Kathi Lipp (00:10)
Hey friends, welcome to Clutter Free Academy where our goal is to help you take small doable steps every day to live with less clutter But more life and I am back here with the reigning queen of all things clutter. It is Tonya Kubo. Hey Tonya You know what we are diving into a season in Clutter Free Academy that really is all about Tonya and her people

Tonya Kubo (00:25)
Hey, Kathi

haha

Kathi Lipp (00:37)
And it’s it because we are coming up on link now. I’m doing some linty things Which sounds like I need to get one of those picker uppers to get stuff off my clothes. You’re right exactly Because I’m gonna be talking a lot about soup around lent because soup and lent go together really really really well Especially with the weather we’re having here in California today is is it crazy where you are to yes?

Tonya Kubo (00:43)
You are?

I was gonna say you need a roller. We need a roller.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

…Currential

Downpour.

Kathi Lipp (01:05)
Okay, totally off topic. Can I tell you how excited Roger is because we bought these giant backup batteries that for when you know, the power goes out, he wanted his computer and my computer to keep going. Sadly, the weather has been beautiful here. We have barely had a dusting of snow.

Tonya Kubo (01:14)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

And Roger did not get to play with his new toys.

Kathi Lipp (01:30)
Exactly until yesterday and then yesterday we still had beautiful weather But they had to turn our power off in order to do you know things and we got to use all of our giant batteries and Roger Lipp has never been happier, but this has nothing to do with what we’re talking about We are talking about as we go into lint I think you and I you know, we’re both looking at

Tonya Kubo (01:33)
Yeah

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (02:00)
We just cut off of a conversation where there’s a lot going on in Tonya’s life like right now like Tonya I hate to say this this has been like the most chill week I’ve had and it feels like five years

Tonya Kubo (02:11)
Yay! I was gonna

say because you haven’t had a chill week in five years, Kathi you deserve a chill week.

Kathi Lipp (02:19)
I am absorbing it and I’m doing some deep thinking and things like that. And on the opposite end of the spectrum is Tonya’s life. And it’s interesting, I’m gonna ask you a question that we did not prepare for. With everything going on in your life, there’s been some relationship stuff, emotional stuff, work stuff, kid stuff.

Tonya Kubo (02:33)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (02:44)
If you were still where you were 10 years ago with clutter, how would this week have looked different for you? Because I know it’s been a very stressful week, but I also know you’ve made great progress in your life.

Tonya Kubo (02:49)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so the thing is, is when in my life, right, when I was early in my clutter journey, because I think like we have a lot of listeners who are like eons beyond where I started off with, right? Like they are just so much, their starting point is so much higher than where my starting point was. But I wouldn’t have been able to function. I mean, I think I would have had to take like a week off of work.

Kathi Lipp (03:14)
All right.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (03:26)
I’d probably have a really hard time. I definitely would have a hard time eating. That’s always one of the things is when I am overwhelmed and life is difficult, I really struggle to feed myself. I feed the people around me, but I don’t do well feeding myself. And then I just fall into like very base level survival habits. So I wouldn’t have slept. You know, my old life, I would frequently be up 18 to 20 hours a day.

Kathi Lipp (03:31)
you

Yeah.

my goodness. I can’t even imagine.

Tonya Kubo (03:56)
Because

I just didn’t feel like I had the luxury of sleep. And so…

Kathi Lipp (03:59)
And it

can I also point something else out that I I just want to say, you know, this is again, rough couple of weeks, lots of things going on. And not only clutter wise, are you so much further behind? And, know, if somebody says that, oh, I lost $50,000 in the stock market, that’s a lot of money. But depending on where you started from, that could be life changing.

Tonya Kubo (04:03)
Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Kathi Lipp (04:28)
Or

I have to put off retirement for another three months. know, like for different people, yeah. So that you didn’t have to start with such a deficit because of this, but you have also done some big stuff for your health over the past couple of years that, you know, where, you know, 10 years ago, your health also would have taken. I’m just saying you have done so much progress in so many ways.

Tonya Kubo (04:32)
Right. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (04:58)
That while this has been an incredibly hard couple of weeks You have done it with you know, you’ve kept your nose above water

Tonya Kubo (05:06)
Right, well, it’s been very easy to figure out what to do and not do, right? So it’s one of those things where, you know, it’s like the, we’re kind of at the beginning of the month and we do a lot of our grocery shopping at the beginning of the month. But like my shelves weren’t bare. It was no hardship to put off grocery shopping for a week. You know, some people had offered to bring us meals and I just said yes. And it was very easy to say yes to that because I didn’t have food rotting in the fridge.

