Declutter Your Home in 30 Days

Published Oct 24, 2023, 7:00 AM

Clutter isn’t just a nuisance; it also impacts our brains. Having a space that feels complete and not cluttered leads to the brain feeling uncluttered, making it easier to make financial decisions. Let’s spice up the challenge of decluttering your home easily and quickly as we cover speeding up your decluttering process and popular minimalist challenges in this episode.

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Episode three forty eight, Declutter your Home in thirty days.

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast, where you'll learn to save money, embrace simplicity, and liver your life. Here your hosts, Jen and Jill.

Welcome to the Frugal Friends podcast. My name is Jen, my name is Jill. And we ran a poll in the friend letter to see what kind of financial challenge you guys wanted to do, and this decluttering challenge one hands down. So this is the episode you are getting. And if you're wondering why decluttering on a quasi financial podcast, because a lot of you will know will reiterate having a clean home, having a home that feels complete, having spaces that feel complete and not cluttered, has a direct connection to your brain. It results in your brain feeling uncluttered, complete, and it makes it easier to make financial decisions. And just the sheer fact that if you love where you are, you want to leave it less so and which will result in spending less money. So there are a lot of reasons decluttering your home is directly correlated with your finances, and we're excited to talk about how to help you declutter faster and hopefully in thirty days.

We love these challenges just to gamify, how to simplify. But first, this episode is brought to you by Erasers, somehow, a great children's toy and an I know most adults can't live without. They follow us through our whole lifetime, taking away our mistakes and decorating the ends of our pencils. The only thing better than erasers is writing and words that you don't.

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Yeah, this is what you asked for in the friend letter, So here you go, all of you subscribers.

So if you're interested in decluttering minimalism the correlation it has with your finances, we have several episodes over the last almost three hundred and fifty The most recent ones we've done episode three oh two, How Decluttering Saves You Money with Ankor Jansen, she's from declutter Hub, and then episode two eighty one, which was a rerun. Not a rerun, but we had a summit in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two and this was an interview we did with Christine Platt from the Afro Minimalist called how to Curate a Life with Less Stuff and More Intention one of my favorite interviews we've ever done. So I would highly highly recommend checking out episode two eighty one and also episode three oh two, really really great decluttering and minimalism episodes. But we love the concept of minimalism, but we are not minimalism people. We love completion and the feeling of loving your home more than we love less stuff for the sake of less stuff. But in order to get there, most of us will have to declutter because years and years of overconsumption lead us to houses that just have too much stuff, just plain old simple, too much stuff, and it leads us to this headspace where we don't know what enough is. We don't know where to stop decluttering, we don't know how far to go with accumulating, and we don't know how far to go with decluttering. So this is something that you don't do just once. But if it is your first time doing it, or you haven't done it in a long time, then doing something like a thirty day declutter challenge can be very helpful in getting you over a big hump into feeling that feeling of completion and enjoyment of your home. And I think my house is nowhere near where I want it to be. We're living in a renovation. But I go over to Jill's house and her house is goals now, like we should show it off more on social media. But your house is esthetically perfect without being sterile.

Jill, Oh, that's so kind.

I have been thinking about that that we should update our listeners because you have been listening to me in the past three years being in the.

Midst of a renovation, so I know what that feels like.

Jen. But I do think that this simplicity and learning what that looks like for us, it is going to look different for everybody for different seasons, whether you are living on your own or with roommates or kids or spouse, you name it's then there's just going to be varying degrees. But I think the goal of contentment simplicity for just our space, more able to relax and recharge in our spaces and not feel overwhelmed. But I think I love this challenge idea because, like you said, Jen, we have to declutter often, so we need to make it approachable and easy to do and quick and efficient.

So I'm excited to do that.

And yes, someday we can show our listeners the home before and afters.

