The Lighter Path to Decluttering with Heather Aardema [Mar 28, 2025]

Welcome, everyone. Welcome, Shelley. Welcome, Marianne. Welcome, Melissa. Everyone hear my music. Okay?

It's beautiful. Thank you.

Okay, I'm just going to put one more reminder in our Facebook group. And as you're tuning in, let me know what you're grateful for today. And if you can, I'd love to see your beautiful faces, your camera turned on. Melissa says, grateful to have woken up, starting this program and choosing to take care of myself.

Awesome.

Love that. Shelly says, I'm grateful for realizing how much rest I really need and honoring that rest as well as I'm maintaining in maintenance mode while adding in other foods and all is well.

Awesome.

So great to hear that. Yes, we do need to honor rest, right? Hey, welcome, Teresa. Just give it another minute or so.

J.

And for those of you who have just tuned in, let me know what you're grateful for in the comments and. We'll get started shortly. Julie says her family. Okay, so we are going to get started and as mentioned before, you can type what you're grateful for in the comments. And if you are able to, I would love to see your beautiful faces. So if you could turn your cameras on, that would be lovely. So today we have a very special guest. Her name is Heather. She founded the School of Living Lighter. And the reason why she created this is because she wanted to set an example of what's possible in our lives when we intentionally choose to go lighter. I thought it was, you know, very fitting for us to invite Heather because our program is also called Living Light. So there's a lot of synchronicities there. A little more about Heather. She's a mom, a mountain, mountain biker, fan of sunlight, love sunlight. Talk a lot about that here. Laughter and the smell of trees. With her Living Lighter community, she simplifies the science of clutter and explores the freedom that comes from living by design and not default. Heather's lighter thinking has been featured on wellness platforms like Becoming Minimalist. No Sidebar Minimalism Life, Optimal Living, Daily, Simplify magazine, and many online health summits, podcasts, and more. She's a certified decluttering coach, a National Board Certified and Functional Medicine Certified health coach, and a certified life coach. So we're in for a real treat here with Heather. So without further ado, let's all give Heather a warm welcome. This is how we show our warm welcome to someone new to our community.

I love it. I'll let you.

Yeah, you're welcome. I'll let you take the stage. And if you have, if you have a slide presentation, you're welcome to Share that as well.

Okay. Thanks so much for having me. And good morning. Good afternoon. I don't have a slide presentation.

That's totally fine.

