how it became maladaptive. Like, oh, that's never sorting my mail is so I'm not getting the stress of opening the mail. And being like, yeah, so it's not gonna matter how organized I get that mail system if I can't address why I feel so much stress for opening the mail.
Star Hansen: Yes, and once you know it, you can get the right support. I was laughing because this weekend, there's a few things I like to have in my house. I don't have a ton of stuff, but I have like, I love gemstones, I love books.
There's a few things that I'm really into. So when I have a pattern of clutter, it sticks out like a sore thumb. And I noticed I was holding onto boxes this last month. And I was like, you know how it is, like you get a box and you're like, this is a good box, man.
Like, come on, like who's gonna get rid of this box? And I have this Harry Potter closet under my stairs and I had room. So I just put these boxes in there and then I finally got my bike here.
I just moved in the last year and so I finally got my bike brought here. And I was like, oh, that'll go great in the Harry Potter closet, which is now stuffed with a thousand boxes. And I had to have a little moment with myself and I realized that was kind of a trauma response for me. One of my trauma responses is flight. I have this fantasy that if I can just start anew, if I can move and start fresh, that everything will be better.
It's one of my silver bullets. And I pulled all these boxes out and I had to really have a moment with myself to be like, whoa, I am feeling really anxious about not having what I need if I need to move in a moment's notice. I am feeling scared to stay here in this house, in this city. And I may always struggle with it for the rest of my life. Our trauma history is our trauma history and we do what we have to do, but it was so interesting.
And because I know how this works and because I do it for a living, I was able to do it pretty quickly. But that's what's happening in most of our clutter. There's some sort of connection that's really hard to let go of. And the truth is some of these can't be solved.
Like I can't go back and fix my trauma history and be like, there we go, no more commitment phobia. Like I had to sit there and look at the bike and look at the boxes and say, I choose the bike. I choose riding my bike on a Sunday morning. I choose exploring my city in this way over the one foot out the door desire to leave by holding onto these boxes. And it was hard and scary and they are now in recycling.
And God willing, they will be picked up on Thursday and then I will be free of them. This is what dances in our clutter. And it can be really complicated, but also beautiful. Because I learned to love myself better just this weekend from having that experience of saying, I choose life over fear and being prepared for some future that may never come.
William Curb: I think that's often a big thing is that we are preparing for things that aren't ever going to happen. I mean, in that exact same vein of preparing for things, just the other day, I noticed 10 years ago, I like set up some like prepper buckets with like extra food stuff in it, in case something happened. Because at that time in my life, I was like, yeah, that's a good idea for doing the prep stuff.
And I'm like, that takes a lot of space in my garage. And I don't believe in a lot of those philosophies anymore. Like I've grown as a person and it's just sitting there.
Star Hansen: It's this constant re-parenting of ourselves. This kind evolution with ourselves of like, I know that I felt like I needed that and it's okay that I don't need it today. I remind myself a lot of the fact that the worst things that have happened in my life, I couldn't have prepared for, I couldn't have been ready for, they just happened. And the things we prep for often never happen. I know that I have some prepper friends and man, they are just waiting for it to go out because they've been ready. They wanna be at the top of the world when the bottom falls out.
But for most things, it's just not gonna happen. And so why are we spending time, energy, space in our home, collecting things, holding onto things because we're investing in fear versus investing in our present moment, versus investing in our life or our loved ones or our hobbies. I would say fill your space with life, not stuff. Stuff just sits there, we forget we have it. Like one of the biggest things you can do is like stop delaying your life until the clutter's gone. If you've had clutter for years, you might have clutter for another few more years. Even if you worked full time at doing it.
Like when I've had people hire me, it can take two to five years sometimes to handle the clutter in someone's entire home. So why would you wait another minute not doing the things you've been excited about? Taking the vacation, taking up the new hobby, dancing, dating, whatever a human is holding back from. Go do it now, stop waiting for the clutter to subside because this is your life.
William Curb: And yeah, being working on letting go of some of those things. I mean, I know there's like sunk cost fallacy where we like, I can't get rid of this stuff because I bought it.
Star Hansen: Yeah, or the whole I wanna save the planet. I can't get rid of it because I know the value, but nobody else will. So if I take it to goodwill, it's just gonna get thrown away and I should find the right person or I need to fix it.
We put these giant projects on our lap because we don't want things to go poorly or because we wanna honor the value or the experience. So this was my grandma's table and nobody will know the sentimental value. I'd hate for it to end up in a landfill. You know, these are the layers of the clutter that keep us holding onto things instead of freeing ourselves.
William Curb: It's like all the just crap toys that my kids end up with that I'm like, you know what? I don't even think goodwill wants this. I can throw this away. It's okay.
Star Hansen: Yeah, it's hard. And you know, it's like when we have those moments of anxiety of like, what a waste or I feel guilty for what it's doing to the planet.
