516 | Hoarder Moms

Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing that's just feeding your greed Oh I bet that you'll be fine without it Yes, hello simpletons, hello everybody Welcome to the minimalist podcast where we discuss what it means to live a meaningful life With Aless, my name is Joshua Fields, Milburn and joining me here at Earth Eaton Studios in beautiful West Hollywood, California The rain has slowed down, the clouds are parting, the sun is peeking through My good friend TK Coleman is here It's the season of holiday cheer Ah yes, it's a brand new month, but look what I have here in front of me No that is not page three, if y'all are just listening to the audio version of the podcast We're on page one right now and Savvy D just handed me these fortune cookies TK, I gotta be honest, I'm a little scared because we don't have any safety net here We're doing these for our last Sunday symposium of the year And we've got these fortune cookies, everyone gets one in the audience I always wanted to be a fortune cookie writer That was my ultimate aspiration, like yeah the Dao De Ching is pithy But what's pithier than the Dao De Ching? Delicious fortune cookies, actually they're probably not that delicious I'm not gonna eat the cookie, but I thought this was a great way to unwrap TK's profundity So we're gonna open these together and then you're gonna tell me what minimal maxim is on your cookie And then we can talk about it a bit before we dive into this full episode here So gentlemen first Yeah, after I'm done with this process I'm gonna write an essay called A Supposedly Fun Thing That I'll Never Do Again Shout out to David Foster Wallace Alright, for audio listeners, he's opening the cookie right now You can hear it, oh yeah I'm so nervous about making a mess, man That's alright, make the mess, savvy D's here, we'll clean it up Alright, what do we got? What do we got? A piece of paper's coming out What does it say TK? If a thing amplifies your misery, let it go Ooh Yeah, so often our things, the material possessions in our lives, you could say this is about relationships You could say it about careers, that's why I like this word thing Because it can apply to physical things, material goods But then also like, hey what's your thing, man? It's like, oh I like playing basketball, I like watching basketball, that's my thing Or like, oh yeah, like any thing can be a thing But if a thing amplifies your misery, then it's a type of clutter, it gets in the way The opposite of that is if a thing, a thing will never make you happy, it'll never bring you joy There's not joy in the thing, but sometimes the thing will amplify the existing, the innate joy that is already in you Anything to add to that? And sometimes to another person, the thing that amplifies your joy might seem to amplify your misery If you're watching a Denver Nuggets game and the ref makes a bad call, you may go, come on ref Or your favorite player misses the shot, you go, come on Steph And then someone looking at you goes, look at this guy, he's so miserable, but he says he loves basketball But that's you just connecting with the energy of it and you love that little flashing bit of misery Because of the joy it brings you from your participation in the overall game, what you gotta celebrate later Yeah, yeah, and so it's not like an existential dread that you get from that You have this momentary valley that you're traveling through because I think basketball is a great example of that Because like, yes there are the moments where it's like, oh no, like you full body cringe or wincing, right? That's not real misery and that's obviously not what we're talking about here But sometimes we hold on to things that maybe amplified our joy a decade ago But they're just in the basement or worse, they're taking up space in a living room And every time I look at it, it's a reminder of misspent money It's a reminder of wasted time and resources and energy and effort and attention And every time I see it, it's like, oh, it amplifies my misery even slightly, right? It's a slight amplifier, but as soon as you get rid of that amplifier, all of a sudden you realize like, oh wow Yeah, that misery has turned down as well I have a cookie for you here You have to sing yours in the style of Luther Vandross Yes, all right, here is my cookie Yes, oh, that's so satisfying The minimalist ASMR Oh my, I ripped it That's all right, DK, I could put the pieces back together There we go, ooh, every disagreement is an opportunity for self-reflection Well, I disagree Well, let's reflect on that Yeah, that's good, I mean, every time you disagree with someone, that's because what they're saying makes you feel some kind of tension or incongruent Ah, that's not right And that's an opportunity for you to not just refute the other person, to not just challenge them or push back But it's an opportunity for you to discover something interesting about yourself Why does that bother me so? Why do I feel a need to respond to it at all? What is it that I care about so much that I see this as wrong? Is it possible that both things could be true? Even if what they're saying is wrong, is there a different way for me to respond? Is there a non-response for me to have? These are all interesting questions that don't take away any of the freedom you have on your ability to say, hey, I disagree I completely disagree I have a meme on my phone, it's from one of the Instagram reels from back in the day when Danny Unknown was here And he sent it to me and it's just like a quick one-second clip and it's just TK saying, I completely disagree I'm like, yes! I see that's my wife all the time, she'll send me something, just jokingly I completely disagree Anyway, if you want to agree with us or disagree with us, we are next Sunday Symposium It's the last one of the year and it's the last one we're going to do for a while It's here in Los