Bye, Clutter. Hello, Emotions!
“I regret decluttering with you, Kim,” said NO CLIENT EVER.
I love shouting out the courage of my clients to invite me into this vulnerable process with them.
I hear from them (and I know from my own experience—see below) that paring down is deeply emotional, therapeutic, cathartic. And it brings up a lot of feelings—maybe you were ready; I know I wasn’t ready, and usually my clients aren’t either!
I consider empathy to be a superpower of mine, and I’m comfortable to simply BE with people in their pain, with their tears.
It’s been a strength as an occupational therapist working with adults who are in pain, who are scared, who have lost independence and mobility—and now it’s serving me well as a professional organizer.
Sometimes people cry at the expected parts—looking through sad memories, uncovering old documents that are triggering, the finding of a lost baby toy, etc.
And some cry at the very unexpected—like letting go of decade-old underwear or a random set of soup bowls—because guess what? We are humans! Life is complicated.
When we move through life without regularly taking inventory of what we have (and why we have it, like, do I even wear this? Do I even use this? Do I even want this anymore?), we can become blind to our own clutter.
And because are humans, we enmesh so much of who we are and bury our emotions in STUFF (numbing). And this becomes status quo. Then the stuff becomes our literal baggage.
I’m here to help detangle some of that heaviness with you. And also to not let you get lost in it, to not let you say “[if I’m crying over this] I’m broken,” and to validate the feelings that come up.
Earlier this week, a client was sorting through paperwork and found an old piece of mail about one family member that evoked so much pride in them—and instantly triggered an emotional response of grief and sadness about another family member.
Make space for both of these feelings, make space for all of them.
It’s helpful to talk it out with a safe person. I’m lucky she felt comfortable sharing with me.
When I finish a session, I take a carload of clutter with me for donation—FREE. I want to leave you feeling a little lighter, more spacious, more free.
Without the tangible item, you’re left with the feelings. And it doesn’t have to be scary, or bad, and it’s nothing to be afraid of. You already had the courage to bring in help, to work on letting go of the excess.
When my partner and I ended our relationship, I told my therapist “I will never be OK.” It seemed unfathomable to me to recover from this loss. I worried that I would not be strong enough to come out of this depression, that I’d be stuck here indefinitely.
Then, I found Marie Kondo and embraced minimalism. My apartment was barren. It freed up the emotional landscape of my home. I could sit with myself in the messy aftermath. I wasn’t distracted by clutter or procrastinating with endless tidying or triggered (knowingly/unknowingly) by all the visual cues of association.
Then, I got to rebuild. I got to reclaim that space as my own. It was a fresh start that I needed to move forward.
When we finish our goal, my clients aren’t stuck in their emotions. They feel PROUD, they feel peace. It’s hard-earned, it’s well deserved. You can have that, too.
Book a free call to talk about your home: https://calendly.com/consciouslyclearedandcontainedllc/freecall