Heather Aardema reassures listeners that clutter is not a moral failing but often reflects nervous-system states and childhood experiences. She guides a compassionate response (breathing, kinder self-talk), explains how clutter can raise stress hormones and impair decision-making, and uses a blueberry-pruning metaphor to encourage letting go as a pathway to a lighter future.
So often people will come to me feeling so bad and ashamed and embarrassed about their clutter. And I want you to know that there is nothing wrong with clutter, that it doesn't make you immoral, that it.
Doesn'T make you a bad person.
Clutter is much more of a representation of, of your current nervous system state and childhood trauma than probably anything else. And so my first suggestion is to take in a nice slow inhale and exhale and to start being kind to yourself about the clutter and about why it's there. You know, it's not so much the clutter itself that is so bad or makes us feel so bad, but it's the thoughts that we have about the clutter that feels so heavy. And that's a net negative. We have the clutter which is impacting us, it's impacting our physiology, it's impacting our psychology, and then we have the thoughts about the clutter as well. So it's a net negative, it's a double, a double negative. And that's no fun. So I want you to know again that there's nothing wrong with clutter, that it doesn't make you a bad person and that instead of it being a problem, it's actually an opportunity. It's an opportunity to get really honest with yourself and to ask yourself, what is it that matters most to you? What do you want to get out of life? How do you want to live? How do you want to surround yourself again? There's nothing immoral about clutter, but clutter definitely impacts you. If you can feel the clutter, if it feels heavy to you, that is impacting your physiology. When we feel the clutter, that's usually our cortisol, our stress hormone going through the roof. When we feel clutter, it impacts our decision making as well. So I know when I come home and if the house is a mess, I will probably head for the kitchen and find a bowl of ice cream instead of doing something healthy for myself, like taking my dog for a walk. Clutter is a distraction. And I'm not just talking about the physical stuff, I'm talking about all of the forms of clutter. All of the mind clutter, the body clutter, the home clutter. All of it is a distraction getting in the way of you showing up as your best self. So clutter does impact us. So if you'd like a little inspiration from nature on cutting back, on letting go, I want to tell you a little story about a blueberry patch at my parents house that I enjoyed this past summer I was visiting my parents. They live in the Midwest of the United States. And I went out back and I was amazed by how many blueberries they had in their garden. And there were two different types of blueberries and they were both delicious. And I noticed that one of the types of blueberries was much more bountiful than the other. And so I asked my dad about it. They said, is it just because they're different types of blueberries? And he told me no. He said the blueberries that were really, really bountiful, he had cut back the season prior almost all the way to the ground, whereas the ones that were not so abundant, he had only trimmed. What an amazing story from nature, right? The more we cut back, the more we let go, the more we open the door to possibilities, the more we open the door to a lighter future. So take that lesson from nature and use it as permission as you go through your home, if you choose to do so, and let go again. Nothing wrong with clutter. It's not a problem. Instead, it's an opportunity for you to let go so that you can lean in to this next best version of you.
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