We're just going to do it this way. Yeah. That's what felt light and right to me. And that's what I use as a true north with any decision. I ask myself, does this feel light or heavy? If it feels light, that's my sign that it's right. Excuse me. So today we're going to talk about the lighter path to decluttering. When you think about clutter, does it feel light or heavy? And you can go ahead and put that in the chat if you like. You can do a thumb if you want if your camera is on. Okay. Randa, I saw that. Yeah. Kind of like this. Okay. Excuse me. It can feel so heavy. And often we'll think about our clutter. It'll feel heavy, and then we'll go do something else. Right. Because anything else will feel better than decluttering. So I'm here today to show you a reframe. And you might not believe me right now, but I promise by the end of our session, you will be excited to declutter. If you do have clutter, it'll be a totally different perspective, and I believe it will impact how you move forward for the rest of your life. How's that sound? Right. A lighter perspective when it comes to our clutter. And clutter is not just the physical stuff, right? Not just the physical, tangible stuff. Often we think of clutter as an uncomfortable amount of things. Clutter can also be inputs coming into our body. So for me, we had toxic mold in our house, and I was very sensitive to it. So you can hear me wheezing and coughing. I'm still healing from that. That mold was clutter in my body. Excuse me. Excuse me again. Thank goodness for my husband and my kids. It was not clutter in their body. They could breathe a mold in and it could exit their body, and they had no problem with it. So sometimes what's clutter in my body might not be clutter in the next person's body. Food can also be clutter in our body. I used to eat certain foods and they left me lethargic, exhausted. I would drink certain things and I'd. I get acne on my face as an adult. And that was my body telling me, oh, this is clutter. This is clutter. Because it's not helping you feel your best. Something that might seem surprising as clutter in my body. Tomatoes. I love tomatoes. Right? Love tomatoes. My family can eat tomatoes. If I eat tomatoes, I'll get a rheumatoid arthritis flare. So I just made a decision. Ah, tomatoes are clutter. And there are so many other good options. So it's not deprivation. And so the thought, oh, I feel deprived. I feel deprived. That's mind clutter. And it's optional. And so instead. Exactly. Bar up those pesky nightshades. Right. And the garlic and the onions too, for me, but not for the next person. So just like our chemistry is unique, what ends up being clutter in our body is unique as well. The mind clutter. I was just starting to talk a little bit about the mind clutter. Mind clutter can look like thoughts that tell us we're not enough. Thoughts that tell us we're too much. That was a lot of the messaging I got when I was younger. Oh, my gosh. Heather is too much, too excited, too loud, too happy. I've been told that I was too happy. And please tone down the happiness a little. So mind clutter are these thoughts that feel like resentment, anger, frustration without a plan. The feelings are not clutter. It's just when we don't have a plan, that's when we can swirl in them, and that's when they become clutter. So at school of living lighter, we talk about mind clutter, body clutter, home clutter, and today we'll mostly focus on home clutter. But I'll definitely make sure to touch on the others a little bit more. Okay. I mentioned that we were going to cover three things. We're going to cover why we've ended up with so much stuff. It's not just you. It's all around the world. We have a lot in my programs. They're global programs. So all around the world, our planet is drowning in clutter. What we get wrong about decluttering and how to overcome that and how to let go with ease. How does that sound? Letting go with ease. Does that sound good? If you have your cameras on, give me some head nods if it does. Awesome. Letting go does not have to feel heavy or hard. Okay. And this timing here in the northern hemisphere, we've got our spring weather that's showing up. And usually what that feels like, it's like, oh, you know what? Maybe it's time to do some spring cleaning and to lighten things up. And so if you're the northern hemisphere, great. Even if you're in the southern hemisphere, that's okay too. It's nice to do some decluttering before you kind of Enter your home for that long winter experience. All right, so let's start off with why we've ended up with so much stuff. Any thoughts? Any. Any hypotheses? If you have them, share them in the chat, and I'll make sure to keep my eye on that. Oh, Barb, that's good. Fear, consumerism. Ariane. Yes, yes, yes, yes. We get a lot of new things. There's so much more coming in than leaving. It's an equation that's out of balance. Exactly. All right, so here are three additional ideas. Oh, I love what you're putting in the chat. You all. I love that. Three additional ideas from me. We've been conditioned to believe that more is more. And boy, did I believe that for decades growing up. At breakfast, we'd have cream of Wheat or oatmeal and toast. These are things that are kind of cluttered in my body today. But I would look at that plate of toast, I would look at my sisters, and I would think, how can I get the most toast? More is more, right? I would sit there at breakfast looking at them looking at the toast, looking at them looking at the toast, and try and grab more because I thought more was more. That was when I was young, and that followed me when I was in high school, that more friends, the better quantity over quality. And I kept embracing that more is more. And since birth, we've all been surrounded by messaging that says happiness comes from more. If you think about advertising industry, they play on our insecurities. They create something called fomo. Have any of you heard of fomo? Fear of missing out. Do you want to know what the antidote to FOMO is? The antidote is Jomo. Anybody hear of Jomo before? Joy of missing out. The joy of me not eating tomatoes is that I don't get a rheumatoid arthritis flare. That's worth it. The joy of me not picking up a new shirt. Let's say there's a. A three for one or two for one. And I look at it, I kind of like it, but I don't love it. But oh, my gosh, it's such a great deal, right? The joy of me not buying that is that there's more room in my closet and more money in my bank account. And I save the money for the things that I really like instead of just kind of like. And then never wear and then feel guilty about it. So much mind clutter, right? Yeah. Keeping up. Exactly. Keeping up with the Jones happiness coming from stuff. I worked in corporate for 20 years. And my job in corporate America was to come up with the idea that you would see in a TV commercial that left you feeling like your life was incomplete unless you bought my clients thing. Fill in the blank. I worked in automotive. I worked for Procter and Gamble. I worked for IBM. I worked for all the companies. They all do this. How can we play on people's insecurities? It's business. Not bad. It's neutral. It's business. So why else. Why else have we ended up with so much stuff? Another reason we attach meaning to things. When we discovered we had toxic mold, we got rid of almost everything because mold likes everything. Especially books. I didn't realize, but a lot of my identity was woven into these books. It was harder for me to get rid of my books originally than my wedding dress. My wedding dress, I just took it to Goodwill. I knew somebody else would love it and be delighted to have it and to wear it. The books, though, the books. I mean, that's how I proved that I was interesting, that I was smart, that I was going places. And so I was using those books as trophies of proof that I was a valuable human being. But books? What do you mean? Books and mold. Why would you have to get rid of your books? Well, mold likes paper. There was a time where I couldn't even go into a library because all the libraries are so moldy. I can go into them now, today, which I'm relieved about. Excuse me. So we attach this meaning. Excuse me. And the meaning is, well, I'm lovable, I'm worthy, I count. Sometimes we'll hold on to things because they represent a version of us, ourselves that we're not ready to let go of. And so often with my clients, we talk about books. Books come up a lot. And we ask ourselves, do we want our books to represent our past so looking behind us, or we do we want our books to represent the person we are today and what matters most to us today. Hold on one more second. I'm just going to give a little cough. Thanks for that. I'm going to pause and do a little sidebar. I've been healing for a couple years and I love doing this work. And sometimes I'll do free classes. And often the response is, oh, my gosh, thank you. I learned so much. So great. And occasionally, not often, there'll be one or two responses that say, you shouldn't teach a class until you can do it without coughing or wheezing. It's hard on my ears to listen to you now. They're Neutral. Their. Their message is neutral and it's all about them, clearly. And so I want you to know, mind clutter would be. Oh, my gosh, I agree with them. I'm not going to teach a class and maybe have to wait another six years before I can do it without coughing. But I will tell you, I love this topic so much. That little comment here or there is not going to get me down. It's not going to stop me from what I'm doing. But often there's so much clutter with other people's thoughts or opinions. And I just want you all to know that what they think or say, if that feels heavy, if it's not aligned with what your passions are, then it's cluttered and you can just totally ignore it. So I just wanted to share that because I'm probably going to cough a little bit more throughout this presentation today. And I want you to know that I'm feeling great and I'm thrilled to be here talking about my favorite topic of clutter. Yeah, you know, people say things and it just goes back to what? The pain. They've got pain inside. Maybe at some point they were told not to speak up and so they just want to push that off on somebody else. It's okay. It really is neutral. They just say words. I get to decide what I make those words mean. Okay, one more reason and why we've ended up with so much stuff. And somebody said this in the chat. We live in a culture of consumerism. Have you heard of the term planned obsolescence or perceived obsolescence? This is a marketing strategy. And basically, let's say you get a new phone and the new phone means all of a sudden you need a new charger and you need a phone case because the old phone case doesn't fit. And that's called planned obsolescence. Perceived obsolescence is, oh, Heather, your phone only has two cameras. It's so not cool. Which is what my kids told me, mom, you gotta have three cameras to be cool. So that's perceived obsolescence. Like, oh, it still works fine, but I want to be cool, so I better get the three camera one. Now. There's nothing wrong with the three camera one. It's just what we decide to make things mean. Companies would like me to think, oh, my phone is now outdated and I need the latest and greatest. It's okay. It's business. We have in the United States more storage units than McDonald's and Starbucks and. And a couple other fast food chains combined. So We've got all these storage units, and then even if we don't have storage units, take a moment, think about your house, and think, is there a spot in my house where I'm storing things as a storage unit? And that's okay. Ask yourself, do I want that, though? Do I want my home to feel like a storage unit? And if not, it's okay. This is a perfect time to start letting go and deciding what matters most important. What's most important to you. Okay, so those are three big reasons on why we've ended up with so much stuff. Oh, goodness. Doranda.

