Episode 502: 5 Ways to Declutter Your Life (Mindset & Self-Care)

EBT502 – Declutter

Intro  00:01

Hey food bloggers. Thank you so much for joining me in this mindset and self-care focused episode here on Eat Blog Talk. One of the reasons I started a blog talk was to hold a space to talk about the importance of mindset and self-care. Being an entrepreneur can be a lot. If we are not taking care of ourselves, then getting actionable information about SEO Pinterest or whatever else is all moot. I will meet you back here every Wednesday to discuss various mindset and self-care topics. So you have the energy and space to tackle the rest.

Sponsor (Mika Kinney) 00:34

Are you a food blogger who is constantly trying to get new posts out update old ones and more? Let me help you. My name is Mika and I’m a fellow food blogger and experience freelancer, I can right format and upload high-quality helpful posts, articles and roundups to WordPress for you to publish. Each post is completely customized to your audience and your voice so there’s no skipping a beat with your readers. Plus the first project is always offered at 50% off just to make sure it’s the absolute best fit. For writing samples and more. Shoot me an email at [email protected] or you can find me at www.joytothefood.com. Look forward to chatting.

Megan Porta  01:18

Hey, awesome food bloggers welcome to this self-care and mindset focused episode of Eat BlogTalk. In this episode, we’re going to talk about five ways to declutter your life. So to start, I think we should define decluttering and also address why this is so important. to declutter refers to removing unnecessary things from a space in order to make room for things that are actually useful. Most of us have heard this term when we talk about the spaces we work in, or the spaces that we live in our cars, our homes, etc. And we’ve also experienced that free mental feeling after decluttering a space, it just feels so good to remove clutter from a space. Decluttering a physical space doesn’t just free up the space itself, it also frees up this mental bandwidth, which is super important for our mental health. This concept can extend beyond physical spaces, and we will talk about the different areas of your life that can be decluttered inside this episode. 

Megan Porta  02:27

Let’s chat about the power of decluttering. I started experimenting with decluttering only a few years ago, at the time, our house was absolutely filled with clutter to be honest with you, our cars were filled with clutter, it was so embarrassing having people in my car, my desk, my office area, my computer was filled with clutter. And now looking back, I can see that my businesses were filled with clutter as well. And because of all of this, my mind was cluttered. Most things in my life were absolutely filled with clutter. It’s no wonder that I did not feel peace back then it totally makes sense to me now. I had first heard about this concept of decluttering. From Marie Forleo, you may have seen her show about this concept of getting rid of old things and creating whitespace in your home and in your life. I also really enjoyed her book, Everything is figureoutable. I just found this concept so fascinating. It just made sense. And I had never experimented with it before. So I decided to start experimenting. So for the past few years, anytime I am feeling stuck with something whether it’s just simply not having peace in my life that I want. Or maybe I’m having a hard time manifesting something into my business or my life. Or if I suddenly look around and realize that I would really like to have more high quality people in my life and fewer lower quality people, or if my bank account just feels stagnant. Whatever it is that I feel stuck with. I know it’s time to declutter, and it works. I have at least one declutter item on my to do list at all times. Right now I’m looking at my notebook next to me and I currently have declutter mess behind bedroom door written down. This is something that I will do later today. And this just shows the power of decluttering. It is something that I keep top of mind all the time. So to start with this, if you’ve never experimented with decluttering before, experiment with writing one declutter item on your to do list today and every day for I don’t know, a month or so and just see what happens. And in episode, I’ll give you a bunch of ideas about where to start. 

Megan Porta  04:53

I think it’s also important to note that the thing you’re decluttering doesn’t have to match what you’re trying to make space for. So cleaning out my closet, for example, can actually set things in motion for a new business opportunity to come my way. The decluttering doesn’t have to carry the same theme. And I believe that decluttering really anything in your life is going to open up space for good things across the board to come into your life. So whether you are feeling blocked, or you are having a hard time earning the money you like, or you want more peace in your life, or better people and opportunities in your life and business decluttering is for you. I think that we all fall into this category of wanting at least one or more of these things. And I believe that this practice can benefit everyone. Get ready for your life to be transformed. I know that sounds like a very huge dramatic statement. But it is so true. This decluttering stuff is like voodoo magic and it works. 