Angeles, we have people who come to these from all over the world From Switzerland and Germany and Iowa and Canada and Mexico and Arizona and Hawaii and all over the place We limit it to 200 people and then we're taking a break from our live events for a while We're going to spend some time sort of reconstructing, reimagining, re-conceptualizing our events What they're going to look like in the future, so it's my favorite thing that we do And sometimes when you have this favorite thing, it's good to set it down for a while Because cheesecake is delicious, but if I'm eating cheesecake at every meal, it becomes commonplace It becomes an everyday thing and so we're trying to figure out where are we going next year And beyond with some of our live events You can join us for this one last live event, the final Sunday of the year Here in Los Angeles, SundaySymposium.com If you want to grab your free tickets while they're still available Coming up on this episode, a caller is overwhelmed by her mother's clutter Several listeners have identified the biggest hoarders in their family Plus a pound of experiences is worth more than a pound of stuff And much, much more. Also, TK on page three will review five sneaky ways that stores get you to spend more money on stuff you don't need I think that's especially true this time of year, where the holiday shopping frenzy Last week you were out, he called me and he was like, hey, I need off on Black Friday, it's a special day for me I think you misunderstand the, I said, just fine, you can take the podcast off Then I was like, no brother, you misunderstand, I have a Black Hun day No, TK was just out and he was in Tennessee, you were on, you did the whole Ramsey Car Wash, we call it Is that what you call it? The Car Wash? Yes, you're on Ken Coleman's show, how'd that go? It was excellent, man, we finally got the Coleman brothers collaboration that the people wanted Everybody wanted to see the twins get together in the same studio, but we've been trying to conquer the world coast to coast So it's good to be in the same room You came back together, we did a live event with him years ago in Washington DC Me and you and Ryan and Ken Coleman, and that was really special I'm glad you got the opportunity to go back there and you're on Deloni's show, George Camel We'll put links to those in the show notes, if they're out by now, I'll be happy to share those with everyone You can take a listen and a look at TK over there at the Ramsey HQ Let's start with our callers, TK, if you have a question for our show we'd love to hear from you You can give us a call, our phone number is 406-219-7839 Or you can email a voice recording right from your phone, that's the easiest and clearest way to do it Just send it over to podcast at theminnalists.com Let us know if you're a Patreon subscriber so we can prioritize your message By the way, big thanks to our patrons, your support keeps our podcast 100% advertisement free Because sing along at home, y'all, advertisements suck Yes, they do, TK on page 3, advertisements suck I gotta talk to you about this, you know about this, but we need to have a whole conversation YouTube just started turning on ads on our videos And I found out from my barber, actually a very long story, we'll cover it on page 3, but I was pretty unhappy about it And so I want to talk to you about the whole ordeal and what we're doing because of it And some of the realizations, some of the learnings that I've had over the last few weeks with respect to My own expectations around ads on that front because they just started turning them on randomly without our permission And I want to talk to you about that, maybe you have some insights for me as well But first, let's get to our callers, our first question is from Alexandra Hello, I'm from Sydney, Australia, my name is Alexandra I've got a huge question to ask, please I would love to declutter and become more minimalist But I live at my mom's house, which is filthy and full of clutter What do I do? Please help And if I do anything, then I might get in big trouble because she really is attached to her things Thank you so much for your help There are several questions embedded in this, right? Like how do I help my mom detach from her things, right? Because she's so attached to them, it's probably making her miserable It goes back to the amplifying your misery Quite often, hoarders are rather miserable And they're not miserable necessarily because of the stuff, but the clinging to the stuff is a byproduct of the misery And then that stuff then amplifies the misery, becomes a really vicious cycle And it sounds like Alexandra, your mom is probably a stage four or stage five hoarder Those tend to be the people that we see on our TVs And it's a big problem because right now you feel like you have to live there I think back to, we did an episode with Destiny, the YouTuber And you had some really interesting debates with him, it was a great episode In fact, let's put a link to it in the show notes, Savvy D, so that we can point people toward it It was a wonderful discussion, but we started off that conversation The first thing I said to Destiny are, hey, are your parents hoarders? I didn't know that his parents were hoarders, but it's a question I often ask at live events Or just the people, if they ask about minimalism, I say, hey, are your parents hoarders? And I usually get one of two answers, yes, how did you know? Or, yeah, I guess they are, right? Now I think there are a couple reasons that we might judge someone that way Maybe they are actually hoarders, and it's just a diagnosis, not a judgment at all, right? Just, hey, I understand that you have a particular mental illness Hoarding is a mental illness, it's on the obsessive-compulsive spectrum And so recognizing that actually gives us compassion for these people What's not point in saying, oh, how could you have all this stuff? It's