Absolutely, So today's episode is going to focus on tips for getting things done fast, how to declutter fast, not declutter your whole house in a weekend. I really don't think that that's attainable for most people unless this is a practice that you're doing bi annually. And then we're also going to be talking about a few mini challenges that you can do throughout the thirty days to break things up and make it fun. So yes, we could find a thirty day challenge where we just read off thirty actions for you to take, but I think it's worth making the task your own, because who has time to declutter every single day in a month, right, It's usually you're going to be doing it on the weekends or in the fine, finite times you have during the week. Well, that's what we are going to be covering in this episode. The first article that we found when researching speedy tips is from Becoming Minimalists and it's seven tips to speed up the decluttering process. Becoming Minimalist is a fantastic blog. It's from Joshua Becker, who has written pretty much the quintessential minimalism books. Really love his books and he's got some great tips. So I will start with the first one we'll go through all seven is start easy with a clean sweep. So rather than attempting to declutter your home room by room, try going in waves instead. And I love a room by room approach. That's what I do, But if that's not you, you might find this a quote unquote waves method to be a more impactful, especially at the beginning. So what you do is you grab a box and walk around your home room by room and just fill your box with anything you find that you no longer need, no hard decisions, just getting rid of that first wave, and then once completed, you can try a second wave, but be advised it gets a little more difficult each wave you go through. But this is a great idea if you're not sure where to start, if you're maybe intimidated by the room to room approach, you just grab a box and you start filling things with the easy stuff, and that's an amazing way to start.

So yeah, this is clearly not just talking about putting things away or simply organizing that could come, but truly decluttering, recognizing that there are things that you have in your home that you no longer need and you just haven't found the time and space to remove them from your home. And that could be because you're gonna sell it, you're gonna give it away, or it truly is just trash. But I love that idea. It feels so approachable. We're just we're walking with a box and we're going in waves. The second tip to speed up the process on here is to find motivation with built in deadlines. I've been seeing a lot of this, honestly in reels where people are describing how they're doing a task and setting a timer to do that task. Usually it's something that we don't totally want to do, so being able to give ourselves just a time limited amount for how long we're going to give ourselves to this, so that we know, oh, I actually didn't spend more than ten minutes on this thing. And so Joshua describes how when he first began the process of minimizing their possessions, he did a lot of the work early in the morning. So his kids usually got out of bed at seven am, so he'd begin at six am, and so he knew he had one hour to get done as much as he can. For some that's going to be reasonable. For others of us, we're not early birds. So find whatever time you have, and it doesn't even have to be as long as an hour. It can be ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. It can be for that sweep that Jen just described, or it could be room by room. Really, this is kind of a we're throwing tips at you to be able to be efficient and quick with your decluttering, but grab and take whatever is going to work for you and makes the most sense for your lifestyle.

Yeah, I wanted to say this when I was reading the first one, but I didn't want to encroach on the second one. But like setting a timer for fifteen minutes and doing that first wave in fifteen minutes, it makes the task seem less daunting and it cuts down on the decision fatigue when you're like doing the fifteen minutes and you're like, you really have to just like make decisions and go on, and if you can't make the decision, you move past the item, so it keeps you from lingering. I love this tip because it does work so well to speed up the process, and so it's definitely better for the earlier waves for sure. But even when you get into kind of later waves with more sentimental items, you can just take in longer deadlines to do things. But I love, love, love this tip. I would say like fifteen minute deadlines to do that after fifteen minutes after the kids go to bed, or fifteen minutes like when everybody's doing their homework, or just after you get home from work. It's time that you have that you'd probably spend scrolling on social media, but instead you're doing something really really productive with it. The third is to donate more. So this is one that I have started taking to heart. When I was first decluttering, I really felt the need to do the buy Nothing group to sell as much as possible. I just wanted to pass things on to as many people as possible. I didn't want to send things to the thrift store if I didn't have to, and I especially didn't want to throw them away. But as my life has become busier, I have found less time to end vest to passing things on to other people. So if I want to, if it's a bigger item, I will try to sell it. If it's a bigger item that I don't think will sell well, I'll put a kerb alert on Facebook Marketplace and just be like, you know, this is near the corner of this street and this avenue and have somebody like you know, can pick it up there. But I donate a lot more and it has made the process of decluttering much quicker and something I will do continuously. And Jill knows this. I have a box either by the front door or in my room at any given moment when I find something that I'm like, you know what, this has served its purpose. This has served me, and I no longer need it. It goes directly into the box at all times there is a box of donations just ready, so that way, when the box fills up, I can take it and I don't have to think about things. So definitely highly recommend donating more. It's just easier. It doesn't have to be for everyone. But if it's daunting to you to, like if it's keeping you from decluttering because you're like, oh, I just have to have the time to like list everything and sell it, and I just have to wait until I have that time. Stop waiting and just donate.

Agree.

I think we get better and better at this too, because since we're always going to be in the process of decluttering throughout our lives, we can get better and better at identifying what's going to be donated, what am I going to take the time to try and sell. I keep different boxes in my garage for that purpose, ones that actually it just goes straight into the car, so that whenever I'm passing at thrift.

Store, I can take it there.

