#655 Finding Grace in Your Imperfect Space: A Conversation with Hilary Bernstein

#655 Finding Grace in Your Imperfect Space: A Conversation with Hilary Bernstein

#655 Finding Grace in Your Imperfect Space: A Conversation with Hilary Bernstein

Hey there, friend!

Are you caught in the tension between wanting a perfect home and feeling overwhelmed by the impossibility of achieving it? In this episode of Clutter Free Academy, Kathi Lipp sits down with Hilary Bernstein, author of “The Tension of Tidy,” to explore the connection between perfectionism and our struggle with clutter. 

  

Learn why perfectionists often have the hardest time maintaining an organized home and discover practical strategies for breaking free from the paralysis of perfectionism. Hilary shares insights about finding God’s grace in our imperfect spaces and offers hope for those caught between Pinterest-perfect expectations and real-life limitations. 

  

In this episode, you’ll discover: 

– Why perfectionism often leads to cluttered spaces 

– How to celebrate small wins in home management 

– Practical first steps for overwhelmed perfectionists 

– Biblical perspective on imperfect spaces 

– Permission to invite people into your imperfect home 

 

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Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest

Kathi Lipp gives readers an easy-to-follow process for meal planning and prep, so that they can enjoy a full day each week of real rest and refreshment.

Could you use a break from cooking (and everything else) once a week? Not only is rest vital for your mind and body, it’s good for your soul too. God designed us to enter into Sabbath rest one day per week, but as you know, meals still need to be made. Your family still needs to be fed.

Sabbath Soup includes convenient, seasonal meal plans that take the guesswork out of shopping and cooking. More than just a collection of delicious recipes—including main dishes, breads, breakfasts, desserts, salads, sides, and yes, soups—this is your guide to establishing a weekly rhythm and routine of meal planning and prep that allows you to have a true day off.

Do something good for your soul and experience the peace that comes with a full day dedicated to spending time with God, family, and friends. Savor your Sabbath as you proudly proclaim, “Soup’s on!”

Order your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here.

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Meet Our Guest 

 

Hilary Bernstein

Hilary Bernstein is the women’s ministry director at The Chapel in Green, Ohio, where she brings a wealth of experience from her roles as a blogger, newspaper editor, and columnist. A prolific author, Bernstein, has recently published Prayerful Living and twelve other impactful devotional books. More information can be found at hilarybernstein.com.

Tonya Kubo Picture
Transcript

Kathi Lipp (00:10)
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am here with the Clutter-Free queen. It is Tonya Kubo. Hey, Tonya. Okay, we don’t often do top 10 lists, but we’re doing a top 10 list today. I, so this is a two-parter. The first part is 10 things I don’t do now that I live clutter-free.

Tonya Kubo (00:24)
Hey Kathi

Kathi Lipp (00:40)
And next week, we’re going to talk about 10 things I do now that I live clutter free. And so I want to talk to you about how your life has changed, the things that you have stopped. And I just realized I told you we were going to do exactly the opposite podcast, but you know what? We’re we’re just fine. We’re just rolling with it. You know, we’re going to live in the moment here. And so I’m going to get us kicked off because I I think

Tonya Kubo (00:53)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (01:10)
People would not recognize my life From before clutter free now clutter free has not always I did not say hey I’m gonna start something called clutter free and now I’m gonna change my life like I changed my life and Then I thought I’m not the only one like this I wrote a book called clutter free and then I met my friend Tonya Kubo who seemed like the most put-together human being on the planet, but told me no

Tonya Kubo (01:21)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (01:39)
her life was a mess too, and we started to figure all this stuff out together. And what a gift that was because as much as the book helped people, I know that our Clutter-Free Academy, Clutter-Free for Life and this podcast have helped just exponentially more people. I really, people don’t believe that I was cluttery at one point. And I’m like, no, I’m still cluttery at some points, but.

Tonya Kubo (01:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

still cluttering. Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (02:09)
I’m not afraid

to invite you into my house. So I wanted to talk about what are some key things that look different now than they did when I was clutter free. number one, I don’t save up decluttering for the weekends. And this has been a huge shift for me because I would always think as I’ve…

Tonya Kubo (02:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (02:32)
pretty much always been a Monday through Friday, nine to five kind of person and who actually works nine to five. Let’s be clear, it’s eight to six. But I’ve pretty much been that person my whole life and I was just so busy during the week that I’m like, I’m just gonna save all this up for the weekends. And I don’t live like that anymore. Like as I am leaving a room, I’m like, are there things I can grab to throw away, to put away, to declutter?

Tonya Kubo (02:39)
Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (03:00)
Is that similar for you?

Tonya Kubo (03:03)
Yeah, I mean, I still think, you know, because my kids are younger, right? Like our house is always in some state of shambles, but you know, little things that I used to on Fridays clean off my desk, for instance. And now it’s just at the end of the day, right? It just is so much easier to take like a handful of stuff at the end of each day than to have to make multiple trips every Friday.

Kathi Lipp (03:06)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

It makes such a difference, right? Because I don’t know, there’s just something about like, I’ve saved this up for an entire week. You know, instead of just saying, okay, a little bit of time, a little bit of time, my brain has shifted into small amounts of decluttering instead of huge mountains of decluttering. Okay, so that’s number one. Tonya, we’re going back and forth. Tonya, what’s number two?

Tonya Kubo (03:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Kathi Lipp (03:54)
something that you don’t do now that you live clutter-free.

Tonya Kubo (03:57)
Okay, so this might seem silly, but I genuinely used to think unloading the dishwasher took 30 minutes and now I realize it takes about three and a half. So I don’t put off unloading the dishwasher till the weekend. Like seriously, I made it into such a big job in my head and I don’t need more.

Kathi Lipp (04:11)
Right?

Yeah, yes,

I feel like doing the dishes could take a half hour if you’ve got a lot of dishes piled up if you have things that need to be soaked like, you know, deep, deep scrub. Right.

Tonya Kubo (04:24)
Right, but I didn’t say doing the dishes, Kathi. I just

said unload the dishwasher.

Kathi Lipp (04:30)
just thinking maybe that’s why your brain was playing tricks on you and here’s what I know is when you when you unload the dishes here’s the magical thing it’s easier to load the dishes I know that seems like it should be obvious but our cluttery people will get that

Tonya Kubo (04:42)
Right.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.

Kathi Lipp (04:49)
Yeah, okay. Number three, I don’t stand next to the gas pump while it’s filling up. I, okay, so I think a lot of our cluttering friends will get this. I went, those small moments, like just like you were talking about with the microwave, I unload the dishwasher in the two and a half minutes that my, or I at least get it started in the two and a half minutes that my oatmeal is cooking.

Tonya Kubo (05:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (05:18)
And

so now I am married to somebody who does quiet contemplation while his coffee is warming up. And I’m like, you know what, we just live different lives. while I’m pumping my gas, I clean out the car. I just grab a few things. I throw them into the garbage. I feel like that’s free garbage. Garbage is such a big deal up here.

Tonya Kubo (05:24)
Hahaha

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes,

it is free garbage. I am right there with you.

Kathi Lipp (05:45)
It makes me so happy. I can’t even stand it. Yeah, I’m never somebody who would bring garbage from my house to throw away. I’ve heard of people doing that. I know. But if I’ve got a McDonald’s cup, that that’s going in the garbage while I’m pumping. It is I’m doing all the things and even like our truck takes a long time to fill up. I have been known to we have a like a hand vac in the truck.

Tonya Kubo (05:53)
Right. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yup.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:14)
and I’ve been known to like vacuum things out while I’m doing, yeah, it makes me so happy I can’t even stand it. Okay, but I’m doing, what the core concept behind that is it just takes a moment to make a small difference. And like you just said with the unloading dishwasher and even with the, I don’t save up decluttering for the weekends. If I can do a little bit each day, man, the weekends can be for.

Tonya Kubo (06:17)
Nice.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:42)
fun or bigger projects or things like that. Okay, number four, Tonya, what’s something that you don’t do now that you’re living clutter free?

Tonya Kubo (06:44)
Mm-hmm.

I don’t go shopping when I’m tired, hungry, or frustrated.

Kathi Lipp (06:56)
That’s my favorite time to go shopping. Okay, tell me more. Right.

Tonya Kubo (06:58)
It’s everybody’s favorite time to go shopping.

Right. But I mean, something that I learned early on in my clutter free journey is that when I’m tired, I’m hungry or I’m frustrated, my tolerance, like my my impulse control is lower and my desire to soothe is higher. And so I feel like everything I see at the store is going to make me feel better. And it is not.

Kathi Lipp (07:16)
Yeah.

Mmm, good.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (07:26)
to make me feel better. I am still going to leave the store tired, hungry, and frustrated so I may as well just solve those problems before I go.

Kathi Lipp (07:33)
Okay, can I tell you how I’m even worse at this and it’s something I need to correct in my own life. So I go to the store, which is a chore, right? That is an errand. Right. And I feel like because I have done that, even when I was living in San Jose and things were like five minutes, like, look at me checking things off of my list. I deserve a little treat, a little treaty treat. Can we just say that shopping and Target

Tonya Kubo (07:42)
Yeah, it’s a jaunt for you. It’s a jaunt.

Hahaha

Kathi Lipp (08:02)
It’s so much better when you have Starbucks. And so like this is the thinking I have to unpack all the time in my cluttery journey. it just, makes a difference. It makes a difference when you say, and I just, but I try not to go, I pack snacks now in our car so that we are not so tempted.

Tonya Kubo (08:05)
I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:32)
Like it’s okay every once in a while to go to Starbucks, but you don’t get Starbucks every time you leave the house. Yes, okay. And so tired, hungry, frustrated will lead you to, and here’s the other part of that that I think is you’re so wise because I’ll just throw things in my cart and I’ll say I’ll return them later if I’m frustrated. Like, you know, don’t go shopping for jeans when you’re tired, frustrated or hungry. That’s just the meanest thing you could do to yourself.

Tonya Kubo (08:32)
Yeah.

Mmm.

No.

Kathi Lipp (09:00)
but then I’ll buy all the jeans and then I’m like, now I have to take them back. And then like, I already have a return right now of a shirt and it’s, we’re recording this around Christmas time. And I’m like, the last thing I want to do on earth is go into a store and return a shirt. Like I can’t think of anything I want to do less. Okay. Number five, I don’t leave a room without scanning the room. So.

Tonya Kubo (09:04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm

Kathi Lipp (09:27)
What that means is I don’t, I don’t just walk into another room. I will walk into another room, but I will grab the dish that’s on my desk. I will grab the shirt that needs to be returned. Can you tell I’m going through stuff? I will grab the jacket that needs to be hung downstairs. And here’s why I think that this matters. Even if I’m just going into Roger’s office, which is still on the top of the floor.

I’ll move those things to the top of the stairs so that I used to think if I’m gonna do something, I need to do it all the way. And no, I just need to push it forward. I need to push that chore forward. And that makes a huge difference. It’s like, even if I can’t unload the entire dishwasher while my oatmeal is cooking, I’m pushing it forward enough and I’m yelling up to Roger,

Tonya Kubo (10:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (10:26)
The dishes are clean, I’m just not done yet. And so he knows not to put dirty dishes in there. But if you can push it forward, then the next time you’re reheating your coffee, you can push it forward another minute and you might get it done. And so scanning a room, seeing what can I push into place? Because here’s what I know, if I leave it all until I have time, then I’m gonna spend half a day going up and down the stairs. And that sounds like my worst nightmare, I hate that stuff.

Tonya Kubo (10:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (10:56)
Yeah, okay. So we have gone through our top five. We’re gonna take a quick break, pay some bills. We’re gonna come back and Tonya is gonna talk about how she doesn’t apologize. I can’t wait to hear about how you do this. Teach me, Obi-Wan. We’ll be right back. Okay, guys, we are back with 10 things I don’t do now that I live clutter free. So Tonya, you say you don’t apologize. For what?

Tonya Kubo (11:23)
I

apologize for the condition of my house.

Kathi Lipp (11:26)
So tell me more. Tell me how I can get brave and be really like, just come on in.

Tonya Kubo (11:33)
well, just stop doing it. I mean, that’s how I did it, right? It was like a cold turkey. Like, I think there was a bit of a transition of where I would say, I probably should apologize for the state of my house, but I won’t. But I just don’t. And, you know, some people come in and say stuff and some people don’t, and I don’t really care. Because what I realize is we all have a different standard. You know, I used to apologize. And I realized that a lot of people

Kathi Lipp (11:37)
wow.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (12:03)
Like, first of all, I would apologize after spending hours doing a crisis clean because I knew other people would come in and like, and feel like my house was in complete disarray. And I was like, why am I acting like I didn’t just kill myself to make this house look nicer? And then I got to where, you know what? What do I care? mean, people come in, sometimes people are like, wow, you must be really busy. I am. That’s not untrue. I am really busy.

Kathi Lipp (12:13)
Mmm.

Right, right.

It’s a great friend test, right? Can we hang? Can we hang? Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (12:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, but I’m just

like, there’s nothing they could say that’s probably not true to some degree. And I’ve had like repair guys come in, it’s funny, is because the repair guys will come in and our front room doesn’t have flooring. We tore up the flooring and then building costs went up so we have not replaced the flooring. And they’ll go to put the booties on them like, yeah, that’s cute. You don’t have to do that here. And they’ll look around and they’re like, okay.

Kathi Lipp (12:49)
All right. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (13:01)
Every now and then they’ll say, are you sure? Like, yeah, no, we’re good here.

Kathi Lipp (13:06)
Yeah.

Well, it’s so true. Our lives are all in transition, right? And when you have kids, the amount of day-to-day clutter goes up exponentially. Or maybe you’re in the midst of a big project. You know, I’ll never forget during the launch of Clutter Free, book, the state my house was in. It was like, we can’t take any pictures. And just recently,

Tonya Kubo (13:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (13:35)
Tenneil who manages our social media said, Kathi, can we get a video of you pushing in a chair? And right now we’re in Christmas crazies. I’m like, it would take me 45 minutes to get to a place to push in a chair. Right, it’s, yeah, because there’s all the fudge making supplies right there, yeah. So are you really, are you using marshmallow fluff in it?

Tonya Kubo (13:45)
No. To push in the chair. You’re like, “‘Cause I can’t get to the chair to push it in.”

Yes, I’m making fudge this weekend too. Anyway, I am.

I am using marshmallow fluff in it. I took a whole class on how to make fudge using marshmallow fluff. It was fun.

Kathi Lipp (14:05)
I saw that I saw that well,

I saw the fudge class. I didn’t know that there was the marshmallow fluff. Yeah, I’m very excited I’m just using a recipe off the internet But as you know, we live next to not next to you know half I don’t know 20 minutes away from a gourmet chocolate shop, which is the only Yeah, they’re a whiner They ship they’re so good but also let’s just say their fudge has gourmet prices and I’m like

Tonya Kubo (14:16)
Mm-hmm.

Little John’s, they ship. Little John’s, you should order from Little John’s.

Yes

Kathi Lipp (14:35)
How much would it cost for me to do this? And Roger’s like, we can buy their other stuff. We never have to buy fudge again. And I was like, I’m an indentured fudge servant now. Got it. Okay. Okay. You know what? It’s good. Hey, speaking of fudge, number seven, I don’t buy all the gear for hobbies unless I have a pattern of doing the hobby. Because here’s what I’ve discovered, Tonya. You know what my hobby is? Buying the stuff for hobbies.

Tonya Kubo (14:44)
Yes, I am too.

Mmm.

I

was gonna say preparing to have a hobby.

Kathi Lipp (15:07)
So here’s what I said, know, like one of the recipes that I am preparing right now called for a candy thermometer. And I’m like, ugh.

Tonya Kubo (15:17)
I need that for the fudge recipe with the marshmallow fluff. You need a candy thermometer.

Kathi Lipp (15:20)
Okay, so here’s what I told

myself if I prepare three recipes right now that don’t require the the thermometer if I if I prepare these three Christmas gift II things then I am allowed to buy a Candy thermometer and I got one by the way Michaels has 30 % off coupons for a while now. So go check that out I got the I think it’s the Wilson one but

Tonya Kubo (15:34)
Mm-hmm.

Ew.

Kathi Lipp (15:49)
I cannot tell you how many hobbies I’ve invested in and had to keep that stuff because I invest I told myself I’ve invested so heavily I need to keep all this stuff. It just it doesn’t make sense and it’s not the right thing. So I no longer I need to have a pattern of Can I start this hobby with stuff I have or can I start this hobby for less than ten dollars? And if I find that I really enjoy it

Tonya Kubo (15:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (16:19)
Then I will keep going but I am NOT going to go I’ll just say my history is buying at a professional level and performing at an amateur level like it’s not good

Tonya Kubo (16:30)
I

know that feeling though. If I have the same paints and brushes that Bob Ross has, I will make the same pictures that Bob Ross made.

Kathi Lipp (16:37)
Right.

Right, right.

And you know, our friend Cheri Gregory, friend of the podcast, Cheri Gregory calls it buying to become and I have done that for years and years. Okay, Tonya, number eight.

Tonya Kubo (16:49)
Yeah.

Okay, I kind of stole from you because you said that you scan a room before you leave. Before I go to bed, I make a round through the house specifically for dirty dishes. And here’s my, if I made a round through my house for decluttering, I would never make it to bed. But I can make a pass through my teeny tiny house just for dirty dishes in about 25 minutes. And it makes my life so much easier that

Kathi Lipp (16:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

so smart.

No, of course not.

Hmm

Tonya Kubo (17:24)
Like, know, because all run into bulls, where are all the bulls? The bulls are in the kids’ room underneath the bed. Why are they underneath the bed? I actually can’t answer that question, but that is where I find them.

Kathi Lipp (17:33)
Okay, Tonya, we are missing a bowl right now. There are just two of us. There are just two of us. This giant glass bowl, we cannot find. Is it under Lily’s bed? That’s my question now.

Tonya Kubo (17:36)
Maybe it’s under my bed!

It’s probably under Lily’s bed, and this is the worst of it, right? Is the way that Abby’s bed works, it sits lower to the ground. So Abby shoves stuff underneath Lily’s bed too. It’s not even all Lily’s fault.