like, yeah, that stuff is residue from this illness It is a symptom of something that's going on inside me And then there are other people saying, yeah, my parents are hoarders But their parents may not actually be hoarders They are saying, if I owned all their stuff, it would be totally inappropriate for me And it would get in my way So if Alexandra was one of your clutter counseling clients, and she came to you and she said, hey I have to live with my mom right now And my mom's a hoarder, and it's really making me miserable What do I do? Makes me think of the words of Sartre, hell is other people Or mother Angelica, being a saint would be easy If it wasn't for other people, all of us are living this life in our own way There is something we can imagine that would be so much easier or more feasible If we didn't have this person in our lives who's complicating it in some kind of way And this person can be someone that we love And we can have an attitude that says, I refuse to end my relationship with this person They're necessary to me, I don't want to give up my children I don't want to give up my marriage, I don't want to abandon my parents But gosh darn it, they're just so difficult to work with or live with in this particular way Just know that the rest of humanity stands with you on that issue Even if it doesn't have to take the form of dealing with a clutter problem Here's one thing I would suggest Whenever you have a situation like this, try to form a positive conception of what it is you would like to do for you Then express that to the other person in a way that preserves their dignity And then form a specific ask for what that would require of them And then ask would you be willing to So for instance, if I came to Josh and I said, hey man, I want to do some different stuff with this podcast But you're so obsessed with minimalism That has two shortcomings Number one, it puts him on the defense because I'm making it about how obsessed he is with minimalism And he's likely going to justify himself by saying what that's what the show was about And I'm also being so vague that he couldn't possibly be passionate about what I want to do Because I haven't given him anything other than frustration and general sentiment But suppose I would say, hey look man, I would love it if during our show we could work away for us to talk a little bit more about sports It's something that we have in common, I feel like our conversations have like this interesting quality when we talk more about sports So what I'm thinking is if we can have like a two minute segment where I say TK's sport lesson of the week And just for a couple of minutes, I identify something cool that an athlete said and then you give me your thoughts on it Would you be willing to consider something like that? Would you be willing to try that out for one episode? Now I've given something specific, I haven't put him on the defense I framed it in a way that doesn't involve him believing that there's something wrong with him And I've identified what we can do and I've made it testable This is something that is so important to learn with people that we live with Because it's so easy to be like, you know what, you're a filth, it just gets in the way of my life Well their reaction is going to be predictable even though I have a lot of sympathy for why you would feel that way So maybe you can go to your mom, actually before you go to your mom, maybe you can go to your room, maybe you can go to your own soul And you can say, hey, forget about her for a second, what specifically do I want? Well, I want a space in the home where I can sit and I can do my work without having all this clutter in the way I want a space in my home where I can do exercises without having to go to a gym, but there's just so much stuff Okay, great, we're part way there And now we go to mom and we say, hey mom, is there a way you can work with me to create a little space in the house Where I can have some space to exercise and where I can have some space to do my work And we don't say a word about what we think of her character and what we think of her habits And we don't just leave it up to her to work together with us and come up with the ideas We do all the work for her because we want to make it easy for her to give us a yes Not because that's the noble thing to do, but because that's the self-interested thing to do Because we're so passionate about what we want that we do things in a way that give us the probability of getting what we want And so we say, and here's what I'm thinking, how we can go about it If you let me, I can take these boxes of yours or I can take these things and I can put them here Or I can store them here, or if you're willing to, I can organize this in this particular way And that way you still have your things and then I get to have my space Would you be willing to let me try that out? If you don't like it, I get it, but would you be willing to let me try it out? And that's not a formula because relationships don't work on formulas But probabilistically, that's a much better chance of getting what you want than orienting the conversation around your judgments about her flaws Yeah, those five words changed my life. Would you be willing to? And then there's an ellipsis there, right? And it's the exact opposite of how dare you, energy And sometimes I think we show up with the how dare you energy without even realizing it Because we've been stewing on something like, my mom's got all this stuff I can't believe she's not considerate about me or the family or the people that come over here And she's not even considerate of herself And before you know it in your mind, you're saying how dare you Without maybe even articulating it Now eventually it can get to that point where there's the equivalent And we accidentally become self-righteous because we stew on something for so long This little kernel of