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Chapter 1: What does it mean to keep anything but not everything?
Hello and welcome to the Art of Decluttering podcast. I am your host, Amy Revell. So great to be back with you this week. We've had a couple of banger episodes in the last few weeks. And I really wanted to come back to a phrase that was mentioned, just a phrase that was mentioned in my episode with Dana K. White. And so we're going to come back to that in just a minute.
I wanted to start off by just telling you a little bit of an update. The podcast, I've decided to stick with YouTube, you guys. You know, we started at the start of the year and I said I was going to give it six months. It's been about five months. And the way that I know I'm going to stick with it, A, is lots of you are watching, so that's really cool.
But I decided this week that I'm actually going to create a proper podcast studio in the house, which we have the space to do. We have a little bit of a room between a thoroughfare going out to Cal's office outside. And so it's not quite a bedroom. It's kind of this in-between space. I'd offered it to the kids. I was like, does anyone want it for gaming, for sports, for music?
They were both like, nope, we're quite happy. I'm going to turn it into a podcast studio. So this week I've been picking wall colors and getting some lights delivered and doing a few different things. So that makes my little podcast heart happy. If you are an audio listener, great, excellent. Nothing will change. You can just imagine me sitting on a more comfortable couch and
with a less distracting background. Like that's kind of what's going to change. The rest will be the same. But I do know that sometimes when you start out with something, particularly as an ADHDer, it can be tempting to go and buy all the things. And so I'm quite proud of myself that I've managed to kind of put myself out there going like, hey, is YouTube the thing? And turns out it is.
And so now is a time for me to invest in that I don't think the plants are going anywhere. If you go to any room in my house, to be honest, there are always lots of plants. But it'll be nice not to have a window that looks out into my backyard and a random door and some of those things will change. So hopefully it'll be a little bit less cluttered. But we needed to have time to get there.
So I'll put some photos on socials as I start to do that. As I said, paint testing has started this week. I'm going for like a deep green. I've looked at a deep teal and I'm just kind of trying to get that right. So it's a bit of a fun project. I love a little bit of DIY. My sister Laura has been over helping pick colors and design things with me. So that's been super fun.
So keep your eyes out over the next probably couple of weeks. That'll start to come together. And then, yeah, I'll be able to start recording in that space, which will be fun. So back to this week's episode, the phrase that Dana said was, you can keep anything, but you can't keep everything. You can keep anything, but not everything.
And a few of you commented and let me know like that phrase really stuck with you. And so I thought what I would do is give a whole episode to this phrase and to what it means underneath it and to what that practically means for you guys. So I want to think about that limits are really what we're talking about here, that you can keep anything.
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Chapter 2: How can boundaries create freedom in our homes?
And so I want you to think about this like you can keep anything but not everything when it comes to kids toys. I mean, kids know this. They know that they can't keep everything. They know when they go to the shops, they don't point to you and say, I want one of everything. They probably just point to you and say, I want that thing. And I'm not suggesting that you need to get them that thing.
I'm just suggesting that's how their brains work. It's like they're not saying I want all the things. When kids go and they try on clothes, they don't say I want one of everything. They pick something that they love and they like and they do it.
And then when you look with kids and you ask them to do some decluttering, what I love doing is giving a boundary and allowing children to have the choice. I did this recently with a young girl and we had a big basket for her soft toys. So we put all the soft toys on the floor from her bed, from her wardrobe, from her floor, from under her bed, everywhere. There were, I don't know, maybe 200.
And we had a big hamper. And I said to her, you can keep whatever soft toys you want. This is the limit we've got though. This is the limit she agreed on, that her parents agreed on. And so she then could fill it with anything, but not everything. And she did. And she loved it. And she was awesome. Like she found like a little pocket where like there was toys and there was space in between.
She'd shove a little toy in. She was putting as much into that hamper as she possibly could. Good on her. And she filled it, but she got to pick. And she very clearly understood I can keep anything, but not everything. And it's the same when you're filling a kid's pencil case. You look at all the pencils and pens and texters that you have and you say, look, put in there whatever you like.
But the limit is the pencil case. And so I think about that with garden sheds. Like, sure, you can keep whatever you want in your garden shed, but the limit is the garden shed. So if it doesn't fit, something either needs to come out or you need to curate. You need to make room for what matters.
When we think about creativity, often we think that more choice will help us to be more creative, more um, supplies, more instruments, more, um, you know, technology will help us to be more creative. But again, this paradox of choice is you can take any photo, but you can't take every photo.
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Chapter 3: What role do limits play in our decision-making?
You can paint any painting that you like, whatever you like, the canvas is yours, but you can't paint every painting. You can make any piece of jewelry that you like, but you can't paint, you can't make every piece of jewelry in the world. And I think that there's this natural thinking of like, but more is better, but it's not.
Sometimes when you have a limit of one canvas, one toy box, one wardrobe, you actually make better choices. You've just got one kitchen in your house. Presumably you have one kitchen in your house. then you have to pick what goes into that kitchen because the limit is your kitchen.
You don't want to have dining, what are they called, dining sets and crockery in your bedroom or in the bathroom or in the laundry. You want it in the kitchen. So you have to make choices. You can keep anything you want in your kitchen, but you can't keep everything. You can't have every dinner set. You can't keep every pot and pan you've ever bought, every piece of Tupperware you've ever bought.
You can't. It just won't fit. So you get the freedom to choose. And then you have to choose within the boundaries. You've got the boundaries of time. You've got the boundaries of money. You've got the boundaries of like space. So your home is that space and you get to pick. And I think that's exciting.
I think that actually births freedom because when you can look at a space and you go, I can keep anything I want in here. You start to look around and think, oh, what's the most important? What do I love the most? What do I use the most? And so instead of the decluttering being the focus of what do I have to get rid of, you're focusing on what will I keep?
What is important enough to me to take up the space that I'm going to give it? And I think that's an awesome way of thinking about our stuff. So I hope that is really helpful for you. You can keep anything, but not everything. Thanks to Dana for triggering that kind of idea and conversation on the podcast. Until next week, friends, enjoy the freedom.
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