Instead of beating ourselves up, again, choosing curiosity over judgment, choosing to sharpen our focus, like, okay, great. I'm very aware that I don't feel comfortable with plastic toys going to the landfill. We're switching to wood toys. What micro change can you make that makes you feel better about the choices that you make?
William Curb: We're not getting happy meals anymore. No more those little toys that I just don't do anything.
Star Hansen: No. And I was thinking about, I was researching a little bit on you today. I came across your IG that said that you loved playing Legos. And I was laughing because I was remembering two times I have asked a client what Legos they want to get rid of. And I mean, I've never seen someone look at me with the fierceness that those two humans, one was a child and one was a grownup, right?
It did not matter. And the grownup looked at me so sternly and he said, star, you never get rid of a Lego. Like he was so, he was like, like I had said, the most preposterous thing he had ever heard in his entire life, Legos do not go. And I think I like relayed that story to a child and he was like, no, you never get rid of Legos.
But I think our stuff highlights our values in so many ways, like what we refuse to part with what we see value. Because to me, I don't play with Legos. It's a piece of plastic. And I'm like, do you have too many pieces of plastic?
And someone who like that's the anchor for the wings of the next airplane they're going to build. I don't know. I'm just making this up as I go. But you know, it's like it's that's an important thing that they could use. And so our values shine through what we keep and what we hold on to very much.
William Curb: Absolutely. And it's just so easy to hold on to stuff. I find that is one of the biggest problems is holding on to too many things. Yeah.
Star Hansen: Things were so different. I remember I went and did a tour of these. I live in the Southwest and they have these beautiful Pueblos, these Native American Pueblos. And I went and did a tour of one and no one else showed up the day. So I got like a private tour.
It was the most epic day. This poor woman had to feel a thousand questions from me. But one of the most interesting things was that she said, you know, we were nomadic and so we would go where the water was. And so what would happen is if we were living somewhere and there was a drought, we needed to then move. And so you only took what you could carry. And so why you find a lot of pieces of pottery and things out in the desert is because they would smash it.
You know, it was built from clay from the earth and then they would literally break it and only bring with them what they could carry on their bodies and then start anew. And I loved that so much because we are the opposite now. We have more than we need. We are just full and burdened with the amount of stuff that we have. Like it's hard to maintain.
We spend our weekends instead of going out and having fun, maintaining and handling our stuff. One of the things that I ask people when I work with them is what percentage of the items in this room do you think you would need to part with in order to have this room feel the way you want it to. And that answer varies anywhere between 15% to like 70%. And it is, it's so interesting to kind of track, but that's a big part of it.
It's like, I'm not forcing anyone into minimalism, but it's the idea that like the less you have, the less you have to maintain. And that's not to say that it gets any easier. I was chatting with a client of mine today who she has ADHD and her fantasy is always like, I'm going to go to like an Airbnb and have this amazing life that's so simple.
And she said, I still struggle with my executive function here. It's easier than my home because there's less stuff. But it's in again, it's kind of what we're talking about earlier was like that separation and knowing that it's like we might still have challenges, but knowing that less stuff means less burden. So releasing is really, really important.
William Curb: Because we don't want our stuff owning us. Right. Totally. Like we know how our clutter currently is doesn't feel good.
Star Hansen: If we don't honor these big emotions as we go, we won't get rid of things. If you feel anxiety every time you look at that mail and then you ignore it and you stuff that down, you turn away and you go into the kitchen instead. That clutter owns you. That clutter has your number in your mind. It's stronger than you, more powerful than you. Versus if you look at that clutter and you feel super anxious and you stand there and you breathe and you allow it to like have that anxiety. Just live in you for a second or call a friend and say, I'm super anxious about my mail right now and you start to export or you journal or you tell your therapist. You take your power back.
You then can find solutions because humans are amazing at finding solutions. Like we live for that. Like, oh, talk about a dopamine hit, like bring it on. Like you give me a problem, I'll find you a solution done. It is really powerful to spend the time to really like allow ourselves to feel the feelings. And what's really cool is that we don't have like a huge variety of stuff that gets us.
Right. Like most humans have like three to five major lessons that we're learning. Like, oh, I struggle with insecurity or inadequacy or perfectionism or whatever our story is.
But most of us have like mostly three to five that we're struggling with. It's like just different versions of the same thing. So every time you lean in on our present to that, you are healing every part of your life because that lesson that's coming up with your clutter is probably also coming up with your body, with your relationship, with your job, with money, with your car, with your dog, with your kids. Like how we do anything is how we do everything. So it is totally worth it to use clutter as this beautiful microcosm of change and transformation.
William Curb: Yeah. And one of that has dealt with clutter. Yeah. I can see how my relationship with my stuff is just impacts everything else on my life too. It makes a lot of things a lot harder. So it's, you know, important to actually address and not just kind of like sweep into the closet.