Kathi Lipp (17:52)
Ugh.

Poor Lily. I’m sorry Lily. I did not mean to throw you under the bus bus or the bed Okay, so you do so what 25 minutes that seems like a long time so break that down for me Really okay

Tonya Kubo (18:13)
It’s a lot of dishes in my kid’s room and a lot of

dishes by Mr. Kubo’s desk. So it’s two trips. Two to three trips from the girl’s room, two trips from Brian’s desk and then

Kathi Lipp (18:20)
Got it. So you’re having to make multiple trips. Got it. Okay. And then

And and you’re

loading you’re soaking all that. Okay, that makes more sense. Okay Okay, that makes total sense. And I think doing doing a round of dishes I really feel like when everything else in your life falls apart the two things that you need to stay on top of are dishes and laundry because Mm-hmm. Yeah

Tonya Kubo (18:49)
Yes and I will say just really quickly that 25 minutes

does include a good five minute temper tantrum of my gosh what is growing in this thing.

Kathi Lipp (19:00)
I love it. Yeah, the the the Dishes and laundry if you stay on top of those like I don’t care how crunchy your kitchen floor gets I don’t care, you know at the I would say the third thing but this doesn’t have to be done as Much is staying on top of bills. Those are the important things that if you fall behind on them It’s going to be super painful to recover from them

Tonya Kubo (19:01)
That’s in there too.

No.

Mm-hmm. yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (19:25)
But if you can stay on top of those three things, it takes almost the same amount of energy to mop the floor when it’s been a week or five weeks. Like, I don’t want you to have to go five weeks, but if you need to in a crisis, you can. And yeah, and also stay on top of your garbage and recycling. number nine. This is my last thing of things I don’t do now that I live clutter free.

Tonya Kubo (19:37)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (19:55)
Okay, I try not to I’m still working through this but I’m much better than I used to be I don’t compare my stuff to my friends stuff so Or stuff on social media. There is always a new thing That would make my life two percent easier or two percent better Not not my entire life if something made my entire life two percent better you bet I’m going to invest in that but like

Tonya Kubo (20:04)
Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:25)
Let’s say, know, my, my robot vacuum, there are now robot vacuums that you can control remotely. Like I could be at my mom’s house and now I could get that doesn’t make my life better enough to upgrade my robot. Like my robots fine. We get along. We, she does what she needs to do. I’m sorry. It’s normally a he. I don’t know why I said she, cause I like for all my domestic labor to be he’s.

Tonya Kubo (20:34)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:55)
Because I just think that’s fair But I Just because somebody else has something that has made their life Infamates Lee better. It doesn’t mean that I need to upgrade it. I I try when I see you wearing a cute sweater I’m not going to say you know what? need that cute sweater. I’m gonna I’m one of things I’m trying to do is go into my own closet

Tonya Kubo (21:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (21:22)
and see

my own cute sweaters and the things that make me happy. So I’m trying really hard to reframe what my friends have. And also that can be a form of jealousy. I can just say, you know what? I’m really happy that Tonya has that sweater. I think she looks great in it. She’s having fun with it. And it makes me happy to see her in it. And it doesn’t have to be, I don’t have to own it for it to bring me happiness. So trying to stay out of that comparison trap.

Tonya Kubo (21:33)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (21:52)
And I’m sure when you go into people’s houses that have floors, that can be hard.

Tonya Kubo (21:57)
I do have floor envy right now, I’m not gonna lie. If you’ve got luxury vinyl plank, I’m eyeballing your floors, let me tell ya.

Kathi Lipp (21:59)
I you do.

And I do have that upstairs and I wrestled over that decision for about two years And I’m so glad we pulled the trigger It’s so painful to get flooring done just because of all the moving and shifting and all that kind of stuff Okay, Tonya round out our list. Give us number ten. All right

Tonya Kubo (22:09)
Yeah, no.

It is.

My cluttery peeps will get this. I no longer gain comfort or security from having full shelves, full drawers, etc.

Kathi Lipp (22:33)
yeah, space scares us, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:37)
Space is scary because space is scarcity and lack and my gosh what

if I don’t have enough. But if things are full even if they’re full of stuff that you haven’t worn in 22 years you believe you have enough clothes if for some reason they stopped making all clothing.

Kathi Lipp (22:48)
Right?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so Tonya, this is so interesting. A number of people on TikTok and other apps are doing a no buy 2025, right? And the conventional wisdom is declutter your closet so you can see what you have. And then, so you know what you have, because it is, it’s easier to see what you have when you have less stuff in your closet.

Tonya Kubo (23:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (23:22)
But I heard one woman, I thought this was so interesting. And I’m just gonna throw this out there for your reaction. She goes, I am not decluttering before my 2025. Because when I declutter, I feel like there is empty space. And I feel this urge to fill that space with shopping, with thrifting, with all these other things. So what she is doing is she is.

Tonya Kubo (23:39)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (23:50)
putting some of her clothes into another closet, including clothes she likes, so that she will, she remember, I’ve got more stuff. I don’t know, how does that hit you? I thought it was really interesting. Really.

Tonya Kubo (23:53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I have a friend who does that actually. she has,

yeah, so she boxes up all of her extra stuff, even if it’s in the current season. And she has it all in like the rafters of her garage. But whenever she’s like, I wanna go shopping, she just goes and she takes a box down and she trades out pieces.

Kathi Lipp (24:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You know, I think it’s really interesting. And so I’m not saying one way is better than the other. I’m going to try the other closet boxing because yeah, when I pull out all my winter stuff, I’m so happy. I’m like, I never need to go shopping again. And then after about two weeks, I’m like, you know, people are really into these green grandpa sweaters and like, okay, Kathi, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Tonya Kubo (24:50)
Yeah,

see, and I’m the person, I want all of my clothing to be able to fit in this much of my closet. Like, I don’t wanna ever change anything out. I don’t wanna work that hard. I’m just so, like, I don’t wanna say lazy, but really it’s just like, that is just something that takes such a high level of perceived energy for me that I’m like, I’m good.

Kathi Lipp (24:56)
Yes, you.

Yeah.

Okay, see, even within our Cluttery community, we all have our own little quirks. And that’s why it’s okay for you to forge your own path, but think about the wisdom that will get you to the next space in your Clutter-free journey. I hope one of these has inspired you today. Tonya, thanks so much for hanging out with me.

Tonya Kubo (25:18)
We do.

Thanks for having me.

Kathi Lipp (25:37)
And friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you always wanted to live.

 

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Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

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Order your copy of Sabbath Soup: Weekly Menus and Rhythms to Make Space for a Day of Rest here.

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Meet Our Guest 

 

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A professional community strategist, she believes everyone deserves to have a place online where they feel like they belong. Raised by a hoarder, Tonya knows firsthand the pain and isolation that comes from living in conditions others don’t understand. She wants better for her family and her cluttery peeps, which is why she is passionate about the compassionate slow-and-steady approach that makes Clutter Free unique. She lives in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit tonyakubo.com to find out more about her community work, or email her at tonya@kathilipp.org to discuss the Clutter Free Academy podcast and programs.

Tonya Kubo Picture
Transcript

Kathi Lipp (00:10)
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am here with the Clutter-Free queen. It is Tonya Kubo. Hey, Tonya. Okay, we don’t often do top 10 lists, but we’re doing a top 10 list today. I, so this is a two-parter. The first part is 10 things I don’t do now that I live clutter-free.

Tonya Kubo (00:24)
Hey Kathi

Kathi Lipp (00:40)
And next week, we’re going to talk about 10 things I do now that I live clutter free. And so I want to talk to you about how your life has changed, the things that you have stopped. And I just realized I told you we were going to do exactly the opposite podcast, but you know what? We’re we’re just fine. We’re just rolling with it. You know, we’re going to live in the moment here. And so I’m going to get us kicked off because I I think

Tonya Kubo (00:53)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (01:10)
People would not recognize my life From before clutter free now clutter free has not always I did not say hey I’m gonna start something called clutter free and now I’m gonna change my life like I changed my life and Then I thought I’m not the only one like this I wrote a book called clutter free and then I met my friend Tonya Kubo who seemed like the most put-together human being on the planet, but told me no

Tonya Kubo (01:21)
No.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (01:39)
her life was a mess too, and we started to figure all this stuff out together. And what a gift that was because as much as the book helped people, I know that our Clutter-Free Academy, Clutter-Free for Life and this podcast have helped just exponentially more people. I really, people don’t believe that I was cluttery at one point. And I’m like, no, I’m still cluttery at some points, but.

Tonya Kubo (01:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah,

still cluttering. Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (02:09)
I’m not afraid

to invite you into my house. So I wanted to talk about what are some key things that look different now than they did when I was clutter free. number one, I don’t save up decluttering for the weekends. And this has been a huge shift for me because I would always think as I’ve…

Tonya Kubo (02:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (02:32)
pretty much always been a Monday through Friday, nine to five kind of person and who actually works nine to five. Let’s be clear, it’s eight to six. But I’ve pretty much been that person my whole life and I was just so busy during the week that I’m like, I’m just gonna save all this up for the weekends. And I don’t live like that anymore. Like as I am leaving a room, I’m like, are there things I can grab to throw away, to put away, to declutter?

Tonya Kubo (02:39)
Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (03:00)
Is that similar for you?

Tonya Kubo (03:03)
Yeah, I mean, I still think, you know, because my kids are younger, right? Like our house is always in some state of shambles, but you know, little things that I used to on Fridays clean off my desk, for instance. And now it’s just at the end of the day, right? It just is so much easier to take like a handful of stuff at the end of each day than to have to make multiple trips every Friday.

Kathi Lipp (03:06)
Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

It makes such a difference, right? Because I don’t know, there’s just something about like, I’ve saved this up for an entire week. You know, instead of just saying, okay, a little bit of time, a little bit of time, my brain has shifted into small amounts of decluttering instead of huge mountains of decluttering. Okay, so that’s number one. Tonya, we’re going back and forth. Tonya, what’s number two?

Tonya Kubo (03:33)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Kathi Lipp (03:54)
something that you don’t do now that you live clutter-free.

Tonya Kubo (03:57)
Okay, so this might seem silly, but I genuinely used to think unloading the dishwasher took 30 minutes and now I realize it takes about three and a half. So I don’t put off unloading the dishwasher till the weekend. Like seriously, I made it into such a big job in my head and I don’t need more.

Kathi Lipp (04:11)
Right?

Yeah, yes,

I feel like doing the dishes could take a half hour if you’ve got a lot of dishes piled up if you have things that need to be soaked like, you know, deep, deep scrub. Right.

Tonya Kubo (04:24)
Right, but I didn’t say doing the dishes, Kathi. I just

said unload the dishwasher.

Kathi Lipp (04:30)
just thinking maybe that’s why your brain was playing tricks on you and here’s what I know is when you when you unload the dishes here’s the magical thing it’s easier to load the dishes I know that seems like it should be obvious but our cluttery people will get that

Tonya Kubo (04:42)
Right.

Yeah, no, exactly, exactly.

Kathi Lipp (04:49)
Yeah, okay. Number three, I don’t stand next to the gas pump while it’s filling up. I, okay, so I think a lot of our cluttering friends will get this. I went, those small moments, like just like you were talking about with the microwave, I unload the dishwasher in the two and a half minutes that my, or I at least get it started in the two and a half minutes that my oatmeal is cooking.

Tonya Kubo (05:01)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (05:18)
And

so now I am married to somebody who does quiet contemplation while his coffee is warming up. And I’m like, you know what, we just live different lives. while I’m pumping my gas, I clean out the car. I just grab a few things. I throw them into the garbage. I feel like that’s free garbage. Garbage is such a big deal up here.

Tonya Kubo (05:24)
Hahaha

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yes,

it is free garbage. I am right there with you.

Kathi Lipp (05:45)
It makes me so happy. I can’t even stand it. Yeah, I’m never somebody who would bring garbage from my house to throw away. I’ve heard of people doing that. I know. But if I’ve got a McDonald’s cup, that that’s going in the garbage while I’m pumping. It is I’m doing all the things and even like our truck takes a long time to fill up. I have been known to we have a like a hand vac in the truck.

Tonya Kubo (05:53)
Right. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yup.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:14)
and I’ve been known to like vacuum things out while I’m doing, yeah, it makes me so happy I can’t even stand it. Okay, but I’m doing, what the core concept behind that is it just takes a moment to make a small difference. And like you just said with the unloading dishwasher and even with the, I don’t save up decluttering for the weekends. If I can do a little bit each day, man, the weekends can be for.

Tonya Kubo (06:17)
Nice.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:42)
fun or bigger projects or things like that. Okay, number four, Tonya, what’s something that you don’t do now that you’re living clutter free?

Tonya Kubo (06:44)
Mm-hmm.

I don’t go shopping when I’m tired, hungry, or frustrated.

Kathi Lipp (06:56)
That’s my favorite time to go shopping. Okay, tell me more. Right.

Tonya Kubo (06:58)
It’s everybody’s favorite time to go shopping.

Right. But I mean, something that I learned early on in my clutter free journey is that when I’m tired, I’m hungry or I’m frustrated, my tolerance, like my my impulse control is lower and my desire to soothe is higher. And so I feel like everything I see at the store is going to make me feel better. And it is not.

Kathi Lipp (07:16)
Yeah.

Mmm, good.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (07:26)
to make me feel better. I am still going to leave the store tired, hungry, and frustrated so I may as well just solve those problems before I go.

Kathi Lipp (07:33)
Okay, can I tell you how I’m even worse at this and it’s something I need to correct in my own life. So I go to the store, which is a chore, right? That is an errand. Right. And I feel like because I have done that, even when I was living in San Jose and things were like five minutes, like, look at me checking things off of my list. I deserve a little treat, a little treaty treat. Can we just say that shopping and Target

Tonya Kubo (07:42)
Yeah, it’s a jaunt for you. It’s a jaunt.

Hahaha

Kathi Lipp (08:02)
It’s so much better when you have Starbucks. And so like this is the thinking I have to unpack all the time in my cluttery journey. it just, makes a difference. It makes a difference when you say, and I just, but I try not to go, I pack snacks now in our car so that we are not so tempted.

Tonya Kubo (08:05)
I’m sure it is, I’m sure it is.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (08:32)
Like it’s okay every once in a while to go to Starbucks, but you don’t get Starbucks every time you leave the house. Yes, okay. And so tired, hungry, frustrated will lead you to, and here’s the other part of that that I think is you’re so wise because I’ll just throw things in my cart and I’ll say I’ll return them later if I’m frustrated. Like, you know, don’t go shopping for jeans when you’re tired, frustrated or hungry. That’s just the meanest thing you could do to yourself.

Tonya Kubo (08:32)
Yeah.

Mmm.

No.

Kathi Lipp (09:00)
but then I’ll buy all the jeans and then I’m like, now I have to take them back. And then like, I already have a return right now of a shirt and it’s, we’re recording this around Christmas time. And I’m like, the last thing I want to do on earth is go into a store and return a shirt. Like I can’t think of anything I want to do less. Okay. Number five, I don’t leave a room without scanning the room. So.

Tonya Kubo (09:04)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm

Kathi Lipp (09:27)
What that means is I don’t, I don’t just walk into another room. I will walk into another room, but I will grab the dish that’s on my desk. I will grab the shirt that needs to be returned. Can you tell I’m going through stuff? I will grab the jacket that needs to be hung downstairs. And here’s why I think that this matters. Even if I’m just going into Roger’s office, which is still on the top of the floor.

I’ll move those things to the top of the stairs so that I used to think if I’m gonna do something, I need to do it all the way. And no, I just need to push it forward. I need to push that chore forward. And that makes a huge difference. It’s like, even if I can’t unload the entire dishwasher while my oatmeal is cooking, I’m pushing it forward enough and I’m yelling up to Roger,

Tonya Kubo (10:00)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (10:26)
The dishes are clean, I’m just not done yet. And so he knows not to put dirty dishes in there. But if you can push it forward, then the next time you’re reheating your coffee, you can push it forward another minute and you might get it done. And so scanning a room, seeing what can I push into place? Because here’s what I know, if I leave it all until I have time, then I’m gonna spend half a day going up and down the stairs. And that sounds like my worst nightmare, I hate that stuff.

Tonya Kubo (10:29)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (10:56)
Yeah, okay. So we have gone through our top five. We’re gonna take a quick break, pay some bills. We’re gonna come back and Tonya is gonna talk about how she doesn’t apologize. I can’t wait to hear about how you do this. Teach me, Obi-Wan. We’ll be right back. Okay, guys, we are back with 10 things I don’t do now that I live clutter free. So Tonya, you say you don’t apologize. For what?

Tonya Kubo (11:23)
I

apologize for the condition of my house.

Kathi Lipp (11:26)
So tell me more. Tell me how I can get brave and be really like, just come on in.

Tonya Kubo (11:33)
well, just stop doing it. I mean, that’s how I did it, right? It was like a cold turkey. Like, I think there was a bit of a transition of where I would say, I probably should apologize for the state of my house, but I won’t. But I just don’t. And, you know, some people come in and say stuff and some people don’t, and I don’t really care. Because what I realize is we all have a different standard. You know, I used to apologize. And I realized that a lot of people

Kathi Lipp (11:37)
wow.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (12:03)
Like, first of all, I would apologize after spending hours doing a crisis clean because I knew other people would come in and like, and feel like my house was in complete disarray. And I was like, why am I acting like I didn’t just kill myself to make this house look nicer? And then I got to where, you know what? What do I care? mean, people come in, sometimes people are like, wow, you must be really busy. I am. That’s not untrue. I am really busy.

Kathi Lipp (12:13)
Mmm.

Right, right.

It’s a great friend test, right? Can we hang? Can we hang? Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (12:33)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, but I’m just

like, there’s nothing they could say that’s probably not true to some degree. And I’ve had like repair guys come in, it’s funny, is because the repair guys will come in and our front room doesn’t have flooring. We tore up the flooring and then building costs went up so we have not replaced the flooring. And they’ll go to put the booties on them like, yeah, that’s cute. You don’t have to do that here. And they’ll look around and they’re like, okay.