But then I also keep a box for things that I want to try and sell. So then when I have a Saturday that actually just happened for me this past weekend, I have this collection of things I took three hours on a Saturday to take measurements, post pictures and sell those items, and I give it a week and if they don't sell, then I donate them. But I think you can feel the permission to not do any of that. Again, like you said, Jenna, love that if it's what's keeping you from decluttering, then there's a cost to that, and you may not want to incur that kind of cost.

Yeah, and I love that built in deadline that you give yourself a week and if it's not sold, then it's donated. So yeah, maybe you can give yourself a week, but don't let it just fester there, you know, for months at a time sitting on Facebook marketplace.

I think too, this is not in the article, but I'm going to mention it because I'm thinking about it and it's halfway my podcast. I think that this process of going through, whether you're doing a sweep or room by room, it forces us to look at our things from a different perspective versus when we're not in the mode of decluttering or looking at things to question whether or not we want to keep them, even if it doesn't make it into Some have been by the end of those fifteen minutes. It's starting to get our brains to think about our things in a different way that maybe you set eyes on something but you weren't ready to make a decision, but it's now stewing in the back of your head and you're thinking, oh, actually, now I've got a friend who could utilize that toy because her kids are at that age. And it just kind of gets you into that mode of being willing to let go of different items and know where the best home is going to be for it as you start to look at your things in that way, even in just time chunks. So there's multiple reasons to do this and many people can benefit from it. But I'll move on to number four now, which is includes some help. And so this is talking about specifically the people in your home that you don't have to do this process of decluttering all on your own. And I know this is quite a point of contention and barrier and pain point for a lot of people of how do I get my spouse on board? How do I get my kids on board? And this isn't an episode d primarily about that, but with this tip, it's saying, invite them into this process, maybe share what your thoughts and goals are about it, and ask them to participate in some way. He gives an example of tasking his children with finding three things in their room that they can give away or donate. And so you're not the only one going room to room. You maybe have depending on how many people in your home, multiple people now getting rid of three, five, ten things each. And you didn't do all of that, and you got their minds thinking about their things, what do they actually need, what's going to build contentment?

That's just a life skill, honestly.

Yeah, I wanted to get Kai into the decluttering process for the first time. We had our biannual declutter, like where I went room to room. We had it last weekend and I told Kai, we're going to get rid of some of your toys that you don't play with anymore so that we can pass them on to kids who will play with them. And he was like, very into it because right now his favorite toys are new toys. And he says, he will say this like honestly, he's like, I love new toys, I hate old toys. I love new toys. And I'm like, God help us. And I gave him a big box, and I was like, all right, put your old toys that you don't like anymore into this box, and then you know, we can accumulate new toys. And I come back thirty minutes later, and there is one car in the box, and he's moved on to playing with other things.

One because for a child, it's forced him to look at all of his things, and looking at all of his things means he's playing with all of his things. Yes, and they may not totally work with a four year old, but I mean, well, good on you for making effort.

And well, this is stuff. You know, it's not gonna go well, but you got to start it so that they get familiar with it. So I mean, he already sorts his own laundry. He is quite overwhelmed by it. But I've already got him sorting his own laundry, you know, because when he turns five, he's going to be doing his own laundry. So he's got to start now with the sorting. So yes, get help. Next the next one, I was very hesitant, slash intrigued by, slash offended, slash interested, and agreed with. I had so many emotions about this one. And I wasn't going to include it, and then I was like, you know what, this is actually real, This is real life, and it's why we go through articles and don't just say all of our own thoughts. Number five is find freedom in temporary storage, and I am vehemently morally opposed to storage units like long term love pods are great for moving or if you're between apartments and you need a storage unit, great, they serve a purpose. But I am, oh, just I hate how big of a business storage units have become. They are so profitable because people just have so much stuff that they it overflows into a storage unit and they just keep it. It's just there. They pay for it every month just to store stuff, and it's insane to me. But here's his explanation. He says, I know a lot of people get hung up on hard to remove items, and these vary from personal person, but it can be sentimental items, books, kitchen gabinets, toys, kitchen gadgets. So to keep from getting slowed down by these things, you can try an intermediate step of packing a box, labeling it with a date, and storing it out of sight. It'll be easier emotionally. And then six months later, you can revisit the box, and if you go to the storage unit for anything, then you know that's something you should keep. But if anything you don't touch for six months in there, you part with and I can get it. It's also a finan like you've got money invested in this, so it behooves you to get rid of the stuff after six months. So I can see how this would be a really good step if you're having a very hard time getting rid of stuff, that you do those first waves and then the harder stuff you can put into the storage unit and just test the waters to see if you'll need it.