Megan Porta  05:55

Now let’s talk through five ways to declutter your life so you can make room for better things. Number one, declutter a physical space. I think this is the most obvious way to remove clutter because it’s something we see with our eyes. And it’s something that we’re really familiar with. Unfortunately, I used to equate the word declutter with the closet that I think we all have, that we start literally stuffing crap into when guests are coming over, that just gets so filled with clutter, and it’s not even useful anymore. We’re in our homes all the time, we see the clutter building up. So we equate decluttering with removing things from our homes. So I think this is a great place to start, because we’re all really familiar with it. So here are a few ideas about ways that you can declutter a physical space, clean out a closet, like I mentioned, I think we all have closets that are packed with clutter, clean out an entire room, you can go to your car and clean out the garbage and just get rid of anything unnecessary there. You can clean off a bookshelf, so maybe take books down that you can donate and get rid of old things on there. Clean out your garage, donate things that you don’t need anymore. What about your yard and garden? We have a pretty big yard. So in the summer and spring and fall, there’s always things that can be decluttered there, lots of weeds. For example. What about your pantry? Decluttering my pantry is an ordeal. Sometimes what I do is just tackle it shelf by shelf. And that feels so good. Look under your bed. Is there stuff that you can declutter from there? Look around you right now you might be sitting at your desk. Are there things on your desk that you can declutter? Here’s one that I tackled, I think it was a year ago, drawers and cabinets in my house. Every time I opened a cabinet in my kitchen, I was so stressed out and overwhelmed that I decided to tackle one cabinet or drawer every day. Until all the kitchen cabinets and drawers were decluttered. It took me five to 10 minutes at most to do each one. And when it was done, it felt so good. 

Megan Porta  08:12

If you want a really simple decluttering task, just look at your kitchen table or other tables that kind of build up papers and other things. How about your fridge, whether it’s inside you could tackle one shelf at a time or the outside of the fridge. I know ours gets a little bit cluttered over time as we put things up on the fridge. This is one of my favorites. It’s a really easy one. But it feels so good cleaning out my purse or my wallet. Sometimes I pick up my person, it feels like it weighs 90 pounds. I’m like what the heck do I even have in here? What is this? So I just give it a good decluttering and it feels lighter physically. But then it also mentally feels lighter too. If you have the notorious stack of papers that I think a lot of us do. I know we have a stack of papers that builds over time. Cleaning that out can feel really good. I just did this last weekend and it is amazing how much lighter I felt after doing that. How about your wardrobe or your kids wardrobes or your spouse’s wardrobe? Do a quick comb through and just make piles for I’m going to donate this pile and throw this and keep this that sort of thing feels really good. And here’s something that happens occasionally just having things kind of sitting around our home that no longer work that we just put aside and we kind of forget about. So either throwing those or finding new homes for those sorts of things. That should give you a really great list to start with decluttering physical spaces. 

Megan Porta  09:39

Now on to number two, which is declutter electronics. I really love this category because I can do it when I’m on the go. Like if I’m sitting in a waiting room or waiting in a line somewhere and I just have that urge to declutter, I can open my phone and start doing that. Every time I do it just feels good. It feels like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Here are a few ideas for ways that you can declutter electronics. I mentioned my phone. So open your phone, there is a wide array of things, at least on my phone that can be gone through at any time. Photos can be organized, they can be deleted videos, I know I take videos and photos for work for my food blog, on my phone, and I know they’re on my computer, I don’t need them anymore. So I can go through and delete those. I also like to go through my apps and delete any apps that I haven’t used in a long time. Something I do occasionally is go into the subscriptions and see what I’m paying for what subscriptions are in that little list. And if I’m not using those, I cancel those. And that feels good, mentally, and it’s also good for my bank account. Also contacts I will occasionally look through and see names that I am not familiar with. A few weeks ago, I was going through my contacts and I found a contact called do not answer prank to this person. There’s a little fun fact about me, my college roommates and I used to love prank calling people. Now you can’t do that so much anymore with caller ID. But apparently Long, long ago, I pranked somebody and made a note not to answer that phone number. So I deleted that contact, clearly I do not need that anymore. Also, your computer provides a host of opportunity for decluttering, you can go through your downloads folder, this builds up so quickly for me, I can have it cleaned out. And literally within a week or two. It’s like crazy chaotic. So I do this periodically, and it feels great. Any old files that you’re not using anymore, you can put onto an external hard drive and just get them off of your laptop. If you have photos and videos that accumulate, organize them put them in clearly labeled folders. And if you haven’t accessed them in a while, put them onto a hard drive as well. Another thing that builds up for me over time is my desktop, I will take screenshots or save photos randomly. And pretty quickly my whole desktop is covered with random files. So I like to clean those off periodically, and it feels really good to. And if you do have a hard drive, go through those files once in a while and see if you can maybe get rid of some that you know you’re never going to use anymore. 