Wow.

Okay. So what do we get wrong about decluttering? My mom, she's 82. She talked about decluttering for decades. And what she would do is she'd move things from one room to the next, putts from here, puts to there. And then in the fall, probably about six, seven months ago, she said, heather, knowing what I do, Heather, I'm going all in. I've been getting this wrong. I'm done putzing from here to there. I don't want this to be part of my identity any longer. And I'm so thrilled to share that today her house is decluttered, meaning my sisters and I won't have to do it when my parents are no longer here. And that is a big gift that my mom just gave me. It's a massive gift. So what do we get wrong? Why is it so hard? And if you have thoughts in your head, please share them in the chat as well. What I'd like to offer is that one of the biggest reasons that it's so hard to declutter and why we stall out or feel paralyzed is that what we do is we focus on the mechanics of decluttering. What should I throw away? What should I donate? What should I give to friends before we get to the root cause of our clutter? And because we don't get to the root cause of our clutter, it just keeps coming back, even if you bring in a professional organizer. And that's great. Talking to somebody. Yesterday, she had brought in a professional organizer a year before everything got organized. And then yesterday she said, well, everything's organized, but there's just more and more and more. And what do I do? And I said, well, did you explore the root cause of your clutter? And she's like, no, we didn't do that. We just figured out, what should we throw away, what should we. All right, so how do you get to the root cause of your clutter? There are a Couple different tools. I'm going to share one of my favorites with you right now. I like to write a letter to myself from clutter. And it goes like this. Dear Heather, I am clutter, and this is what I want you to know. And then you just let your heart pour out onto the paper and then you sign it, Love clutter. And this is what we do in my community. One of the tools that we use. And the letters are powerful, some are short, some are long. And always, always there's insight about why we have the stuff, what was the messaging we got in childhood, what the stuff has helped us do, and permission to get curious about letting it go. Yeah, it's good. It's a good exercise. It really is. And often when we write these letters, we feel tingly afterwards because we prioritized our own well being. Because clutter impacts how we feel, how we show up, our decision making. And so we feel all tingly because we prioritized ourselves. We get stretched so thin. I got to do this, I got to do that. Need to help the kids, need to help my parents, need to stretch. So exactly. Physical clutter equals brain clutter 100%. So one more plug for this letter. Why get to the root cause? Because clutter, guess what, it's a symptom. And in the functional medicine world, what do they do? They get to the root cause of symptoms instead of just doing another band aid, which is what the organization industry would like us to do. It's a billion dollar industry. They want us to think that the answer is just organizing more. And what I'd like to offer is the answer is actually I'm getting to the root cause, giving ourselves grace and compassion and understanding and letting go. We don't need all this stuff. It's weighing us down. It's impacting our decision making. When I walk into my house and it's a mess, you want to know what I want to do? I want to go into the kitchen, I want to go find the plantain chips, and I would just want to eat plantain chips on autopilot without even thinking. If I walk into my house and I have a little house, it's a cute little white brick, 1300 square foot house in Colorado. When I walk into my house and if it's clean and serene, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to go get my dog, put our leash on, and we're going to go take a walk. Clutter, what we see absolutely impacts how we feel and what we do. There was A study that was done, I think it was done in Ohio. They took a group of respondents, broke them into, had one group work in a messy office, the other work in a clean office, and their work was just filling out papers. But the real research, the real test was, what will they do when they leave? We're going to give them an incentive. We're going to give them either an apple. We're going to give them an apple or a candy bar. What will they choose? That was the research. Well, guess what? If you worked in the clean office, you were twice as likely to choose the apple over the candy bar. Our surroundings absolutely impact our decision making. All right. There's a physiology to clutter as well. There was research done in California where they did saliva samples of people talking about their homes. And when people talked about clutter and projects that weren't finished, there was this massive spike in cortisol. People who talked about their homes as calm and serene, well, guess what? No impact to the cortisol. So there's a physiology that's happening to us. All of our things are more energy than matter, and they impact us on a vibrational level as well. Okay, what else do we get wrong about decluttering? We over complicate the process. Does anybody ever overcomplicate things? Make them harder than they need to be? That's human. I love that, Barb. I'm like, no, not me, exactly. So there is something called a complexity bias. Have you heard of that before? There's also something called a negativity bias. And here's the thing. It's human. We're human. It's part of our biology. It's natural. It evolved with us. We needed to be on the lookout for bad so that we could continue to live. And so what happens is that today, because of this complexity bias, because of this negativity bias, we look around ourselves in our homes and we tell ourselves, oh, my gosh, I don't know where to start. I am overwhelmed. I can't do this. Oh, I can't do this. I know I'm not the only one, because let me tell you, everything I'm sharing. I have done and felt and experienced myself overwhelm. I'm overwhelmed. I can't. And then what we'll do is we'll tell ourselves, you know, this doesn't matter. I don't really need to do this. It's okay. I'll go do something else. And the clutter will still be there, and it will still weigh on us. And so will say, well, I can't really start decluttering because what do I do with my great grandmother's things or what do I do with these presents, these expensive presents I was given or I paid a lot of money for these things and I don't want to waste them. So I can't let them go. Right? We over complicate it. We make it so complicated. And so what I like to offer, well, I like to offer a lot. But what I like to offer is that when it comes to decluttering, go for the low hanging fruit first. So there is something called the progress principle, which means a little bit of progress will feel