Well, he's not actually saying that you need to rent a storage unit. I mean maybe that would be somebody's true somebody's experienced, but you could also do this even just if you've got storage space and attic a garage the way way back of a closet. I think the main point here is that if that's your hang up of I'm not ready to get rid of this thing right away, throw it in a box and put a date on it. I love that tip, so you can actually know when was the last time I touched this box?

Looked at these things true.

You could even put a date on the calendar. Now I'm going to go back and look at it. It's not as if you can't re look at the things in the box, but give yourself a lot of space and time and then see how emotionally attached you still feel to those things. It's usually much easier to actually part with them, not keep them in your closet, in a garage or a storage space you're paying for.

Hopefully that doesn't last for long.

Yeah, No, you would make a good point. You don't have to pay for it. You can't just put it, but you have to be very adamant about revisiting it. You can't just put it in there and forget it about it because you're not paying for that storage. You've got to be adamant about revisiting it at the date.

You could double it with a savings goal. Every month that you are storing that box, you just pay yourself a storage fee to a side.

Oh that's so true. What a fun e'xt your challenge you? Yeah, every month you're putting money away, and once you get rid of the box, then you get to do whatever you want with that money, which hopefully is defy a bunch of more stuff. But this is true.

Okay, number six, we can't move through this article. We got so many ideas. Tell a friend and invite them over. Now, I gotta say, when I first read this tip, I thought that it meant have a friend over help them to clutter.

That's not what they're saying.

They're saying like planning to have a friend over is going to give you the urgency that you need to declutter. This only works if you care what your friend thinks about your space.

You know what it should be your mother in law. Have your mother in law over.

Like if it's Jenner, I, we don't care. You're coming over and you're gonna see the whole show.

But it has to be a friend that I guess you care about what they see and what they don't see. And using that then as a death line for when you have to have your house kind of dem or start.

A book club. You can start a book club or some kind of like girls' night. So yeah, it puts a little bit of pressure on you shouldn't like stress you out. Don't do it if you're overwhelmed, but it can be a good Another deadline self implosed deadlines so good, so healthy. And the last one is don't confuse intent with action. I love this one. With all things in life, It's important to not confuse a desire to change with actual change. Can I read that again?

Go for it? Please do.

With all things in life, it is important not to confuse a desire to change, which you all have. If you're listening to this, not to confuse a desire to change with actual change. Thinking about decluttering. Talking about decluttering does not.

Result Listening to a podcast about it does not.

Result in actual decluttering. And this is the same thing as procrass to spending. Spending money on something does not result in that thing, that hobby, that activity getting done. Learning about something does not result in that activity or thing getting done. So the benefits that decluttering and minimalism can give you on your overall cognitive function, on your finances long term, those benefits can only be experienced when the excess clutter has been removed and you have given yourself permission to stop buying home decor and stop buying kitchen gadgets and all of this stuff because you have deemed all of your kitchen, your rooms, your living room complete. So remind yourself that taking change. Thinking about change is not the same as implementing a change, and you should take one small step at a time. I know when Kai is sorting his laundry and it's a big basket of laundry, he's very intimidated by it. You can see his body language change and just sees up and he's very intimidated by it. And I'm trying to teach him. We do this one piece of clothing at a time, We sort one piece at a time, and that's the same for you. You start decluttering and getting your home complete one thing at a time, not even one room or one basket, one thing at a time, So just do it.

HM.

Now we're going to talk about this next article, which is eleven of the best decluttering and minimalism challenges worth trying. It comes from Sarah. Ever after, we're not gonna go through all eleven. We're just gonna pick a few of our faves and I'll kick it off. The first one is ten spaces, ten minutes, one hundred items, and it is what it sounds like. You will decide ten spaces that you want to be moving through and decluttering. You're going to want to find ten items in each of those spaces to then equal, so like the challenge is doing math for you, that it will then mean that you have decluttered gotten rid of one hundred items by the time it's all said and done. Now, this particular challenge you do not need to do all at once. In fact, it and I advise against it, you can tackle you could you could tackle it.

All in like a weekend.

I mean it would take you probably two hours, ten minutes. Ten spaces. That's one hundred minutes. That's an hour and forty minutes. That's some in between times, so two hours. If you have two hours, you can do this all at once.