Kathi Lipp (05:10)
Mmm.

Yeah.

Right.

Good for you.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (05:35)
because we

have a great system for eating all the food that we cook. So it was like, yeah, actually, my leftovers will be tapped out on Wednesday. So if you want to bring dinner over for us on Wednesday, that will be awesome. And then somebody else was like, well, can I just send you Uber Eats gift card? You are welcome to send us that. That would be great. I have a great use for that. So I could, when people offered help, I knew exactly what kind of help I needed. But the main thing, Kathi, is I was in bed by eight o’clock every single night.

Kathi Lipp (05:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (06:04)
Now the one hard thing for me, right, is because again, when I get stressed out, like my body just does different things. I have not been able to get out of bed before 5 a.m., which you me, I’m a 4 a.m. person.

Kathi Lipp (06:15)
I’m sorry. Yeah, for the rest of the world, yes, but for Tonya, I know that’s sleeping in.

Tonya Kubo (06:21)
But being able to sleep for that kind of stretch would not have been possible before.

Kathi Lipp (06:26)
Yeah, and you know what I’m going to attribute a lot of this to not everything but a lot of it too is that you really are our champion when it comes to the hidden cost of clutter You’re the one who’s constantly pointing out No, it’s not just that you have to move stuff over if you want to sit down on your couch You you are the one who keeps bringing up in conversation the emotional drain

Tonya Kubo (06:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (06:55)
the spiritual drain. And so that’s what I want to talk to you about today is, is it possible, all these places where we just, we are feeling so incredibly tapped out, is it possible to make changes like that in your life? And I, you know, I’m just going to say yes, because I’ve seen it in your life. I’ve seen it in my own life.

Tonya Kubo (06:58)
Uh-huh.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (07:22)
I’ve seen it in the lives of some of, you know, many of our members where, and I think we sometimes forget to do that because we see how much further we have to go. I’m doing this with my clutter right now. Like, can you believe how out of control my t-shirt drawer is? Like, why am I even teaching anything in Clutter Free? Because if you saw my t-shirt drawer, you’d be like, she has nothing to say. And, but before,

Tonya Kubo (07:33)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Kathi Lipp (07:51)
I was paying late charges on every bill we had. I couldn’t find, I remember the day I couldn’t find my toothbrush. Like Tonya, what happened to my toothbrush? Like where was I taking my toothbrush?

Tonya Kubo (07:55)
Right.

Yeah.

Kathi Lipp (08:09)
And if you came to my house right now, would I like five minutes heads up? Yeah. Do I need it? I don’t. so I, yes, that change is possible. I want to know for you, where have you seen the biggest difference in emotions from the time? And both of us are coming from guys, our houses are not perfect. And Tonya would be the first to say, cause she’s been to my house. You know, she is

Tonya Kubo (08:16)
Right.

Kathi Lipp (08:38)
Let’s just say she has a lot of life going on at her house. know, Roger and I, we could say, I could say I’m not cooking today, and it would just be fine. That would not go over so well at your house. You know, people…

Tonya Kubo (08:47)
Mm-hmm.

No. Well Abby would

love that because then Abby would be like, well, can we go to Olive Garden? answer is no, child. No, cannot. No.

Kathi Lipp (08:55)
Hahaha!

Abby and Roger are just two people separated by 50 years. That’s all there is to it.

I just want to know what, where have you seen the biggest emotional difference for you?

Tonya Kubo (09:13)
So this is, hard to articulate, but I’ll try and then you’ll make it sound like it makes sense. Before, there was always a level of chaos. So if you picture like, okay, my brain is cluttered and there’s a scale of one to 10. On a good day, my brain was already at level seven. So there was never much more space for things, right?

Kathi Lipp (09:40)
Right.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (09:41)
So

like prioritizing the simplest, I just couldn’t do it. By the end of the workday, I’d already made so many decisions. I couldn’t tell you what to have for dinner unless I’d planned that four days ago. Now, I would say my average level of like capacity of my brain taken up is like two. So like a lot of life can actually get thrown at me before I’m at that level of paralyzed that I was every single day.