Kathi Lipp (12:49)
All right. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (13:01)
Every now and then they’ll say, are you sure? Like, yeah, no, we’re good here.

Kathi Lipp (13:06)
Yeah.

Well, it’s so true. Our lives are all in transition, right? And when you have kids, the amount of day-to-day clutter goes up exponentially. Or maybe you’re in the midst of a big project. You know, I’ll never forget during the launch of Clutter Free, book, the state my house was in. It was like, we can’t take any pictures. And just recently,

Tonya Kubo (13:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (13:35)
Tenneil who manages our social media said, Kathi, can we get a video of you pushing in a chair? And right now we’re in Christmas crazies. I’m like, it would take me 45 minutes to get to a place to push in a chair. Right, it’s, yeah, because there’s all the fudge making supplies right there, yeah. So are you really, are you using marshmallow fluff in it?

Tonya Kubo (13:45)
No. To push in the chair. You’re like, “‘Cause I can’t get to the chair to push it in.”

Yes, I’m making fudge this weekend too. Anyway, I am.

I am using marshmallow fluff in it. I took a whole class on how to make fudge using marshmallow fluff. It was fun.

Kathi Lipp (14:05)
I saw that I saw that well,

I saw the fudge class. I didn’t know that there was the marshmallow fluff. Yeah, I’m very excited I’m just using a recipe off the internet But as you know, we live next to not next to you know half I don’t know 20 minutes away from a gourmet chocolate shop, which is the only Yeah, they’re a whiner They ship they’re so good but also let’s just say their fudge has gourmet prices and I’m like

Tonya Kubo (14:16)
Mm-hmm.

Little John’s, they ship. Little John’s, you should order from Little John’s.

Yes

Kathi Lipp (14:35)
How much would it cost for me to do this? And Roger’s like, we can buy their other stuff. We never have to buy fudge again. And I was like, I’m an indentured fudge servant now. Got it. Okay. Okay. You know what? It’s good. Hey, speaking of fudge, number seven, I don’t buy all the gear for hobbies unless I have a pattern of doing the hobby. Because here’s what I’ve discovered, Tonya. You know what my hobby is? Buying the stuff for hobbies.

Tonya Kubo (14:44)
Yes, I am too.

Mmm.

I

was gonna say preparing to have a hobby.

Kathi Lipp (15:07)
So here’s what I said, know, like one of the recipes that I am preparing right now called for a candy thermometer. And I’m like, ugh.

Tonya Kubo (15:17)
I need that for the fudge recipe with the marshmallow fluff. You need a candy thermometer.

Kathi Lipp (15:20)
Okay, so here’s what I told

myself if I prepare three recipes right now that don’t require the the thermometer if I if I prepare these three Christmas gift II things then I am allowed to buy a Candy thermometer and I got one by the way Michaels has 30 % off coupons for a while now. So go check that out I got the I think it’s the Wilson one but

Tonya Kubo (15:34)
Mm-hmm.

Ew.

Kathi Lipp (15:49)
I cannot tell you how many hobbies I’ve invested in and had to keep that stuff because I invest I told myself I’ve invested so heavily I need to keep all this stuff. It just it doesn’t make sense and it’s not the right thing. So I no longer I need to have a pattern of Can I start this hobby with stuff I have or can I start this hobby for less than ten dollars? And if I find that I really enjoy it

Tonya Kubo (15:54)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (16:19)
Then I will keep going but I am NOT going to go I’ll just say my history is buying at a professional level and performing at an amateur level like it’s not good

Tonya Kubo (16:30)
I

know that feeling though. If I have the same paints and brushes that Bob Ross has, I will make the same pictures that Bob Ross made.

Kathi Lipp (16:37)
Right.

Right, right.

And you know, our friend Cheri Gregory, friend of the podcast, Cheri Gregory calls it buying to become and I have done that for years and years. Okay, Tonya, number eight.

Tonya Kubo (16:49)
Yeah.

Okay, I kind of stole from you because you said that you scan a room before you leave. Before I go to bed, I make a round through the house specifically for dirty dishes. And here’s my, if I made a round through my house for decluttering, I would never make it to bed. But I can make a pass through my teeny tiny house just for dirty dishes in about 25 minutes. And it makes my life so much easier that

Kathi Lipp (16:58)
Yeah. Yeah.

so smart.

No, of course not.

Hmm

Tonya Kubo (17:24)
Like, know, because all run into bulls, where are all the bulls? The bulls are in the kids’ room underneath the bed. Why are they underneath the bed? I actually can’t answer that question, but that is where I find them.

Kathi Lipp (17:33)
Okay, Tonya, we are missing a bowl right now. There are just two of us. There are just two of us. This giant glass bowl, we cannot find. Is it under Lily’s bed? That’s my question now.

Tonya Kubo (17:36)
Maybe it’s under my bed!

It’s probably under Lily’s bed, and this is the worst of it, right? Is the way that Abby’s bed works, it sits lower to the ground. So Abby shoves stuff underneath Lily’s bed too. It’s not even all Lily’s fault.

Kathi Lipp (17:52)
Ugh.

Poor Lily. I’m sorry Lily. I did not mean to throw you under the bus bus or the bed Okay, so you do so what 25 minutes that seems like a long time so break that down for me Really okay

Tonya Kubo (18:13)
It’s a lot of dishes in my kid’s room and a lot of

dishes by Mr. Kubo’s desk. So it’s two trips. Two to three trips from the girl’s room, two trips from Brian’s desk and then

Kathi Lipp (18:20)
Got it. So you’re having to make multiple trips. Got it. Okay. And then

And and you’re

loading you’re soaking all that. Okay, that makes more sense. Okay Okay, that makes total sense. And I think doing doing a round of dishes I really feel like when everything else in your life falls apart the two things that you need to stay on top of are dishes and laundry because Mm-hmm. Yeah

Tonya Kubo (18:49)
Yes and I will say just really quickly that 25 minutes

does include a good five minute temper tantrum of my gosh what is growing in this thing.

Kathi Lipp (19:00)
I love it. Yeah, the the the Dishes and laundry if you stay on top of those like I don’t care how crunchy your kitchen floor gets I don’t care, you know at the I would say the third thing but this doesn’t have to be done as Much is staying on top of bills. Those are the important things that if you fall behind on them It’s going to be super painful to recover from them

Tonya Kubo (19:01)
That’s in there too.

No.

Mm-hmm. yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (19:25)
But if you can stay on top of those three things, it takes almost the same amount of energy to mop the floor when it’s been a week or five weeks. Like, I don’t want you to have to go five weeks, but if you need to in a crisis, you can. And yeah, and also stay on top of your garbage and recycling. number nine. This is my last thing of things I don’t do now that I live clutter free.

Tonya Kubo (19:37)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (19:55)
Okay, I try not to I’m still working through this but I’m much better than I used to be I don’t compare my stuff to my friends stuff so Or stuff on social media. There is always a new thing That would make my life two percent easier or two percent better Not not my entire life if something made my entire life two percent better you bet I’m going to invest in that but like

Tonya Kubo (20:04)
Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:25)
Let’s say, know, my, my robot vacuum, there are now robot vacuums that you can control remotely. Like I could be at my mom’s house and now I could get that doesn’t make my life better enough to upgrade my robot. Like my robots fine. We get along. We, she does what she needs to do. I’m sorry. It’s normally a he. I don’t know why I said she, cause I like for all my domestic labor to be he’s.

Tonya Kubo (20:34)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (20:55)
Because I just think that’s fair But I Just because somebody else has something that has made their life Infamates Lee better. It doesn’t mean that I need to upgrade it. I I try when I see you wearing a cute sweater I’m not going to say you know what? need that cute sweater. I’m gonna I’m one of things I’m trying to do is go into my own closet

Tonya Kubo (21:09)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (21:22)
and see

my own cute sweaters and the things that make me happy. So I’m trying really hard to reframe what my friends have. And also that can be a form of jealousy. I can just say, you know what? I’m really happy that Tonya has that sweater. I think she looks great in it. She’s having fun with it. And it makes me happy to see her in it. And it doesn’t have to be, I don’t have to own it for it to bring me happiness. So trying to stay out of that comparison trap.

Tonya Kubo (21:33)
Mmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (21:52)
And I’m sure when you go into people’s houses that have floors, that can be hard.

Tonya Kubo (21:57)
I do have floor envy right now, I’m not gonna lie. If you’ve got luxury vinyl plank, I’m eyeballing your floors, let me tell ya.

Kathi Lipp (21:59)
I you do.

And I do have that upstairs and I wrestled over that decision for about two years And I’m so glad we pulled the trigger It’s so painful to get flooring done just because of all the moving and shifting and all that kind of stuff Okay, Tonya round out our list. Give us number ten. All right

Tonya Kubo (22:09)
Yeah, no.

It is.

My cluttery peeps will get this. I no longer gain comfort or security from having full shelves, full drawers, etc.

Kathi Lipp (22:33)
yeah, space scares us, doesn’t it? Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (22:37)
Space is scary because space is scarcity and lack and my gosh what

if I don’t have enough. But if things are full even if they’re full of stuff that you haven’t worn in 22 years you believe you have enough clothes if for some reason they stopped making all clothing.

Kathi Lipp (22:48)
Right?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, so Tonya, this is so interesting. A number of people on TikTok and other apps are doing a no buy 2025, right? And the conventional wisdom is declutter your closet so you can see what you have. And then, so you know what you have, because it is, it’s easier to see what you have when you have less stuff in your closet.

Tonya Kubo (23:04)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (23:22)
But I heard one woman, I thought this was so interesting. And I’m just gonna throw this out there for your reaction. She goes, I am not decluttering before my 2025. Because when I declutter, I feel like there is empty space. And I feel this urge to fill that space with shopping, with thrifting, with all these other things. So what she is doing is she is.

Tonya Kubo (23:39)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (23:50)
putting some of her clothes into another closet, including clothes she likes, so that she will, she remember, I’ve got more stuff. I don’t know, how does that hit you? I thought it was really interesting. Really.

Tonya Kubo (23:53)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I have a friend who does that actually. she has,

yeah, so she boxes up all of her extra stuff, even if it’s in the current season. And she has it all in like the rafters of her garage. But whenever she’s like, I wanna go shopping, she just goes and she takes a box down and she trades out pieces.

Kathi Lipp (24:10)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

You know, I think it’s really interesting. And so I’m not saying one way is better than the other. I’m going to try the other closet boxing because yeah, when I pull out all my winter stuff, I’m so happy. I’m like, I never need to go shopping again. And then after about two weeks, I’m like, you know, people are really into these green grandpa sweaters and like, okay, Kathi, stop, stop, stop, stop.

Tonya Kubo (24:50)
Yeah,

see, and I’m the person, I want all of my clothing to be able to fit in this much of my closet. Like, I don’t wanna ever change anything out. I don’t wanna work that hard. I’m just so, like, I don’t wanna say lazy, but really it’s just like, that is just something that takes such a high level of perceived energy for me that I’m like, I’m good.

Kathi Lipp (24:56)
Yes, you.

Yeah.

Okay, see, even within our Cluttery community, we all have our own little quirks. And that’s why it’s okay for you to forge your own path, but think about the wisdom that will get you to the next space in your Clutter-free journey. I hope one of these has inspired you today. Tonya, thanks so much for hanging out with me.

Tonya Kubo (25:18)
We do.

Thanks for having me.

Kathi Lipp (25:37)
And friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you always wanted to live.

 

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  • The benefits of joining the supportive, compassionate Clutter Free for Life community

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Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

 

Join Clutter Free For Life

While Clutter Free for Life comes with a plan of action to keep you moving forward in your decluttering journey day after day, the true magic of this membership program is in the community. It’s a program FOR cluttery people BY cluttery people.

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Can you share a personal story about how clutter once isolated you?

Share in the comments!

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Meet Our Guest 

 

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Tonya Kubo Picture
Transcript

 

Well, hey friends, welcome to clutter free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life And I’m back and you know guys, we’re just gonna keep talking about it. We’re gonna keep talking about clutter. We’re gonna keep talking about all the reasons that we need to crush the clutter in our lives, especially as we’re going into the holidays because can we just, okay, I’m gonna say something controversial. Hey, Tonya, by the way. Hey, Tonya’s here. Can I say holidays are their own form of clutter?

 

Tonya Kubo (00:42.622)

Bye.

 

Tonya Kubo (00:49.406)

they totally are.

 

Kathi (00:51.2)

Yeah, that you know, clutter is not always bad. I right now downstairs, I’ve got some clutter on my table. But the clutter on my table is stuff I want. Or I don’t know if I want it, but I have to investigate like there’s mail down there. One of another podcaster I was on her show, we were talking about soups and we were talking about her favorite soup. And she said, my favorite soup is made with chow chow.

 

Tonya Kubo (00:57.49)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (01:21.676)

And I’m like, the only thing I know that is chow chow is either dog foods or dogs. So, do you know what chow chow is? How do you know what chow chow is?

 

Tonya Kubo (01:28.584)

Mm.

 

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Church fundraiser cookbooks?

 

Kathi (01:39.523)

Okay, that is fascinating. So, chow chow, would you explain it because I’ve actually never tasted it. Go for it. Or do you know? I know it’s made with cabbage, right? It’s like a relish with cabbage.

 

Tonya Kubo (01:56.11)

It’s, I think it’s a relish and people put whatever they want in it. It’s one of those things, it reminds me of, you know, it’s like every family has their own way of doing it, but it’s like canned, it’s home canned. And the people who love it, really, really love it. My mom hated it. My mom was like, ehh.

 

Kathi (02:17.48)

Mm-hmm. Okay.

 

Kathi (02:23.128)

So I was having this conversation with another podcaster and she was telling me about her, believe it’s a beef stew recipe that uses chow chow as a main ingredient. And I said, well, that sounds really interesting. She was kind enough to, she went to an Amish store and shipped me two cans of chow chow, or at least that’s what she’s told me. I have not opened the box yet, but I’m gonna go buy the ingredients to make her recipe and.

 

Tonya Kubo (02:27.016)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (02:31.986)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (02:42.162)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (02:47.517)

Right.

 

Kathi (02:52.738)

do that. So it’s clutter, because it’s not put away. But also there’s a category of clutter, where there’s no way to put it yet, because I have never had a chow chow section of my pantry before. And I just like saying chow chow. Can you tell?

 

Tonya Kubo (02:55.676)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (03:07.456)

Right. I know. But remember, our definition of clutter is do you love it? Do you use it? Would you? Could you buy it again? I add the could you part. But for you, you know, it’s like it just needs to find a home.

 

Kathi (03:13.688)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (03:25.408)

So, so Tonya what this is is Schrodinger’s chow chow because I both want it and don’t know if I want it I both will use it and have never used it And I don’t know that I would buy it again because I’ve never bought it once So it is it is Schrodinger’s chow chow and that’s okay. That’s okay

 

Tonya Kubo (03:51.55)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (03:52.362)

We don’t need to we don’t need to have a category for everything there has to be some space in your house for the things that you haven’t decided on but I do want to talk about what clutter can do to us because you and I have both lived with hoarders and I would say one of the the worst part about clutter hoarding is the extreme version obviously

 

Tonya Kubo (04:01.447)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (04:17.662)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (04:20.792)

But even as a young mom, I really struggled with clutter. And I would say it was isolating for me. Like I didn’t want to have people over. I remember thinking, it’s okay to have kids over, but I don’t want to have their parents over until a kid said something about my clutter. And I’m like, well, I don’t want to have anybody over anymore. And I, did you…

 

Tonya Kubo (04:39.154)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (04:48.61)

Did you also experience that isolation with your clutter?

 

Tonya Kubo (04:53.116)

Yeah, well, I mean, you referenced it in your book, Clutter Free. And I remember the first time I read that and realizing, right, like I couldn’t have anybody over when I was a kid. I mean, every now and then my mom would make an exception. But, you know, it was always having to balance like, OK, if I let a friend come over, were they going to go to school and talk about how my house looked? Right. And then, you know, I made a conscious decision, especially when the girls were little, that I wasn’t going to let the condition of my house.

 

Kathi (04:56.492)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (05:13.342)

Right. Yeah, right.

 

Tonya Kubo (05:23.326)

prevent me from inviting people over. So I would just tell people, I’m not cleaning for you. But I had a similar experience when I was pregnant with Abby. And like I had a potluck, a mops potluck at my house. And this one little girl came up to me and she was like, why is your house so messy? And my friend got offended for me. My friend Justine, who you know, got really offended for me. And she was like,

 

Kathi (05:49.358)

Bye now, Justine.

 

Tonya Kubo (05:51.612)

because she works full time. That’s why. she, I remember the little girl, cause she said, you only have one child and my mom has four. Why is your house so messy? My mom keeps our house clean. Which you know she got because her parents were talking about that at home, right?

 

Kathi (06:06.169)

Kathi (06:10.798)

I want to retroactively punch somebody in that family. Maybe not the child, but somebody.

 

Tonya Kubo (06:15.836)

Ha ha ha ha ha!

 

Tonya Kubo (06:20.994)

Right, and so then of course you have my friend Justine Popsin, well because she works full time and your mom doesn’t. Right, which is of course like total mommy-war stuff.

 

Kathi (06:31.106)

Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (06:33.054)

I just looked at it I said, know what? A clean house is a higher priority for your mom and your dad than it is for me and my husband. That’s all.

 

Kathi (06:44.494)

Okay, you gave the highly evolved answer. I might have said something like, well, your mommy’s also on antidepressants, which really helps with the… No, I wouldn’t have said that, but I’d want to say that because there’s no shame in being on antidepressants at all. Let’s be super clear. But also, I would want that little girl to be… I would want to punish her.

 

Tonya Kubo (06:44.572)

End.

 

Tonya Kubo (07:13.15)

Nah, she didn’t know any better.

 

Kathi (07:13.334)

Okay, you know what? I take back what I said about the antidepressants because people I love the most in the world are antidepressants. But that would have been my very unevolved response 30 years ago when I had kids and mops. Okay, that’s cute that I think I had kids. Yeah, 30 years ago. Okay, yeah. So I’m sorry. I’m just I’m, I’m, I’m D detangling stuff.

