https://www.listennotes.com/e/1737b9b5378544aaafa775f937ae0bf8

Hello, sweet friends. Welcome back to the Momset podcast. I'm your host, Tessa Romero, Momset coach here with Momset and also a mindset coach for mothers. I'm super passionate about this work if you're new here. And today is a really special episode. We are doing a total focus on decluttering your home and also your heart. We have an incredible expert here to speak with us on this topic. Her name's Julia Ubbenga, and you can find her on Instagram at rich and what matters. She's an author, blogger, and minimalist living coach, which if you guys have hung out with me for any amount of time, you know that I love decluttering. It's like such a fun hobby for me and living minimally. And I have so much to grow there. So I'm really excited to learn a lot on this episode too. She recently published her first book, Declutter your Heart and youd Home: How a Minimalistic Life Yields Maximum Joy and had her first her fifth baby, excuse me, her fifth baby just a few months ago. She's on the show today to give us a head start in understanding why this approach to living is so transformative and what we can be doing now to get started. So welcome, Julia. Thank you so much for being here.

Thanks so much for having me, Tessa. It's great to be here.

Of course, of course. Just a little note to the listeners here. Julia's actually going to be partnering with us inside of the Momset membership through May, helping us run a full-fledged Decluttering Challenge all through May. She's provided a fantastic outline. So if you're someone listening that's been really wanting to focus on practically decluttering your home in a really sustainable and obtainable way, this challenge is for you. And leading up to that, we'll also have all the mindset work to be doing and then going right into healing those parts of our childhood home that we're bringing into our current home. So we have a whole quarter to be focused on decluttering. Um, and I'm really excited to be partnering with Julia. So I want you guys to have just as much like, I mean, just real inspiration and hope coming from Julia as I do. So I'm going to start by having Julia share her story. We've already had such a great conversation and I want everyone to know your story too. So will you take us back to six years ago or so and open up about where you started with your decluttering journey?

Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me and I am just so excited about this partnership that we have coming up in May too with this decluttering challenge. So I'm just so thrilled about it.

Me too.

Yeah, so I am an unlikely minimalist. I have not always been a minimalist. Pretty far from it, actually. So I grew up close to my grandma, and my grandma loved to shop. So she would go shopping whether she needed something or not, whether she had the money or not. She just loved to buy things. It was her love language. So I would spend time with her. We would stroll the malls, and I soon learned that shopping was fun, that it was a way to feel good. that it was a way to kind of COVID up hard feelings, to not feel bad.

Yeah.

