Alright stop! Collaborate and listen! Kaitie's back with a brand new...I'll work on finding a rhyming word later.For now, let's answer the big question: will the decluttering journey EVER stop??? I mean, the short answer is no. And also, yes, you can stop whenever you want. But then you'll have to start again in a few weeks or months most likely and you might hit that overwhelm point again and who...

Alright stop! Collaborate and listen! Kaitie's back with a brand new...I'll work on finding a rhyming word later.
For now, let's answer the big question: will the decluttering journey EVER stop???
I mean, the short answer is no. And also, yes, you can stop whenever you want. But then you'll have to start again in a few weeks or months most likely and you might hit that overwhelm point again and who really wants to go back to THAT feeling again so why not just keeping going and going like the Energizer bunny (and no this is not sponsored, it's only my second blog post! Are you kidding me??)?
Alright, sorry about the incredibly long run-on sentence. I tend to forget to breathe when I get worked up. Hence my need for medication to tell my brain to pause and take many MANY deep breaths.
When I first began decluttering I had the help of The Minimal Mom and Dana K. White motivating me and telling me to keep going. Just keep swimming, just keep swimming.
I am not 100% sure of this, but I think the first place I started decluttering was in our kitchen. It was the biggest eye sore and I also had a LOT of big plans for that kitchen which included knocking out some overhead cabinets. Which I couldn't do if my cabinets were already overflowing because then where would the things in the overhead cabinets go?! So, my first goal was to declutter down to the point of no longer needing those cabinets to store things in. What was in these cabinets? Approximately 1,427,983 coffee mugs. We didn't even have a coffee maker or drink coffee for much of our adult lives at this point so I'm blaming this one on the many sweet gifts I got during my teaching career.
We also had our glass cups, plastic cups, and ceramic plates up in those cabinets. As well as tons of jars and medicines in another.
I narrowed our mug down to the "essential" (read: the sentimental ones I nor my husband could fathom letting go of). I also got rid of our plastic cups. Not all of them, yet, but a good chunk. Then we realized we had enough plates to feed 16 people at a time and yet we only had a 4-seater dining table. Haha! So the plates got whittled down. And so it went. I wish I could say I did this in one night. But just that s section of overhead cabinets that we would hit our heads on because they were hung over the bar, took me about a week or two to finally get cleared out. And then we lived with them for a few weeks to make sure we could actually survive without these things. And then we had a demo day and smashed thise bad boys to BITS! It was glorious!
My point in today's blog is this: put on someone who is on the same decluttering journey as you or put on a son that pumps you up and start getting xmthe crap out of your home! Because the only thing we "lost" from that decluttering were some butt-ugly in-our-fave cabinets! And now our kitchen/dining room feels SO much bigger and brighter!
Decluttering opens up so many new possibilities for your home!

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I struggled to decide with which category I would post my first blog post. However, it didn't take me long to realize that I would be doing my journey a disservice if I didn't begin where it all began. Decluttering. My entire life I've felt messy, discombobulated, a bit frazzled, yet at the same time mostly chill and care-free. Until I had kids and became a stay-at-home-mom. In the span of about 9...

I struggled to decide with which category I would post my first blog post. However, it didn't take me long to realize that I would be doing my journey a disservice if I didn't begin where it all began. Decluttering. My entire life I've felt messy, discombobulated, a bit frazzled, yet at the same time mostly chill and care-free. Until I had kids and became a stay-at-home-mom. In the span of about 9 months I became a mom of two under two years old, I became a part-time solo parent due to my husband's career change, I continued as a full-time teacher and part-time assistant tennis coach, got stuck at home during the pandemic like everyone else in the world which led me to not have a true closure with my students because we never returned to classrooms and that was already decided as my final year of teaching thanks to the extremely limited daycare that would take both a 2 year old and a newborn.
I say all of this because I didn't become the overwhelmed, overestimated, overtired person that I am in just one night. This was about 3-4 years in the making. And with all of this fairly sudden job change happening at the same time as a world-wide pandemic, I ended up completely derailed and looking for answers. I also wound up VERY depressed. To the point where I contemplated suicide (only once) and found myself crying/sobbing tears of frustration, anguish, confusion, and loss to a dear friend as I sat on the washing machine in our mudroom because it was the only place I could find in the house that wouldn't be freezing in the middle of December AND was far enough away from my children and husband that they wouldn't hear the things I was saying.
Luckily for me, I was blessed with not only one incredible friend, but three during my high school years. This particular friend was my bubbly, never seemed to be too down for too long, absolutely on fire for God, always remembers your birthday and to stay in touch kind of friend. And when she told me that not only was I not alone in all these monumental feelings, but that SHE also struggled with many of the same (minus the suicidal) things, I nearly fell off my washing machine! I literally jolted back where I was because I just couldn't get my brain wrapped around a woman like her feeling these same low, suffocating feelings as me. Yet she was and she did and if she hadn't opened up to me about her struggles, I truly don't know if I'd be here today. That was December 2020.
That night I decided I would do something I never in a million years thought I would do. I set up an appointment with my doctor and within a couple of weeks I was taking Citalopram. An antidepressant. It felt like failure. It felt like I was giving up and looking for a quick-fix. But when I felt my brain and my soul become less cloudy, less compressed and restricted, less muddled. That feeling was one I didn't know how badly I was missing until it was given back to me!
Did it solve all my problems? Listen, if antidepressants could do that, then NO ONE would be here reading this and I wouldn't even have a story still to tell. 😂
Fortunately, they worked well enough that I could breathe again. I found myself not wanting to scream at my children and my husband for everything. Did I mention my biggest issue was actually unfiltered, uninhibited anger? Probably nor. Because I'm ashamed of things I said and did. I still to this day cannot quite believe what I allowed myself say and do. I don't even actually remember all of the things, but I remember the feelings of wishing I could die so that I could never hurt the ones I love like that ever again.
Anyways, 3 side-bars and 2 rabbit holes later here we are: why I chose to start with the Decluttering category! Haha!
Because it took all of about 2 seconds for my newly opened eyes and brain to realize how much of a mess our house had become and how maaayyybe this mess could be triggering some of my anxiety and anger and overwhelm. I can't remember exactly who I may have watched or read first, but I believe it was Dawn Madsen from The Minimal Mom. She was talking about minimalism with FOUR kids! I only had two, so how hard could it be if she's done this with double the amount of kids?

Turns out, VERY hard.

I began decluttering in January of 2021. It has now been THREE. YEARS! And I'm still going. I think I hit my clutter threshold about a year ago. I found a good Grove and a good rhythm but that means it took me around two full years of decluttering to get there. What I found through the process of decluttering was just how much crap I had held onto for my fantasy self, my kids, and my memories.

My story is a long one, which is why I decided to start an online diary of sorts in the form of this blog.
My hope and prayer is that this blog will be that glimmer of hope to someone else out there who feels like they are suffocating and can't get out. I've been there. It's me, hi, and I'm here to tell you, there IS hope!
Let's go out there and do this life together!

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