really good and inspire you to make some more progress. So you start from the easiest spaces and you go from easiest to hardest with the most lived in spaces first so you can experience that progress. And at the same time you work on the stories, you work on the mind clutter, saying you can't let go, saying that you are overwhelmed. We did some coaching on overwhelmed the other day in one of my programs and we realized that overwhelm is really more of an umbrella feeling. Anytime we feel any kind of heaviness, oh, I'm overwhelmed. It's like it's an easy go to. And we realized that actually overwhelmed wasn't even the feeling that this person was feeling. She was feeling some sadness and there's nothing wrong with sadness. And she allowed herself to lean into that sadness. And because she leaned into it, she got to the other side and then she was able to move forward. So we overcomplicate it. We say it's going to be so hard and it feels heavy. Yet. Yet once we start decluttering, it begins to feel really good. Think about the last time you decluttered your sock drawer or a kitchen drawer afterwards. That satisfaction, well, guess what? That lightness you just created in your home, you also created in your body. Your physiology is also positively impacted when you declutter from the lens of, hey, I'm doing something really good that it's not the lens of, oh, I hate this, this is hard. It's the lens that this is neutral and I'm doing it and oh my gosh, it feels good. And you know, that feeling of goodness, serotonin, dopamine is all the good chemicals. And then you get to a place like DEPA where you love decluttering your closets, right? Because it feels so good. That's what happened to my mom. She started having fun with decluttering and then she didn't stop. And then my dad called me and said, heather, please tell your mom to stop decluttering, because now she's going through my things. So when we're decluttering, we only do our own unless other people want us to do theirs. But she ran out of her own things to declutter. She's like, that's too fun. I'm going to keep going. That's what it can be like. All right, last reason on what we get wrong about decluttering, we let guilt and all the what ifs get in the way. And so when I talk about what ifs, it's what if I need this someday? What if I regret letting go of something? What if, what if, what if? And these what ifs, if you get curious about them, curious about them, they all go back to childhood and moments where maybe you didn't feel like you had control or you didn't feel like you had a say because you were a little kid. Maybe you moved around a lot and you weren't able to bring your things, or maybe you didn't have friends, so your things became your friends and you named them. Well, how do you get rid of things that you've named as an adult when they're your friends? And so there's always a story in the clutter. There's also trauma in the clutter as well. And I think every human has experienced some. Some kind of trauma. There's absolutely a continuum here, but it's worth getting curious about. It's worth getting curious about. And getting curious about it is one of the biggest gifts in the world because it helps you get to know yourself so much better. Okay, how to let go with ease. All right, how to let go of these. Number one, get curious and not judgmental. So often I'll hear, well, Heather, I've made some great strides, but it's not nearly enough. Do you see where the focus is? It's not nearly enough. If we move the focus to. I've made some great strides, and there's still some more to do, and that's okay. How much lighter is that? So look at our language when we're talking about what we're doing. Look at the language. Okay, how to also make it easy. I like to create guardrails. So, for example, I like to decide ahead of time, how much of my life do I want to give to decluttering this thing? Or my clients will say, how much of my life do I want to give to decluttering all of my parents things that they left me? And would our parents want us to spend Months and years feeling heavy about letting go of their things. Would our parents want us to fight as siblings in getting rid of their things? And so I like to say, give yourself a time frame. If you've got a storage unit, ask yourself, do you want to give three months of your life? Do you want to give three years of your life to getting rid of the storage unit? What do you want to do? Create a container that you can work out of. If we stay vague, guess what happens? Nothing. Nothing happens because we stay vague. Get some clarity. We all deserve clarity. This one might sound a little weird or a little silly as you're going through your things. If you wear gloves, if you touch something and you've got gloves on, you will break the emotional connection and you'll be able to look at it from a more neutral perspective. If not, if you hold things, you're more emotionally connected. So look, think about stores, clothes, clothing stores. Do you know why they have the clothes displayed? So that you can feel them and look at them so you feel more emotionally connected. So you buy. And so consider just putting on a thin pair of gloves if you want to touch your things. All right. My favorite. And I shared this at the very beginning of the call today. Does this feel light or heavy? So I had a pair of jeans and I loved part of the jeans. I loved how they fit at my waist, but I did not like how they looked at my ankles. And those jeans sat in a drawer for years not getting worn because there wasn't something, there was something wrong with them. So those jeans not being worn are clutter, right? Yeah. I could not let them go. So they felt heavy. Yeah. I was like, no. And I wouldn't let them go. Then I pulled the jeans out and I realized in their current form they were clutter. And I wanted to give them a new life to then see if they were clutter or not. So what I did is I took some scissors out and said, well, if I love the top, let me cut off the legs and create some shorts. Well, I did that. And then I knew without a doubt that they were clutter because I am not a 13 year old girl, I'm a 50 year old woman. Does that not need a pair of short shorts? Nor does she want a pair of short shorts. And that was my permission to finally let them go. So if you're looking at something, if it feels light, it's right. It's not clutter. So let's say you have inherited a lot of things. There are some things there I bet you love those things. Feel light. They're right. They're not clutter. The other things, though, whether you inherited them or not, the other things, the things that feel heavy, know that if they feel heavy, that's your permission to let them go in their current form. Now, if you want to do what I did and try and cut off some legs, see if they'll work, great, do that. But if you're not willing to take a step to change them, permission to let them go. Okay, what else? Perfection. I have so many people say, well, I'm a perfectionist. And