142 - "Do I Own Too Much?" Why Minimalism Isn't the Goal

Summary

Heather debunks the myth that decluttering means minimalism, emphasising that a home should reflect personal love and functionality rather than societal ideals of minimalism. She discusses practical tips for organising, the importance of having backups, and embracing a lived-in, personality-filled space.

Chapters

00:00
Introduction: Debunking the myth of minimalism

00:29
Why decluttering isn't about minimalism

01:00
The importance of a home that feels good

01:27
The reality of real homes versus social media images

02:27
The pitfalls of owning nothing

03:23
The value of having backups and extras

04:46
Visual clutter versus sensory needs

05:45
Creating a home that feels welcoming and personalised

07:13
Living with emptiness and adjusting to space

08:07
The 'just in case' pile and planning ahead

09:04
Hobbies, collections, and loving your belongings

10:01
The goal: functional, organised, and personalised spaces

11:24
Organising for purpose, not perfection

12:17
You can have a lived-in, chaotic, yet calm home

12:48
Final thoughts: Focus on what you love and need

Transcript

heather (00:00.782)
Hello, untanglers, and welcome back to another episode of Decluttering Untangled with me, your host, Heather Tingle. Today's episode I wanna talk to you about is busting the myth that decluttering means minimalism. So grab your cuppa, get comfy, let's get into it because today I want to have a proper rant, I suppose, a restrained rant, because I seem to go to clients' homes and they always say to me, oh, how many of these should I have?

I guess it should only be one or they seem shocked when I admit to having like a hundred pairs of shoes or a million bras or a ton of mugs for my cup of tea. Apparently somewhere minimalism and decluttering got linked together and I'm not really happy about it. Now I have to say I'm not a maximalist either, but whether I love it or hate it is irrelevant because that does not matter. It all depends on what you want and love, not me. It's not my world. It's not my house. It's yours.

And what I want for you, like my aim, my reason for being in this world, it's pretty simple. I just want you to have a home you can invite people into and feel good about it, regardless of the volume of the things inside. So if you spend any time on social media looking for a decluttering help, one of the ways that apparently my website speaks to people unlike others is you will have probably seen it. Images like that are really white.

very empty, like white shelves, empty countertops, a wardrobe with like 10 things in it. And like it's all shade of beige and white. It's really neutral and it's really clear. And I mean, it looks beautiful. It looks incredible, but it looks nothing like a real home with real people that live in it. Especially if you've got kids, animals, what I have, hobbies or a brain that works differently. Like that is not really feasible. Like good for you if that's what you want to aim for. Like I can get you there, but for most people it's...

just a step too far. And I want to say something really clearly, like that is not the goal. It was never the goal for most of us to have like three things, like one cup, one plate, one knife, one fork, one spoon. And for most of you listening, that's probably not the goal either. You'd be like, my God, it would be amazing. It probably isn't amazing. It's probably just as stressful to have nothing. It is to have lots, just different challenges.

heather (02:27.405)
And I think owning nothing sounds really simple and really like something to aspire to because I genuinely do agree that the less stuff you have, the easier life is as a general rule. Absolutely. Like it does mean that you look after what you've got. It's easy to find it. It's easy to tie day. You know where things are and you know when you need to buy more of them. You can find what you want when you want it. Like it's easier.

But if you take that too far, like in practice, especially for lot of neurodivergent brains, it creates more work, not less. Because we can be really, I wanna say like we're all or nothing, black or white thinking. If we aim for minimalism, Wendy Cluthrin, then my word, we will do it. But it can cause so many problems. And not least because it's really hard to actually be attainable. Like that is so hard to do. Especially if you've got a family. So if you only own one of something,

Like you would think, a declutter is definitely going to say you should only own one of this. But the downside of it is you've got no backup. Now, before you all breathe a sigh of relief and think you're getting a Heather says it's okay moment to just hoard absolutely everything and have a million backups, I'm not talking like 50 backups of something that you might need possibly in the future in 20 years time, maybe if the right circumstances happen and, know, Mercury's in retrograde or whatever. Like we're not talking that.

we're talking if you've only got one something that you use often or it's useful to have more than one of like that is okay. So if you've got one, for example, a phone charger, if you've only got one, that causes problems. mean, that would cause absolute chaos in my house, but it means like more decisions later, more last minute panics, more trips out to replace things because you got rid of them too soon. Like it can cause problems. Like if you struggle with the executive function, for example,

Having a little bit of backstop, and I'm not talking like tons of it, I'm talking a little appropriate amounts for the type of thing it is. And a bit of a visual reminder of what you've got that can be doing you a favor. It's not working against you because you've got the space for it and it's organized and it makes sense. Having open shelving, for example, so you can see what you've got. Having clear containers and items visible is not what minimalism is about.

heather (04:46.19)
because it's visual clutter, but actually if you're ADHD and you got, you know, out of sight, out of mind, then being able to see that stuff is really useful and I think quite necessary. And there's also the sensory side of it. So I know like if you go on holiday, for example, and you've got a lovely like ordered hotel room, you will notice it's not totally minimalist. Like there will be things there that probably don't have to be there because some people feel calm in an empty room.

but it's not gonna be totally empty. Like it's got a bit of character to it. Even like a hotel room has got some character, like there might be a fake plan or there might be extra lights or extra art or like, know, notepad and pen. Like there's gonna be things there. But if it was a totally like empty almost room with like real bare minimum, like a bed, a toilet, a shower, like not even bedside cabinet, that would probably feel, I would say not calm at all.