misery gets amplified And then what happens? We let it get bigger and bigger and bigger It's the Tony Robbins analogy, you want to kill Godzilla when he's a baby, not white toys taking over the city But now we're talking about her mom And Godzilla has taken over the city, the stuff is there in the home And there are a couple of things that would be really freeing for me to realize in this moment Because the energy she called in with is, I have to be here right now Okay, I understand that's how you feel right now And I don't discount that at all And of course it's not that you get to be there right now It certainly doesn't feel like you get to, I don't want to say turn it around To say, oh you get to live with your mom in this hoarder's house, no But at the moment you choose to be with her, right? In TK said something profound a moment ago about like, you don't have to abandon your mom And I agree, but maybe leaving the house is the best way to not abandon her At least having a plan to leave, it doesn't mean that you pack your bags today And you're out of there immediately But what is the plan to get out of this situation? And maybe creating that distance will also give you enough distance to help her And allow her to maintain that dignity without the, how dare you It's the, would you be willing to let me help you? That's right, you know, you gave the example of a dog And so I'm going to just stick with that Imagine if you know, you're going over a friend's house and you know their dog You have a relationship with the dog, but the dog does what dogs sometimes do They're caught off guard, they're surprised and they, er, er They bark at you as you're standing far away Part of it's like, come play with me The other part's like, hey, what's your problem? You know, and so what do you do when you have a moment like that? Do you look at the dog and go, hey, why are you always barking at me? Like, this is not conducive to a good relationship That just antagonizes the dog, right? But what do you do? You change your voice and go, hey man, you know, what's something? And then you kind of kneel down and you hold out your head, hey man And the dog's like a little nervous, you know, like, all right And then he comes up to you, smells your hand, licks your hand, what's up man? And now you pet it, and next thing you know, the dog's rolling on the floor And you're playing and you're doing well, why? Because this moment wasn't about being right This moment was about connecting And whenever you're connecting with someone that is in an antagonistic mode Or a defensive mode or a fearful, insecure mode You don't exacerbate that by responding in like kind You adjust your own vibration so that you can reach out in a spirit of love In a spirit of invitation and you make them comfortable with you That's a self-interested thing I'm all about the morality, I'm all about doing the right thing But what I want to be heard out of this is this isn't about just some abstract conception of doing the right thing This is how you get effective in your relationships so that you can get what you want When you treat people with respect and with kindness and charity And you give them the benefit of a doubt, you're most likely to win Yeah, yeah And right now it feels like you're losing, right? You've paid this cost of admission to be at your parents or to be at your mom's house The cost of admission has been misery But if the cost of admission is misery, then I would say the cost of admission is too high The price is too high And maybe you didn't realize that was going to be the price When you moved back in there And maybe you moved in with grand intentions to help But you can't help, also you can't help someone who doesn't want help And so if they're not asking for help, yes, you can invite them But you can't show up and remove the stuff for them They said, I'll get in trouble Well, yeah, that's called theft You can't just go into the house and start removing things You don't want to do that because let's say best case scenario That you went in there and you made the house perfect You removed all the clutter and at the end of it, somehow miraculously This wouldn't happen, but let's just pretend Your mom was like, oh, thank you so much, that's so freeing No, she'd probably panic and lose her mind, but let's just say that she did Oh, that's so freeing, thank you so much Guess what's going to happen six months from now? The house is going to be right back to where it was Or at least approaching where it was And six years from now, it's going to be, oh yeah There's the hoarder's house again because you did it for her It's one of the most maddening things about parenthood I could do all of my daughters reading and math homework for her, right? I'm so much better at math than she is And yet that would be robbing her of the dignity of figuring out on her own Now I can help her with it And if she has questions, I can pour in her in the right direction And I can be there for her But if I do it for her, I'm actually doing a disservice for her Alexander, I'd love to, two things One is I'd love to give you a free copy of the Emotional Clutter book You can download it for free over at theminimalists.com On our resources page there We have a bunch of free resources including Emotional Clutter Because there's a lot of Emotional Clutter that's in this moment with you and your mother right now It's tangled in there, those material possessions It's not about the stuff, it's about what's going on inside you And also what's going on inside of your mother And so I think Emotional Clutter will help you with that You can download it for free over at theminimalists.com Or if you want the audiobook version, we'd be happy to send that to you as well Also, I'd love to give you a free Clutter counseling session with TK You can help you unpack some of these issues with your mom Obviously us having a quick 15-20 minute