 

Tonya Kubo (07:30.686)

No.

 

Tonya Kubo (07:36.296)

I apologize for derailing our conversation about isolation.

 

Kathi (07:40.366)

You know, I think about it though, because well, okay, I think we just proved something there, or at least I did my unevolved response proves something. What will make me act terribly faster than shame?

 

Tonya Kubo (07:58.482)

Mm-hmm. yeah, totally. Well, and we have talked about this several times, right? We see that in Clutterfree Academy. I mean, so often, you know, we don’t get a lot of prickly people in there nowadays, right? Because we have such a strong culture and everybody really does want to be kind, but…

 

Kathi (08:01.923)

It

 

Kathi (08:08.47)

Yeah. Yeah.

 

Kathi (08:14.272)

No. Mm hmm.

 

Kathi (08:21.027)

Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (08:21.746)

The times that we do get somebody super prickly, it’s because they are so deeply embedded in shame that they can’t see their way out of it. And I feel like, you know, it’s that hurting people hurt. A lot of times they’ll lash out because they want to take the offensive rather than, cause they assume somebody’s going to lash out at them.

 

Kathi (08:28.941)

Yeah.

 

Kathi (08:34.902)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (08:39.81)

Yeah.

 

Kathi (08:44.844)

Yeah, Tonya, have you heard that? Maybe we’ve talked about it on here, the 17 diapers discussion. Have we talked about that? Yeah. And, you know, I think the people who are so hard on the mom who had 17 diapers for her brand newborn, who was doing it all on her own, are the people who either there are two ends of the spectrum. They get their validation from their house being perfect.

 

Tonya Kubo (08:51.034)

Yes, I think a couple episodes ago.

 

Tonya Kubo (09:04.883)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (09:14.846)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (09:15.554)

Or I could never live like that, but they’ve got some something else that they would never ever tell another human being. And so like, well, I’m not 17 diapers, so you’re worse than I am. Well, yeah, but you know, you do this other thing that you would never want the world to know about. it’s clutter can be so isolating, you know, and I think

 

Tonya Kubo (09:29.896)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (09:43.938)

once we get to a certain point, we feel like we can’t ask for help. Like I dug myself into this. I’m going to dig myself out. And we just don’t have a support system. And we get to this place where there’s so much self-criticism. We start to change the chemistry of our brain to believe, can we actually do something about this or not? So we have well articulated the problem. You have also seen my

 

Tonya Kubo (09:51.036)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (10:13.656)

propensity for rage based on something that was said to Tonya maybe 10 years ago, but here we are. Here we are, friends.

 

Tonya Kubo (10:20.594)

Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (10:25.786)

Everybody knows what a loyal friend you are though, Kathi, now.

 

Kathi (10:28.442)

Yeah, I write it done But I want to come back to what are some things that if you’re feeling in that space where you feel like you can’t do anything What are some things that you can actually get done? So we’re gonna take a little break and come right back

 

Okay, friends, we’re talking about the shame and isolation of clutter. And Tonya and I want to come back and talk to you about that. Because we’ve both been there. We know a lot of people who have been there. And we know that there’s a way out because here, I love that story about the man who falls down in the hole. And a you know this story. And I’m sure most of our listeners do but

 

Tonya Kubo (11:06.856)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (11:11.97)

You know, a priest walks by and says, I see you’re down in the hole. And he throws a prayer down to him. And then a politician comes by. He says, I see you’re down in the hole. And he throws a law down to him. And then there’s a police officer who comes by and he throws a law about you’re not supposed to be down in the hole. And then finally, a friend comes by and

 

He jumps in to the hole and the guy in the hole says, why did you do that? Now we’re both stuck in the hole. And the friend who jumped in says, yeah friend, but I know the way out and I can show you. So let’s get out together. like I’ve heard that story for 25 years ever since I first heard it on West Wing and it still gives me chills because I feel like

 

Tonya Kubo (11:56.36)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (12:10.924)

That is so much of what we do in Clutter-Free Academy and Clutter-Free Life is friend, I’ve been in the hole before, but I actually know the way out. Let’s get out together. And maybe you don’t know your way completely out of the hole. And by the way, Tonya, that person from the Mops group would come to my house today and her daughter would say, why is your house so messy?

 

Tonya Kubo (12:12.882)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (12:39.264)

And I would say, you know what, my house is perfect for me. Because apparently her mom had different priorities and that is just fine for her family. But my home is happy, my home is clean. And we get to do a lot of wonderful cooking and loving and entertaining and work in our homes. And I’m really, really grateful. And so if that sounds like how you want your home to be.

 

Tonya Kubo (12:42.333)

Hahaha

 

Tonya Kubo (12:52.488)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (13:08.18)

If that sounds like how the kind of home you would like your kids or your grandkids to be in, I would love to tell you some things that have happened for us. So first of all, accountability. Tonya, how do you feel like accountability works in our groups?

 

Tonya Kubo (13:26.192)

Yeah, well, in ClutterFree Academy, right, the accountability piece is really more on the member. We have some members that want to be, you know, they want support and accountability. And so they post their before and after pictures. They ask specifically like, hey, you know what, can somebody check in on me at the end of the day, make sure I did what I said I would do. Whereas in ClutterFree for life, because it’s a paid membership program,

 

Kathi (13:34.786)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (13:54.608)

and people really are saying, I am going to pay you to boss me around, Tonya Kathi Grace, right? We actually are a little bit more proactive in the accountability. So we’re checking in daily. I am somebody who pays attention if somebody who has been active is quiet and I reach out to them. And usually, I mean, like I’m not like calling them or showing up at their house, okay? I’m not over the top, but I’ll tag them in a post in the group.

 

Kathi (13:59.778)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (14:12.812)

Mmm. Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (14:23.486)

I might drop them an email just to see. Because the thing is, is I know life gets in the way of our best intentions all the time. And what I know is that once you fall out of that routine, sometimes, like for me, all I need to do is skip two days and it’s no longer my routine. It’s no longer a habit. Like that’s how fragile my habits are. And so I know that on day three, it’s very easy to say, well, you know what? I messed up. I’m out for the whole month.

 

Kathi (14:31.63)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

 

Kathi (14:52.332)

Right. If it’s not perfect, then I’m not going to get the rewards of somebody who’s perfect. So I’m out of here.

 

Tonya Kubo (14:52.999)

Right?

 

Tonya Kubo (14:58.982)

Yeah, or you know what? I have let Tonya and Kathi down. I get apology emails left and right. I am so sorry, Tonya, but this happened and that happened and you know what? I’m like, I get it because I felt that way too. And I’m always like, please pick up wherever you left off, just pick it up. We’re here for you. Is there something I can immediately help you with? And I’ll tag them in that post or that coaching session. Because that’s the other thing is,

 

Kathi (15:17.101)

Yeah.

 

Yes.

 

Tonya Kubo (15:28.062)

Our weekly coaching sessions, as much as they are designed to help people with the next step, they’re a great place for people to come and discuss what’s hard and get peer-to-peer support in addition to support from our team.

 

Kathi (15:39.074)

Yeah.

 

Kathi (15:43.758)

Yes, and I love the accountability. It keeps me on track because it’s so easy for life to crowd out things in another way. But the accountability says, no, Kathi, you’ve said that this is important to you. We’re just reminding ourselves of what’s important and that’s what we need. So there’s power and accountability being able and I think part of the accountability for me is to say I’m not the worst person in the world.

 

Tonya Kubo (15:52.819)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (16:00.538)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (16:14.297)

yeah.

 

Kathi (16:14.316)

that I don’t have the worst house in the world. And another part, and I know you’ll get this Tonya, and I think our listeners will too, cleaning out that drawer in my bathroom that has been bugging me for so long and has made me feel gross. If I shared that with my family, they might say, well, that’s what you’re supposed to do. But if I share it with,

 

Tonya Kubo (16:17.34)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (16:24.04)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (16:33.555)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (16:41.435)

Right.

 

Kathi (16:43.776)

My clutter free group. They’re going to say no we get this that’s important. That’s big And getting that, you know sharing strategies getting that support Is so crucial, but I think the number one thing for me is saying You don’t need to live in shame I have been there or I am there and you know, the only shameful thing is to give up and I don’t even want to shame people who are giving up because

 

But the only thing that should be like, I need to change this desperately right now is giving up. Because you’ve said that this is important to you and you wanna live a different way and we wanna be there to help you. And the longer I do this, Tonya, the more I see our clutter-free group being like any other recovery group, like an AA meeting or an NA meeting or.

 

Tonya Kubo (17:25.502)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (17:38.322)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (17:42.358)

You know a whatever whatever kind of meeting you can think of way that Yeah, you can do it on your own, but why make it a thousand times harder?

 

You know, because be around people who not only support your recovery, but understand the challenges you’re having in that recovery.

 

Tonya Kubo (18:03.386)

Yeah, well, people having ideas that you haven’t thought of. mean, this is something that has come up quite a bit in the paid membership program is a shoe or buying a shoe organizer to organize unmentionables in a way that they hang on the back of a door in a house that doesn’t have a lot of space. Right.

 

Kathi (18:19.47)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (18:27.138)

Yeah, interesting.

 

Tonya Kubo (18:28.796)

I mean, it’s fascinating actually, the different things you can put in a shoe organizer. But some of us are like, well, it says shoe organizer, so we only think of using that for shoes. And then somebody else says, this is what I do. And you go, I can’t even visualize that. And then they say, well, I’ll just post a picture. And then you’re like, wow.

 

Kathi (18:33.667)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (18:39.512)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (18:50.006)

Yeah. Okay. You know why I love that so much, Tonya? my goodness. Do you know why I love that? Because the things online are only the aesthetically pleasing things because you want to be able to go to your drawer and see all the little compartments and you want to get that high from it being overly organized and color coordinated. And you know, there are organizing systems out there that, you know, you, you put things from yellow to purple.

 

Tonya Kubo (19:01.32)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (19:19.772)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (19:20.026)

And that’s the only way you’re and it makes me crazy because our houses are not set up like that I don’t have a walk-in closet My closet is a walkout closet, know, and I do have a shoe organizer in there But can I tell you my shoe organizing system? Do you want to hear how awesome this? Okay So every night when I’m getting into bed and I’m changing into my clothes, I kick my shoes into the bottom

 

Tonya Kubo (19:27.773)

Right.

 

Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (19:39.366)

I do, I wanna hear it.

 

Kathi (19:49.39)

the closet in a jumble and then on Saturdays I put them away so You usually have five to six pairs of shoes on the bottom of the closet For about a week and then I put them away so I can find them again But you know what it works for me. Yeah, am I am I ready to get photographed for House Beautiful? I am NOT and if they came here, I’d break their camera, but it

 

Tonya Kubo (19:51.07)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (20:13.852)

Right.

 

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (20:17.792)

My life is so much better than my shoes being all over the house every day tripping over them. It’s, it’s, do I want to be perfect or do I want to be sustainable? I want to be sustainable.

 

Tonya Kubo (20:30.46)

Yeah, no, exactly. mean, and I’m somebody, I only like alternate between two pairs of shoes usually. I tuck them underneath the bed, right? Because I get dressed in the dark because I get up hours before Brian does. So I just, there’s one little spot underneath the bed. That’s where my shoes live. I put them on, I’m good to go. And I think that’s the other thing that, so there is a time for aesthetics. There really is.

 

Kathi (20:36.824)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (20:40.366)

Perfect. Yeah.

 

Kathi (20:45.836)

Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (21:00.892)

But most of us now is not that time, right? Now is the time to minimize, like get as much out of there and to make our houses functional. So, you know, like for us right now, like socks are such a battle when you have kids and it was fine when their feet were not as big as mine. Now that our feet are all the same size.

 

Kathi (21:12.782)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (21:18.638)

Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (21:27.774)

It’s a problem. So we have two of those fabric cubes and all the socks go in there and we don’t match them. We don’t do anything. It is absolutely not a great long-term solution, but I don’t have socks all over the house and I’m not worried about whose socks are in whose drawer.

 

Kathi (21:44.814)

Okay, can I tell you my ultimate sock solution that I did when I had teenagers? I don’t know if this will work for you, but my girls would keep stealing my socks. I had black no-show socks. So what I did was I ordered a dozen Barney socks and.

 

Tonya Kubo (21:48.59)

I’ll take it. I will take it.

 

Kathi (22:11.726)

they were never touched by my teenage girls.

 

Tonya Kubo (22:15.423)

that’s funny.

 

Kathi (22:16.972)

Because I was so sick of, I literally did not have socks. And I’m like, I, go ahead.

 

Tonya Kubo (22:21.478)

Right. Well, I was going to say, yeah, I don’t have socks, but it’s not the girl’s fault. Remember, Brian does the laundry and Brian has an organization system that is called Mine Not Mine.

 

Kathi (22:29.326)

Right?

 

Tonya Kubo (22:36.922)

And if it is not his, then it goes all in the same pile. Right? And so the girls and I, was like their underwear in my drawer, my underwear in their drawer. And I would always like hold up their underwear. like, what part of you thinks this is my size? And that’s when he explained, he’s like, Tonya, it’s a simple system. It’s mine and not mine. And if it’s not mine, I just kind of assume maybe it’s yours.

 

Kathi (22:43.01)

Yes.

 

Kathi (22:47.726)

Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (22:53.366)

Right, right, right, right.

 

Kathi (23:05.302)

Okay, thank you, Brian, for doing laundry. Grateful.

 

Tonya Kubo (23:06.59)

Exactly. I am grateful for the laundry and now we have this weird commingled sock thing, but it works for now. once, Lily and I have been talking about this, it’s like, okay, once our frustration level gets to the point that we are ready to solve it on our own, we will do that. Until then we do not complain and we tolerate the solution that dad has come up

 

Kathi (23:25.708)

Right. Right.

 

Yes, Barney the Dinosaur, just keep that in your back pocket.

 

Tonya Kubo (23:34.928)

I might actually, that’s tempting.

 

Kathi (23:39.138)

Yeah, just make your stuff so undesirable that nobody else in the house will touch it. Yeah. Okay. So Tonya, this is literally the last day of our sale.

 

Tonya Kubo (23:44.872)

Right.

 

Tonya Kubo (23:51.794)

Right, well, we haven’t even talked about the clutter free for life sale!

 

Kathi (23:54.646)

So here’s why I’m gonna ask you if people are feeling isolated, what is our last ditch effort to say one, you’re the person who might benefit from this and two, what it’s gonna change for you.

 

Tonya Kubo (24:09.05)

I mean, it’s clutter free for life, right? So I guess here’s the thing is if you were looking for your house to be Pinterest perfect in 30 days, this is not the program for you. This is for the person who says it’s going to take time. It’s going to take effort. It’s a day to day thing that I’m going to have to work on. I’m going to slip. I’m going to fall. I might not even like look at the program materials for three months time. I may not. But when I’m ready,

 

Kathi (24:12.045)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (24:39.354)

I will have this whole community of people who are waiting for me and are happy to help me pick back up. Then Clutter Free for Life is 100 % for you. You can do our annual pass right now. It’s over 60 % off of regular price. Month to month is totally an option as well. But right now the annual pass is just 118 for a whole year. That’s what, like nine bucks? You do the math way better than I do, Kathi. It’s like nine bucks a month.

 

Kathi (25:04.098)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

 

Tonya Kubo (25:07.958)

And it’s worth trying out and giving it a go. And if it’s not for you, then you’ll know in the first 30 days, I think. Because we’re pretty laid back and sometimes we’re just too laid back for people. I get that. But I really think you just… They do. People do come in really expecting me to be mean. And I’m just like, I don’t have it in me. I’m sorry.

 

Kathi (25:16.482)

Yeah, for sure.

 

Kathi (25:21.696)

Yeah, no, they want us to be meaner to them.

 

Kathi (25:30.732)

No, that’s not what we do here. We’re nice and Right

 

Tonya Kubo (25:34.106)

I have a lot of compassion and I think my compassion, I actually had somebody last January who was like, no, like I don’t deserve compassion. And I was like, yeah, you do. And they were telling me, they’re like, you don’t understand. And they were telling me like how lazy they were and all these things. And I said, wow, you have really high expectations of yourself. And they were like, well, yeah. And I said, and how’s that working? And they just kind of stopped. And I said, you know, like,

 

Kathi (25:46.04)

We all deserve compassion.

 

Tonya Kubo (26:04.07)

I can’t say the word right now. Recrimination, self-recrimination has, like it sounds like you have a history of that and it hasn’t been effective. So what if we tried compassion?

 

Kathi (26:06.636)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Kathi (26:14.092)

Yeah, yeah, because if you’re going to keep doing the same thing you’ve always been doing and it hasn’t worked And here’s the thing I come from a generation I come from generations of people who wanted to shame themselves into better behavior And it just it doesn’t work. Okay friends today’s the last day, but here’s the beautiful thing if it doesn’t work for you 30-day guarantee what if you got to lose and I think

 

Tonya Kubo (26:28.882)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

 

Kathi (26:43.488)

If you stick with it, you’re gonna see results. You may not feel like you see results in the first week, but within the first two weeks, you’re gonna start to see some noticeable results in your life. And we wanna be there to cheer you on. So I’m putting the link down there. It’s normally 299. You can join any time of the year for 299. But if you wanna get the super, because we like to onboard everybody at once. It saves our team a lot of time and a lot of energy.

 

Tonya Kubo (26:55.166)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (27:10.79)

Yep.

 

Kathi (27:13.006)

118 and That’s It’s less than $10 a month To know that you’re on the right track Tonya. Thanks for hanging out with me Okay, and friends, thank you for hanging out you’ve been listening to clutter free Academy. I’m Kathi lip now Go start the clutter free life. You’ve always wanted to live

 

Tonya Kubo (27:21.63)

Mm-hmm.

 

Tonya Kubo (27:26.44)

Thanks for having me.

  

 

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Hey there, friend! You know that feeling when you’ve spent an entire weekend decluttering, only to find your house looking exactly the same three weeks later?

You are definitely not alone!