I think emptiness can feel quite cold, quite unfinished, oddly unsettling rather than peaceful, especially if you've gone quickly from clutter to bare and you've gotten there really quickly, like your body's not had time to adjust. Now I did this with my living room when I went on my decluttering journey, hate the word journey, I need to find another word. If you've got any suggestions, let me know, send me a message, another word for journey. When I was decluttering, my decluttering adventure, I really decluttered.

my living room and my friend came and when I just went, don't understand why it doesn't look like a magazine. Like what is wrong with this room? It just looks weird and it felt really unsettling. And my friend went, well, you've got rid of all your personality. There's literally no personality in this room at all. Like you've got rid of yourself in this room. It's now a box with a sofa in it. That's what it is. And that was really useful to be able to figure out.

how to dress a room that felt like mine and have my things out that felt good. Instead of feeling so cluttered and overwhelmed like how it used to be, I'd just gone too far. And it can feel really weird rather than peaceful. So if a bare shell makes your stomach do a little flip instead of making you like feel zen, you're not doing it wrong. That is feedback and information about what your nervous system is feeling about it.

heather (07:13.322)
It cold, it didn't feel me. It didn't feel comforting. And that's what I needed my living room to feel. know, like the soft furnishings I needed to feel cuddly in my living room. And to be able to see things on the wall that made me smile, like that is what I needed. Maybe you just need time to adjust to the space instead of having to fill it. Because a lot of time when you've got empty space, your body automatically like...

wants to reject it and put something in that space. Sometimes you need to live with the emptiness for a little while to then decide what can look right there that's strategically placed there that is dressing it. So there you go. There's also the bit about having the just in case pile. Now no one should have a pile, because that sounds to me like unordered and not organized, but the just in case stuff. The bits people tell you you should get rid of. So that pile.

I would say it's not a pile. Those extra things can be things like your spare batteries, a few birthday cards ready to go in case you suddenly remember it's someone's birthday, like the charger that was missing, a spare one, that's really useful. That is not failure to decutter properly. That is just forward planning for a brain that knows itself like inside out. It makes sense. And then there's the other bit about minimalists. Do they have hobbies? Like we've got interests in collections.

And that's all right. You're allowed to have those. If you love things, you're allowed to have them. Obviously, when you look at things as a collection, that is a habit that makes you want to keep them all. But if you look at each individual item in that collection and you love every single one of them, like I do my shoes and my underwear and my mugs, then you make room for them because you love them and other things that aren't as important, then leave so that they have the space.

That's what's important, not a, I only should have one of these. That's not how life is. So if you've got like that 10 item wardrobe account that you're following on Instagram or Pinterest or whatever, and it's made you feel like you're failing at decluttering, you're absolutely not. This is not a permission slip to keep absolutely everything, by the way. This is a real statement over minimalism is not the aim and I am not a minimalist. I actually wear a t-shirt for work that says minimalist on it.

heather (09:34.979)
just because it was a really fun, cheap t-shirt from a shop. And I bought it just because I thought, that's a great cotton t-shirt that I can wash at like 90 degrees and it's gonna be fine. Because I'm not a minimalist and I just thought it was funny for work. Like I am not a minimalist. So when people ask me what the right amount of the thing is, the goal isn't to have less things.

The goal is that the things that you have in their place and it's a place that makes sense. It's a completely different question to ask about your belongings, not how many of these should I let go of? Can I survive with less of this? But do I love this item? Do I use it? Do I know where it lives? Do I have a place for it? Does it have a home it goes back to easily? That's the questions that you need to answer, not how many of this item should I have? If the answer is I love it,

I use it or I don't even use it. I love it. I have a space for it. That makes sense. I can put it away easily. It has a home. It's not impacting anything else. Then why can't you keep it? So I was working with a client recently, like really busy household, young kids, proper like family chaos most days. And when we were working together, like none of it needed to look like a magazine to work. We use shoe boxes. We use bags because nothing in that home

needed to be minimally. It was just reorganizing. It wasn't actually decuttering. It needed to be functional. There's a big difference with that. Toys had a home, even though there was a lot of them. School bits had a system. Even a system was like three boxes rather than one perfect little tiny basket like that looks aesthetic. That's organizing a purpose. So it works for you. Like a full house, but a calm system, no white inside.

but a home that they're happy to let people into that they can maintain and feel good about. It's got their personality in it. It's got the things that they love in it. It feels comfortable and they know where things are. They can enjoy their things and they can let people into their home without any shame or embarrassment. Like that's what I've always built my business around and the paper system around. It's never about owning less for the sake of it. It's about knowing where things live so that what you own works for you instead of like just.

heather (11:54.06)
adding to noise and the chaos. Okay, quick Heather says it's okay moment incoming because I always wanna give you one of these. You are allowed to have a full home, a lived in, well used, slightly chaotic, cause life happens. It's allowed to be like that and you can still have it feel calm and easy to live in because organized was never supposed to mean bare and empty.

It was never meant to mean only one of each thing and if you love it, it doesn't matter. If it's not to you, you should get rid of it. That's not what it's about. It means everything's got a reason to be there and a place to go. So if you've got lots of one item and you love each one and they've got a space that makes sense, it's okay because decluttering is not about the number of things you get rid of. It's about only having the things you love and want to keep and have them stored in a way that makes sense for you. So there you go. Little rant there about minimalism and the fact that I hope by now you know I'm not a minimalist.

even if it's only my underwear, shoes and mug collection. So I really want you to stop thinking about what you are aiming for in comparison to other people and figure out what you want to aim for for yourself. There you go. So be kind to yourself. Until next time, remember you're not alone. Keep untangling.