Or you can space it out and you'd still be accomplishing the challenge if you take even just ten minutes every day, and over the course of ten days you've done ten spaces in ten minutes. Now you've got one hundred items, and that sounds like a lot, like a lot of items, and who knows, maybe you'll end up with more. This is just a launching point to be able to gamify what can be an uncomfortable, not very fun process. But by time limiting it, it can help us to make quicker decisions as we move through it.

I like this for a weekend challenge. I think it's you know, two hours, it can be done. I think it sounds like a fun thing if you are starting out, maybe your first weekend. This is definitely a you know, one of those first sweep kind of games. The second one is a little more intense and I have opinions on it. It's the Men's Game, and if you are familiar with minimalism, this is the most popular minimalism challenge out there. I think you can probably do hashtag Men's Game, or hashtag Men's or something. You find a lot of people doing this. It is an often unfinished challenge because you start the first day of the month by decluttering one item. On the second day you declutter two, third day three, so by the end of the month. By the end of a thirty day month, you will declutter four hundred and sixty five items. So on the positive side, the challenge allows you to start small and work your way up. On the negative side, the author says, I could picture it being very challenging to five thirty items at the end of the month after you've already discarded over four hundred. If you're going to do the Men's Game. Here's how I would do it. I'd do it backwards. I would go thirty to one. I mean, honestly, at this point, like the Men's Game would be a habit. You're creating a habit of decluttering. So not only are you de cluttering, but you're also working on building a habit, and those are two different things that you're working on, and they can sometimes fight each other. So very few people actually finish the Men's Game. So with that in mind, building the habit is not the important part of decluttering. Getting stuff out is the important part. So that's why I would start with doing thirty twenty nine, twenty eight like that.

So it's also kind of odd because it's anticipating that you're gonna have more time each consecutive day. It's gonna take much more time to find and declutter thirty items than one item. So you also have to consider timeframes that you have, whether you're gonna want to kind of incrementally increase or decrease, or if you'd rather keep a steady pace of every day I'm doing ten minutes or five minutes or fifteen anyhow, Yeah, those are our hot takes. I'm gonna talk about the third challenge they highlight here, which is.

The twelve twelve, twelve.

We've got so many numbers, I know, so much math happening. So what this means is that you're going to search your home for twelve items to throw away, twelve to donate, and twelve that just need to be put away in their proper places, which I do think is reflective of the reality for many of us. It's not just that I'm going to go through my home and this, this, and this is going to go away. We're looking at all of our stuff and we're going to get distracted by the things that have to get thrown away, and then we're going to get distracted by the things that have to be put away. So this just kind of captures it all, and it's kind of a game. So twelve, twelve, twelve, you could obviously decide whatever number. I don't know how they decided twelve, but they're saying, like, in a short amount of time, you've got thirty six items that have been kind of declined uttered, whether it's through a donation or throwing it away or putting it back. But if you want to do more, you want to do less. I think that that's a really helpful, comprehensive way because we recognize we're going to encounter different things that need to happen with our items.

Yeah, twelve is it seems like an arbitrary number, But this does seem like a good, I mean, honestly nightly challenge. Just look, for gosh, there on any given minute of the day, there are probably twelve things I need to throw away. Maybe not twelve items to donate, but definitely twelve items to be thrown away and twelve that need to be put away.

So when I go to my sister's house, yeah, she's got four kids. Every night after I help her, when I'm visiting put the kids to bed, there's plenty of trash.

There's just trash that needs to.

Be thrown away. I don't donate her stuff for her. But and this is my f and this is drive, and this is I'm gonna take this.

I don't do that.

I mean, yeah, one day you might though. The next one is one that I have. Another one I have opinions on, but I'll let you be the judge of what you think. But I'll tell you my opinions because I'm here. The fifth is called packing party, and it is much less of a party. It's essentially the challenge is you pretend you're packing up to move and box everything up in your house or as many rooms as possible, and then you only take things out as you need them, and after a certain amount of time, if you whatever you haven't used is that's still in boxes leaves and gets donated. And this gained popularity. It's the method that the minimalists used in order to become the minimalists. It is extreme. It is the most extreme challenge here. I'm pretty sure those dudes like didn't have girlfriends or children. They were just like blown bachelors when they did this, because God help us if we tried to do that. Like, this is not a method for everyone, but hey, if you live alone and the thought of clutter is overwhelming you and you just need a quick like fix, this could be something for you. And this would be a great one to share on social media because it is so extreme. I would love to see somebody if you know anybody who's done this or like, no, have a social media profile I can follow. I don't want to say I'd love to see you do this because I don't really want to see anybody with you. It is a thing that has been done before, and it is a thing you can do. And that's what I will say about it.