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Listeners will discover:

  • The value of setting realistic goals with a maximum of three priorities per day
  • Ways to help children develop organizational skills without creating tension
  • The importance of understanding different organizational styles within the family
  • Why small, consistent actions lead to lasting change

The hosts share personal experiences with generational clutter patterns and discuss how different organizational styles within families can impact home management.

Click here to be notified when the next podcast episode is released!

Also, stay up to date and sign up here to receive our newsletter.

 

Join Clutter Free For Life

While Clutter Free for Life comes with a plan of action to keep you moving forward in your decluttering journey day after day, the true magic of this membership program is in the community. It’s a program FOR cluttery people BY cluttery people.

It’s a family of cluttery people who want better for themselves and for you. We all understand the emotional weight of clutter and the physical barriers it causes. Clutter Free for Life members have a team of experts who know what it’s like to feel overwhelmed as their guides. Want to see whether the membership is right for you? Check out our info page Clutter Free For Life.

What’s your advice for someone who feels overwhelmed by generational clutter patterns?

Share in the comments!

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Meet Our Guest 

 

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

Tonya Kubo Picture
Transcript

 

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am back with your Clutter Crusader. It is Tonya Kubo. Hey, Tonya. So today, I think this is such an interesting topic that we’re gonna be talking about today, is the clutter cycle. 

  

Tonya Kubo (00:49.324) 

Hey Kathi. 

  

Kathi (00:59.717) 

And there are lots of ways that we can be talking about the clutter cycle. You and I have both had cycles in our family that were clutter. I mean, I remember, I don’t know, did you know your grandparents? You did? Okay, were they cluttery people? 

  

Tonya Kubo (01:17.426) 

so my grandmother died before I was born, but my grandfather, he was disabled. like, he didn’t, like he, we lived with him. So it can’t really say whether he was cluddery or not. 

  

Kathi (01:27.337) 

Kathi (01:30.863) 

Got it. Okay, because your mom who was a hoarder could have been the one who was bringing the clutter in. Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (01:39.328) 

Yeah, I mean, so what I know is that my grandmother was very, very particular about how clean the house was. And there was a 100 % right way to do things and then everything else was wrong. 

  

Kathi (01:48.133) 

Mmm. 

  

Kathi (01:52.655) 

Got it. Isn’t that interesting? So on my mom’s side, like my mom would get in trouble if she didn’t clean up all the little pieces of paper from the paper dolls, or if she left the scissors out. And on my dad’s side, I just remember chaos. Like, you know, my grandfather was a house painter after his sports career, and my grandmother was an artist. 

  

Tonya Kubo (02:06.317) 

Mmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (02:11.63) 

Mm. 

  

Kathi (02:21.569) 

And I just remember there was always stuff around, like just stuff. But it didn’t feel cluttered to me. It just felt full. I don’t know, you know, a perspective of little kids. So there’s those kind of cycles. But then there’s also the cycle of just the overwhelm of our own house’s clutter. And I think that there is that feeling of overwhelm. And I don’t know where to start. 

  

Tonya Kubo (02:27.288) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (02:31.117) 

Yeah. 

  

Kathi (02:51.333) 

which is the internalized criticism. But then there’s also, if you live with other human beings, the frustration of, is it all up to me? Should it all be up to me? Why is this my problem and not the household problem? I think that you and I have felt that at different times, probably with our kids, but 

  

I also have to defend other people in my family saying, you know, it’s a kid’s job to be cluttery. Like that’s part of their role. And so it’s for me, it’s always been more of a partner thing than it has been a parenting thing. How about for you? 

  

Tonya Kubo (03:27.832) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (03:35.146) 

Mm-hmm. Well, think, yeah, that’s the same. I just, I’m not bothered like other people are bothered by it because I just understand the nature of clutter is that it’s a cycle. And I think other people, and I mean, we see this all the time in the Facebook group, especially when people come in brand new, there is this skewed perspective. 

  

Kathi (03:46.341) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (03:50.213) 

Yeah, yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (04:01.974) 

that if I just get the house decluttered, then it’ll stay that way without me having to do anything extra. And I understand that it’s just an ebb and a flow. 

  

Kathi (04:05.711) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Right. Right. Yes. 

  

Yeah, because we all love that high right after something’s been decluttered, right? Where we know where the scissors are, we can open that box and what it says on the outside of the box is on the inside of the box. And it feels so good. And then, but I think lots of times those decluttering, let’s just say binges where we binge declutter, we are relying 

  

Tonya Kubo (04:39.308) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (04:44.011) 

less on systems and more on memory. Like I just put this thing there last Tuesday, so it’s probably still there. I just put the scissors there last Wednesday, so they’re probably still there. And so we have less of a system and more of a, I just put it there. And then as other people start to get involved in the binge, that’s when it tends to fall apart. 

  

And I know I will admit, I have been the person who says, why can’t you just put it back where it belongs? And they’re like, well, where would that be? Because I wonder if this is part of the cluttering profile, because I’m always trying to improve systems. Because I’m kind of equal creative and executing. 

  

Tonya Kubo (05:34.446) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (05:41.57) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (05:42.669) 

So I’m always trying to think of could we do this better? Could we do this better? Instead of, you know, pouring into deep systems, I’m just trying to always improve the system. So what was true last week is no longer true. Do you feel like that about yourself? Not at all. Do tell. 

  

Tonya Kubo (05:51.48) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (06:00.302) 

Right. Not at all. No. I never, I will never rearrange my furniture. I am the person who moved into a house that had pictures on the walls and I never removed them. 

  

Kathi (06:14.607) 

Shut up. 

  

Tonya Kubo (06:16.782) 

Just don’t care. Like, it’s just, can I live here? Sure. Can I live with this? Fine. I like, I have zero desire for decoration and it falls into my clothing too. You and me talk about clothing all the time. You know, some people are like, Tonya, you’re so good. You know, you just, you’re so into what your purpose here is in the world that you don’t care about styles or trends. And I’m like, no, it’s not cause I’m a better human. It’s cause quite honestly, I don’t have the energy for 

  

Kathi (06:29.123) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (06:46.892) 

Like, I do not feel like I haven’t like ascended to some special like, I don’t need to care about my appearance. I still have the energy. It’s like it has nothing to do with that, but sure. 

  

Kathi (06:56.401) 

Tonya, you’re just so much closer to Jesus than the rest of us. 

  

someday I will be like Tonya. By the way, you look fabulous today. Your glasses are so on point. I love them so much. you know, I also know, yeah, so I do try and I’m not always good about updating the decor. I will say a lot of things that we when we bought this house, they had some really cute stuff that they left behind and it’s still in the same spot. 

  

Tonya Kubo (07:06.318) 

No! 

  

Tonya Kubo (07:10.318) 

Thanks. 

  

Tonya Kubo (07:28.814) 

Mm-hmm. Yeah. 

  

Kathi (07:32.513) 

Then we have people like to kneel in our lives who come to our house and say, can I just rearrange everything? And I’m like, sure, I don’t care. 

  

Tonya Kubo (07:36.099) 

Yeah 

  

After, after to Neil and I visited your house, was like to Neil, can never come to my house. Cause like I like, no, no, you can, you cannot do those things. But you know, and I say this, you know, for our listener, because I do know that some of them kind of trend more toward where I’m at. You know, we had a situation where like where we kept our leftover containers, right? Some people call those tougher wear reusable containers, whatever you call them. We kept them in one like. 

  

Kathi (08:04.133) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (08:06.636) 

when we moved into the house, it was like, yeah, that seems like a good place to put things. So we put them there. We knew for years it was not really functional. were all these problems with it. It took me a year of thinking before I could come up with another place to put it. It’s just, it’s really hard for me to shift. I’m not a good systems creator. I’m a good systems assimilator. Right? So I can ass… 

  

Kathi (08:28.785) 

that’s good. That’s a real skill though. 

  

Tonya Kubo (08:31.606) 

I can assimilate into just about anybody’s system, but to create one from scratch is hard. So no, I’m never thinking of ways to improve the process. 

  

Kathi (08:40.133) 

See I am the good creator, but not the good assimilator like even into my own systems But I am let me just say this a good systems Bullpucky detector When I you know, I just saw an article yesterday dollar store solutions For your storage needs and they were talking about like the Tupperware stuff 

  

Tonya Kubo (08:45.168) 

Tonya Kubo (09:05.486) 

Ugh. 

  

Kathi (09:07.741) 

And they were saying, you should put all of your small storage containers and lids in lingerie bag. And I say, I call a bullpucky on that. No, that would, it’ll make you feel good for a moment, but it will not, it will not make your life better. So here’s what Tonya and I are gonna do. We’re gonna go pay some bills and when you come back, we have fully explored the problem. 

  

Now we’re gonna come up with some solutions to breaking that clutter cycle. So stick with us and we’ll be right back. Okay, Tonya and I are back. we wanna talk about how can you break those clutter cycles. I would love to say for once and for all, this is like those Buzzfeed articles that say, 

  

Stop your snacking once and for all. There’s no stopping your snacking once and for all, but I can give you, Tonya can give you some ideas of how you can interrupt those cycles so that you’re constantly getting better. Because here’s what I’ll say, Tonya, I don’t feel like there has ever been one trick, one solution, anything that has changed my life, but it’s been a lot of small decisions reinforced day over day over day that have 

  

taken me from cluttery to come onto my house. You know, like I feel like that that is the evolution. So the first thing is no overhauls, right? No overhauls. I give you permission from the Lord of Decluttering on High to do 15 minute sessions. 

  

Tonya Kubo (10:35.042) 

Nice, yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (10:44.566) 

Hmm. 

  

Kathi (10:58.213) 

If you have set aside time I give you permission to do up to an hour of decluttering if you’re gonna be going deep on a project because I understand if you’re trying to Declutter a kitchen cabinet It could take 15 minutes. It could take 45 minutes and you don’t want to just do that in 15 minute segments. So Giving yourself focus on 15 minutes 

  

Tonya Kubo (11:18.894) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (11:27.959) 

and give yourself permission once at the maximum twice a week, unless you’re moving or something, for an hour session. Tonya, how does this look in your household? 

  

Tonya Kubo (11:40.59) 

Well, for us, you know, I think we run kind of like a lot of families with small kids. you know, Monday through Friday is really about survival. And then the weekends are where you try to get things reset. So I do like when we’re not and we have tons of activities. So when we don’t have a ton of activities or if we have at least one down day, I have everybody work on their space, their individual space for an hour. 

  

Kathi (11:49.849) 

Yeah. 

  

Kathi (11:53.483) 

Mm-hmm, yeah. 

  

Kathi (12:09.637) 

Mmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (12:09.942) 

Right? So that can be the girls working on their room together for an hour. Sometimes actually I have to put one girl in there all by herself for an hour and then move that girl out and put another girl in because they don’t have the same systems. But that’s what we do. And then in terms of the day to day decluttering, that is all on me. Like there is nobody else in this house that’s going to set aside 15 minutes a day unless we’re in middle of a challenge of some sort to focus on decluttering. 

  

Kathi (12:17.369) 

Yeah. Right. Yes. 

  

Kathi (12:27.886) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (12:34.529) 

Yeah. So Brian is in charge of things like laundry and stuff like that, right? And so you’re more of the decluttering diva in the household. Okay, no, that totally makes sense. You both are contributing in ways that make sense to you and feel right to you. And I love that. Okay. So breaking those tasks into manageable, manageable chunks. So 

  

Tonya Kubo (12:41.454) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (12:46.541) 

Yeah. 

  

Kathi (13:03.833) 

Tell me how do you guide your girls through making it manageable to get rid of stuff? 

  

Tonya Kubo (13:11.96) 

Well, so for us, it’s never not a conversation. We talk about it in some way every single day. So it can be going through the backpacks, right? So, you know, both of my girls are neurodivergent. There’s just a lot about how their backpacks look that kind of fits both of their archetypes. And so going through and just saying, you know, it’s so much easier to throw away one piece of paper or to go through the pencils and toss the one broken pencil. 

  

Kathi (13:20.323) 

Hmm. 

  

Kathi (13:24.922) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (13:42.426) 

each day than it is to have to like go through that backpack at the on Friday and go through 10 crunched up pieces of paper or whatever else is in the bottom of the backpack, right? So that’s part of it is just reinforcing that if we do a little touch every single day, it’s so much easier than if we save it all up to the end of the week. 

  

Kathi (13:52.644) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (14:04.93) 

But then it’s also when they make some headway is giving them reminders. So like with Abby, you know, we’ve just gotten her started where she puts away her own clothes. And it’s like, you know, Abby, if you put it, if you put undies in this drawer and shirts in this drawer and pants in this drawer, it’s so much easier to get dressed in the morning than if you want to shove everything in one drawer. Because that’s really what she wants to do, because she doesn’t actually want to put her stuff away. So she just wants to shove it all together, right? It is. 

  

Kathi (14:24.239) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

I don’t blame her. It’s the worst part of laundry. It is the worst part of laundry. Yes. 

  

Tonya Kubo (14:33.366) 

I will give you that. It is the worst part of laundry. So those are some things we do and just talk about like see how easy this makes our life isn’t this much easier than it was before. 

  

Kathi (14:42.989) 

Isn’t it so interesting that as kids, we buck those systems so much, but as adults, the thing I hear about decluttering so much is I need accountability. I need somebody to be in this with me. And we see what we needed as children. I think the difference is that you really know your girls’ types, and you’re able to say what works for Lily doesn’t work for Abby and vice versa. 

  

Tonya Kubo (14:54.466) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (15:04.782) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (15:08.846) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (15:10.489) 

And maybe we didn’t have a parent that was quite as in tune to that. So that makes a huge difference. OK, also, setting realistic goals. I know that this has been really hard for me. Like my to-do list at the beginning of the week can look like, do you have a crew coming over? Do you have magical elves that are going to help you with some of this stuff? So. 

  

Tonya Kubo (15:30.53) 

Yeah. 

  

Kathi (15:38.853) 

How do you keep your own goals realistic? And I’m asking this in a holistic sense because you also have a business, have, mean, so how do you keep your goals realistic throughout the day? 

  

Tonya Kubo (15:46.126) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (15:52.686) 

Well, so for me, I don’t ever allow myself to have more than three items on a list. Like that’s a hard rule. I remember years ago, you know, how I was introduced into the work world. And I think for some of us who didn’t grow up in environments that were organized, we learned organization and whatever was imposed upon us in our first jobs. And so, you know, I was trained by somebody who had this like running task list, we’d have like 25 items. 

  

Kathi (15:57.743) 

Mmm. 

  

Kathi (16:12.419) 

Right, yes, absolutely. 

  

Tonya Kubo (16:20.812) 

and they would just add stuff to the bottom and cross off from the top and then it would just roll over to the next day. So they were always making a new list every day and that would have stuff carried over. And I think that it just, it’s not helpful. It’s not helpful to have a list of 10 items. It’s like, okay, before my head hits the pillow, there are three things I have to get done today. What would those three things be? And there’s some days like today’s a day, for instance, I started with meetings at 4.30. I have not had more than a 30 minute break. 

  

Kathi (16:34.351) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (16:49.824) 

and I won’t get a break until six o’clock tonight, right? So that’s gonna be my day. So when I woke up this morning, I had my three priorities that I wrote last night. And it’s like, okay, now that I look at my calendar and I recognize that I am a human who hopes to at some point eat some food, it’s just one thing. What’s the one thing that I have to get done the day before my head hits the pillow? And then that’s how I said it. And I’ve learned to be okay with that. I think that’s the other thing is you have to not be 

  

Kathi (16:53.713) 

my word. 

  

Kathi (17:06.937) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (17:12.591) 

Yeah. 

  

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (17:20.47) 

You have to not let yourself get into the place where you’re feeling guilty for not having more things on your list. 

  

Kathi (17:25.327) 

Right, because if only I were superhuman. And it’s like, well, that’s such a ridiculous statement, but for some reason, we don’t expect that of other people, but we expect of ourselves. And that’s something we need to combat. And that I know that when you have challenges, you have a family reward system. Talk a little bit about that. 

  

Tonya Kubo (17:29.421) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (17:35.114) 

Mm-hmm. Exactly. 

  

Tonya Kubo (17:48.736) 

I do. So when we do like, for instance, we’ve got 30 day 1K coming up, which is like my favorite time ever as of recording. So we have a tracking sheet. There’s four of us. So it’s very easy to find a pack of highlighters that has four colors in it. And everybody gets to mark theirs off. And then our reward system is the winner. In this case, it’s whoever declares more items. The winner gets to pick the prize. 

  

for everybody, right? And sometimes I pick it just because, you know, one year it was like, well we should go to Disneyland for this. No, you’re not going to Disneyland because you declared 200 items. Sorry, it takes more than that. But, you know, being able to say, okay, we’re gonna have a family movie night. That’s the prize. And the winner picks the movie or the winner picks the snacks for family movie night. That’s a big one. Like the girls really love to pick the snacks for family movie night. 

  

Kathi (18:29.615) 

Right. 

  

Kathi (18:45.887) 

Okay, yeah, okay, so I just have to ask what are some favorite snacks? 

  

Tonya Kubo (18:50.286) 

Abby is all about popcorn, popcorn chips. She likes the salty stuff. Lily just wants chocolate. If Lily can have a buffet of chocolate, maybe a little gelato tub, that would make her very happy. She likes a charcuterie. She’s a big fan of a charcuterie too. Yes, yes. 

  

Kathi (18:52.739) 

Yeah. Yeah. 

  

Kathi (19:00.387) 

Kathi (19:03.883) 

Okay. Yes. see, I love all these ideas. This is amazing. Yes. Yeah, they do not have cheap taste. They get that from their father and their mom in some in some regards. Yeah, you know, for us, you know, I think this is an adult thing. Like if I declutter, I can go to bed early and be in a decluttered room and moose and I can snuggle. 

  

Tonya Kubo (19:09.984) 

My kids are bougie though. They just are. 

  

Tonya Kubo (19:15.434) 

No. Right. 