conversation about it is a good on-ramp But this will take some more unpacking So I'd encourage you to do that with TK We'll give you a free Clutter counseling session Anyone else who wants a Clutter counseling session, head on over to theminimalists.com And click counseling at the top You can book an appointment with them anywhere in the world Via Zoom or here in Los Angeles as well Before we get back to our callers, TK, it is time It's time for the lightning round This is where we answer the Patreon community chats question of the week And attempt to answer questions with a short, shareable, minimal maximum You can find this episode's maxims in the show notes at theminimalists.com Or maybe at a fortune cookie near you Or if you're not coming to one of our live events And you want all of our minimal maxims ever, you can find those at minimalmaxims.com We'll also deliver our weekly show notes directly to your inbox every week Including seven new maxims every Monday If you sign up for our email newsletter over at theminimalists.com We'll never send you spam or junk or advertisements But we will start your week off with a dose of simplicity Alright, TK, question of the week this week A lot of discussion on Patreon with this one By the way, you can join the Patreon community chat for free Even if you don't support the private podcast But head on over to patreon.com. The minimalist for that Question of the week is, who's the biggest hoarder in your family? Who is the biggest hoarder in your family? How many people had a lot of comments around this? Before we get to our pit, the answer is around this Let's listen to what some of our listeners had to say Robin, this is my favorite one She said, I'm the biggest hoarder in my family I'm still working on my scarcity mindset And the fact that I might need that thing someday There are many times that I've gotten rid of things and regretted it Which only feeds my hoarding tendencies I'd like to live with much less Because all this clutter interferes with my happiness But I get overwhelmed when I try to declutter So I often avoid it, which just perpetuates the cycle Well, kudos for you taking responsibility Robin, brava on that TK, what does Robin need to understand about regret That might help her get unstuck here? Don't hoard the regret Regret is just your moral compass Letting you know that it is unsatisfied with the past result that you created The proper response to that isn't to hang on to it As if it's some sort of valuable possession that makes you rich the longer you have it The proper response to that is to say What can I do differently in the future? What adjustments can I make in my strategies? What room can I open up for more accountability in my life? Those sorts of things so that I can achieve the kinds of results That I want to achieve Your regret is there to make you better Not to make you feel bad because of how terrible you once were And when we hoard the regret, when we cling to it Then it no longer serves its purpose, right? It's like I'm beating myself up with the regret I'm not even learning the lesson that I was supposed to learn from it in the first place Jeanette says, my sister is the biggest hoarder in my family A year ago, her family moved to a huge house With over 900 boxes Who even took the time to count 900 boxes? 900 boxes? I used to run retail stores for a living And I'm trying to think of any of them had 900 boxes of inventory at a time Our warehouse did, but there's a whole retail store With a dozen or two dozen employees And thousands of customers didn't have 900 boxes And that's not a judgment, it's to put things in perspective 900 boxes is almost unfathomable I want you, if you're listening to this right now I want you to imagine a room with 900 boxes Talk about overwhelming, well Return to text here There are boxes still unpacked in the living room, kitchen Two bedrooms full of boxes, plus two storage rooms in the basement Wall to wall boxes Personally, I would large dumpster and trash most of it I mean, my sister is 70 years old She is never going to unpack those boxes TK, is it possible for Jeanette to help her sister here? Yes, if she lets you You can only help someone within the context of having tremendous respect for their free will And so often for many of us The true test of our character is our capacity to love and respect and endure someone When they don't want our help, when they don't agree with us About our ideas for how much better we could make their lives The hard part though, sometimes we are right Sometimes we can see that a person is doing something that is objectively unhealthy And we want to intervene and we know they are going to be defensive and resistant about it And there are some things we can do to soften that resistance One thing we can do is frame everything in form of questions rather than criticisms Hey, you need to do this, you need me to help you with that Hey, you know what, I'm going to do this for you You know what, this has to end, enough is enough If you've tried that before and that's not working Maybe translate you should into how can I help Or wouldn't it be nice if Or what if I did this, how would you feel about that Another thing you can do which is much more fundamental Is you can find out the information that you need to incentivize a person to change their behavior And that is a knowledge of what they care about Hey, mom, hey brother, hey sister I noticed that you've had these boxes for a long time and they haven't been open I'm not mad at you, I'm not judging you, I'm curious What do you plan on doing with all this? Like, hey, what are you going to do with all these boxes? You're already frustrated and they can feel that And that's going to come through much louder than the words But like, I'm curious man, what do you want to do with those boxes? You know, I did the clutter counseling video on how to get out of an argument spiral