And that's why you're that's why you're talking about it.

I don't want to live out of a box.

Of the top three most stressful experiences a human goes through, as far as regular experiences that many people face, experiencing the death of a loved one, a divorce, and moving are the top three most overwhelming stressful experiences. And so why put yourself through that. You're hearing a little bit more of my unadulterated opinion on that.

Like you throw it all into a box.

Then you have boxes all over for months, and then you got to dig and find whatever it was that you are looking. Anyone has moved, you know. This is not a party. Okay, Yeah, I'm moving on. We just like to talk about salacious things. Mostly you could do that. You could do that, and then it takes thirty days.

This is why we go through these articles to give our honest opinions. And here we are at it's our podcast. If it sounds good to you, you should try it like it's for it has been for other people. It has worked for other people, and it could work for you.

Just no moving as stressful.

Number six Project three three three. We've talked about this before. It's a great one. It is essentially for clothing, particularly decluttering our closets, and especially if you want to be aiming at a minimalist or even capsule wardrobe. So this is definitely an extreme version of a capsule wardrobe challenge. But essentially it begins by you choosing thirty three items of clothing. Now bear with me. This includes accessories, jewelry, outer wear, shoes, and of course your clothes, and you only wear those items for three months. I do like that because usually a season is three months, so this is probably to do at the beginning of a season. I think this might be a little bit harder if you do this as you switch into different seasons, but that's really when it comes down to it. Not a ton of things when you're including accessories, jewelry, shoes and coats into that number, but really worthwhile to try. I think this will help to show what do you actually wear, what do you like from your closet, what does contentment with your wardrobe and clothing look like? This is certainly going to keep you from purchasing new clothes at least for those three months, much less wearing out all of the rest of your clothing. So then the idea is that once those three months are over, you can go back through the items that you've packed away and if there was something that you missed, you can bring it back in. But it might give more clarity on what clothing items can I actually get rid of that I didn't miss at all.

Yeah, we actually did in an interview with Courtney Carver, who was the creator of Project three three three way back in the Archives episode fifty nine. You heard that ride just fifty nine, and I love her reasoning behind like why she started it. So if you're feeling overwhelmed by your closet, keep turning to Frugal Friends because we're also doing a capsule wardrobe episode very soon. But also you can head back to episode fifty nine to hear a little bit more about Project three thirty three. All right, I think those were the best mini challenges on the list. We won't waste your time with the rest of them, but I will say that we have a thirty day minimalism challenge that we sell in our shop, we have a whole slew of workbooks and if you've made it this far in the episode, I would actually like to give you that workbook for free. And it is more of a less of a minimum for minimalism's sake, but looking at decluttering on a deeper level. And so if you are subscribe to the friend letter, you will get this in Friday's email. So you got to be subscribed to the friend Letter and we will have a link to get that for free in Friday's email. So if you're already subscribe, nothing you have to do, you're going to get it. And if you're not subscribed, head to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash friend Letter and get on the list so that you can get that this Friday.

Do you know what else we're about to give you that comes for free just because you're listening to this episode.

Every Friday, every Tuesday, always free.

The bill of the week.

That's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. Tough bills Buffalo Bills Bill Clion, this is the bill of the week.

Hi Jen, Hi Jill.

My name's Emily and I just bought a house. My bill of the week is one that I am choosing not to pay for my house. In that I was pricing trash companies in the area and they all ranged from twenty to twenty five bucks a month, and I was fretting over which trash company to go with, and then beating myself up because I was using so much time and energy worrying about this five dollars difference until I realized that it wasn't a five dollars problem. It was a twenty five dollars a month problem because I don't create a lot of trash, so I don't need to be paying twenty to twenty five bucks a month for someone.

To take my trash away.

I asked my neighbor, who is paying for trash, if I could just toss a bag into their trash can once or twice a month, and she said yes. So now instead of paying twenty dollars a month for trash, I'm going to maybe toss a couple of bucks at my neighbor to help offset her costs and that's why my trash bill is my bill of the week.

Goodbye, Okay, I love the way you thought about this, Emily.

Yeah, what a way to.

Look at all the facets of your different bills and get creative and think outside the box.

And how amazing to think community too.

I think we've lost so much of that in some of the individualistic ways that we look at owning the sessions and paying bills. And sometimes there can be shared expenses, shared tools, trades, exchanging of goods and services, And I love this.

This is phenomenal.

I don't think that a lot of people do need to be paying for the full use of trash. Some do, but this is awesome because I also think it probably encourages you in a relatively more low waste lifestyle. This is just beautiful across the board.