Star Hansen: And I will say, because I know you've got kids and I think you have a partner, it's like when we are living in relationship with other people, life alone is so easy. Like my life every day is like a vacation.
I'm like, it's me and my stuff is where I left it last night. And when you live with other humans, it is not that way. You are trying to blend so many people and so many things. most damaging things that I see happening for people who have clutter is when they're well-meaning people around them try to be helpful by being bullying. And that happens a lot.
I love that when people will come up and be like, oh my God, you just have to get rid of this clutter. Oh, is that all? I didn't realize. I'm cured. You changed my life. Really?
You thought that was helpful? I've had clients that we meet and their kids come over and they're like, how much did they get rid of? And it's like, okay, that's not the measure that we're looking for of success.
Like, no. So oftentimes what we need to do if we're struggling with clutter and we're struggling with people who we love trying to be well-meaning, but kind of bullying is to tell them what we need. And it can be as simple as, hey, when you constantly bring up my clutter or when you kind of say those things, it makes me actually hold tighter to my clutter and makes it harder to get rid of stuff. What would help me instead is if you asked me if I found anything cool in my clutter today, or did I remember a story from my life while I was organizing today?
Because like if we tell people what we need, they think they're being helpful by just kind of coming at us over and over again. Like, oh, did the garage get done? Did the disc get done? Like, some days you're going to go through a box of paperwork and it's going to look the exact same. Other days you're going to have this huge transformation. You don't deserve less accolades, love, support, attention for doing the box versus the entire garage. And so really like saying to our well-meaning lovely people, hey, when you do this, it actually makes me hold onto clutter tighter. What would help me is if you did this thing instead.
And then that way they know what they're doing. You're not starting to fight. It's not like World War 47, you know. And we need that because we all need our people to support us in our endeavors.
Like that's huge. And oftentimes, when it comes to clutter, the people that we love most and live with closest can be the most challenging for us around our clutter. And so being able to set those boundaries and make requests can be really, really helpful for your own progress.
William Curb: Absolutely. In any situation, more communication is usually better.
Star Hansen: Always. And same with the kids, right? I think of like, how many memories do we all have of like, just clean your room? Well, like what if instead of that, it's like, hey, is there anything kind of stopping you from cleaning your room? Does it feel hard to do it today? What makes today harder? Or does it always feel difficult? Like when I've worked with kids, it's fascinating because you know, I'll have two siblings living in the same room and one kid will need 20 categories for their choice.
And the other kid needs two. So that's tricky, right? Figuring out like, okay, great. Again, leaning into the curiosity of like, yes, communicating our needs, but also soliciting communications from our loved ones of like, okay, great, what would make this go better for you? I feel like I'm really wanting to experience you cleaning your room and I'm not getting that. So tell me how I can support you or tell me what's getting in the way or is there something you don't know how to do? How can I support you in this? That can be really powerful.
William Curb: All right, well, we're kind of coming up on time here. So I was wondering if there is anything you wanted to leave my audience with here.
Star Hansen: Of course. So I know it can be a little scary to jump in with someone around organizing because of everything we were just talking about. So I'm offering a few gifts for your listeners. So I have a free copy of my book. If they want to get it, they can go to starhanson.com/podcast. And I spell my last name H-A-N-S-E-N. And on there, you'll see a few different free gifts for your listeners. I have a quiz on there so they can find out what monster is stuck in their closet, keeping them disorganized. They can get a free copy of my book, Why the F am I Still Not Organized? It's on Audible and Amazon and all the main places, but why pay when you can get it for free? And you can kind of scroll around on my site and find I have like a million freebies on there.
If you just want to get your toes wet, if you want to start to see a change, it's a wonderful process, but it can be very challenging. And so I want you to come in at the speed you want. So they can find me there at starhanson.com/podcast and get some free stuff and enjoy taking their organization to the next level.
William Curb: And I'll have that all in the show notes so people can easily find it. And thank you so much for coming out of the show. I think this was a great episode and people are really going to get a lot out of it.
Star Hansen: Thank you so much, William. It's such a treat to be here with you today.
This Episode’s Top Tips
It can be hard to let go of possessions but we can alleviate some of this by approaching decluttering with curiosity rather than judgment. Ask yourself why certain items are difficult to part with and explore the emotions and memories attached to them. When deciding whether to keep or let go of these items, consider their true significance and whether they align with your current values and lifestyle.
When dealing with clutter in shared living spaces, communicate your needs and boundaries with loved ones. It's important have open conversations about clutter and to ask for the type of support that would be helpful to you, rather than feeling overwhelmed by unsolicited advice.
Clutter can reflect our values and emotional struggles. The items we choose to keep highlight what is important to us. Use the process of decluttering as an opportunity to reflect on your values, make intentional choices, and create spaces that align with your goals and aspirations.