Wannabe Clutter Free | Declutter, Simplify, Find Freedom

Do you feel exhausted and overwhelmed, even when everything looks fine on the outside? Your home might be feeling it too. Megan Caldwell is a mom of three, a two-time burnout survivor, and the creator of the ROCKSTAR Mom Method. She joins me to talk about why balance is BS, why moms need to put themselves first, and how the tiniest actions lead to real, lasting change in your life and your home. I...

Boo. It's October. Thanksgiving is only six weeks away. Christmas is only ten. Deanna shares the four things she's doing right now so December feels calm, cozy, and intentional instead of frantic. This is her family's first holiday in a brand new house, and her goal is to buy as little as possible. 1. Decisions before decor. Decide how you want your home to feel, then ask what the mini...

Deanna moved from a 1969 single level house into a home with a second floor and three full bathrooms. Standing in the new kitchen, her first thought wasn't "look at all this space." It was "how am I going to keep up with all of this?" After a few days she realized she wasn't behind on anything. She had been treating four completely different jobs like one job. The four jobs...

Two weeks into a new house, Deanna is still living out of boxes on purpose. She's running a Packing Party, and while she unpacks, she's doing something that matters more than where the dishes go. She's deciding how this house will work before it fills up. After 17 moves, she knows a house decides how it works in the first few weeks whether you're paying attention or not. So this ep...

Five nights into a brand new house, Deanna is recording from a room full of boxes. The furniture is up. A few kitchen things are out. Everything else is still packed. And all three members of her family are about to unpack in completely different ways. In this episode: Method 1: The Packing Party (Deanna's). From Ryan Nicodemus of The Minimalists. Whatever is still in a box stays there until s...

Deanna Yates thought the hardest part of moving would be the packing. It wasn't. Nine weeks ago, her landlord told her family she was selling the house they had rented for almost five years. It was the longest they had lived anywhere, and everyday there felt like winning the lottery. Now they're packing up the whole house in less than a week. In this solo episode, Deanna shares six mindset...

My clutter threshold broke this year. I am a decluttering expert. Our house is not cluttered. And I still hit a wall, because we are in the middle of an unplanned move, my husband had back surgery, and I am 46 and doing most of the lifting myself. That is the exact season I was in when Amy Nesbitt came back on the show, and I am so glad she did. Amy is a full time corporate working mom of two boys...

You will get rid of more in two weeks of packing than in five years of living in the same house. Not because you tried harder. Because the rules changed. Deanna Yates has moved 16 times as an adult, and number 17 is happening right now, unplanned and unwanted. In this episode she breaks down exactly what moving does to your brain, and how to steal that effect without touching a single roll of pack...

If you're decluttering the chances are that there is a bag in your trunk right now, isn't there? You did the hard part. You went through the closet, you made a hundred decisions in a row, you got everything bagged up and loaded in the car. And then you drove past the donation center. Twice. The problem is that there are two decisions inside every declutter, and almost nobody warns you abou...

Your house isn't cluttered. It's loud. That single reframe changed how I look at my own home, and it comes from Myquillyn Smith, known online as The Nester. Myquillyn has spent over twenty years helping women create homes they actually want to use. She's the author of Cozy Minimalist Home and House Rules, and her new book House Hushing is out now. Here's what makes her different. S...

I host a decluttering podcast, and my house is full. Not messy. Full. And I know exactly how it happened, because I have done it before. Our landlord is selling our house. My husband is in surgery the day this episode goes live. My mom is in another round of chemo. My daughter just went back to school and does not know about the move yet. I did not choose any of this. So I am choosing the one thin...

You have decluttered your closets. But have you decluttered your calendar? In this episode, Deanna sits down with Megan Sumrell, time management expert and founder of The Pink Bee, to talk about why reclaiming your time is the piece of living clutter free that most people skip. Megan spent over 20 years in corporate IT before she realized traditional time management systems were never built for wo...