my response to that is that it is just a subtle excuse to not make progress. Perfectionism usually is all or nothing, which means it's nothing. So what if we just drop that word from our vocabulary? My younger son always tells me, mom, perfection. Perfection does not exist. And he's right. So if we hear ourselves saying, I'm perfectionist or I can't, let's just let that go because it's just getting in the way. It's a distraction. All right? And let's see. Let's see, what else? Letting go. Often we just automatically believe. Oh, my gosh. It's just so heavy. It's just so hard. And I want you to know that letting go can actually be one of the most beautiful experiences of your adult life. There's an author, her name is Sue Monk Kid. And she wrote. She's written a number of books. But she has said that the sacred can be found in the now. The ordinary and the natural. And decluttering fits all three. Decluttering is natural. Our brains like order. We make better decisions when there's order. Decluttering is in the now because it's an action that we take. We need to be present to be able to do it. And it's ordinary. There aren't any fireworks going off at the corner because you're decluttering. There are only fireworks going off inside of you because it makes you feel so light. So decluttering again can be one of the most sacred experiences of our adult life. It's. It's absolutely helped me be able to identify what are distractions and what are not. And it's helped me live a life that's more true to how I want to show up. There's another author, and her name is Bronnie Ware, and she was a palliative care nurse for 20 years, meaning that she sat with people in their final moments and she listened, and she wrote an essay that then became a book and a course and the essay was the top five regrets of the dying. Have you heard of this essay before? Okay. Some yes, some no. Powerful. The number one regret is I didn't live a life that was true to myself. Often we will use clutter as an excuse to not move forward on our dreams because the dreams feel scary. So we will use clutter as a buffer. So for example, I have somebody in my community who was an md, is an md and she took time off to spend with her dying spouse and her dying mother. And when we first connected, they had passed. And she said, I have all this clutter. And after I deal with my clutter, I don't want to go back to being a conventional allopathic md. I actually want to become a functional medicine doctor. And that feels scary and hard. I have no idea how I'll do it, but once I declutter, that's what I'll do. Well, guess what happened? Did she declutter? No, because the dream was too scary. It was too scary. So it took about six months for her to really look at that, to see what was going on and to come face to face with that dream. Did she really want that dream? And once she came face to face with that and realized how important it was to her, the decluttering became so much easier. Often we'll say, I'll fix my marriage once I declutter or I'll start a new job once I declutter. I'll lose the weight once I declutter. And then the decluttering doesn't happen because that dream is so scary. And so when we get really honest with ourselves about what it is that truly matters, what matters most to us, that's when the magic happens. That's when we get into our groove. That's where we find flow. And so it's so. It's such a wonderful gift, I believe, to get curious about your clutter. And most of us won't do it. Not most of us here. I'm just talking about most of us in the world because we're not aware that it's an option. Cluttering has been. Or decluttering has been one of the most eye opening experiences of my, my life and what I have seen my community go on to do because they have moved through that. Oh, it's complicated and overwhelming and hard because they've moved through all of that story that didn't serve them. They're now living their best lives and that's such an honor and so fun to see. So with that know that decluttering can be fun. Keep asking yourself, what feels light? What feels heavy? It can be eye opening, it can be transformative. And once you deal with your physical clutter, you also get to say, like, what other clutter do I have in life? Do I have clutter in my thoughts about my relationships? You know, do we think like, oh, my spouse should be like this or should be like that? I call that operating manuals. When we wish our spouses would behave differently just so that we could feel better, or anybody, frankly. Our neighbors, our friends, our colleagues. And these operating manuals, we never share them. So they don't serve them. They don't serve us. And so when we get curious about the thoughts we have for others, we're able to find agency and empowerment instead of falling into a victimhood of, oh, they did this to me, they did that to me. Because that's all clutter. That's all clutter. All right, one more thing I'll share, and then if you have any questions, I am happy to give you my opinion on anything. So there was work done by somebody named Shirzad Shamin. And what he did was some factor analysis research, and he looked at the different types of way we sabotage ourselves. Have you heard of Shirzad before? And his work just before I. Okay, fascinating. So Shirazad identified basically 10 ways, fundamentally 10 fundamental ways we. We sabotage ourselves. I'll share a few of those right now. So the judge. We'll all have a judge inside. You should have started declaring earlier. They shouldn't have done that. You shouldn't have done that. The judge is not very nice. And then the judge will pair up with these accomplice saboteurs. So some of those are the pleaser, the avoider, the hyperachiever, the hyper rational, the hyper vigilant, the restless, the stickler. And so those are reasons why we get stuck, or we feel paralyzed because of all this inner dialogue, which are just mental patterns of thoughts that we've had for a very long time that were originally designed to serve us. So, for example, the hypervigilant, let's say in childhood, you moved around so much that you always had to keep your eyes on your stuff, or your parents would forget to. To bring all your things. And then as an adult, you gotta hold on to all your stuff, because what if? What if? And so that's how that can travel through time. Or the hyperachiever. That was me. I. I knew as long as I got great grades in school, my parents would be happy. That was where I found my. My Value. And. And that was great that that helped me move forward as a kid. But today, if that's what I use today, then all I do is work, and that makes me sick. And so what Shirzad found was that the thoughts that sabotage us come from the brain stem and parts of the left brain. So with brain scans on brain imaging, those are where those thoughts come from. The good news is, is that we all have an inner sage, that wise inner voice that connects you to your intuition, your higher self. We're born with it. The