Kathi Lipp (09:44)
Mm-hmm.

Right. Yes.

Mmm.

That’s such a gift. is. When you’re not having to spend, you know, your levels on finding the car keys, figuring out where that permission slip is that your kid brought home three days ago. When you are not having to, you know, when dishes are not a crisis. Because I remember thinking dishes are a crisis, not this is just a part of what we do every day. I know.

Tonya Kubo (10:13)
It really is.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Uh-huh.

Right?

Kathi Lipp (10:40)
I know that sounds dramatic, but it was amazing how long I could let the dishes go before I actually did something about them and how bad I felt about that.

Tonya Kubo (10:51)
Right. Well, so here’s the other thing, right? Is when you’re like underwater, literally underwater because life is that unmanageable because I’m sorry, but I know very few people who just have a cluttered home, right? Usually it’s a cluttered home, it’s a cluttered head, it’s a cluttered heart, it’s a cluttered schedule. And all of those things contribute to the cluttered home. So when you’re not…

Kathi Lipp (11:07)
Right.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (11:20)
that far underwater and life throws you a curve ball, it’s very easy to shift things around. You know, like you’re talking about dishes. So in our house, certain people have designated chores. It was a simple conversation of, with everything going on, Lily, I need you to be in charge of washing the dishes every day this week. Abby, I know that you’re used to three reminders to empty the dishwasher. I really need us to have a day where

Kathi Lipp (11:28)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (11:50)
I tell you something once and it gets done. Can you do that for me? Right? And I mean, she’s 10. Does she want to do it? No. She’s like, yeah, mommy, okay, I can do that. I see everything is going cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs around here. No problem. I got that. But 10 years ago, well, let’s see, Clutter, yeah, 10, it’s been 10 years since Clutter Free came out. 10 years ago, I couldn’t have even been able to tell you what to show.

Kathi Lipp (11:52)
Mm-hmm.

Of course not.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

It’s been 10 years.

Okay.

Tonya Kubo (12:18)
You would

have come to me and you would have said, Tonya, what’s not getting done this week because of all this stuff going on? I’d be like, I don’t know.

Kathi Lipp (12:24)
Yeah. And I think you made a really good point a bit ago when you are so underwater and somebody wants to throw you a rope and you’re like, I don’t even have a hand to catch that with. Like I can’t tell you how to help me. And I love that you were so specific in asking for help. We’re going to take a quick break. We’re going to come right back and I want to talk about a little bit more of the impact and then an opportunity for

Tonya Kubo (12:36)
Mmm.

Kathi Lipp (12:51)
everybody who’s listening, because I think we have some really cool stuff up coming up that I think will help you if you’re relating at all to this conversation. Okay, we’ll take a quick break and come right back.

Okay, I am back with Tonya, we’re just talking about what is the hidden cost of clutter. And you know, one of the things that we talk a lot about in the group is spiritual disconnection. And people, you know, I’ll never forget. I can quote you almost every bad review I’ve ever had on the book. By the way, I just got a one-star review on Sabbath Soup.

And she didn’t like that I said, you know, there are different days you can have your Sabbath. And her username is picky mommy. And I’m like, okay, if you see that, yeah, if she calls herself that it’s okay. But one of the bad reviews I got on Clutter Free back when it came out was that clutter isn’t a fight between good and evil. Clutter is not from the devil. Okay, fine. You know what?

Whatever you want to say, but here’s what I know. My clutter, so much of it has been rooted in fear, guilt, and shame. And those are things that leave me spiritually disconnected. Especially, I would say, especially shame. Shame is a big thing for me. I want to know from you in these past 10 years, was shame a part of your decluttering journey?

Tonya Kubo (14:03)
That’s fine.

Kathi Lipp (14:31)
Was it fear? Was it guilt? Or was that not really it? What would you say was your disconnect?

Tonya Kubo (14:39)
Well, for me, it was all three to different degrees. mean, definitely fear drove my Claire in a big way. The shame piece was… So I probably had less guilt than I had shame. I probably had more shame. For me, the shame was I really thought everybody else got this and I didn’t. Right. So I was ashamed of the fact that there was like some missing piece that I couldn’t figure out. And

Kathi Lipp (14:46)
Okay, yeah.

right.