Megan Porta  12:23

And then here is a here’s a doozy: email. This is a huge pain point. For me, I feel like my email tries to swallow me almost every day and over time, it can really bulk up and just add so much clutter to my mind, going through email, but also consider creating filters, which can filter incoming emails to individual folders. I’ve started doing this and it really has helped me feel more decluttered. You can create categories and subfolders and organized that way. Also unsubscribe to email lists that you don’t want to be on any longer. I love going through and doing this once in a while it feels so good. Something I just thought of you could also comb through your applications on your computer and remove applications that you just don’t use anymore. Hopefully that gives you a few ideas about how to declutter electronics. I’m sure there are many more, but those are the ones that I go through fairly often. 

Megan Porta  13:21

Now let’s talk about number three. Declutter your calendar. If you’re at your computer right now, I encourage you to open your calendar and take a good look at it. Try to take on the perspective of being an outsider looking in to your calendar getting a glimpse as someone who is not you talk about or think through what you see, Is it crazy chaotic all over the place? Are there different colors are things scheduled at really different times throughout the day and week? What doesn’t need to be there, what things on your calendar are not serving you or your life or your business. Obviously, if you do see things that aren’t serving you, you can’t just go in and remove everything. If you’ve committed to a call, you have to show up for that call. But there are ways that you can start thinking through how to declutter your calendar. Here is a quick example about something I was experiencing about a year ago. I noticed that every Friday, I was massively energy depleted. I was so tired. It was really bad. This was about three months into the year and 2023. I would literally fall into my bed on Friday afternoon not wanting to ever emerge. This was happening week after week. And every Friday I’d be like why am I so tired? This is crazy. Like I didn’t understand what was going on. I finally decided to evaluate my calendar. I gave it a close look and discovered that I was doing a bunch of these one on one planning calls that I do, mostly with my mastermind members. And I had up to three a week that I was doing in addition to all of my other calls. I was hosting a handful of mastermind calls at that time. So I was doing those two podcast interviews I was I mean, there were so many things going on on my calendar, it was absolutely nuts. But what stood out to me were those one on one planning calls. Now I have to give this a disclaimer because I love these calls. Helping people in this way, is a huge strength of mine, and it just fills me up. It fills me with so much joy to see the clarity come to people after we have these calls. But with that said, they require a ton of my energy, I show up to those calls giving 1,000,000%. And when I’m done, my energy is drained. So doing three of these a week on top of all the other calls that I was doing was nuts. And I never would have figured this out if I hadn’t evaluated my calendar. So what I did was I decluttered these calls. I didn’t get rid of them, I didn’t want to get rid of them. Instead, I dispersed them more evenly throughout my month, so that they weren’t filling up my week and depleting my energy. So now having learned from that madness, I limit myself to two planning calls a month. And this is perfect. Decluttering doesn’t have to mean you’re getting rid of you’re throwing something away, it can mean that you are evaluating and re-dispersing it or redistributing it as needed. Just like with a room, if you were to go into your bedroom and see a bunch of things that maybe belong in your garage, you wouldn’t throw them away, you would just go put them in the garage. It’s the same thing with our calendars, evaluate the clutter, and redistribute as needed. Now I’m at a point where I’ve really trained myself to think through and evaluate every single thing that comes onto my calendar, just to make sure it is adding value and not adding clutter. 

Megan Porta  16:45

Number four, declutter your relationships. This one is touchy. This one is tricky. Because relationships mean that you’re dealing with people and you don’t always want to hurt feelings. I know how that goes. Especially if you don’t like confrontation. But you know, when there’s a person or a relationship in your life that needs to be cut back on or even removed, we all know that feeling. But it’s also really not easy to do it, it sucks going through that. With that said though, I believe that decluttering the people that need to go or at least cut back on holds greater power than other forms of decluttering just because it’s so hard. And it’s so important to our souls and to our mental health. The people in our lives can make or break us. Toxic people in our lives can add clutter in very intense ways. I would bet on the fact that most of you listening can relate to this. Sometimes people are toxic enough that you have to completely remove them. And that is really hard to do. But usually what you can do is just start taking a step back and letting things play out. Decluttering relationships can also mean just fixing things in relationships that are not worth holding on to anymore. So maybe extending an apology or that needs to happen. Or addressing and ironing out an issue that you’ve been holding on to for a while or that the other person has been holding on to. So when I say declutter relationships, that doesn’t mean get rid of relationships unless that needs to happen. It can also mean cutting back on toxic people who don’t serve you anymore, or mending things that need to be mended. This one should be handled with great care, as you already know, but also holds great power. 