And so I brought this mindset into my 20s. I started making money and I started spending money. And pretty soon I had all this stuff and I had $40,000 worth of consumer debt. But when I thought about all this debt, then I felt bad. But when I felt bad, I'd go buy something new because that's what I thought would make me feel good and make me feel happy. And so this cycle, it really continued until about the time our second daughter was born. And I was working outside the home as a speech language pathologist at the time, but I'd always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom. That was my dream to stay home with our kids. And my husband got a promotion at the time, so I was able to stay home. I was so excited. But I had this really idyllic vision of what stay-at-home mom life would be like for us. I thought we'd be giggling over tea parties and we'd be snuggled on the couch reading Little House on the Prairie and baking cookies. So in my mind, it was just going to be great. But a couple weeks into the stay-at-home mom gig, I wouldn't have even called myself a stay-at-home mom. I was more like a full-time stuff manager because that is what I did. I was constantly looking for things and picking things up and tripping over things that I hadn't picked up yet. It was just all consuming. I was stressed. I was exhausted. I was distracted. I couldn't really be present to the people around me. Like I was there, but I wasn't really there. So I was just overwhelmed. And a couple months into living this way, I was diagnosed with postpartum depression. And I have this memory of this morning where I was up in the nursery in the recliner chair feeding our baby, and I was talking with God. Really, I was pleading with God. I'm like, God, what is going on here? This isn't what I signed up for. Something's got to change. And I was reading the Bible and a couple of verses out of Luke chapter 12, they just jumped off the page at me, and they said, your life does not consist of possessions. Be rich in what matters. And I pause right there and I ask myself, was I rich in what mattered? Was I rich in relationships? Time for prayer? Time for a hobby that I loved? And no, the answer was absolutely not. I wasn't. So that planted the seed that something in my life around the area of possessions it needed to change. But I didn't know what. I didn't know where to go from there. And that same week I had a therapy appointment. And at the end of the session, just as I was leaving, the therapist said, Julia, have you ever heard of minimalism? And I'm like, oh, you mean houses with white walls and next to nothing in them? And she's like, well, look into it. There's more to it than that. I think you might be interested. And so I was curious. I did a Google search there in the car after the session and realized that there's a lot of books about minimalism and blogs. And so I started listening and reading to information about minimalism and realized that this idea that I didn't need all this stuff to be happy. And in fact, I'd be a whole lot happier with less of it because then I'd have the time and the energy to focus on who and what mattered. It was a mindset shift that was life changing. And it finally gave me just a vision of how to get out from under all this stress and anxiety that I was feeling at the time. And so I went all in on minimalism. I started a blog at the time. I called it Rich and what Matters. And we ended up letting go of 75% of our possessions over the course of the first year. And then we downsized to an apartment for a few years, got rid of our consumer debt, and we built a intentionally small, newer home. And we've been living this way as a minimalist family for six years now. We have five kids ages 11, 7, 4, 2 in two months. And so, yeah, I'm an unlikely minimalist, but I've learned that you can live an abundant life without an abundance of stuff. and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Oh, I love every, like there's so many things that popped into my mind, especially when you referenced the scripture within, you said it was from Luke chapter 12, right? And there are so many times in scripture too that, I mean, I'm more recent to reading the Bible. I've only been reading the Bible for two years. And, there's a continuous underlying message of, just that, that scripture that says, you know, it's easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a keyhole than for a rich man, meaning materialistically rich, to come to heaven. And that always stunned me. I'm like, well, what's wrong with having things? What's wrong with having money? What's wrong with having possessions? You're saying I can't come to heaven. And that's not what it's saying. It's just saying if you prize those things and love those things more than heavenly father and you put those things over your integrity to live a life rich in faith, then you're putting all of your value there and it will be so hard for you to live a righteous life because you're after the wrong things. And it took me a while to understand that. I was like, oh, this, this makes so much sense. So I love that you referenced scripture in that really powerful. And when you, what was like, I mean, what was it like for you, though, to hear that you were diagnosed with postpartum depression?

I kind of didn't believe it at first. I'm like, how can I have postpartum depression? Like, I don't know if it was pride or what, but it was just like, how can this be happening to me? And they're like, I have my life together. I'm a speech pathologist. I have a master's. I got, you know, I have things together. But it wasn't. I was overwhelmed, and I needed help. I needed a way out, and I needed the community and I needed a change. And so, yeah, it was, it was kind of a shock at first, but then, then I knew that I did have some agency, too, that there was some things that I could do to help make things better. And so I did those things and stepped out of it. And, I mean, praise God. Yeah.

I mean, you really did the things. You guys downsized to an apartment, you paid off your consumer debt, and you very intentionally built a smaller home to raise your five children in and to be together as a family. And I think the reality is too, that option is available to all of us. We can all choose to downsize. We can all choose to go for less than we think we need and live truly in that idea of live within your means. We can all do that. What do you think stops people from doing that though? why would it be so difficult for someone else knowing that's a choice to refuse to do that?

That's such a great question. I think the culture we live in tells us that our happiness is found in our next purchase, in our next possession. I certainly believed that. So I think we have all this cultural pressure to have a bigger home, to have certain things, and maybe it's part of wanting to fit in, but also the marketing Tells us that we need it. And gosh, it tells us the same thing for our kids too, for moms, that we can buy our kids a good childhood. And we can talk more about that. But I do think just the culture we live in, you know, the average home now has over 300,000 things in it. And that's average. Yeah. What? You're right. And we're not made, moms aren't made to manage that much stuff. I mean, houses have doubled in the last 50 years, but here our moms still wanting to manage it all and wanting to create a good home for their kids and a peaceful place for their families, but we simply have way too much stuff to manage right now.

Oh my gosh, that's mind-blowing. Mind-blowing. And now I'm thinking at my house, I'm like, do I have 300,000 items in my house? And I'm like, oh my gosh, I think I do. I think we have just, if you think about like each article of clothing, every pair of shoes, all the little toys, I mean, we just got a set of I think it was like 110 piece MagnaTile set. And we love MagnaTtiles. And now I'm like adding up the numbers and like, oh my God, we probably do have that much stuff. So what is that first mindset shift that you think is like, if you really want to sustainably live minimally, what is the first real practical mindset shift that a mom needs to make in order to even think about pursuing this work?