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:09)
You know, because of course so many people think clutter is a housekeeping issue. We know it’s not, you know, so it’s like, you know, a shame that I couldn’t keep a house. Well, then once I understood the emotional drivers of clutter, then it’s like, well, no, it’s like, I didn’t understand how to manage the ebb and flow of stuff. I was overwhelmed. I had an unrealistic attachment to items. I really had deep, deep fear of scarcity.

Kathi Lipp (15:14)
It’s not.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (15:36)
You know, I still struggle with that. I talked to a lot of our members about that, right? Like, I feel like that will always be my albatross, like until the day I die. I will always default to this fear. But the shame piece has been gone for years. I think actually shame left first. I think guilt hung on a little bit longer, but shame left first simply because it’s like, you know what? Why is irrelevant? It just is. And this is who I am.

Kathi Lipp (15:37)
Yeah. Right.

Yes. Yeah.

Mmm, that’s so exciting.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (16:05)
and

I’m just, I’m working to get better each day.

Kathi Lipp (16:09)
Do you think the fear, I know for me, it came from parental underemployment? Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (16:15)
It’s poverty. Yeah, my fear

is 100 % poverty driven.

Kathi Lipp (16:19)
Yeah. And it’s a killer. part of our psyche now. It’s part of our DNA. so, you know, when you see people gathering too much or doing too much, just realize, you know, that’s probably based in real fear for them. And it’s good to have an understanding while still, you know, in ourselves trying to work on it. You know, I think about all of this, the fear, guilt and shame. It has an impact on our relationships.

Tonya Kubo (16:26)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (16:50)
financially, I think about this that I tend to buy things, you know, my my impulse is to buy things to have a backup of a backup of a backup because of some of that childhood stuff that is still going on. And I love that you have taken up the mantle in our group for not just Clutter Free, but for Clutter Free.

Tonya Kubo (17:01)
Mm-hmm.

Right?

Kathi Lipp (17:18)
We have a Bible study and the subtitle is, it’s Clutter Free Bible study, what Jesus has to say about your stuff. And because we know the number one topic in the New Testament isn’t anything that we are currently fighting about in the United States. It is money and stuff. Jesus knew that this was, you know, talk about an albatross around your neck. Jesus knew that this was going to be our biggest hang up.

Tonya Kubo (17:20)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (17:47)
in everything that we do. And so every year you lead a Bible study that I wrote 10 years ago. But it is, I would say, in many ways, it’s more relevant today in 2025 than it was in 2015. And can you tell me a little bit about why you’re so passionate about this Bible study for people who struggle with clutter?

Tonya Kubo (18:05)
Mm-hmm.

Okay, well, I mean, I’m passionate about it because this is how our Facebook group got started. I like, I’m just a little bit nostalgic about that. We got started as a Bible study. But see the thing with the Bible study, again, we have a tendency to think symptoms are the problem, right? And very rarely are symptoms and the problem the same. So where symptoms of a problem emerge oftentimes is very far from where the problem actually is rooted.

Kathi Lipp (18:16)
Guess. Mm-hmm. Guess.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (18:42)
And

clutter, this physical clutter, the stuff in our home is actually a symptom. The real problem, as you’ve pointed out, is fear, guilt, and shame. But the real problem, I think, especially for believers, is there’s this contradiction, right? We’re supposed to have this neat and tidy house, but then we have internalized this message that we’re supposed to keep every single thing we’ve bought because that’s the only way we can prove we’re a good steward of the money that we’ve been given.

Kathi Lipp (19:09)
Right.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (19:10)
And there’s

this battle that our cluttery people fight all the time between I want a tidy house. I have too much stuff in this house. I need less stuff, but I don’t want to be wasteful. And so what I love about the Bible study is it breaks it down scripture by scripture at what Jesus really says about stuff and

Kathi Lipp (19:24)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (19:34)
I think for most of us, because it’s a very internal process for the Bible city, this is not the sort of thing you can take before and after pictures of. This is you, your walk with clutter, you, your walk with Christ. But people kind of go internally and then they recognize, the stuff. For some people, they view the stuff as an idol. They recognize like, I’ve been idolizing these things. I think, I’m so safe and so secure because I’ve got

Kathi Lipp (19:41)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (20:03)
15 bags of flour in my pantry, but really the flour is an idol, right? I’m telling myself that I am better than the average person because I have 15 sacks of flour in my pantry. And if I stop and think about it, I don’t bake. So those 15 sacks of flour are actually the biggest waste. I’m better off giving it to a food bank. I’m better off giving it to somebody else. And so I just feel like

Kathi Lipp (20:08)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (20:32)
It drives home how, well, clutter can be a unifying problem, how individual the root cause of each of our clutter issue is.