And I talked about the power of curiosity for, you know, de-escalating these conversations And someone said, but what if I'm not curious? My answer to that is never accept that illusion about yourself You are curious, it's part of your nature You knew this when you were a child You may not be curious about another person and why they do things But you certainly are curious about your own possibilities in life That's why you're even asking a question like, what if I'm not curious? That's an expression of curiosity What kind of space did that question come from? The part of you that wonders about your own possibilities in life And so be so curious about your own possibilities That even when another person is uninteresting to you You can see the possibility that learning more about them Can more readily move you in the direction of what you want Hey man, you've had this stuff for a long time What's up with that? Talk to me, what do you plan on doing with all that? And they might give you insights that can help you know the best way to make suggestions for them that they will like And sometimes that pause and then figuring out the appropriate tone Is the difference between, what are you going to do with all these boxes? Which is, how dare you, right? How dare you own all these boxes? And like, oh man, I'm curious What do you plan on doing with all these boxes? And it's like, okay, that's an invitation That's not a, I'm on a pedestal and I'm looking down at you Because you have all these damn boxes and I don't So clearly I'm a better person than you And obviously that's not Jeanette's perspective here either You can tell that she has some serious sympathy for her sister who's 70 years old And she's like, oh, I wish I could help her see I see you and I think that's what I would say ultimately is You can show up and see her You can see the misery or the grief that is attached to this in some way Because it is It's not possible to have 900 boxes of things that you're holding onto and refuse to get rid of And would feel completely devastated if you lost them It's not possible to have that level of horde Well, having a severe level of grief or anxiety or stress or overwhelm A lot of these unpleasant emotions that are being covered up by the things Yvonne says, my husband is the biggest hoarder in my immediate family Finally, we get the guys involved in this This isn't just about hoarder moms It is true, a lot of guys own a lot of things and we often hoard differently, right? And sometimes it's easy to justify as Yvonne will point out here As the proverbial quote, I might need that one day mindset Especially when it comes to his extensive tool set Who needs 53 screwdrivers? Yes, I counted He also owns a collection of drills that he will never be able to use again Due to a physical limitation He is a mathematician, so he probably has close to 500 academic books Both in bookcases and trunks in the attic Did I mention the 40 years of paper files containing tax returns, credit card statements And investment account paperwork The case of possible form, Yvonne, to show her husband how to maybe be more considerate? I believe it is It's a matter of motivation, though The space from which we communicate with him cannot be a space of I think you need to make some changes because it irritates me when you are this way I think you need to make some changes because I think all the things you're doing are unnecessary And it just bothers me that a person can do that sort of thing It has to be something deeper What do you believe becomes possible for your interactions with him Or for him if that clutter is out of the way Do you see a version of your husband that's healthier and happier That's more in a line with what he told you he wants to be Do you see a version of interacting with him that brings more joy for the both of you That's the vision and you got to sell the vision, you got to lead with the vision You've got to say love Here's what I'm saying for you and I Here's what I want and you bring that vulnerability, right? Like that vulnerability is that sense of humanity People just aren't motivated by the feelings of irritation that we have with them in their shortcomings Boy are they motivated by that capacity, the experience within themselves to be helpful to the people that they love Here's what I would love to have out of our marriage and our time together Here's what I would love to see, the man that I married was so fired up about this And I've been seeing you look worn down and I've been seeing you look distracted And I would love to just see you on fire again And I feel like these sorts of things are getting in the way Would you be willing to have a conversation with me about some of the ideas I have So that we can get back on track or so that you can get that thing that you tell me that you need That's just a much more effective starting point than like Why do you have so many freaking pans, man? Yeah, two questions that have helped me out a lot are What do you want? Like what is your outcome here? Like what do you desire beyond what you have right now, right? And that is the vision you're talking about here And then like what is upsetting you? What's frustrating you? What's getting in the way? What disturbs you is the way I often phrase that Because sometimes we don't know what we want but we can very quickly tell you We know what we don't want and I can tell you what I don't want Even if I don't know what I want in the moment I can tell you that I don't want ants in my pants, right? I can tell you a bunch of things I don't want immediately And those are the things that cause you pain And often unnecessary pain, right? Pain is part of existence, it is necessary But then there's the unnecessary pain of clinging And quite often we get into a pattern over years Or in Yvonne's husband's case probably decades Patterns of collecting and hoarding and we get stuck into