I think first of all, it's awareness, realizing how much stuff we have, realizing that maybe some of our overwhelm really is coming from our environment. So I think awareness is a big first piece. There's a study they did out of UCLA that showed that women's stress levels in the home are often tied to the amount of possessions they and their families have accumulated, that it is causing elevated cortisol in women. And so that that means their cortisol, the stress hormone stays high the whole day instead of tapering off at night like it's supposed to. And that leads to more stress and anxiety and poor sleep. So research is showing that all this stuff in our home isn't helping us. It's affecting us negatively, actually. So I think the first mindset shift is just awareness, realizing, hey, what is this environment that we've created? Whether I meant to create it this way or not, whether it just happened, you know, people bring stuff in. Grandparents, you know, want to show love, bringing all these gifts in and all this stuff.

Yeah.

Home and whether I wanted it to happen or not, like current state of my home, what is it doing to me? And really reflecting on that and then realizing, Hey, if my home is a problem, if I feel like I'm stressed out because of it, there's something I can do about it. Yes.

And you just mentioned a really good point. I've been coaching moms for over five years now, and this is a continuous thing that I hear. It's like, well, other people are giving my kids gifts. They get gifts at the birthday party. They get gifts for Christmas. They get gifts For all for good behavior, all the things. And it's like we position ourselves as the victims of other people's expressions of appreciation and gratitude and love and adoration for us and our kids. And I always think it's real. I'm a big, just force of nature against that victim mentality is what I would call myself. I just believe that the victim mentality is the shared enemy. that all moms have. The only enemy is the victim mentality. And in my faith, I look at it as like, that's right from Satan himself. Like, what better way would it be for Satan to just distract you in life and overcome you than to shoot at the root of your family? Because he knows if I can overtake the family, I can overtake anything. And to literally create this idea in our head that, People that love us, especially our kids, are against us. That's all the mindset stuff. So when we get into that victim mentality, though, that, oh, they're doing this to me. Like I said, no gifts and they still gave me gifts and they're not respecting my boundaries. And I'm like, okay, let's let's look into this more. So what I love and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, what I love to encourage this mentality of like gatekeeper. I'm the gatekeeper of my home. Someone can gift us anything they'd like. And it's not my job to refuse the gift, refuse the gesture, really, in the character that I want to have. I want to be someone that is graciously accepting and graciously just grateful for. For what's coming my way. And then I get to choose what I do with it, because a gift is not meant to be given out of control, like. Oh, this is what I wanted you.

To do with it.

That's not my responsibility to control. It's, I was gracious to receive this in gratitude, and now I'm going to decide what I do with it. So as the gatekeeper of my home, we regift presents that come in. If we have an abundance, I tell my kids, I'm like, wow, you could literally give that to a kid that doesn't have any toys. And we were big fans of donating and regifting. But I'm curious your take. Like my perspective is I'm the gatekeeper. I say what comes in and I get to determine what goes. What is it like for you handling that objection and that opposition that women experience with the things that are given to them?

Gosh, I would say you are spot on with what I do too. Like that is right in line with being the gatekeeper of our homes. We are. And it's just this idea that we can't control what other people are going to do, but we can control how we respond to them. And when they do bring us us gifts, even though we've told them, you know, Hey, I now have five kids. I don't need any more stuff. Please just give us experience gifts or money. But they still want to show love and a gift is just a way to show love. And our culture says that that's the way to show love. So they're still going to bring something over. But it's then up to us to receive it graciously and decide what we do with it. And we know that once it's ours, we can do what we want with it. And yes. if someone truly loves us, they want what's best for us. And if we have, you know, discerned that what's best for us is to give this to another kid or to donate this thing, then they should still support that. Yeah, it's about putting up that boundary and being the gatekeeper that whatever comes into our home doesn't have to stay here if it's not being used, if it's not being loved.

I love that. So and it's just that freedom, that permission to decide what you do next. And that's a big step in like overcoming people pleasing tendencies big time, which we need to do. If we want to overcome people pleasing, we have to first experience what it's like to decide for ourselves and have the autonomy of this is what I'm going to think. This is what I'm going to say. This is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to feel. And that sense of like control, building up our self, our self esteem, building up our self worth again. Now. We've also talked about, and this is something I want to make sure we add into this episode, is that regulation piece. You said, you know, it's not necessarily that I was depressed. I was just, I had too much stuff. Like I wasn't meant to manage 300,000 items and people and, and my marriage and myself. So what, what impact, I mean, you're really well versed in the research and you're so knowledgeable on this. You really live this. Dr. Minimalistic, idea of life. So what does the research say about regulation, stimulating that nervous system becoming dysregulated in relation to our home, that environment, and like the clutter that we collect.

