After Divorce
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What is this episode about and who is the host?
Hello and welcome to the Art of Decluttering podcast. I'm your host, Amy Revell. Welcome to another week of decluttering and organizing our homes. Today's topic is quite specific. We're talking about decluttering after divorce. It was a request from one of our listeners, one of our clients. You know who you are. And I wanted to just create something fresh for you right where you're at because I know you're not alone. I know that lots of you as listeners in my community have either gone through divorce or are thinking about divorce or actually walking through it right now. And decluttering and organizing around divorce is tricky. It's got a whole lot of additional layers that you may not have if you're just decluttering and organizing in a home where there hasn't been that kind of disruption.
Why is decluttering after divorce different from regular decluttering?
So we're going to tackle it. My first caveat is that I haven't experienced divorce personally myself. My parents haven't experienced divorce. My in-laws haven't. None of our siblings or extended family have gone through divorce. However, what I want to bring to you today is actually the lived experience of clients that I work with and the clients that my team work with, lots and lots of the clients that we have experienced. that invite us into their homes have been through divorce and we get to navigate what that looks like for each individual family because it is different for everybody. But there are some unique things to think about when it comes to decluttering and organising after divorce. The first thing I want to say is I want you to show yourself grace.
When you're going through such a stressful life transition, it is normal for your house level of organization, of decluttering to drop down your priority list. And actually, it's kind of important because your children and yourself and your mental health and holding things together, maybe holding employment and trying to get financial stability, all of that needs to come up higher than it maybe was. And so if you're finding that as you're processing all the emotions and the thoughts and the logistics of divorce that the house is sliding a little, Rest assured, you're not alone and it's really normal and probably really helpful. But when you're feeling ready, decluttering can be a really important part of processing through divorce, coming out the other side, resetting a vision for yourself.
So I've written a couple of notes that I want to go through this week because I want to really honor this topic. And there's some things that I didn't want to forget as I go through. The first thing is to understand that when you're decluttering and you're rebuilding your life after divorce is that there's a lot of grief and there's grief for the life that was, but also the grief for the life that you thought you would have had. And so that can really manifest in clutter because it might be the things that you and your ex ex-partner used to do together that is hard to let go of because you don't know if it's going to become a solo activity. Maybe you might want to do it with a friend. There'll be areas where you had wished that you would do that thing together.
And so you don't want to let go of that too easily because you don't know who you are. You're redefining your identity as part of coming out of the season of divorce. So I want you to just be aware that whether you're doing it on your own or you're doing it with a professional organizer, that decluttering after divorce can be a little bit emotional because you don't quite know what items are actually going to trigger big feelings for you. It might be that you're just doing fine and then you come across your wedding dress in your wardrobe and that's the thing that really hits home for you. It might simply be a book that you love together or a board game that you played together or a hobby that you did.
And that can be like a really sticky point. One of the things I would say is when you're first starting out to declutter after a divorce is take it easy. Start with some categories that are pretty easy for you.
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