  

Kathi (19:32.675) 

and it’s the best thing ever. And so that makes me super happy. Like that gives me joy, joy, joy down in my heart. And so I love that. I love that idea about that. Okay. So guys, if this is sounding appealing to you, if you need a little bit of accountability, you want to know more, you know, feel. 

  

Tonya Kubo (19:34.132) 

Yup. 

  

Kathi (19:57.411) 

like you’re being rewarded for this, but you also just know that part of the reward is living in a clutter-free house. If you are willing to get rid of some of that stuff in your house permanently, so you never have to revisit it again, I just wonder if Clutter-free for life might be for you. is, Tonya, tell them a little bit about Clutter-Free for life and how they’ll know if it’s for them. 

  

Tonya Kubo (20:26.668) 

Yeah, so, my gosh, I love Clutter-Free For Life as anybody who listens to this show should know by now. So, you Clutter-Free For Life is for the person who is like, you know, enough is enough. Like I’ve tried to do this on my own and it hasn’t been successful for me because I believe that we do have people in Clutter-Free Free For Life who genuinely would succeed with the membership or without it. They just… 

  

Kathi (20:29.589) 

I know, I do too. Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (20:52.914) 

know that they are happier in the process by having community around them. But, you know, for most of us, and I’m thinking of me, I’m thinking of Grace Church who’s over there, if you’ve tried it by yourself and you haven’t been successful and you’re like, you know, there’s just something like I can get it to a place, but I can’t get it beyond that, or I can’t keep it that way, Clutter-Free for Life is designed specifically for that. It’s designed for the person who needs a little extra support. 

  

Kathi (20:55.833) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (21:20.236) 

Maybe the person who doesn’t have anybody in their life who understands how hard it is to actually release clutter and to keep things decluttered and they want somebody or would like to have somebody who shares those small wins like, hey, I just decluttered this one drawer. Clutter-free for life is perfect for that person in addition to those people who actually need a plan. And our plans are flexible. They work no matter how big or how small your house is. 

  

They work if you live with other people or if you have your own space, you can rent, can own. We’ve made it a very flexible plan, but it is something, at least you wake up that day knowing what part of the house to focus on and what to do when you’re there. 

  

Kathi (22:05.269) 

And we see such huge success stories over in Clutter-Free for Life. It’s inspiring. 

  

Tonya Kubo (22:10.858) 

We do. And you know what, what’s funny is what some, each person when they say is like, this is what changed everything for me. It’s always different. You know, for some it’s the weekly coaching session. And it’s not because we like boss them around, right? But it’s because they get to show up. They get to look around and go, Hey, I’m not the only one who struggles. There’s, know, 10 people on this call, 20 people on this call who have the same struggle. We talk through. 

  

Kathi (22:21.54) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (22:38.412) 

like what works for us. Like I just got a great tip from somebody last week during a coaching session that’s totally changed our kitchen. And it was, my gosh. So shout out to Natasha, who’s in Clutter-Free for Life. We were talking about like ways to organize small spaces like bathrooms and stuff where you don’t have closets. And the idea came up, the little shoe boxes like the Sterilite plastic shoe boxes with the lid are a great way if you… 

  

Kathi (22:46.031) 

Do tell! You have to tell! 

  

Kathi (22:51.019) 

I love Natasha. Yeah. 

  

Kathi (23:03.471) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (23:06.4) 

if you have things that are just like lots of odds and ends that get lost in a drawer, well, what it made me think of is like, I have appliances that have lots of pieces. So think of like your food processor has all those things that come with it and you’re always looking for a random piece. So I was like, what if we got these shoe boxes and I put all my meat grinder attachments in one and I put all my food processor things in another and we have our sushi-making stuff in another. 

  

Kathi (23:17.219) 

Yeah, right. 

  

Kathi (23:28.495) 

Yeah, yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (23:35.038) 

And it all stacks beautifully all modularly in a little cupboard. But I’m not having to dig through drawers and go, well, this is kind of an odd shape. So it goes here and this is really tiny. So it goes there. And Brian was super excited, right? Because Brian was just like, my gosh, now I just have to pull out that one little box and everything I need is going to be in. 

  

Kathi (23:50.277) 

It’s amazing. 

  

Kathi (23:57.943) 

It’s you know, I have that kind of system, but it’s under my stairs in the Harry Potter closet where Yes, where you just have these these tubs that pull out and all my quazen art stuff is there and yeah It’s such a good idea. Yes, absolutely Well guys, you know the thing I love the most about clutter-free for life is we’re supporting people not just in their decluttering but that decluttering 

  

Tonya Kubo (24:03.456) 

I love the Harry Potter closet though. 

  

Tonya Kubo (24:08.396) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (24:11.991) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (24:26.797) 

is the undergirding to so much more in their lives. It’s the undergirding to buying less because you can find stuff in your closet. It’s the undergirding to paying your bills on time. It’s the undergirding to cooking more because your kitchen is not in chaos. And we have a sale going on right now that this runs through December 10th. 

  

Tonya Kubo (24:30.136) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (24:43.48) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Kathi (24:54.981) 

Clutter-Free for life is 2.99 a year, but if you buy it on this sale for, know, before December 10th, you can get it for $118. It’s a huge discount because we love to have everybody kind of come in at the same time. It saves us a lot of time and energy and that’s how we support it. And we would love to have you join us today. 

  

You can go to the link in these show notes or if you just go to Kathi Lipp’s Clutterfree Academy, know, look over there. We’re going to have all sorts of information about it over there. So, and if you have questions, feel free to ask us questions over there because we would love to be able to support you in that. Tonya, what’s one thing you would like to encourage people with if they’re kind of on the fence about this? 

  

Tonya Kubo (25:32.685) 

Mm-hmm. 

  

Tonya Kubo (25:47.086) 

if they’re on the fence, they just need to reach out to me. Seriously, just talk to me. I would say, you know, my email address is tonya@kathilipp.org. They can get information @kathi.link/CFL. But honestly, let’s just have a conversation. What I love about our community is we’ve got members. I mean, they’ll tell you like what they love. They’ll tell you what was hard for them when they started. They’ll tell you why they stay. 

  

Kathi (25:50.147) 

Okay. 

  

Kathi (26:02.297) 

Yeah. 

  

Tonya Kubo (26:16.766) 

We’re very honest because the truth is it doesn’t benefit us if it’s not a good fit for you either So we just want to see you. I mean, I would love to have you try it We do a 30-day guarantee. So we’ll give you your money back within 30 days if it’s not for you, but if You’re looking around and you’re like I want to live differently and I just don’t quite know how to do that day-to-day I really would encourage you to check us out. 

  

Kathi (26:22.584) 

It’s so true. 

Tonya Kubo

Thanks for having me.

 

Kathi (26:41.925)

Tonya, thanks so much. And friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter-free life you’ve always wanted to live.

 

  

 

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As Kathi mentioned in the episode, she has a free resource for you! Receive your Checklist for Decluttering When Moving or Downsizing by signing up for her newsletter here.

The Accidental Homesteader: What I’ve Learned About Chickens, Compost, and Creating Home

Homesteading [hohm-sted-ing]
noun
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 Has your definition of clutter ever had to change due to life circumstances?

Share your answer in the comments.

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Meet Our Guest 

 

Tonya Kubo

Tonya Kubo is the illustrious and fearless leader of Kathi Lipp’s Clutter Free Academy Facebook group and the Clutter Free for Life membership program. A speaker and writer, Tonya makes her home in the heart of California with her husband, Brian, their two spirited daughters, and one very tolerant cat. Visit her at www.tonyakubo.com.

 

Tonya Kubo Picture
Transcript

Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter-Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am here with the co-captain of the Clutter-Free community. It is Tonya Kubo. Hey, Tonya.

Tonya Kubo (00:44.182)
Hey, Kathy.

Kathi (00:46.653)
And can we just say we have to give Tonya extra props because she’s been sick I don’t know for the last month and We’ve had to reschedule this a couple of times not just not just because you’ve been sick But we were about to hit record a couple of weeks ago and your power

Tonya Kubo (00:54.943)
Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (01:06.974)
Yes, my power went out twice that day.

Kathi (01:11.485)
Let’s be clear, when Kathy’s power goes out, we’re like, well, that’s just a Tuesday. But when Tonya’s power goes out, and you know what? I’m just gonna say something here real quick that maybe some, this might be of help to some people. Roger just got diagnosed with sleep apnea and he has to wear a CPAP. So yes, I am sleeping next to Darth Vader every single night now, but it’s really helping him. But because of that,

Tonya Kubo (01:16.404)
Right.

Kathi (01:39.797)
In the state of California, we’ve qualified for a program where we can get Tesla batteries on the side of our house absolutely free. Where the Tesla batteries absorb the power at the cheapest rate and then put out the power when we most need it. And to get these Tesla batteries is almost $2,700, no, $27,000, excuse me, $27,000. And there’s a California program where we get them for free now.

Tonya Kubo (01:58.358)
Wow.

Tonya Kubo (02:04.354)
Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (02:10.242)
That is amazing. I know a lot of people with CPAP, so that’s huge.

Kathi (02:10.433)
So, isn’t that?

Yeah Yeah, so I know a lot of our listeners are not in California But we also have a decent amount because you and I both live in California and a lot of people that we’ve spoken to and met So that has nothing to do with it. Well, maybe it has something to do with today’s Because here’s the thing that’s a life change for Roger and I have to tell you the first thing he did God bless him. He gets the CPAP machine. He goes I need to declutter my side of the bed because now

Tonya Kubo (02:43.232)
It’s big.

Kathi (02:43.489)
It’s not a huge apparatus, but it takes space, especially on his nightstand. So that’s something we need to consider.

Tonya Kubo (02:48.396)
Yeah.

No, that is true. That is true. Brian had a CPAP for a while and his was huge. I’m not gonna lie. His took up the entire surface of the nightstand.

Kathi (02:58.135)
Oh.

Kathi (03:02.501)
Oh dear. Yeah, that makes for an interesting bed partner, doesn’t it? Okay, but yeah, what we’re talking about today, let’s just dive right into it. Tonya, you spent a lot, we both did, we spent a lot of time talking to people in our paid group, Clutter Free for Life, about what their biggest challenges were, how we could help. In our paid program, we do a 15 minute free consultation with everybody who joins.

Tonya Kubo (03:07.698)
Yes it does.

Tonya Kubo (03:20.174)
Hmm.

Kathi (03:30.933)
so that they can ask us the questions that are just for their circumstance. What I came to find out, and I wonder if you did too, is when they said, this is really unique to me, it was never really unique to them. Because the circumstances may change, but the challenges are the same. That was my biggest takeaway.

Tonya Kubo (03:44.29)
That is true.

Tonya Kubo (03:49.502)
Right. Well, and I felt like for them, that was probably like, because I would always ask people at the end of our time, I would say, what was most helpful for you here? And every single one of them would be like, the fact that you knew what I was talking about, and the fact that you said that I’m not alone.

Kathi (03:59.845)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (04:04.92)
Yeah.

Right, right, absolutely. Yeah, it is huge. I would say you got this situation more than I did, but I did get it some, is that people felt like their clutter got so much worse during a big life change. And I was trying to think, did that happen to me? And I was like, yeah, it absolutely did. When Moose was diagnosed with cancer,

Tonya Kubo (04:09.535)
was huge.

Kathi (04:37.185)
I have to say for about six months, I cared very little about the state of my house. I cared very little about what was going on around me. Like guys, I’ve gotten better, but I spent so much time just hanging out with her because we didn’t know what her life expect, all that kind of stuff. But after about six months, I’m like, okay, I don’t want to continue to live like this. And fortunately, I have the tools in my back pocket to be able to say.

Tonya Kubo (04:53.771)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (05:07.317)
Okay, here’s how I recover from this. But have you been through something like that in your life, Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (05:14.806)
Definitely. I mean, I think raising children, like by itself, like even not under extreme circumstances, but every phase of life brings a huge transition that involves clutter in some way. And then of course, as you know, we lost my mom very early in our decluttering journey, but that had a big impact. For us, the most recent was losing Brian’s sister.

Kathi (05:18.735)
Mm.

Kathi (05:30.062)
Yeah.

Kathi (05:41.461)
Yeah, way too young.

Tonya Kubo (05:41.822)
And I’ll share a little bit about this only because it made, it really seemed to have a profound impact on the people I spoke to one-on-one. When we lost Brian’s sister, it was really interesting to see how grief or how coping with grief is different for each person. For her husband, they had sold their home when the pandemic started and they were building their dream home.

Kathi (06:01.198)
Mmm.

Tonya Kubo (06:09.05)
And then she was diagnosed not too long after. So they had this rental that was really wrapped up in her illness that they had been living in. It really was a sick home. And so her husband really threw himself into decluttering because he wanted out of that rental home. Like there was just all sorts of bad memories. But there was this other piece of him.

Tonya Kubo (06:37.206)
What I recognized is he was so worried that there was something that was special or precious to the family that he didn’t know about. Like he didn’t know why it was precious. He didn’t know why she was keeping it because quite honestly, nobody expected to lose her at the age of 44, right? So these are, like he knew she had bins and boxes and stuff in the garage, but he never thought to ask why.

Kathi (06:54.753)
course.

Kathi (07:02.753)
Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (07:02.806)
So he starts going through this stuff and he wants to give it to Brian’s mom. He wants to give it to us because he’s like, I don’t wanna be responsible for it, right? And it was really soon for Brian’s mom. Like in some ways, I mean, cause that was hard for her, right? Cause she’s just lost her daughter and now she’s being like given all this stuff. And so Brian and I had a conversation. I just said, look, if he calls you and says, hey, do you want this? Just say yes.

Kathi (07:13.387)
Right.

Kathi (07:17.763)
Mmm.

Kathi (07:31.897)
Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (07:32.998)
We have a decluttering system in place in our home. We have a garage. We can say yes to everything, and we can deal with it later. Because the family dynamics are such, nobody expects us to keep everything forever. So we’re good there. So I said, you just say yes. Our priority was to make the decision easy for him and to trust that we had the emotional bandwidth and the space and the maturity that we could take it from there.

Kathi (08:02.917)
What a gift to him. Even if he didn’t know, what a gift.

Tonya Kubo (08:09.042)
So, yes, and it did make life so much easier, but of course that means that we very quickly had a filled garage with all sorts of random stuff.

Kathi (08:17.302)
Right.

Right, right. Well, so let me ask you, yeah, let me ask you because a lot of people are dealing with the loss of a loved one and having to deal with their stuff. I did with my dad as well. And, you know, we went through a process where there was a first layer of like, okay, we can just donate this or trash it or whatever needs to happen.

Kathi (08:48.029)
And then there was a second layer of like, okay, does anybody in the family want this? And then the third layer of, um, we have to decide if this is the memory we want to keep of my dad. And so it was a three layer process for us, but that doesn’t mean it’s right for everybody. What was it for you, Tonya? Or, or have you gone through the stuff yet?

Tonya Kubo (09:10.542)
Also, multi-layer process, yes, because a lot of it was Brian’s dad stuff. We did not realize how much of Brian’s dad stuff Megan had taken until Megan was gone and Jeremy was like, I know this was from your dad, but I don’t know much more. But like one was, it was like, oh, I have a bunch of your dad’s shirts.

Tonya Kubo (09:35.454)
and they were really special to Megan, but the boys didn’t know your dad, so the boys don’t really understand. And so I told Brian, yeah, we’ll take those. We can make a quilt out of them or something. Well, it turned out they weren’t work shirts, like Brian thought. They were racing jerseys. His dad used to race motocross. Motocross jerseys do not make good quilts, by the way, just so you know. It’s just not a good fabric, right? So Brian was like.

Kathi (09:58.996)
No they do not.

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (10:04.566)
What do I do with this? And I said, well, for now, we let it sit in the garage. And I mean, it was like, I don’t know what you call this, but you know when you go to like Marshall’s and they have the clothing racks that are on wheels?

Kathi (10:15.121)
Yes, yes. Rolling racks. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (10:16.57)
I mean it was on those, yeah those rolling racks. It was like a whole rolling rack of shirts. So that’s still in my garage. Still don’t know what to do with it. But I also don’t feel like that’s a decision I have to make today. I have the available real estate, it’s fine. Now her classroom stuff, she was a teacher, Brian is a teacher. So her classroom stuff, it was very easy to process through all that.

Kathi (10:21.001)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Kathi (10:30.262)
Right.

Yeah.

Kathi (10:38.902)
Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (10:44.106)
We said yes to all of it, then Brian went through and was like, oh, I could use this, and then we have teacher friends. So for us, that was the first layer. And of course, as you know, Kathy, the first layer is always the least emotionally connected layer.

Tonya Kubo (11:01.766)
Very easy to release classroom stuff, work stuff, right? But imagine how much space, I mean honestly that classroom stuff was taking up more space in my garage than those work shirts or than those racing jerseys are.

Kathi (11:06.274)
Yes.

Kathi (11:16.905)
Yeah, it makes so much sense. And you know, I think these big life transitions, it’s either we’re going to something new, or we’re letting go of something. And so we’re going to take a quick break, we’re going to come back. And I want to talk about what are some steps that we can do in these transitions, whether we’re going towards something. And even when you’re going towards something new, you have to let go. And I’ll talk a little bit about that.

But, excuse me. But we’re gonna take a quick break and come back to give some really practical steps of what you can do. So hang with us friends.

Okay, friends, we are back and we’re talking about what are the really practical steps when you’re going through a big life transition. This could be a marriage, it could be a death, it could be a birth, it could be kids leaving the house, it could be a divorce, it could be, there are a million different things that, job loss, new job, moving, if I didn’t say that before, and I think that was one of ours.

that was really tough. We had, we moved from San Jose to the mountains. Well, we had just redone the San Jose house. And can I tell you, it was gorgeous. It was exactly, it was everything I wanted it to be. But.

Tonya Kubo (12:40.159)
It was. I visited it. It was beautiful. That bathroom, Kathy. That upstairs bathroom.

Kathi (12:48.985)
It was phenomenal, right? It was phenomenal. Okay.

Tonya Kubo (12:50.746)
Yeah. I just need you to hear me tell you that it was beautiful. You did a great job.