sage offers thoughts of, you know, you've got this. It doesn't have to be complicated. A little bit makes a difference. And the thoughts from the sage, guess where this comes from. Prefrontal cortex and parts of the right brain. Fascinating, right? That our thoughts, depending on if they're sabotaging us or serving us, come from different parts of the brain. And what Shirzad. Exactly. The reptilian brain. Exactly. What Shirzad figured out was that all it takes is two minutes of hyper presence to move from that sabotaging space. It's too hard to declutter. I'll never get it done. To the sage space. Two minutes of hyper presence. That can look like going outside barefoot with your feet on the grass with your face up towards the sun. That can look like two minutes of prayer. Two minutes of meditation can also look like standing up, bending over in rag dollar and slowly moving your torso. Two minutes of hyper presence, and all of a sudden, there are options, there are possibilities that you did not feel or experience before. I think Shirzad Shamin wrote a book called Positive Intelligence. I think that's what it's called. If you type Shirazamine, I'm gonna. It's hard to. Might be hard. Shamine. Whoops. Not. The last name is Shamin. And it's. Oh, I did not spell. There we go. Shared Shirazad. If you type in his name. There we go. He's got a book, he's got a course. It's just fascinating. And it is not just relevant to decluttering. It's relevant to all facets of life. The sabotaging thoughts we learn from them, and then if we continue to embrace them, they're just a distraction. They're clutter. And so I hope that today, with these tools, these books, these authors, and some of these experiences that I've shared, you feel lighter when it comes to decluttering. What did I say this would be called? Oh, the Lighter Path to Decluttering. I hope that you see that that now is an option that the path to decluttering doesn't have to be heavy or hard, that it can be light and full of opportunity to get to know yourself better so that you can live a life that is true to you. Yeah. Yeah. It is fantastic, isn't it, Dan? I agree. I totally agree. Wonderful. Okay, so with that, I feel like there are just a few minutes left. Do you all have. That was a lot of me talking. I'll say. Thank you for your patience with my wheezing and my coughing. I appreciate that. And any. Any reaction or feedback or thoughts or any. Any lightness or happiness that you'd like to share. Yeah. Aria. Arien. Is that right? Hi. Thank you so much for this session. Great. Yeah. So my situation is a little unusual. I have with my family three storage lockers, and we moved to Mexico very quickly and they're still back home in Toronto and they're costing us $1,000 a month. And do you have any recommendations on companies that can help just get rid of stuff for us? Not junk, but that they can take it and sell it and get some money for it and then maybe give to us? So I don't have specific names. Get curious about. So. So often what happens is people will come to me and they say, I spent so much money on my China, and then, guess what? Nobody wants China anymore. Or I have these beautiful books that were, you know, thousands and thousands, and they're. They're special books. And guess what? Libraries won't even take them. And so I would put together a list of. Even without going into those storage lockers or the storage units, think to yourself, what are the most important things that are in there? The most valuable, the most special? Write down that list and then ask yourself, do you want to do the work of finding somebody that would sell these for you? Because that's going to be pricey. Will you be in the hole? Possibly. And then go from there. So often, how much of your life do you want to spend figuring this out? Sometimes the answer is to do all of that work because it feels good. It's satisfying. The right person got the thing. Often some come to the realization that they just want to bring up a dumpster and just toss it. So people will also say, well, I love the planet, so I want you to know I love the planet, too. I really love the planet. And everything that exists today will end up in a landfill. Every single thing. My earrings, my shirt, my. This stuff, everything, the flowers, the flower thing behind me. Everything will end up in a landfill. What's more important, if you love the planet and don't want to fill it with glitter, is to be more intentional about the new demand that you create. So not supporting fast fashion, fast furniture, buying clothing that will last, that is quality made where there are humane living conditions for those making it, really supporting the companies that are really being intentional, that is more meaningful for the planet and the planet's health than worrying about all the stuff we have right now. Because, again, it will all end up in the landfill at one point or another. And we are not a more moral, better person if we just keep storing things in a storage locker or our homes because we don't want it to go to landfill because it's going there anyway. And so really, it's about the new demand that we're creating. And my husband, he's like, oh, my gosh, Heather, why do you have to be so particular about the mattress that we got? Because I want to buy a mattress that's organic, that is quality that I can use, and not just keep getting one every couple years. Like, no, that's not. It's intention. And so not a great answer. I didn't give you a name of a company or a person. And I want you to know it's not so unusual having three storage units or three storage lockers. Now, the moving to Mexico, that's really fun and enjoy that. But ask yourself, how can I create as much lightness as possible around those storage units so that it doesn't weigh me down and I don't think about it for the next 30 years? How can you just take care of it so that you can move on? Yeah, a lot of our things, we look at it like China. Oh, it's so valuable. It's so expensive. And then there are brokers that will sell China. There are brokers that will sell things for you. More often than not, if we value our own time, we are in the hole in terms of finances because our time is valuable, too. So you want to think, what's my hourly rate if I'm going to do this? And if that's just your stuff, and if it's other people's things, too, and you're the one taking care of it, you let them know I have an hourly rate of this. And yeah, because our time. Our time. So it's the only thing. What we have is this present moment, and we don't know what is beyond that. And so value your time, too. Facebook Marketplace. Absolutely. Watch out for the. The bots there and. And so forth. Ideally, you people meet people. Somebody in a, you know, a neutral location. Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Thank you. Anybody else? This is your time. You got a question. And if you don't, that's okay, too. I just appreciate your attention and. And being here with you all today.