a pattern And we don't even realize we're in the water anymore It's the David Foster Welles thing with the two fish swimming in water Morning boys, how's the water? What the hell is water, right? Because you're steeped in it And sometimes what the hell is clutter? Because we're steeped in it What the hell is a hoard? I'm steeped in it, right? But then you realize like, oh yeah, what disturbs me? What frustrates me about what's going on right now in this present moment And that points to what I want to let go of And if he understands what frustrates him or what disturbs him Then as he starts clearing He may be able to form a clearer vision of what he wants beyond the material hoard How about you listeners, who is the biggest hoarder in your family? Let us know your thoughts in the Patreon community chat Okay, give me something pithy, TK Who's the biggest hoarder in your family? It's not what you notice It's what you do with what you notice If you want someone in your life to notice your flaws and call you out for them You don't need a friend for that You can just go to a comedy club, sit in a front row And you'll get plenty of that You'll learn an awful lot about yourself But what's the difference between a friend and someone who notices your flaws and calls you out on them? Because a friend can do that, but an enemy can also do that The friend is the person who chooses to walk through life with you They don't use your flaws as a basis for exploiting you They use that as a basis for encouraging you to either get better Or get the people and resources in your life that can compensate for those weaknesses A friend is someone who looks at you through the eyes of love and through the eyes of redemption And they say, hey man, I see where you're struggling I see why your life is cluttered with so many things that are getting in the way of what you want Not just what I want from you And I don't want to call you out on that I want to call you forward on that I want to call you to forget those things that are behind So that you can press towards the mark of a higher calling So for me, it's not about noticing if that person is the biggest hoarder in my family Or if this person is the biggest hoarder in my family Because my ability to notice that just makes me more accountable It just raises the question, okay, what are you doing about that? What are you doing to help support them? What are you doing to help love them? Yeah, that's beautiful Well, for my fifth answer, I have a quote here from the Bible It's JFM chapter 7 verse 3 Why do you look at the particle of clutter in your brother's house But fail to notice the stockpile in your own house I think very often it's easy And I notice this in my own house, obviously Like the, my daughter is the biggest hoarder in my family But she's 12 and she's not a hoarder at all But that's because of the boundaries that we set up for her over time I remember when she was three years old And her favorite pastime was to collect rocks and sticks and bring them home And eventually we had a little stool That was the boundary She couldn't, and she just put the rocks and sticks on this stool And if they no longer fit on there She had to remove certain rocks and sticks And then because she couldn't put them beyond that Now, my preference would be let's not have any freaking rocks or sticks in our house, right? And the same is true with her things We still have boundaries there, you know, she has a rather large dresser That all of her toys go in and things that she plays with But the boundaries, she can't keep things on the floor Things have a home and the floor is not their home When you're done playing with it, done using it It goes back to where it goes But regularly, I'm asking her, hey, before we do this Before you can do that, before you can do the thing you want to do You're gonna do the thing that you have to do in order to get that, right? And that's a life lesson for all of us But instead of me just being like, how dare you? You better clean this crap up It's helping her understand what the boundaries are And why those boundaries are there Because if I don't have boundaries in my own life, it's true I will have a stockpile before I notice it The reason that minimalism was so appealing to me wasn't because I was born a minimalist I mean, I guess we were all born minimalist, we didn't own anything at the time But it's because I had a lot of stuff, man And I needed some boundaries, because I lived a life without any boundaries I was willing to accept anything And if you accept anything, eventually you'll end up with everything you don't want Oh, you could tweet that, Professor Sean Yeah, so ultimately, it's easy to point Hey, there's the speck of dust in your eye, right? But I've got a plank in mind I've got a stockpile in my own house Let me start here before looking outward and saying you need to change your life That's almost the end of page one, TK We still have an entire switchboard of callers to talk to But first, real quick for right here, right now Here's two things going on in the life of the minimalists December, it's often the best month to play the 30-day minimalism game This episode comes out on December 1st Can you believe it's the last month of the year now And what was the game like, 30 days of Christmas version? Oh, yeah, so how would that work? I don't know What I like about doing it in December is December is often the month that a lot of things start showing up that you didn't really ask for Or didn't plan for, whether it's Christmas gifts or seasonal decorations Or people are bringing a tray of cookies over And now there's an extra plate that you have in your house randomly Or people are just stopping by and they leave their coat or their scarf there Now I'm not saying get rid of that stuff But what I'm saying is now is a great time to open up the space Maybe there's been an accumulation all year Just a