Yeah, it's definitely a great example of getting curious and getting creative because and this is why we say in your budget and your spending plan, there is no such thing as a fixed expense. So yes, some cities do require you to pay for your trash with your water. You can't get around it. But in the areas that do not, that expense is not fixed. It is variable, so and not just by five dollars. You got creative, and now you're probably gonna pay your neighbor ten dollars a month to just put a bag of trash in every other week. And it's going to encourage you to waste less so that you don't make more trash. So it's not just going to be a fifteen dollar savings. It's gonna save you in your purchasing because you're gonna purchase less or purchase with less packaging. It's gonna permeate into other areas for the simple fact that you got creative. So well done, Emily.

If you all listening have decided that you're not gonna pay your bills anymore, or you are paying your bills and it's really fun, or you are a person named Bill and who in the world knows what's going on with your bills, It doesn't matter because your name is Bill. Visit Frugal friendspodcast dot com slash Bill. Leave us your bill. We're just sitting here waiting for it. And now it's done for the.

Round.

Our next bill of the week is gonna be like, Hi, Jenna, Jill, I just decided to stop paying my bills. Bye, I said.

If it's a person named Bill who says that, then we're here for it.

Oh gosh, I no, I don't feel the same way. Don't let me in there, all right? For our lightning round today. How do you usually deal with the what if I need this later when decluttering? What a great question. So I may not be the best person to ask that because I chuck first and ask later. I am the person who has thrown away important documents and other tools and gotten rid of needed things. That is a thing I am known for. So maybe I'm not the best person to ask that, but I have I have some unique traumas when it comes to clutter, and I always say no first, then inspect later. Yeah, so that's going to be me.

There definitely have been times where I did get rid of something and then a few months later think, oh, that would have been really nice, But not that often so a few of the filtering questions. If I feel that way about an item and I'm asking myself that question, I will try to identify how do I actually foresee myself using this in the future, Like at least a couple of scenarios, What do I imagine I'm going to do with this thing. If I can give myself an adequate answer on that, then we move on to the next question of how much would it cost if I got rid of this and then I suddenly needed it to get it again?

Not even new?

Just used how difficult to find this item? How much is it going to cost? If it's an absurd amount of money, then that's going to be telling. If it's not a lot of money, If it's going to be super easy to find, then that's also telling. And then I have to answer the question adequately where am I going to keep it? And have to have an idea that I feel comfortable with of where this thing is going to be stored. Usually those three questions help me to then further determine it. I will say this did recently happen. I think Eric and I run into this most with construction items, tools, extra wood, things that yeah, you'd have to buy it new or a whole lot more than you might actually need, and so keeping just a fuse and we have used that keep a section of the garage of here's some spare metal wood, roofing, whatnot, and I just live with that because we do. We come across times where we are doing our own fixes. Those things are worth keeping. But we had gotten a mattress topper where it came.

In two parts.

Foam and then like another topper piece like a fitted sheet. And after using it, I realized I only wanted the kind of fitted sheet portion and not the foam topper. But it was good foam, and we're like, what don't we do with this? Eric was thinking he might want to use it for sound deadening in either his studio or my studio, and we were thinking this would actually be really good to put on top of an air mattress. We've got enough people coming in that we need sometimes more than our guest room. So we did keep it, and I will say we did just use it last weekend. We did put it on top of an air mattress. Made that air mattress a lot more comfortable. I do have a plastic bin that it fits in in the garage.

So we do sometimes do this.

But again, it's got to go through that whole list of questions before I'm actually gonna keep it.

I would say there's certain levels to the question. So one thing from the minimalists that I do like is their twenty dollars rule. So if you haven't used it in the last six months and it can be repurchased for less than twenty dollars, it goes and hopefully you won't repurchase it, you will borrow it from a friend, that is, or get it for even less at the thrift store. You know, So that that would be for low cost items. For higher cost items, I think if you have something. So I had this like steam grill or something. It was this very cool griddle slash grill indoor thing, smokeless grill. But I already had a griddle, and I had a stove, and I had a grill. Those things were I mean, when you need a grill, you need a grill. When you need a grill, you need a griddle. And this could have been used as a griddle, but my griddle was smaller and more compact, and then my stove. So I ended up selling this nice smokeless grill because I already anything that I could do on it I could already do with the things I had, and I got it as a gift. But yeah, so looking at things you already own and seeing if you could make do without it, this is where I think the temporary storage thing it might come into play. Is putting all these things you're not sure that you'll use in a storage unit or back of your garage sort of idea and waiting six months and seeing if you used it, if you actually needed it, and getting the sunk cost fallacy out of your head. You know, like, yes, maybe you bought it. It costs money. The money is gone. The money is gone, and you can try if it's like you know, like my smokeless grill that sold really easily on Facebook marketplace, So you can try and sell something, see what you can get. But after a week, if you don't sell it, donate it, get it out of there, put it on your buy nothing group, curb alert. And I think that that box might be the best idea. The box that I was so almost against when I read that article is I have warmed up too.