Thank you, Heather. That was such a powerful presentation. I think a lot of people had a lot of great ahas. Just the way you reframe things, it's not. Is not just about getting rid of the stuff, because if you don't deal with the root of the problem, it's going to come back. Right. I know from. For me, coming from parents who were immigrants to Canada, they were. You know, they grew up with not a lot of stuff. Right. And then they moved here, they got good jobs, and they were able to buy all this stuff. And, you know, my mom's gotten a lot better, but there's a lot of difficulty with letting that stuff go because they work so hard for it, and they came from nothing. Right. So.

And that's top of mind for them, too. Right. Like, I know a life where there was nothing. And so, of course, I wouldn't let go of anything today. Yeah. And so I. I honor that and see that as well. And that's where the compassion comes in. And no judgment of anybody who has ever had trouble letting go because it's. It's their story. There's so much story there. And often when we have that, oh, my gosh, what if I need it again someday? That is coming from a place in childhood where maybe the family was really poor and the child has no. No control because the child was a child. And what I like to remind people who say that is you're now an adult, and if you had capacity to create this once in your life, if you truly, truly need it again, you have capacity to create it again. And so, yeah. Dorinda, did you have a question? I hope I'm saying your name right. Hi. You are. You're saying it. Great. So one of my biggest challenges is paperwork stuff. I've gone through a ton of decluttering, and I've narrowed down books to the ones I really love, but I have all of these papers, and that's the hard part, to declutter for me. You know why paper's so hard? So hard. Because each piece of paper represents a decision that you need to make. And we have decision fatigue. Yes, we get decision fatigue. And so do you know what I like to say with paper? I like to say a lot of things. Again. Yeah. Here's an Idea. Well, I'll share. I had a friend, new friend, come through my house and after about 20 minutes she said, heather, I just have to ask. Remember, I have a small house, right? So there's that, there's. Where are all your piles of paper? And I said, hey, I used to have them. I get it, I get it. I was not born a minimalist. I was born a maximalist. Like, I like the stuff more is more. And with paper, here's what I like to do. Because when we keep the paper vague, like big piles of paper, and we keep it vague, it just feels heavy. And so I offer. When you wake up in the morning, ask yourself, how many decisions do I feel like I'm capable of making today when it comes to my paper? I think I'm capable of making three decisions, or maybe one. You look at your paper and you know the bar is low and you can achieve it. You go make that one decision and that's good enough. However, you're going to feel better because you made that one decision. And you might say, you know what? I think I could do one more. And how do we do get rid of the paper? It's like, how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. It's a lot harder and a lot slower if we judge ourselves or if we say, I'm overwhelmed. We're not overwhelmed. We're not. One bite at a time. One paper at a time. Yeah. I think that part of it is that we're bombarded with so much information. Oh, yeah. And that sometimes. And that's what happens. Like, I'm in a field where there's always so much to learn, there's always so many new things out there that it's like there's always so much. Can I tell you, that's a love of learning. So in every field, if you have passion about something, it does not even matter which field it is, because there's so. So often people will come to me and say, heather, I have so much guilt because I bought all of these digital courses and I haven't used them.