Megan Porta  18:33

The last point number five is declutter your mind. Clutter isn’t just the stuff you can see like the files on your computer and the mess in your garage. It’s also stuff that we carry in our minds the stuff that we cannot see. And I believe that this form of clutter weighs us down the most. Mental clutter is a real thing. And it is tiring it is taxing on our souls. This is actually my favorite category to declutter because the opportunities are endless for tidying up our minds. And these are typically things that people don’t think about. So when we address them, it can be a really powerful clean up. Here are just a few ideas about ways that you can declutter your mind. You can sit down and schedule appointments that have been building up. I know over time, I’ll forget or just put aside scheduling kids doctor’s appointments. Our son Elijah has like a million different specialists. And I don’t think to do this on the regular so every once in a while, I’ll just need to sit down and kick all of these out at once. And it feels really good to do that. Hair appointments, I appointments, mammograms, yearly exams, those things build up in they feel really good when you can just get them on your calendar and get them out of your mind. Here’s a big one journaling through problems that have been bothering you. So if there’s something that’s been repeatedly coming into your mind, that’s a block or a problem, make yourself sit down and write through these problems. And this will clear up so much space in your mind. 

Megan Porta  18:33

We’ll just summarize really quick what the five key ways to declutter your life are number one declutter a physical space to declutter electronics, three, declutter your calendar for declutter your relationships, and five, declutter your mind. And remember, it doesn’t matter what you declutter, just start doing it. I challenge you to do this once a day, even if it’s just two minutes of decluttering something every day for a month and see what happens and then report back to me, I’m so excited to hear how this is going to change your life. Thank you so much for listening. I’m so grateful that you’ve tuned in to this episode. I will see you next week. 

Megan Porta  20:09

Here’s something that I had to do a few years ago, I got rid of my phone notifications, because that was adding mental clutter. I also deleted a bunch of apps on my phone, I went as far as to delete email on my phone, because I was getting on it too much and for absolutely no reason. And still to this day, if I want to access email on my phone, I forced myself to go through the App Store, type in Gmail open, and then I can open it from there. So I make myself go through these steps if I really want to get to email on my phone. Also, consider the tabs that you have open on your computer on your web browser. Mind get out of control, everyone smile, I just literally delete them all and start fresh, that feels really good. your to do list can add clutter to your mind. So keeping a tidy to do list is really important. I’ve started creating a new to do list every day for myself. And this really helps to eliminate things that just don’t need to be on there anymore. And then this concept of just creating white space for your mind, reserving that space for things to be blank in your mind, lacking thought and anxiety and all of those things that can fill up our minds with worry and kind of negative things. So things like meditating, taking a few minutes in the morning or afternoon or night or all of the above to sit and meditate in silence or with a guided meditation. I believe you can create whitespace in your mind by embracing the morning routine, which I talked about in episode 499. So if you’re interested in that, go listen to that episode. Also just mindfulness giving yourself reminders throughout the day to stop and just experience the moment instead of thinking ahead to the future, to school pickups to dinner to next week’s party, whatever, like just stop once in a while and relish the moment that you are in. And I know we talked about email in a previous point, but email can add so much clutter to my mind. So I wanted to mention it again. Also texts if you look at your phone and you have a million texts, every time you open that app, it might be beneficial to just start deleting them or at least combing through them. And screen time limit your screen time in general but consider reducing or eliminating certain apps that you get a little hooked on. This will definitely declutter your mind. Social media can take up such a big portion of our minds if we allow it to. Those are just a few ideas. I would love to hear if you have any others under any of these categories. I always love adding declutter items to my list. 

Megan Porta  18:33

We’ll just summarize really quick what the five key ways to declutter your life are number one declutter a physical space to declutter electronics, three, declutter your calendar for declutter your relationships, and five, declutter your mind. And remember, it doesn’t matter what you declutter, just start doing it. I challenge you to do this once a day, even if it’s just two minutes of decluttering something every day for a month and see what happens and then report back to me, I’m so excited to hear how this is going to change your life. Thank you so much for listening. I’m so grateful that you’ve tuned in to this episode. I will see you next week.

Megan Porta  23:34

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