little thing here, there's a thing from Amazon, there's a thing from Target I got this thing from a local boutique and it's just sitting around the house There's a lot of things I'm not using right now In the 30-day minimalism game, we've had tens of thousands of people play it And it's a great way to get started with simplifying Head on over to theminimalists.com slash game You can figure out exactly how to play, it's absolutely free And you can download our free minimalism game calendar So you can figure out exactly how many items you've gotten rid of throughout the month Play with a family member in your house and then you're getting rid of twice as many things Or maybe the whole family plays together And you're getting rid of three or four or five times as many things And it makes decluttering a lot more fun Because for me, just thinking about spending a weekend decluttering It makes me want to pull my hair out But just a little bit of decluttering every day with the people I love And turning it into a game and making it playful Yeah, that's way more appealing to me So download the free minimalism game calendar over at theminimalists.com slash game We'll put a link to that in the show notes as well And speaking of December, the final fans of the year is this Friday December 5th, we do a monthly Zoom call The first Friday of every month with all of our patrons If you want to join us, theminimalists.com slash zoom for all the details We do that at noon Pacific, it's 3pm Eastern It's a perfect time because we have people who join us from Germany And from Australia and from Canada and even from California And hey, there's not a day that goes by without someone being like Yo, where's Ryan Nicodemus? Remember y'all, he moved two months ago to Montana two years ago But he's still part of the family and shows up, you know, every once in a while But on fans, he's there just about every time So come get some Ryan Nicodemus too, that's one of my favorite parts Yeah, me too, I love bringing his perspective back into it And obviously whenever he's in town, we drag him into the podcast studio Or drag him out to the live events And in fact, who knows, maybe we'll be playing some live events with him next year as well And so, yeah, if you want to have a Zoom call with Ryan Nicodemus Also with TK and Josh, but with the trio Savvy D's Typically there, Professor Sean is often there as well You can join us, theminimalists.com slash zoom The final Zoom call of the year Much more coming up TK, but first, here's a minimalist tip from one of our listeners Hello Minimalists, my name is Ari Allen, I'm from Northeast Pennsylvania I'm calling your response to Alyssa from episode 471 Who is anxious over the 12 days of Christmas cheer Where kids were encouraged to dress in spirited costumes, et cetera I loved everyone's ideas and would like to share one more If your child wants to participate in a school spirit week Prioritize one of the days and ask what day interests them the most Whatever that day is, go all out There were ideas to raid closets and get creative But also considered returning into an experience When I was in school, friends and I had a mismatch day for a spirit week And we went to our local thrift store and made a game out of who could create the tackiest outfit Treating it as an experience also allows you to let it all go when you're done I don't remember any of the other days for my spirit week But that mismatch day has memories in my brain forever I hope this helps Oh, thank you so much for that helpful comment, Ariel You know, TK, on page three I've got this I want to show you a real life example of a pound of experiences It's worth more than a pound of stuff And that's exactly what she was talking about here I remember the experience, not the stuff I'm holding on to the experience, the memory of it Without clinging to it, I hold on to it, it's beautiful I'm grateful for it, right? And it shaped me in some way That a thing can't really shape me Yes, it can amplify the experience But it's really about the experience, ultimately For anyone else who has a listener tip about this episode or any other episode You can send a voice memo to podcast at theminimalists.com So we can feature your voice on the show Up next, page two and page three But first For some cookie break, we'll be right back Alright, y'all, that's the first 33% of episode 516 We'll see you on Patreon for the full two hour maximal edition Which includes answers to a bunch more questions Questions like, when is discipline helpful for decluttering And when does it get in the way? And why do people buy so many gifts that their loved ones don't actually enjoy? We'll also tell a horrible story, an unfortunate story About YouTube and why they started putting ads on our YouTube videos without our permission We're going to discuss that, sort of break it down TK, you had a phenomenal perspective on that as well Plus a million more questions and simple living segments over on the minimalist private podcast on Patreon The link is in the description When you subscribe, you can listen to our private podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app Plus you'll gain access to all of our archives all the way back to the very first episode More than a decade of podcasting now And that is our minimal episode for today Big thanks to Earthing Studios for the recording space On behalf of Ryan Nicodemus, TK Coleman, Post-Production Peter, Spire Jeff, and Spire Dave, Jordan No More Tomcat, Professor Sean, Savvy D, and the rest of our team I'm Joshua Fields-Millburn If you leave here with just one message, let it be this Love people and use things Because the opposite never works Thanks for listening, y'all. We'll see you next time. Peace Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing you think that you need Every little thing that's just feeding your greed Oh, I bet that you'll be fine without it