Yeah, there's a study out of Yale that says that our brains expend so much energy just trying to ignore the visuals stimulus in an environment. So, wow. No wonder we're so excited.

Just to ignore.

Like, we're not even thinking about it, but our brains are working so hard just to ignore it and to focus on what we're trying to focus on. So we are just, we can be exhausted just by having a lot of stuff around us because it's working so hard and distracted, too. So, I mean, that is a, that is a big one to just know that if you are feeling exhausted at home or distracted, It could just be your stuff, you know, because your home environment is set up. And then I just think, too, how we talked about stress levels. If our stress levels are high, if we're in fight or flight, then our nervous system is dysregulated and we're not going to be calm. And, you know, I truly believe that families have one nervous system. I see this in our home that when I get upregulated, our kids, Behavior changes and they can feel it and they can just feel what I'm feeling. And so having tools, I think, also in the home to just combat reactivity when you feel yourself getting triggered. So that's, that's a piece in the book about decluttering the mind too. So not only being aware of how our environment is affecting our nervous system, but then also when we are getting triggered, have some tools to declutter our mind, which we can go more into those if you want to or well.

I'm, I'm so excited because as a membership, we're going to read your book together. And I linked the pre-order link for you guys. If you're listening to this episode, April, after April 15th, then you'll actually be able to order it right now. You can put it on your pre-order and get it right when it ships out, which is what I did. And I'm telling my community to do, too, because we are starting a freaking book club. Dang it. So I'm really excited for that. And I am a huge believer also in more so neutralizing emotion rather than trying to control, change, shift, and get into this mentality of like, well, I just shouldn't feel this way. I shouldn't feel angry. I shouldn't feel frustrated. I shouldn't feel annoyed. And that is like incorrect because I love to believe the emotions get it right. Emotions get it right. So if you're willing to truly sit and listen and be more observant, and neutralize the experience itself, like your perspective of it, become that neutral, and then channel the energy of that emotion into something good. And I think that's what keeps me on top of the experience in my home, because there are totally times that I become dysregulated. And then I just choose the path of regulation for myself that works best, which I'm really excited that we're going to be going through that in the membership together. And also just that practical sense of, I know my kids are never the problem. They're not the problem. My husband is not the problem. I am not the problem. It comes back to that research of, I wasn't meant to manage 300,000 items and be accessible at all times. I think that's a real pressure that we face too in society of, you get a text, you're meant to respond right away. You get a phone call, answer it. get invited to something, you have to say yes. Maybe just getting more connected with our values, because when values are clear, decisions are easy. So getting clear there. So I do want to hear your take though, and really just wrapping all this up. What impact do you think clutter in our home environment has on this idea of the mental load of motherhood, where we say it's so unfair, I'm the mom. No, my husband doesn't get it. I have the mental load of motherhood. All these tabs open in my brain. How much of that do you think is in our control, especially when it comes to the way we choose to create our home environment?

Yeah. Well, I think there is a lot of truth to this silent to-do list that is constantly running through mom's minds, all these tabs open. It's almost like, you know, the kitchen can be our office and each thing to do is like another email we have to, you know, address. Yes. Like all this stuff. And maybe we feel like our husband doesn't get that because we feel that we are in, you know, it's our responsibility to address all these different tasks. So there is a mental load. Everything that we have in our home speaks to us. It says, wash me, put me away, clean me. And we see that and we can see all that at once and it can overwhelm us. And so, that's why I think just decluttering and having less visual stimuli out in your environment really can help you. Because then that silent to-do list, it gets shorter. It's. It's not there nagging you, speaking to you all the time. Although I do think there are ways that we can have that awareness of. Okay. Okay. This. This is all speaking to me right now. I feel overwhelmed. And I find in my home now that I. I will have like a bigger to-do list in my mind if I'm more tired or if I just need a. So there's different times of day or different seasons of life that we might feel more overwhelmed from our stuff. But I do think that then we, we do, like we said, have agency of we can control the environment, we can change the environment, and that does lighten our mental load. There's a relation there for sure with.

Your take on this, especially in the coaching aspect that you provide and within your book and applying all this, you had mentioned just now that like when we're in our home, we have that agency, we have that decision making, and it's a mental component too. And I really love that analogy you just had of like everything in my home is speaking to me. It's wash me, change me, love me, pay attention to me, put me away, throw me away. Whatever it is. And I really love that. So what is like the first practical thing that you believe truly serves mothers in taking the first best step into decluttering?