Who has soccer at 5:15? Did the permission slip go back? Is there anything defrostable for dinner? Are we out of milk again? If every one of those answers lives in your head and nowhere else, you do not have an organization problem. You have a bottleneck problem, and the bottleneck is you. In this episode I am sharing the session I presented at the Chaos to Calm Summit on building a family command...

If you struggle to stick to your routines, create new habits, or find perfectionism running your life, this episode is for you. I'm sitting down with Monica Packer, host of the top-rated About Progress podcast and author of the upcoming book Sticky Habits, for a conversation that completely reframes why habits feel so hard for busy moms. Monica opens up about her own journey with perfectionism...

You have probably said it at least once: “I’ll do the whole house this weekend.” And then Saturday came, and you either didn’t start, or you started and made things worse, or you finished and watched it fill right back up within a week. Today I’m explaining exactly what’s happening, and introducing the habit that finally breaks it. The Lightning Tidy is five minutes a day. Same time, same routine,...

Have you ever decluttered your home only to watch it slowly fill right back up? This episode is for you. Ashlee Piper is a sustainability expert, speaker, and author who has been featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and CNN, and in Vogue, the New York Times, and Newsweek. She created the No New Things Challenge in 2013. What started as a personal 30-day experiment turned into nearly t...

Have you ever spent a Saturday morning deep cleaning your entire house, and by noon you still feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and a little annoyed at everything? Your house looks great. You should feel amazing. But you don’t. That’s not you being a perfectionist. It’s the sneaky kind of clutter that almost nobody in the decluttering world ever talks about. Calendar clutter (or the mental load of keep...

Your kid won't get rid of anything. You know their room has too much stuff. But every time you try to do something about it, it turns into a battle. What if you never had to be the bad guy again? Dana K. White is the creator of the No Mess Decluttering Method, the blogger behind A Slob Comes Clean, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Decluttering at the Speed of Life. She has spe...

Digital clutter doesn’t pile up on your counter, but it absolutely piles up in your brain. Every unread email, every unused app, every notification going off every eight minutes is quietly draining your focus and your energy. In this episode I’m giving you three moves for your inbox, three moves for your phone, and a simple weekly habit that keeps all of it under control going forward. In this epi...

Have you ever looked at a "minimalist" home on Instagram and thought, well, that is never going to be me. My kids alone would destroy that in four minutes? Or convinced yourself that your clutter-free journey isn't working because your house just doesn't look the part? You are not alone. And this conversation is for you. **************** ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ RESOURCES ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠...

Paper doesn't ask permission. It just shows up in your mailbox, your kids' backpacks, and somehow on every flat surface in your home. And if the piles keep coming back no matter how many times you deal with them, it's not a discipline problem. It's a system problem. In this episode I'm sharing the exact system I use to keep paper from taking over, including what to do with ever...

Time management expert and Secrets of Supermom host Lori Oberbroeckling joins Deanna to talk about why energy runs out before time does, how clutter quietly sabotages your best-laid plans, and the small routine changes that actually stick. **************** ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ RESOURCES ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ Snag your ticket to Supermom Summer Camp⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get the transcripts and more at wannabeclutt...

Digital clutter doesn’t feel as obvious as a cluttered closet. But if you’ve ever had that pit-in-your-stomach moment of not being able to find a photo that matters, you know this isn’t small. In this episode I’m breaking down the three phases of getting your photos in order (Declutter, Organize, Maintain), the two specific starting points that build momentum without making any hard decisions, and...

Your kids are more capable than you think. Katie Kimball, creator of Kids Cook Real Food and founder of the LifeSkillsNow summer camp, shares the practical systems that take kids from passengers to contributors -- and why cooking is the gateway to all of it. **************** ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ RESOURCES ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Snag your ticket to the FREE #LifeSkillsNow Family Workshops ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Get the tra...

You can declutter your entire home and still end up right back where you started. I know because I’ve lived it. This episode is the piece that makes everything permanent. I’m teaching you the closing shift, the exit bin, and why stacking habits beats scheduling them every time. In this episode you’ll learn: Why I went from owning almost nothing to filling up a house, and what finally broke the cyc...