Your Stuff is Making You Anxious

When I became a mother, it was like something flipped in me and it was made very clear to me internally that I do not want to have a bunch of stuff. I gave away bags and bags of items in my first postpartum season with my daughter over three years ago.

Kitchen gadgets, bathroom closet items, clothes I’ve had for years, baby things we’ve been given and told we “needed” to have, books I’ll never read again…it was made so clear to me that we have been drowning in things that don’t matter.

I had a human life to care for and guide now, I didn’t want to spend my time and energy caring for meaningless stuff.

This new version of me was emerging after the initiation from maiden to mother, like a phoenix rising from the ashes. I felt myself changing, in such a dramatic way, unlike any other seasons or life transformation I had been through. I was able to make clear decisions about what I did and did not want in my life. What mattered most to me became so abundantly clear.

I wanted peace in my home and heart and time with the ones I love most.

All this “stuff” around me was just making me anxious and distracting me from what I wanted most.

If you are feeling overwhelmed in your days, always feeling behind and like you can’t keep up with keeping your home tidy — have you tried getting rid of some stuff? I know, it seems too simple. But oftentimes the answer we are looking for is actually right in front of us, we just have to adjust the way we see it.

It’s not just in your head, mama. There have actually been studies that show high levels of home clutter (aka too much stuff) lead to higher levels of cortisol in women. This is just in women, by the way, most men don’t have the physical stress actually rise in their body with more clutter.

If you want to lower the stress in your days, ruthlessly eliminate the stuff in your home.

Make an Outta-here station.

I have a two boxes in my garage —honestly all the time because kids tend to collect stuff.

Box #1 Giveaway — Things like clothes that don’t work for me anymore that were cheap, cheap kids toys, most kitchen stuff, etc.

Box #2 Sell —I take clothes and toys my kids don’t need anymore to a kids consignment store and nicer clothes of mine to an adult consignment store. Other items, I’ll sell on Facebook Marketplace (it’s surprising what people will buy….)

At first these piles will be quite large. But as you get clearer on what you let into your home, it will be come easier and easier.

I try to bring these piles at least once a month so they’re not just sitting in the garage making clutter…ya know?

Reduce Visual Clutter

Is there a corner of your home that every time you look at it, you feel the stress rise? You think to yourself… I don’t know why this stresses me out but it does. Do something about it!

For example, I reduced the visual clutter of two spaces in my home this week. My kids toy space bothered me every time I looked at it. I tried to make it neat and tidy with baskets but I didn’t like the way it looked, I wanted something closed so when we put it away at the end of the day, I didn’t see it anymore. I moved a shelf from a different area of our living room and bought a new shelf off of Facebook Marketplace. I also found a few toys I could donate…funny how that works. My daughter hasn’t even asked about them.

The second area was in my kitchen. My husband crafted this beautiful bakery table for me from the counter top of the coffee shop we opened in our 20s. I love thinking about all the conversations I had with customers around it, warm coffee in our hands hearing about what’s new in their lives. Now, it’s in our home and I’ve created hundreds of loaves of bread for our family, friends and community on its surface.

It’s bothered me that it holds such beautiful memories and meaning but there has been visual clutter under it due to living in a smaller home (that I love) with minimal storage.

I’ve had this idea for months to create curtains to hide the visual clutter. I finally got the idea out of my head and into my hands! (Aka brain clutter.)

Beautiful then in the coffee shop, beautiful now in our home.

Set Boundaries

What can be the most frustrating, at least for me, is it feels like a never-ending cycle. I’ll look at my boxes of things to giveaway and quite literally be baffled because we just have away so much stuff last month. Like I said before, at the beginning when you first start noticing it will seem like so much stuff. But the more you go, the better it will be. The best way I’ve found to minimize this is setting boundaries for yourself and being clear on your boundaries with others. There are three major avenues of ways “things” find their way into my home and I’d made boundaries around — I hope you find these helpful.

Boundaries for toys/things —

I’ve made it clear to those in my life giving gifts, if it’s plastic and lights up and sings…we don’t want it. If it’s a toy that my kids didn’t specially ask for, we don’t want it.

Honestly, my kids toys are pretty minimal. My daughter has stuffies and dolls but she doesn’t need 20 of each. She loves her magna-tiles, but she doesn’t need 100. We prioritize being outdoors having fun and doing things to help around the home — she loves cooking and cleaning with me!

As far as kids gifts go, we prioritize gifting experiences, passes or homemade. Zoo passes, taking my daughter to get ice cream, coming over and bringing us dinner. For Christmas my Step Mom handmade a tent to go over our table for her to play under. I made my daughter a Pooh Bear she loves. I love more meaningful gifts — bringing childhood magic!

One chilly Winter day we made Pooh Bear a hot air balloon to ride in out of things in our home already. (Ballon, newspaper, clue, etc.)

Just like anything with kids, this is what I’ve found to be helpful in this season but is always evolving. My kids are 3.5 and 9 months.

Bonus tip — If my daughter isn’t being helpful with putting her toys away, I often will say, “If I have to go pick that up, I’m putting it in the garbage. You know how to take care of your toys.” This might seem a little harsh to some, but I believe if she knows how to take it out, she knows how to put it away. We’re a team around here!

*A great book for this and raising kids in general: Hunt, Gather, Parent by Michaeleen Douclueff.

Boundaries for clothing —

If it’s not a natural fiber, I don’t want it in my personal closet. I’ve made this mistake too many times and end up getting rid of it because I do not like the way it feels on my skin. I’ve curated a capsule wardrobe for the season I’m in, and it’s been very helpful.

For my kids, I try to keep natural fibers as much as possible. Have to protect their sweet sensitive skin!! My daughter loves dresses with Disney characters on them (that aren’t natural fibers), so this is not a hard and fast rule. I try to keep it around 7 pants and 7 shirts for each kid, and then a few sweaters (it’s cold where I live) and dresses my daughter loves to pick out herself. This helps me have to only do laundry once a week but not be completely drowning in it.

Boundaries for miscellaneous things —

Everyone has their own way things migrate into their home. For me, it’s through my hobbies and things I love doing. Mainly being in my kitchen and in my garden. My boundaries for kitchen items is for most utensils, I don’t need multiple, besides forks and spoons. Kids don’t need a million cups, bowls and plates. We don’t need every gadget, we can borrow special things and only keep what we use weekly in our home.

Honestly, the biggest thing I do now is just be really mindful when purchasing something or when someone asks if I’d like an item they don’t use anymore (cough, you don’t have to say yes).

The More I simplified my home, the more I enjoyed my motherhood. We already have a million things on our to-do list in our mind. We don’t need to pick up 100 little plastic toys at the end of the day, amen?

Do you find yourself stressed out in the day because there is too much stuff around your home? I want to know!! Let’s chat in the comments.

Xo,

JamieLee