What I found worked best for me was to start in the area of your home that's causing you the most stress. Because I had always read to start maybe someplace easy, non-sentimental, someplace contained like a kitchen drawer. And so I tried that and what I found was I had a really nice organized kitchen drawer and it looked good and I had all the feel goods from finishing a project. But then I turned around and our home was overrun with kid stuff, with kids toys and kids clothes. And I really didn't feel any lightning in the home from that decluttering that drawer. And so what I realized is I had to start in the area that was causing me the most stress. And so what I did was I just wrote out on a piece of paper all the areas of the home that I wanted to declutter. and rated them 10 being the most stressful, 1 being the least. And then I just started at the top. And when I decluttered kids clothes first, because that was our most stressful area, I felt an immediate lightening in the home. And our daughter, who was five at the time, she started helping with laundry independently because now the amount matched her ability level and she wanted to help out. And I'm like, I am onto something. And so, bend and go with it next. that's how I would recommend getting started.

Oh, I love that so much. I will say sometimes I think, and maybe I do have a minimalist approach to kids clothing. I think when you're in your own home, sometimes it's hard to determine whether or not it's like, is it excessive or are we minimal? Like, I don't know. Like for my kids, they have a trundle bed. So I have three boys sleeping in one room, my six, four, and two year old all sleep in the same room. and I love it. At first it was really stressing me out. I'm like, oh my gosh, we need a bigger house with another room because my kids need all their own rooms and we're not moving. So I got all three boys in the room and I'm like, I am so glad it's this way. This is so nice. And this trundle bed that they have though, my six-year-old sleeps on the bed, my four-year-old sleeps on the pullout, and then my two-year-old, I literally just put a crib mattress on the floor and he sleeps there. And then in the morning, we put the crib mattress behind the trundle bed so they have all their space to play. And because we have two rooms to use, and I love having my baby in his own room where his sweet big brothers can let him sleep. With their clothing though, they each have a drawer on that trundle bed that pulls out. And I want to know your experience. You have five kids. How much clothes does a child actually need? like, do you have like a list, like a number in mind of, oh, this is how many shirts, this is how many shorts, this is how many pants, swimsuits, undergarments, like, what is the system like for you?

Yeah, in the book I outline that specifically. This is how many great I have, how many long sleeve, short sleeve, swimsuit, shoes. I go through all of that. And it's less than we think, you know, they need less than we think. And we can play around with it too. Everybody's lifestyle is different. So you can try. you know, a number that you think, even try it for less than you think they need. And then if you need to add feedback in, you can. But I think that's how you find out what enough feels like when you experiment on the side of too little. Because we all know what it feels like, or most of us do, to have too much, but we don't know what it feels like to have too little. So when we can experiment with that, experiment with less, and then add a little bit more in if we need to, that's when we get that number of enough.

Would you say that A mom constantly experiencing a full laundry basket and laundry that just feels overwhelming to put away. Would you say that's a sign of it's time to minimize the amount of clothes you have?

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. We don't even use laundry baskets or hampers anymore. We just, when the clothes get dirty, they go right into the laundry machine. When it's full, we wash it.

We mix colors and whites, nothing better. I mix, yes, same.

Amen. Yeah. And so we just throw it in when it's, Dirty, we turn on the wash and when it's done, you know, switch it over. And then we, as a team, we put the laundry away. Um, our kids take their piles. We don't really fold. We just kind of throw it in their basket. Each kid has a little basket for their clothes, throw it in there. And it's a system that works great. And so, yeah, if you're in or drowning in laundry, you don't need to be.

Yes. Ah, just the encouragement we need to hear. There's something I can do about this. So, I mean, I feel so amazed when I listen to your story and honestly just what you've accomplished in the past year. You just had your fifth baby, your stay-at-home mom, and you just published your first book. Meanwhile, you're writing your blog and you're writing social media, and I know the time commitment of that too. So I'm wondering, for the mom that feels like, I just want to be intentional and I want to be more productive, What has happened to your intentionality and productivity levels since living this more minimalistic way?

That's a great question. They've skyrocketed. They have. I have gotten so much time back from not having to spend it on my house. Decluttering actually, there's a study that said it reduces the amount of time spent on housework by 40% in the average home.

Right.

So if you're spending 10 hours cleaning and maintaining things a week, you get four of those back simply by owning less stuff and having less to manage. So yeah, what could you do with four more hours a week? You could write a book. Write a book. You could relax, do nothing, you know, rest.