Kathi (12:57.401)
Thank you so much, thank you. Every once in a while I go back and look at the Zillow pictures. I just loved it so much. And, but here’s the thing, I love my new house too, but two completely different styles. Both my style, this one is more rustic, cabernet, that kind of thing. The one in San Jose was more like teals and had a little bit of gold, which sounds weird, but it’s actually, it was gorgeous. And.

Tonya Kubo (13:07.853)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (13:26.029)
Uh, but I couldn’t really take the San Jose stuff to the summer sect. And so I have to tell you, it was a process of letting it go. A couple of things I did, which isn’t going to work for everybody, but some of that stuff that I had in San Jose, we, we also have some space at my mom’s house. So I decorated that space with some of the stuff, like the rugs and things like that, that I just loved.

We also have an RV that we put some of that stuff in. Our kids came and took some of the stuff that was really important to them. But I think the best thing that I did with that transition was just saying, we’re going into a new life and I don’t wanna be carrying this. So we put a few things on Freecycle or Facebook Marketplace.

Tonya Kubo (14:17.27)
Hmm

Kathi (14:23.009)
And we just did free because we had a short turnaround time to move. And this one young couple, they, they finally said, we’re just waiting for your ads to come up because we love everything and we have nothing. And so I just said, uh, okay, here’s the deal. I’m, I’m going to put a post-it note on everything in our house that we’re not taking and you can take it if you want.

There was not one post-it note left after all of that. They said, the woman, they had only been married for six weeks, they were sleeping on their floor. And we basically, in some ways, furnished their whole house. Because of course we had a bigger house than their one bedroom apartment. But there was a purpose.

Tonya Kubo (14:52.609)
Mm.

Tonya Kubo (15:01.455)
Oh.

Tonya Kubo (15:09.407)
Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:13.355)
Right.

Kathi (15:16.677)
And it wasn’t even decluttering, it was giving away huge massive things that were important to us. But I think most of us as cluttery people, if we knew the people things were going to, we would give them the shirt off our back and the racing jersey as well. So, you know, it is, when we know that it’s for a higher purpose.

Tonya Kubo (15:22.861)
Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:42.098)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (15:42.241)
So maybe the higher purpose is to lighten your load. Maybe the higher purpose is to help somebody else. What do you feel like were the lessons you’ve really learned and taken away through Megan’s death, through your father-in-law’s death and your mom’s death?

Tonya Kubo (15:59.642)
Yeah, so something you just said really resonated with me, which is clutter. You had said, you know, it’s not really decluttering. It was releasing things that just we loved, but we had no use for. And I think the big thing with these life transitions, and I think part of what makes them so hard, so emotionally difficult to journey through, is it redefines clutter for us.

Kathi (16:15.301)
Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (16:29.098)
Because see, typically we say clutter is something I don’t love, it’s something I don’t use, it’s something I wouldn’t buy again. And these life transitions introduce this new definition which is, this is something that I love and I would use, but for whatever reason, given the circumstances that we have, that’s not possible right now. And it doesn’t make sense.

Kathi (16:52.397)
Oh, Tonya, that’s so good.

Mm-hmm

Tonya Kubo (16:56.354)
to keep it because I don’t know when it’s going to be possible again. So going back to the one-on-one conversations that I had with some of our members, there were a lot of people I was talking to who either had some kind of major medical event. So maybe they had a child born with some very extreme medical needs. One of them had an injury or an illness that required, say, in-home health care.

Tonya Kubo (17:24.73)
anybody who’s listening who has had any experience with in-home health care knows that it’s like they bring a u-haul of medical equipment to your house right and it doesn’t matter little babies older adults it’s not always a hospital bed but sometimes the hospital bed and oxygen tanks and feeding tubes and all of these things and those things get added into this house that was already full even if it wasn’t cluttery it was full it was functional

Tonya Kubo (17:54.678)
You have this period, like you don’t want to get rid of your old life. Those things brought you joy, but there’s not room for that in the hospital bed. There’s not room for that in the ventilator or whatever else. And so something I saw my brother-in-law do that I didn’t, like I remember going, hmm, about it when he was doing it. Like they had just gotten a brand new bed and he called us up and he said, hey, by any chance, do you guys want a new bed? And we were like, and we had actually been looking for a new bed.

Kathi (18:04.29)
Right.

Tonya Kubo (18:22.89)
We’re like, yeah, like, do you want us to buy it off of you? He’s like, no. He goes, we’ve had it for three months. We love it. He goes, but I don’t, I would have to go up in size to the storage unit that we’re looking at getting in order to fit it. So that doesn’t make sense. He’s like, and I, they tell us Megan’s going to be better in 10 months, but I don’t know that she is. And when she is better, this bed may not be comfortable for her. So I think it just makes sense to get rid of it now. And I don’t think.

Kathi (18:23.214)
Oh wow.

Kathi (18:36.409)
Yeah.

Kathi (18:44.349)
Mmm.

Kathi (18:50.504)
Okay.

Tonya Kubo (18:53.11)
my cluttery heart would have had that kind of like logical thought process that Jeremy had. I mean, he was he’s so like wise. I don’t even think he knows how wise he is. But I thought, wow, that is really like that’s just wisdom right there to go, hey, it’s not that I expect to be here forever. But I know that when I’m not here, life is going to be so different that the stuff that’s working now may not work then.

Kathi (19:21.797)
As soon as you’re saying, I’m going to have to go up in size on the storage unit, it’s time to reconsider everything. Yeah, when we sold our house in San Jose, we said we are keeping this storage unit for a month. For a month. You know, because this is stuff we want to bring to the house, but we can’t bring it all at once. And we kept that promise. I was really, really proud of us.

Tonya Kubo (19:29.722)
Right.

Tonya Kubo (19:38.957)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (19:52.165)
turns into a year, turns into five years. But we need to make our lives lighter because we can make better decisions when our life is lighter. You know, you and I just had a circumstance this, like today, where you were supposed to come to my house, you can’t, so Roger and I are like, you know what? You know me, if I could, I would adopt every goat.

Tonya Kubo (20:00.27)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (20:21.729)
every dog, every cat, everything. But we have fewer chickens now because that’s just what happens to chickens sometimes. It’s the circle of life. And we have a dog and we’re like, you know what? Tonya can’t come here. We’re gonna go to Tonya. And it’s because we have lightened our life. And sometimes that’s through circumstances we would not have chosen.

Tonya Kubo (20:29.326)
because that’s the circle of life.

Kathi (20:50.189)
but we are intentionally keeping our lives lighter so that we can do the things we wanna do. And that’s something we wanna do. What do you think is the most important thing that somebody can take away from this conversation? Especially after seeing how wise Jeremy has been and how you don’t wanna repeat the sins of your mother and you have this different example. What would you want somebody to take away from this conversation?

Tonya Kubo (20:52.578)
Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (21:13.816)
Right.

Tonya Kubo (21:19.722)
Well, I think for me the biggest is that certain life transitions do warrant a new definition for what clutter is. What’s clutter today?

Kathi (21:32.073)
I think that’s so wise.

Tonya Kubo (21:35.814)
may not have been cluttered five years ago, and it may not be cluttered five years from now, but because you don’t know that, it makes sense and it is smart and it is wise to treat it like the clutter it is today.

Kathi (21:38.657)
Mmm.

Kathi (21:51.477)
It’s not that the thing is clutter, it’s that the item in the midst of today’s circumstances is clutter and something that you need to lighten your life. This has been such a great conversation, Tonya. Thank you so, so much.

I just think this is exactly what we need to hear. Because when we buy things, we’re like, oh my goodness. This is the most important thing. And I’ll always love it. I’ll always want it. And then job changes happen. And we live in a time now where if you need to furnish your house for free, you could pretty much do it. Because.

Tonya Kubo (22:47.566)
True.

Kathi (22:49.413)
It may not be with the stuff you want. And so we have to decide, do I love it? Do I use it? Would I buy it again right now? Right now, I think that that’s a great question to ask. And one of the things, guys, if you’re part of our newsletter community, we are going to be publishing this week a checklist for decluttering when moving or downsizing. And so,

Tonya Kubo (23:00.086)
Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (23:14.774)
Mmm.

Kathi (23:16.377)
We want you to, if we’re gonna put all the information so that you can become a part of our newsletter community so that you can have that resource for the next time you’re going through something, whether it’s moving or you just need to downsize, whatever that is, we’re gonna give you that checklist to help you make decisions in, because when you’re moving, you’re already having to make a thousand decisions, let this eliminate another thousand.

Tonya, thanks for being on today.

Tonya Kubo (23:46.85)
Thanks for having me.

Kathi (23:48.565)
And friends, thank you for being here. You’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy. I’m Cathy Lip. Now, go create the clutter-free life you were always intended to live.

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When you bring a new item into your space, do you struggle with where to put it?

Have you ever uttered a sentence like this to yourself? “Why don’t I know where this goes?”

Kathi Lipp and three-time co-author, friend, and frequent co-host Cheri Gregory are here to help. In this episode, they finish a two-part conversation about the straight line between perfectionism and clutter. Cheri speaks from an HSP (highly sensitive person) perspective and someone who struggles with perfectionism. She gives us some real-life advice from her recent kitchen and office remodel. Listen in as Kathi and Cheri discuss the connection between perfectionism and clutter, as well as:

  • When is it time to let things go?
  • What is valuable enough for you to store?
  • What is anti-perfectionism and how to use it to make decisions

Cheri Gregory mentioned using anti-perfectionism before purchasing a new office chair. Here’s the picture she promised us!

Haven’t listened to episode 604 Why Your Perfectionism is Keeping You Stuck in Clutter (And What You Can do About it) Part 1? Click here.

 Sign up here to be notified when the next episode is released.

Would you like to receive Kathi’s Clutter Free Academy Newsletter in your inbox? Get it free here!

An Abundant Place: Daily Retreats for the Woman Who Can’t Get Away

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Order your copy of An Abundant Place: Daily Retreats for the Woman Who Can’t Get Away here.

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Let’s stay connected

To share your thoughts:

  • Leave a note in the comment section below.
  • Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help and I read each one.

Subscribe on iTunes or subscribe to our newsletter now.

Meet Our Guest 

 

Cheri Gregory

Through Scripture and storytelling, Cheri Gregory delights in helping women draw closer to Jesus, the strength of every tender heart. She is the founder of the Sensitive and Strong Community Cafe: the place for the HSP Christian woman to find connection. With Kathi Lipp, she’s the co-author of You Don’t Have to Try So Hard,Overwhelmed,and An Abundant Place. Cheri speaks locally and internationally for women’s events and educational conferences.

You can connect with Cheri at CheriGregory.comSensitiveAndStrong.com, on Cheri’s Facebook Page, and on Instagram.

Transcript

Kathi (19:50.183)
Well, hey friends, welcome to Clutter Free Academy, where our goal is to help you take small, doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life. And I am back for part two with my conversation with my co-author, HP, excuse me, HSP specialist, and my dear, dear friend, Cheri Gregory. Cheri, welcome back to Clutter Free Academy.

Cheri Gregory (20:13.858)
Hey, it is wonderful to be back, Kathi.

Kathi (20:16.851)
So it’s really interesting when we have psychological things to unpack in the clutter free community, I run to Cheri because she has thought about all of these things in very, no, you know, well, maybe you are, but your psychosis has worked well for me for years to help me unpack some things. And if you haven’t heard part one of our conversation, go back and listen to that. We’re talking about.

Cheri Gregory (20:29.006)
Because I’m psycho.

Cheri Gregory (20:37.259)
I’m out.

Kathi (20:43.703)
the link between perfectionism and clutter, because in my paid group, Clutter Free for Life, that was the topic that kept coming up for people over and over and over again. I think it’s really interesting when I’m first talking to people about clutter, like the, you know, oh, I have clutter in my house, and if we get into a conversation about it, the first layer is people talking about their circumstances.

Cheri Gregory (21:12.119)
Mm-hmm. Hmm.

Kathi (21:12.555)
Like I’ve got little kids or my husband doesn’t want to get rid of things or I came like it’s a lot of the External and maybe that’s not all external, you know, I mean and I’m not saying that’s not legitimate Holy cow. Is it legitimate? Especially if you have a partner who is not partnering If you have kids who their only job is to bring paint home papers from school like that is their full-time gig Yes

Cheri Gregory (21:28.503)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (21:42.351)
That is it. But I think that we start to address some of those things and we start to realize for some of us, me included, that the clutter issues go deeper. And I think, you know, perfectionism, that whole idea of until I have all the time to do it, I have none of the time to do it. Until I have all the space for my life, I have none of the space for my life.

Cheri Gregory (21:53.599)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (22:04.271)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (22:10.109)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (22:12.339)
I can cook, you know, 10 meals at a time. I can’t cook a grilled cheese sandwich. Like, I mean, these are the things that we tell ourselves. And I think we know.

Cheri Gregory (22:21.842)
Until everybody in the family cooperates with me, I can’t even attempt to do anything different than what’s currently happening.

Kathi (22:25.319)
Yes. Right. And please hear me. You guys have legitimate reasons to be frustrated. But I also know that I spent, personally, Kathi Lipp spent a lot of time focused on Roger’s minimal clutter, because I didn’t understand it, but I totally understood mine.

Cheri Gregory (22:53.006)
Mm-hmm. Hehehe.

Kathi (22:53.063)
Like I knew why I put that there for now and things like that. So, and Roger’s definitely the less cluttery person in this relationship, but I think we naturally do that. We look for the, the outside solvable thing. And then once we’ve solved a lot of those things, we can turn to the inside solvable things, because let’s be honest, the inside is a lot tougher oftentimes. And so.

Cheri Gregory (23:09.88)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (23:19.657)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (23:22.747)
Cheri, I want to ask you, you know, what are, first of all, what were some of the emotional steps? Because can I just make an observation and Cheri, if you want me to delete this from the podcast, I will be happy to, but well, no, I won’t be happy to, but I will.

Cheri Gregory (23:38.769)
Well, I’m now so very curious. Keep going.

Kathi (23:41.231)
Okay, so you and I have been doing online meetings for, I mean, over a decade, long over a decade. And whenever I’ve talked to you, there has been a screen behind you. I’m assuming, like most of us, you know, we had our Zoom screens and things like that, because there was real life going on behind you, and you didn’t want to distract people with that. Today, there’s no screen, and you and I haven’t been on Zoom in a while. I don’t know when this

Cheri Gregory (23:47.991)
Oh yeah.

Cheri Gregory (23:52.427)
Hahaha!

Kathi (24:11.639)
But there’s a real transformation in your space, is that correct?

Cheri Gregory (24:15.358)
Oh yeah, I get in my office again this month, but I did it very differently than I have in the past. And so it’s actually turning into a functional space.

Kathi (24:25.351)
Okay, I wanna know first of all, were there some mental and emotional differences in how you approached your clutter this time? I’m sorry, I didn’t tell you I was gonna ask you about any of this stuff, but I didn’t see your office until 20 minutes ago.

Cheri Gregory (24:34.402)
Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, no. Yeah, I can actually tell you the story about how it happens. So, you know that a couple of years ago, our landlord decided to do a renovation of our kitchen. And Jonathan and I took, well, we had to take everything out. And then they gutted it. So, yes, my son, Jonathan, he’s the hashtag mathematician in the kitchen. He’s an amazing cook and baker.

Kathi (24:46.738)
Yes!

Kathi (24:57.547)
Jonathan’s her son. Just so you guys know, yeah.

Cheri Gregory (25:04.414)
And so we did go through and declutter things because I’m like, I don’t want to store anything that we’re not actually gonna keep. And he was like, I don’t want to bring back into the new kitchen anything we’re not gonna keep. So we had a circumstance that helped us do that. But then when all the new cupboards and appliances and everything was in there, Jonathan had been thinking about how to put things back in the kitchen. He used what’s called design thinking. And don’t ask me what that is, because I actually don’t know.

Kathi (25:17.688)
anyhow.

Kathi (25:30.467)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Cheri Gregory (25:32.722)
All I know is that the end result was he had a plan, a mental plan for where everything was gonna go and it was based on function, not form. It was based on function like this is a baking station and this is a cooking station and this is the cleanup station and this space will always be left clean and he threatened dire consequences to anybody who left things there. And it’s not a big kitchen. And so I wasn’t sure if his plan was gonna work, but not only…

Kathi (25:44.234)
Mmm.

Kathi (25:55.191)
Ha ha ha!

Cheri Gregory (26:02.338)
had we decluttered enough stuff that we were able to move everything in and it’s very like he the kids, both of my kids, Jonathan and Marie, they were adamant, no stacking frying pans on top of each other. So you have to kill yourself and want to swear in order to find the one that you want, like really lots of margin. And then we then Jonathan told me the most important thing. He said, once we get everything set up, then we live with it. We experiment. We see it all as a grand experiment.

Kathi (26:15.915)
Hmm, yeah.

Kathi (26:22.091)
Mmm.

Cheri Gregory (26:30.514)
And then we keep tweaking and we keep having conversations and anything that’s not working, we redo it until it works. And I almost can’t believe I’m saying this, Kathi, but our kitchen works flawlessly. Like there is when Anne Marie visits once or twice a year, she can find anything she wants because it makes sense where it is. And Daniel can find where to put it back. So when I gutted my office, I decided I wanted anything that wasn’t going to serve me in the year 2024 in it.

Kathi (26:33.023)
Yes.

Kathi (26:38.966)
Mm.

Kathi (26:43.816)
Oh my goodness.

Kathi (26:51.021)
Right.

Cheri Gregory (27:00.682)
and I have some projects I really need to finish in 2024. And so I got rid of a whole bunch of stuff. We can talk about how I made those decisions in a second if you want. But then I realized, okay, I’m not coming in here and trying to set up something pretty. In fact, if you look behind me, it’s kind of chaotic looking. It’s, I mean, it’s not gonna go on a, on any kind of a magazine cover.

Kathi (27:00.771)
Hmm.

Kathi (27:04.491)
Right.

Kathi (27:09.996)
Okay.

Kathi (27:22.607)
say it’s chaotic looking, I would say is definitely function over form. So you’re not, you weren’t trying to put curtains up so that you wouldn’t see the books or anything like that. You can see the books, but you could probably find the books too.