Guilty.

Okay, well, me too. And so here's what I say today. Actually, do you all have like two more minutes? I know we went to the past the top of the hour. Is that okay? All right, here's what I say, because we'll carry this guilt and this heaviness. Like, ah, I didn't get to that course. I should look at it, but I don't want to. It's not right. But, ah, I bought it. I Spent money. And so what I like to say is that when you bought that course, you already received benefit from it. How so? Think about your physiology. You hit the buy now button, you got dopamine. So from a physiological perspective, you've already received benefit. From a psychological perspective, when you hit the buy now button, you told yourself, this course will help me go from A to B. And that felt good. And that probably helped you feel a little more optimistic. And that also is a benefit. And so you're allowed to look at those courses and say, you know what? I don't even need now if I want to, and I carve out time. And then I can go through them. If they're weighing on you, their purpose has already been completed, it has already been served. You can look at them and say, there's no remaining work that needs to be done. And the reason why is because you are now where you are, which is a very different place than where you were when you bought them. Now, for the masses of paper that we consume, you get to decide not only just paper, but emails that we can see. I mean, just so much coming at us, right? And so in my community, we have games where we will unsubscribe or declutter inboxes. We'll do the decluttering together, come together, spend 22 minutes decluttering, come back, work through the challenges and celebrate the wins. So you're always allowed to unsubscribe. You don't have to open all the mail, right? There's nothing you have to do. You get, you get, not have. You get to figure this out. And so with the paper, you can ask yourself, what feels heavy? What feels light? Does it feel light to take all the paper and put it in one big pile or have 18 piles, which one feels light? Which one feels heavy? You use that as a guide to move forward. So what is right and light for you when it comes to your paper, your email or whatever will be different from the. For the next person. Because just like our biology is unique, so is our psychology. And so if I were to say, this is exactly how you should do it, guess what the brain will do. Find all the reasons for why that's not going to work. Which is why I'm not going to say you should do this, this, and that. Instead, you want to use your own inner compass. You want to listen. What feels light, what feels right. You want to get curious. Then you want to let go of those sabotaging thoughts that were originally designed to protect you. And then you want to lean in. And even if it's just 15 seconds of being curious about the paper clutter or the digital clutter, something can happen in 15 seconds, right. A decision can be made in 15 seconds that is still worthy. And you want to love the process, make it fun. How are you incentivizing yourself? What, is there a favorite show that you like to watch? Well, guess what? All right, last story. I have two boys and my husband, and they like sports. And the super bowl was going to be on, which is a big, like, football thing in the United States. And I didn't care so much about the football game, but I wanted to spend time with my family. And I had a little pile of paper. This is recently. This is back in February. And I told myself, I put it off, right? We're all human. And then I said, heather, this is the guardrail. You can't sit with your family to watch the football game until you deal with this little pile of paper. Guess how long I put it off? Four minutes before the game. Four minutes before the game. I went, got that pile of paper, and I dealt with it. Now I missed, like, the original kickoff. I didn't really care. But once I got one little win in there, it felt so good. I kept going. Maybe I missed the first minute, minute and a half, but I waited because I'm human until four minutes before the game. It's okay. We create guardrails. I was not going to watch that game and sit with them until I had done something. Yeah. After. I have to declutter. I need to declutter. That comes from scarcity energy, and it's super heavy. I get to do. This is super light. We don't have to declutter. We don't have to do it. This is a privilege. We get to do it. Yeah. If you've enjoyed this, you all, I am teaching a class next week on Tuesday or Wednesday. If you're not able to make it, there will be a recording. I go a little deeper into all this and show you some more tools. And if you'd like to sign, you have to sign up for it to get the recording. So we know where to send that. Is it okay if I put a link in the chat? Is that all right?

I did put it. Yep.

Oh, awesome.

I'll put it again just because I put it a little higher up, but awesome. Yeah. If you guys want to go deeper, if you've enjoyed this, I definitely invite you all to sign up for either one of those classes that Heather's going to be doing next week because she will go a lot deeper into these topics. So fun.

I promise you. These classes are so fun too. And. Well, and here's the thing. I want to have fun, so. Because I want to have fun. Like, we all have fun. Did you all have fun today? Was this, Was it, Did it feel light?

Yes.

Right now than you did at the beginning of the call. Awesome.

Yes.

I'm so glad to see that. See that.

Thank you so much again, Heather, for sharing all these amazing gems and giving people a new perspective on clutter and that it's okay to let go and such a joy to have you. I'll share the link in the replay as well. For those who weren't able to watch today and if they have any questions, I'm sure they'll be able to find you on your social channels. On Instagram. Are you Heather Ara?

Yes. So on Instagram, it's Heather Ara.

Okay.

And then it's School of Living Lighter, though.

I love Living Lighter. Okay, perfect.

Exactly. Yeah. You can always send me an email as well. Heather, at School of Living Lighter, sometimes social media feels a little bit like clutter for me, frankly. And so I am protecting my time and what matters most to me. I. I actually prefer. Yeah, like, emails are just. Yeah, it's all. I mean, it's all good. But yeah, we get to. We get to decide one more thing. We can live by design or default. And so me choosing to kind of be, you know, just to allow social media to be there but not have that be my life, that's me living by design and it feels really good. So use that. Do I want to live by design or by default when it comes to your lives? Do I want the papers to control me or do I want to have agency over all these papers? You all can have agency. When we anchor into our sage stage, we get agency. So there you go.

Love that. Thank you so much again, Heather. Lovely presentation. And have a wonderful rest of your weekend, everyone, and we'll see you next next Friday.

Bye. Bye.

Bye.