Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello and welcome to the Art of Decluttering podcast. I'm your host, Amy Revell. It has been a huge day here in the Art of Decluttering land. I was up bright and early this morning doing the Today Show in Australia. That was great on the morning TV shows and I've already had a client book in as a result of seeing that and feeling like there was hope. which is exactly what I want to portray.
Whenever I'm speaking to you, whenever I'm recording a podcast, sending something through to YouTube, I want you to know that there's hope where there is clutter. And so in areas where you're perhaps feeling overwhelmed, there is a way out. Your clutter does not have to be a life sentence. And kind of in that vein today, I want to talk about malignant clutter and benign clutter.
And what really triggered me to want to record this episode is I was watching Channel 9's Space Invaders a couple of weeks ago, and Peter Walsh, who is a fantastic professional organizer, talks about malignant clutter in the sense that it's evasive and it spreads and it really impacts the way that you live in your home. And I thought, wow. Peter, you've given me an idea.
I want to spend a whole episode talking about the difference between benign clutter and malignant clutter and the impact that this malignant clutter has on your very being, on the way you live, on the way that your household runs and the importance that it is to get on top of malignant clutter.
There are times and there will be times in your life when you've got benign clutter and it's not the end of the world. You don't need to like rush out and deal with it immediately. But when you've got malignant clutter, that is an instance where it's really important to get some support. make some changes so that it doesn't take over. So I've got a few notes that I want to go through.
And the idea is malignant clutter doesn't just kind of sit in the background, doesn't just mind its own business, but it invades your home, your peace, your mindset, your thinking, your relationships. It invades all these spaces. And so it goes from just being stuff to actually like overtaking areas that it was never invited into. So the concept is benign clutter. It's stuff that is temporary.
It might even be contained. It's part of everyday life. So as an example, I had a little bit of benign clutter this morning. So I had a cameraman come and he did lighting and sound and camera. He does all the things. He was amazing. Good job, Paul. And what there was in my house was a little bit of benign clutter because I had some props.
So I had gone around and got some different things so that I could use them as part of the conversation I was having with the hosts. And in order to tidy our house, some things, simple things like things you would always have in your home, like a dish rack and a sponge and things like that, I wanted to remove off the sink so it was a clear surface. And so they went into the laundry.
Now, I created a little bit of benign clutter. They were things that were out of place, not where they should have been.
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Chapter 2: What is malignant clutter and how does it differ from benign clutter?
And there was like a little section of it in the laundry of things we had put away, you know, just like our green waste bin didn't need to be on the bench while we were recording a segment for the show. And so this benign clutter was there. Yes, it was clutter. Was it making an impact on anything? Absolutely not. In fact, it was actually serving a purpose.
And then once this cameraman left and we reset the house, all that stuff came back. It was temporary. It didn't impact on anything. And it was just part of everyday life. Another example of benign clutter is the clutter that you get in the after school rush if you've got kids.
So it might be that come home, shoes come off, a backpack is put down, lunch boxes go in the sink, the bench might have some notices or there might be a ball that's come in. You know, you've just got life is happening in the space.
And if that clutter at the end of the day, you say to the kids, okay, great, grab those school bags, grab your readers, grab your lunch boxes, put them where they belong. And there is a place where they can be put away and the paperwork goes away and the bench is all of a sudden clear. By the time you go to bed, for the most part, things are tidied up.
That clutter period after school is benign clutter. It's life. It's how you live in a home. You can't live in a display home. Nobody wants to live in a display home. And so this benign clutter just comes and it goes, but it doesn't have any kind of insidious implication on the way that you live or the way that you feel. Now, in contrast to that, malignant clutter really does impact you.
So it might impact your relationships. I was talking to a client just today who said they don't invite people over to their home anymore because they're too embarrassed about the clutter. And so this clutter has gone from just stuff to actually creating a barrier in their relationships and in their socialization and in their engagement with their community.
And so this malignant clutter might also mean that you don't go out as often as you'd like to, because either you feel guilty, like I should stay home and I should deal with this clutter or the clutter is significant. It actually means that you can't find your shoes anywhere. It takes you a long time to get ready. Like even having breakfast in the morning might take 45 minutes.
You've got to find the cereal, find a clean bowl. Like all of the things that are part of everyday life might actually be taking longer because the clutter has now started to impede on other areas. It's not just a few things out of place because that's life. But what you do have is stuff that is now creeping. It might be no longer contained clutter.
So instead of being in a drawer, you might have a junk drawer. I don't have a junk drawer. I don't advise you have junk drawers.
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Chapter 3: What are some examples of benign clutter in everyday life?
But containing the clutter when it's become malignant is actually really important. It might be that instead of allowing paperwork to overflow and sit on top of a filing cabinet, you put it in rather than allowing the kitchen dishes to just sit on top of the lunchboxes or the appliances to sit on the bench. you go, okay, I'm going to put them away into the cupboard.
So finding homes for things is a part of managing malignant clutter. It's also about figuring out like what is that additional impact? Is the impact in my mind? Is the impact in like my soul where I just feel like this is so uncomfortable? This is not how I want to live. This is not aligning with my values. Is it impacting your relationships?
Do your kids no longer invite friends home from school because the impact of that malignant clutter is right through to your children? And if you're experiencing that and you're wondering, do the kids haven't invited anyone home? Again, you're not alone. It's a common experience, but it doesn't have to stay that way. So you can tackle little areas.
You can go back over all the hundreds and hundreds of podcast episodes that I've got and go like, well, what do I do? Where do I start? It might be a matter of putting a timer on for 10 minutes and just dealing with one area.
And so what you want to do if you're living in a home where you've got malignant clutter everywhere, which is then impacting your values and who you understand yourself to be and all of these areas is you might not be aiming for minimalism, right? You might just want to aim for benign clutter where it's like, yep, the house gets a bit messy, but at the end of the day, I can pack it up.
I know where things go. And that's what you're aiming for. And so have a think about like, how do I, instead of going for perfection, how do you just have progress in that? Is it a matter of reaching out to a professional organizer? If you're in Melbourne, Australia, we would love to help you in person.
I do virtual sessions all over the world, but reaching out to someone and saying, I actually need a little bit of help because there's so many malignant areas that I just don't know where to start. And so it might be finding storage solutions for things that might be doing a deep declutter and letting go of things that you just don't need anymore. All of these things are really important.
So we've talked about reversing it and we've talked about the hope that there is. And so the takeaway today, really, I think the important thing is to recognize if you do or don't have malignant clutter in your home. Now, if you don't, breathe a sigh of relief and think, okay, when things get messy, when things get untidy, This is benign. It's fine. I know how to pack it up.
I don't know how to tidy. And that's where I want all of you to be. I want even those of you who feel overwhelmed and like, oh, my goodness, it is impacting on all areas. I want you to be at the place where you live in your home, you enjoy it, you walk in, you feel refreshed, you feel like you've got this sense of belonging, sense of home. I think all of that is really important.
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