Cheri Gregory (27:28.371)
Yes.

Cheri Gregory (27:33.266)
Oh no. No no no.

Yes, and my books are not organized by here’s all the red books or turned around the other way. That’s not decorator friendly at all. But right now I have post-it notes so you can find I can find my books like I needed a particular book today and I reached and I was able to find it. So, so I got rid of everything that didn’t belong in 2024. And now I’m approaching it like a working kitchen. Only it’s my working office and I am

Kathi (27:42.677)
Right.

Kathi (27:46.165)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (27:49.708)
Yeah.

Kathi (27:58.295)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (28:02.859)
Mmm.

Cheri Gregory (28:05.286)
As let’s say I’m working on something and that I don’t know where to put it instead of shoving it somewhere. I pause and I ask myself why don’t I know where to put this? Why do I have the urge to set it here or shove it there? What part of my system isn’t working right now or have I not planned for? So that there is a process so that there is a workflow and I’ve given myself. Yeah.

Kathi (28:11.618)
Right?

Kathi (28:16.06)
Mmm.

Kathi (28:29.067)
What a great question though. Why don’t I know where to put this? What a great question. Holy cow. Yeah, that’s really good.

Cheri Gregory (28:36.298)
Yeah. And so I don’t know if you can see, but I’ll show you over here. On the floor is a 40 by 40 square of paper and I’ve got stuff stacked all over it to simulate the bulk of a chair I’m thinking of purchasing. Now, I have not bought a decent piece of furniture in so long. I don’t even know how to, but I have found a chair that I’m kind of in love with. But rather than rather than be perfectionistic, Kathi, rather than go get it and then have buyer’s remorse and then beat myself up because I can never make good decisions.

Kathi (28:45.769)
Okay?

Kathi (28:52.867)
Hahaha

Okay.

Yeah. Right.

Cheri Gregory (29:04.802)
And rather than be like, oh, forget it. It would just be a waste of money. I probably wouldn’t use it anyways. I’m experimenting by putting something that size and shape there. And I’ve been living with that for about a month to see, am I okay with that amount of bulk, with that amount of floor space being used up? Now, obviously I can’t sit on it and enjoy it, but I’m just trying to see, do I resent the loss of floor space? And so the thing that is anti-perfectionism about this is,

Kathi (29:04.888)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (29:10.465)
right?

Kathi (29:19.82)
Hmm.

Kathi (29:23.773)
Right. You’re right.

Kathi (29:29.027)
Mmm.

Cheri Gregory (29:32.818)
I’m experimenting. I’m like, there is no one right way to do this. It is, it’s very fluid and I’m expecting this to take several months. And then I expect that I’m gonna, you know, I’m gonna start finding little parts that don’t work or maybe something about a project changes and I’m gonna need to keep asking these questions along the way. So it has, it’s been transformational to think, because here’s the thing, in our kitchen,

Kathi (29:34.871)
Yeah.

Kathi (29:43.831)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (29:55.754)
So good.

Cheri Gregory (30:01.442)
One of the things I used to do in my office is I used to leave things out because I was just going to come back to it the next day. We don’t do that in our kitchen. Like Jonathan uses his pizza cutter every single day. He doesn’t leave it on the counter. We wash it and put it away in the drawer. When he needs it next, he pulls it out again, right? And so I’m taking that approach in my office now where it’s like, I really want to be able to just have it settled at the end of the day where everything goes back where I think its place is.

Kathi (30:07.004)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (30:13.899)
Right. Yes.

Right.

Kathi (30:27.127)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (30:30.314)
so the next day I can come in and keep using it. So something about that metaphor of a working kitchen that has been experimented with and just bringing that into my office, it’s really been transformational. And to have permission to not have to get it right and to not try to find some external system, like I don’t believe that you could tell me how to do this. I did no research. I didn’t buy anything, Kathi. I bought no folders. I didn’t go to Office Depot.

Kathi (30:55.807)
Right? Yes.

Cheri Gregory (30:59.53)
Like I bought nothing. In fact, all I’ve done is use what I already have and got rid of some things that were just taking up space. But what I believe is I have the knowledge I need to experiment, to practice, and to see what works and what doesn’t work, and to continue working with that.

Kathi (31:18.571)
There are so many things I love about that. Why don’t I know where this goes? So that is such a great question and I also think about a professional kitchen professional kitchens do not have Five wine openers because they’re a professional kitchen. They have one wine opener. They know where it is They don’t have to go down under other stuff to be able to find it they it’s simple the

Cheri Gregory (31:22.828)
Mmm.

Cheri Gregory (31:38.859)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (31:42.557)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (31:47.511)
The counters are clear. They have workspace because they understand the importance of workspace. You know, we have not an instant pot, an air fryer that we use almost every day, but it also gets put away every day. And it’s very light. Now I wouldn’t do that with like the stand mixer because man, that thing scares me. But that sits out on the counter. It gets used about once a week.

Cheri Gregory (31:50.943)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (32:00.846)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (32:06.216)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (32:13.673)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (32:17.527)
But I need counter space more than I need access. I mean, you know, more than I need it to be easy because, you know, the air fryer’s already making my life easier. And so I’m willing to go get it. I’m willing to go put it away, that whole thing. I love this idea and the, okay, but you made a promise and I’m going to follow up on that promise.

Cheri Gregory (32:22.467)
Hmm.

Cheri Gregory (32:26.142)
Yes.

Kathi (32:43.071)
that you said you would tell us how you made decisions about what you kept and what you gave away in your office. So I wanna hear what your decision-making process was there.

Cheri Gregory (32:49.61)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (32:53.922)
Well, it was helpful for me to have a vision of what I needed, which is I need this office to be useful for 2024. I mean, that really gave me a goal, like nothing in here clogging up that isn’t going to be used in this year. And so that means… Yeah, I am. And…

Kathi (33:09.975)
Because you’re doing big things this year. Can you mention a couple of the things you’re doing? I mean, just so people have an idea of how you’re using your office? Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (33:17.254)
Well, my goal is to finally finish my doctoral work and that’s the bookshelf back there and the bookshelf back there, which one of the reasons I haven’t finished it is because everything’s been piles and boxes. And so now I can literally, oh, and I bought myself a new office chair. I’ll send you the photo of my old one versus my new one. I mean, it’s embarrassing talking about, you know, again, so as perfectionists, we can’t start organizing unless we can do it all. And yet we will have a chair that’s 10 years old and looks like garbage.

Kathi (33:27.645)
Yeah, yeah.

Kathi (33:32.439)
Okay.

Cheri Gregory (33:45.57)
Make it make sense. It doesn’t make sense, right? So, but I in my nice new chair, I could roll over and I could pick anything off the shelf that I need at a moment’s notice. And I know exactly where everything is. And I, and it’s organized in a way that works for me. Like I didn’t hire someone to come in and do it. Not nothing wrong with that, but I need to know where my things are. So let’s see. What are some of the things I got rid of? Kathi, would you believe I finally dismantled the binders for the manuscript development team for overwhelmed?

Kathi (33:47.174)
Yeah, it doesn’t. That’s okay though.

Kathi (33:53.987)
Wow.

Kathi (33:58.781)
Mm.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (34:15.954)
And for your listeners, Overwhelmed was released in 2017. And I was like, oh, but I loved doing this book with Kathi so much. And I just had to realize that nothing in those binders caused me to be connected to you in any way, shape or form. Like you didn’t know about the binders. You didn’t live inside the binders.

Kathi (34:16.263)
Okay, you guys.

Kathi (34:38.079)
I did not. I didn’t know that any part of me existed inside the binders. And by the way, we have the book. The book has been published. Yeah, so no, I think. But you know what? Here’s the thing that I have noticed. I don’t think that’s as silly as we think it is, because I have my own binder story. I was a sales rep before I knew you, Cheri. And we used to have to carry around.

Cheri Gregory (34:40.257)
No.

Cheri Gregory (34:44.012)
No.

Yeah, I know.

Cheri Gregory (35:05.313)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (35:08.171)
these giant portfolios of different, like here was my catalog for ANA Plus, and here was my catalog for Carolina Candles. And we had these giant leather binders that all those went into, and they were expensive and they were hard to come by. And so a lot of me was invested, and I kept, even though I was no longer a sales rep,

Cheri Gregory (35:17.454)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (35:21.71)
Hmm

Cheri Gregory (35:27.362)
oooo

Kathi (35:35.063)
They sales reps were not using those kind of binders anymore because everything was digital But because it was such an important part of my life at the time Those binders were hard to get and they were so valuable to me at that time in my life I had a very hard time getting rid of them that overwhelmed binder you had Represented so much work. It was such a big part of our lives

Cheri Gregory (35:40.573)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (35:53.558)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (35:57.484)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (36:00.797)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (36:03.899)
It was such, I mean, that’s one of the most important books I’ve ever written. I would say it’s in my top three. And yeah, I mean, it feels a little bit like throwing away somebody we love to get rid of something that was so important. So I understand it, but we also have to use our own, we have to tell ourselves, Kathi does not exist in the binders.

Cheri Gregory (36:08.67)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (36:20.382)
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Kathi (36:31.131)
The concepts do not exist in the binders my future with this book. Yeah. Okay, so that you got rid of it Right

Cheri Gregory (36:33.566)
Yep. Yeah. Well, and the amount of dust on top of the binders made it really clear that I wasn’t referencing anything in them, like whatever fear had caused me to hang on to it. You know, I spent a lot of the week that I really did the deep gutting, really being grateful, just opening things and going, oh, I loved this so much or oh, this was so important to me at this time.

Kathi (36:52.675)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (37:00.526)
And I am grateful for that. And it’s not staying in here because I have other things I need to do and I need the space. And if I leave it in here, I will not be able to do the things that I want to do. So this is probably the first time that I’ve decluttered with a clear vision for you need to be out of here because there’s other things that are more important. And so I was able to weigh and sometimes it’s I need.

Kathi (37:09.185)
right.

Kathi (37:18.912)
Yes.

Cheri Gregory (37:27.858)
empty space more than I need to hold on to this memory. I need peace more than I need to hold on to this security blanket of a binder or whatever else it might be. And you know, let’s also be clear that there were things belonging to Rafiki in my office and we said farewell. We’ve said farewell to Rafiki at age 16 right before Christmas and you know.

Kathi (37:31.583)
Yes.

Kathi (37:35.857)
Right.

Kathi (37:43.831)
Hmm, so explain about Rafiki. Yeah

Cheri Gregory (37:53.278)
Everybody handles these things differently. And for me, I decided I was not going to keep things around, not because I was gonna go into denial, but because the sooner I could put everything in the car and be ready to take it down to Southern California, anything that’s really easily usable is gonna go to Anne-Marie with her cat, Zaboumafou, and then other things like I still had bags of fluid and special medications, it’s all gonna go to somebody who does foster kitten stuff.

Kathi (37:56.534)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (38:23.022)
And so, you know, but there were some things like, you know, his glucose meter. And I’m like, but I’m the only one who knows how to use this. But but there’s nobody left to use it for. And so there’s no reason for me to hang on to it, even though it was such an important phase of my life. Hanging on to the glucose meter is not going to bring him back. And it’s not going to bring that phase of life back. And so, again, I could be extremely grateful.

Kathi (38:23.671)
That’s so great.

Kathi (38:30.976)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (38:34.636)
Right.

Kathi (38:42.837)
Yes.

Kathi (38:46.846)
Right.

Cheri Gregory (38:51.994)
as I released it and was like, yeah, I’m just that I think I ended up giving to the goodwill because you know, but like you said, it’s there’s a lot of emotional stuff and I gave myself the time. I mean, I’m not talking weeks and weeks and weeks or anything like that, but I was like, it’s going to take as long as it takes. And but again, you know, looking at those things going, does this belong in 2024? Is this going to help me with these projects that I know have to get done this year really helped me be like new.

Kathi (38:58.784)
Yeah.

Kathi (39:15.392)
Right.

Cheri Gregory (39:21.646)
It’s not going to.

Kathi (39:22.311)
Yeah, you know, I have to ask myself, will this item meet me in my future? And yeah, it’s, it’s an interesting way of saying it, right? Because it’s a part of my past. And I take a lot of pictures of things that I’m giving away because, oh my goodness, I loved that jacket and I felt great in it, but you know, some people hold onto their clothes for 40 years. I’m just not that person. It’s for a time in my life. You know, you and I are both speakers.

Cheri Gregory (39:28.762)
Ooh, ooh, so good. Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (39:39.19)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (39:48.005)
Mm-mm.

Kathi (39:52.615)
I buy a couple of outfits per speaker season, I wear it to death, and then it’s time to, if I really love it, I might keep it for another year or so, or maybe two. But for a lot of things, it’s time to let it go, because the jackets I’m wearing are very distinguishable from other things that I wear.

Cheri Gregory (39:58.2)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (40:09.964)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (40:19.666)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (40:19.871)
You know, it’s okay if you want to wear the same thing over and over again But I’m just a different kind of person and that’s not normally how I roll and that’s okay But also like oftentimes I’ll wear something so much. It’s like, okay I’m kind of sick of it and it’s not gonna meet me in my future I’m going to appreciate it for where it served me before but it’s not gonna meet me in my future and that I’ve had Craft things like that. I’ve had

Cheri Gregory (40:24.206)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (40:36.105)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Hmm

Kathi (40:47.627)
The ways I’ve cooked have changed, you know, all those kinds of things. This item’s not gonna meet me in my future. Any other, like one other piece of advice for, I love that you created space in your office and said space is valuable to me. Anything else, I mean, anything else that is new for you that helped you make these decisions.

Cheri Gregory (40:49.886)
Mm-hmm.

Cheri Gregory (40:53.218)
So good.

Cheri Gregory (41:03.711)
Yes.

Cheri Gregory (41:11.234)
Um, I evicted everything that other people had said needed to be stored somewhere. And I’m like, if you want it to be stored somewhere, you can find a place for it, but it will not be my office. I do not feel a need to store anything, anything somewhere. I, my office is not somewhere anymore. And, uh, and, and part of that is because I need to be able to move. I need physical.

Kathi (41:19.456)
out.

Kathi (41:26.623)
Right.

Kathi (41:33.183)
Oooo

Cheri Gregory (41:40.034)
I need to be able to get to my windows to open the blinds. I need to be able to pop up a table and work on it because I’m a spreader outer and then put it back and I need a place to store it. And so I’m just being a lot kinder to my physical body and saying I need the amount of space that I need and I enjoy the spaciousness. So yeah.

Kathi (41:43.157)
Yeah.

Kathi (41:56.354)
Right?

Kathi (41:59.747)
parents of adult children, your house is not somewhere. And yeah, so I think oftentimes when our kids say, yeah, I don’t want that, we don’t quite believe them. We think, oh no, you’re gonna want your third grade, second place soccer trophy. Now, maybe they need a picture of it, but they don’t need the trophy. Yeah, and so your house, your office, your bedroom, your space is not somewhere.

Cheri Gregory (42:03.634)
No.

Cheri Gregory (42:19.23)
I’m sorry.

Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (42:29.283)
Hmm.

Kathi (42:29.687)
and other people get to decide what they’re going to keep and what they’re not going to keep. And I’m not going to be the keeper of memories for other people. My kids get to decide what’s important to them. I don’t get to decide for them what’s important for them. I think that’s really, really great. Cheri, so much good advice here. So many practical things. Is this about…

Cheri Gregory (42:39.406)
Amen.

Kathi (42:57.639)
embracing imperfection? Or is this, do you see it differently?

Cheri Gregory (43:04.514)
Hmm. I mean, that’s I mean as long as the person listening is okay with the word imperfection. I would say yes I mean like I mean another way of saying it would be you know, accepting that we’re human and You know, I know there’s the scripture be therefore perfect and I know some perfectionists get really stuck on that But really what that word means is be mature Keep growing keep growing up

Kathi (43:11.099)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Kathi (43:17.187)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Kathi (43:28.491)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (43:31.01)
And you know, there are some areas in life where we want things to be perfect. Like when my dad had a quadruple bypass surgery, there was only one measure of success and that was perfection. I wanted that surgeon to do a perfect job and he did and I’m forever grateful. But it turns out that in other areas of our lives, there’s a much wider range and there is no one standard measure. And so.

Kathi (43:39.597)
Yeah.

Kathi (43:42.908)
Right.

Kathi (43:54.946)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (43:56.01)
You know, I think imperfection, yes, but I would also say things like curiosity and experimentation and iteration. I mean, for me, iteration has become a really big thing for me, realizing I’m going to need to keep trying and trying and trying and revising and revising and revising. And the goal isn’t necessarily perfection. The goal is, oh, this works better. Oh, this works better. And at some point I will iterate less because I will have.

Kathi (44:05.419)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi (44:10.664)
Yes.

Kathi (44:18.836)
Yes.

Cheri Gregory (44:24.246)
found all those things that are part of my normal routine and they will all work better. So I think part of it is realizing that we keep trial and error, trial and error, trial and error. And so if that falls under the category of imperfection, then by all means, embracing imperfection.

Kathi (44:41.959)
You know, what I think you’ve really taught us here is to be a student, to be a student of self, to be a student of space, to be a student of how you function in the world. And, you know, I think so often we see somebody else’s system and we think that should work for me.

Cheri Gregory (44:47.811)
Yeah.

Cheri Gregory (44:57.911)
Mm hmm. Yup.

Cheri Gregory (45:05.328)
Hmm. Mm-mm.

Kathi (45:07.691)
but it just doesn’t because our houses are different, our habits are different. There are so many things that are different and you’ve really given us an opportunity to say, how I move in the world is okay and I need to change my environment to meet those needs. I love it. Cheri, this has been such a rich conversation. Thank you so, so much.

Cheri Gregory (45:12.174)
Hmm.

Cheri Gregory (45:32.043)
Oh, thanks for having me.

Kathi (45:34.291)
And friends, thank you for being here for these good and deep conversations. You’ve been listening to Clutter Free Academy. I’m Cathy Lipp. Now, go create the clutter free life you were always intended to live.

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