We love the box.

Now I love the box. So thank you so much for listening. I hope that this episode encouraged you to do some decluttering this weekend, and definitely sign up for the Front Letter. Make sure you get that free thirty day minimalism challenge. It's over thirty pages. Got an actual day to day decluttering challenge, journaling prompts, inventory lists so that you can see all the things that maybe you might forget to declutter, all kinds of wonderful things that you know. It's usually thirty bucks. We're gonna give it to you for free for just this weekend. So Frugal Friends podcast dot com slash friend Letter. If you're already signed up for the friend Letter, you're gonna get it. But maybe you haven't left a review for the podcast yet. You can do that instead, because we love reading your kind reviews, especially this one from m Gadunbo. It says, great podcast. I really enjoy this podcast and all the information it provides. I especially like that these girls are young and offer practical advice after doing their own research. If you're looking for ways to save money or learn more about payingoff debt, this podcast is a great start. She called us young Jill, They called us young.

Oh wow. This is gonna live on first forever.

Yes, thank you, emg de Hunbi. That's beautiful. We love those types of reviews. We love all of you listening. We love all of you that are subscribed to the friend Letter. It really helps us find other friends who are going to enjoy this podcast. It helps new listeners find us. So if you've not done it, like Jen said, please leave us a rating and review.

Feel free to tell us that you love how young we are. That's great, we love that.

See you next time. Google Friends is produced by Eric Sirianni.

Wow, Jen, are you going to declutter now?

Now?

I just did my bi annual declutter?

True?

Yeah, bye annual. It makes it sound so official.

It is, And normally I will do it in October. I'll do it in the fall, in the spring, okay, but I did it in September because we have so much going on every weekend in October. Yeah, So I did it the last weekend of September.

Well done.

Yeah yeah. Similarly, we must be on a similar wavelength. Even though we didn't really talk about this, we just did the garage and so we're just getting red of stuff left and right.

It feels so good.

I think we waited and we kind of tried to keep things as organized as possible. But now that the renovation is pretty much over, we really have a sense of what are the decor items we want to keep, what do we not need anymore, what are even some of the renovation materials that we don't need anymore and just really clean out.

Yeah. Yeah, it feels good. Even in the midst of our renovation, Travis got rid of some stuff that was clogging up the walkway, like materials that had to be put up. Yeah, and the openness of it has really given me a like fresh air in my lungs. It impacts me greatly. So this is why I'm like so passionate about this particular topic because it really does impact me so greatly. I don't know how everybody else feels about it. Like Travis very much does not care. He's fine living in this renovation, but I have been suffering. So in his kindness, he really made it a point to open some things up and it has been very refreshing.

That's so good.

Yeah. So yeah, when you feel good, you make better decisions and a lot of the decisions you make day to day or financial and I'm seeing that personally.

What a good anniversary gift?

Then, oh yes, to clutter some of today is my anniversary. Yes, we are recording this today is our a wedding universary.

So happy happy an oversary.

I made that up.

You can't even tell me to stop singing because I'm not a copyright infringing on anyone, You're not.

I love that. Actually, speaking of songs, when I got in the car this morning to take the kids to school in daycare, our wedding song was the first song that like, I turned on the car and it was playing. So I took a little video and this is just I took did a little video just playing it, and I actually still haven't sent it to Travis because I've been so busy. But Kai is singing along in the video, like you can't see anybody singing along and you can't hear atlass, but he was making the largest poop of his life, and the whole while the video was recording, the whole car started to smell like so rank And when I got him out of the car seat to bring him into Isabelle, the whole back, his whole back was wet, like just from.

Kind of like a because of all the work he was putting in no urine and boop, Oh, well you said poop, So.

I wasn't like no, So that was what was happening while I was recording this beautiful song.

So there was joy and pain combined and it was.

Just very like, yeah, this is what this is eight years.

This is a reality.

Yeah yeah, So there you go.

There it is there, it is

Love, it

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