Kathi Lipp (20:45)
And this Bible study helps people get to the root of it. And the Bible study doesn’t clean your house, but it starts to affect your thinking when you start to have those aha moments and start to see that, this is why I’m doing this. Or here’s the truth behind why I don’t need to do this anymore.

Tonya Kubo (20:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right?

Kathi Lipp (21:12)
And it’s amazing what God can reveal in those times. Tonya, can you give us some details about the study of people are like, you know what, a Linton study is just what I need. And I don’t necessarily want to do the one at church because this one affects my life. I need this in my life.

Tonya Kubo (21:35)
Right, well, and the other thing is because we do it online, you don’t have to worry about walking into a building like with a big scarlet letter across your chest that says, hey, I have Claudia at my house. But the Bible says so Lent, know, Ash Wednesday is March 7th and Easter, I think if I’m not wrong, is like April 20th. So how we do the studies to the actual like core curriculum of the study is from March 7th to April 11th.

Kathi Lipp (21:45)
Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (22:04)
But I love to have a good kickoff call where I kind of lay out, I always have a small, medium and large plan for the study because I understand this time of year is very busy for some people and for other people it isn’t. And so you get to decide how deep you want to go. So on the kickoff call, we talk about, you know, sort of what your choices are with that. And then we’ll do a celebration to just kind of mark what we’ve done, the realizations that we’ve come to on April 18th.

Kathi Lipp (22:11)
Mm-hmm.

Tonya Kubo (22:32)
and then you have completed it before Easter starts and you can celebrate Easter with your family and the miracle that comes with that. The Bible study, if you don’t already own it, because if you own it, you own it for life. And so I would just say email us if you don’t know whether you own it and we’ll let you know because we can look that up. But it’s just twenty five dollars. It’s it’s a series of videos and then there’s a printable workbook that comes with it. So you’ve got the online videos, the workbook.

Kathi Lipp (22:44)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Tonya Kubo (22:59)
We have group discussions in our Clutterfree Academy Facebook group. If Facebook isn’t your thing, that’s totally fine. You can do the videos and the workbook and you can email us some of your reflections. I always love to answer people’s emails, so that doesn’t bother me one bit. The group discussions though are really fun because everybody gets something different out of the study every single year.

Kathi Lipp (23:14)
Yeah.

And we all learn from each other. That’s really cool. And then when somebody is talking about why they do the things they do, somebody else has an aha moment. It’s just, it’s really special. It’s really special in there. Okay, so if they want to join, what do they do?

Tonya Kubo (23:33)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so if you need to buy the study because you don’t already own it, it’s kathy.link slash study. We’ll put that in the show notes too, but it’s Kathi. Just make sure it’s Kathi with an I, not with a Y. Dot link slash study. And then our Facebook group is easy to find on Facebook. You can search Cholera Free Academy or just go to kathy.link slash CFA. And that’ll take you directly to the Facebook group where you can join. If you already own the study, you don’t have to make any other purchases.

Kathi Lipp (23:52)
Mm-hmm, for sure.

Hahaha

Tonya Kubo (24:15)
The, you can, some people do like to read the book Clutter Free alongside the study. I always say that that’s like for the A plus plus people. Cause you’re committing to reading a book plus doing the video series and the discussions for six weeks. That’s a lot. But I know some people love that. They want to really go in deep, but most folks will just watch the videos and participate in the discussions and we have a great time.

Kathi Lipp (24:28)
Yes. Yes.

I love it guys. We all again all of this is in the show notes. We’ll also be talking about it in Kathi lips Clutter Free Academy on Facebook but that if you are looking for something a linten study and you would like something that is hits you exactly where you’re at if you’re listening to this podcast This is the study for you and it’s nice that it can be done from home Sometimes when it’s really busy. This is a good thing to be able to do

Tonya Kubo (25:07)
Mm-hmm.

Kathi Lipp (25:08)
Tonya,

thank you so much for all this great insight. Come back next week. We are going to be talking about some of the practical transformation that can come from this Bible study. You’re gonna love it. Friends, you’ve been listening to Clutter-Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lip. Now, go live the clutter-free life you’ve always wanted to live.