Oh, that's such a good point. That's such a good point because so much of this narrative surrounding motherhood is moms never get a break, they never get to rest, they never get these things. And what I've noticed is when I provide more and more and more to my kids, they become overstimulated and they become overwhelmed. and they're looking to me to regulate them, to guide them constantly. And the more I've minimalized our home, the better they play independently, especially with each other. They're so much more kind to each other, inclusive with one another, bringing in friends, being creative with what they can do. And that's where I get my breaks, because I work and I stay home. And, you know, there's this, and, and, and. and it's so true what you just said of we get our time back when there's less to manage so you can be more productive and pursue the things that you're really passionate about and light you up. And you can also have time to rest. I. Wow. What time would you say you're, like, done cleaning for the day? I mean, you. You've had dinner. How long?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What's that like for you in that evening routine? When are you done?

We eat dinner and then we do the dishes afterwards. Most of the nights our kids help us out. Sometimes they're off to run to friends houses, but most nights they'll help. And then really, so that takes like 15 minutes and we might have to tidy the main area a little bit, but that's all. So maybe 20 minutes after dinner and we're done.

So you're not staying up after the kids go to bed to clean your home?

No, no, no.

I'm going to bed. Yes. And I think more moms need to hear that message. If you are staying up late sacrificing your sleep, because we think I'm so exhausted. My kids aren't sleeping through the night. My baby isn't sleeping through the night. Where I understand that that's one piece of the circumstance.

And we have young babies.

We know that. We know what that's like. And I found that. With my fourth, I was just so peaceful in those nighttime wakings because I feel like I'm finally to a point where I'm done for the day by eight and we do bedtime. And then after that, it's just hang out with my husband. What does Tessa want to do? Does Tessa want to watch a survival show or something about World War II? Or does she want to read a book or does she want to go sit on the porch? Like it feels I can relax and go, I've been going to bed earlier than I ever have. I'm usually in bed by nine. and it feels so good. So while yes, my baby still wakes up, usually several times a night, I feel really rested. We need to just get that right to the mom's heart of, hey, less stuff means less for you to do, less for you to manage, and the earlier you can go to bed, you're not staying out trying to get everything cleaned before you go to sleep.

Exactly, yeah, and more time to take care of you, which you need. You're gonna take care of others. So yeah.

Yeah, and your marriage, like pour into your marriage more too.

Yeah, it's a game changer for sure.

I love this so much, Julia. I'm just over the moon freaking thrilled that we get to make this a conscious focus in May. And I'm also so excited that you're running the challenge because I just wanna do it with everybody. That I was like, oh great, show up to the challenge and I can just like post my little picture of, okay, got this done, got this done. It's truly, and just reading that book, I am truly so excited for it. So what final resources do you wanna share with our audience? What do you wanna make sure they know about you? where they can find you and what you have to offer them.

Yeah, so my blog is richinwhatmatters.com and I'm on Instagram @richinwhatmatters and then you can find the book. Like you said, you're linking to it. It's anywhere books are sold, your favorite.

Spot to buy books, it'll be there. Amazing, amazing. All right, friends, we're gonna wrap up this episode. I'm so grateful that Julia was able to join us and share incredible information, experience, and inspiration with us. And the message, the overall message that I'm getting is it's so practical. Like this is giving me so much more than it's ever going to take. It might take me a few hours to invest in my home and get all this ordered. And depending on the level of things, it might, it might, like you said, the first year, like it took you guys a year to downsize about 75% of your belongings. So you may need to invest a year into this. And then, Look how much more we're going to get out of it and get back from it. And that is just so exciting.

It is. I think it's encouraging too to think that you can just do 15 minutes a day and that adds up to seven and a half hours a month, which is 90 hours a year. You can get so much done in 90 hours. So just those small, consistent efforts, they lead to big changes. So it's not something you have to just change your house overnight. It's learning the skill of doing a little bit every day. Oh, that is amazing.

Math still blows my mind just as much as it did in college. I mean, just those little numbers and the way they add up, it's like mind blowing. So amazing. All right, Julia, well, we will let everyone join us in the membership to participate in our May challenge together. I'm going to have your book linked for everyone to easily access it, and I'll get your blog and your Instagram linked as well, so we can easily find you. And just thank you so much for your time today. This is really inspiring. And honestly, I just want to go inside and start filling up a box.

Get it to DI. Thanks so much, Tessa. It was a fun conversation and I'm.

So excited for the decluttering challenge.

Perfect. We'll see you later. Thanks.