How Decluttering Saved My Life
On this FIRST EVER episode of The Simple Joy Show, I dive into the transformative power of decluttering and how it saved my life.
I share how becoming a new mother turned my world upside down and left me feeling overwhelmed and drained. Drawing from my childhood experiences of being in control and hoarding possessions for memories, I explore how these traits worked against me as a new mother.
Feeling lost and apprehensive, I eventually hit my rock bottom – a day you can read all about here.
This day made me realise the changes I needed to make in my life.
I soon started embracing minimalism and decluttering and quickly found comfort and reduced anxiety in a newly streamlined and organised home.
Join me as I discuss how decluttering can help you rediscover yourself and create a more joyful life.
Trust me – it is possible!
Stay tuned for more episodes of my podcast, The Simple Joy Show, where we share tips on living a simpler life every Friday.
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Referenced Blog Post: https://simplejoy.co.uk/2019/03/07/the-day-captain-america-saved-my-life/
Shop: https://hub.simplejoy.co.uk/shop
Transcript
Hayley Forster [00:00:15]:
Hello. Welcome to the first ever episode of The Simple Joy Show. Now, I’m not going to lie, I’m feeling a little bit nervous. For years, I’ve been saying I’ve been wanting to do a podcast, and I just never have. And it came to a point a couple of weeks ago, and I thought, Hayley, do you know what? You just need to do it.
Hayley Forster [00:01:04]:
Because I looked at my goal list for the year. It was coming up to the end of June, and I thought halfway through the year, let’s just have a little bit of a review. And I looked and it said, launch podcast in July. And I’d put back that date for months. I think I was originally going to start at September last year and then probably in the January as well. And I think I first had my idea to do it in early 2020, but then obviously things went a little bit awry in 2020, didn’t they? So, yeah, it’s been a long time coming and, yeah, it’s been frustrating because I’ve been trying to convince myself to do it for so long, and it was just a lack of confidence, really I think, and worried about what I was going to say, whether people would even want to listen to me. So I thought, okay, why not just do it? Don’t be perfect. Just get it out there.
Hayley Forster [00:02:01]:
So a couple of weeks ago, I decided to just make a start. So in order to keep myself accountable, a couple of days ago, I sent round an email and a couple of social media posts declaring that I was starting and I was launching a podcast on Friday. So I thought, if that doesn’t get me to record anything, nothing will. So people are expecting a podcast episode on Friday the 7 July, and you have one. I have committed that I was going to do it, and I’ve done it – after three years, but, yeah, I eventually got there! Anyway, what I would like to dive into for this first ever episode is just to talk a little bit about me, my story, and how I got to do what I do as a declutter coach. Because I think having that perspective and information upfront is just useful for you to understand why I’m so passionate about it and why decluttering and minimalism is something that you should consider for your lifestyle. And obviously, by listening to this podcast, you’ve already thought that it is something that you need to do anyhow or you may be in the process of doing it.
Hayley Forster [00:03:17]:
So hopefully this podcast will help and guide you along on that journey. So, first of all, I’ll give you a little bit of introduction into who I am. So, I’m Hayley Forster, I’m originally from Newcastle, which is in the northeast of England, and I have two young daughters. I’ve got my eldest, Annabelle, and my youngest, Poppy. I’m married to my husband Pete, and we have been together since we’re 17. High school sweethearts. Well, he wasn’t in the same school as me, but I met him when I was at high school and, yeah, we’ve been together ever since and had two beautiful young children. I’ve also got three very furry pets.
Hayley Forster [00:04:05]:
I’ve got two dogs, Duggee and Daisy, and Arty, who is a Siberian cat. And I say very furry because I feel like I spend my life picking their hairs up off the floor, which is very frustrating! But anyway, I digress. So, yeah, I’m originally from Newcastle. We now live in West Yorkshire, near Leeds, and that is something that we did about, oh, God, let me think about eight years ago now for my career, because my corporate career from the past is that I’m a fragrance designer. So I originally done forensic science at university, believe it or not, it’s completely not related to where I’ve went in my life at all, but it was a subject that was very intriguing to me. So I did forensic science at university, absolutely loved it, but I didn’t want to do that as a career.
Hayley Forster [00:04:58]:
So I then just started to apply for research chemist roles and I ended up falling into the fragrance industry and I became a fragrance designer with a company called Procter and Gamble. And I was there for about ten years working on designing fragrances for lots of brands that you’re probably more than aware of that are in your cupboards at home. Things like Ariel and Fairy and Daz and Pantene. Things like that. And after ten years, I got headhunted by a company called Unilever. And that is when we moved down to Leeds, down in West Yorkshire with my family to start a new job there, where I was the fragrance manager for Deodorants, the Deodorant category. So I was working on things such as Dove, Sure, Lynx, Impulse, things like that. And after about two and a half years there, I decided corporate was definitely not the place for me anymore.
Hayley Forster [00:05:56]:
I think I had my fill of corporate life and I quit that, became self employed and I have never looked back since, really. And I’ve got a couple of businesses, one being consultancy for fragrances that is sporadic but very intriguing and allows me to travel the world, which is very exciting. I’m also a digital marketing person who looks after people’s social media and such for their businesses. I suppose that’s the best way to describe it and I am a Declutter Coach so I help people declutter their homes. But how did I get here? So I’m going to go back in history a little bit because I think having a little bit of perspective on my background will help you understand as to why decluttering helped me as I entered my adult life. So when I was a young girl, I was born into a family where my mum was very poorly, so she had some chronic illnesses, so I used to care for her when I was little, but it was normal for me. It was fine. I enjoyed looking after my mam and we were very close knit family and we just got through it. It was normal for me to be seeing my mam going in and out of hospital.
Hayley Forster [00:07:21]:
However, when I hit 13, my mum got quite ill and she ended up in hospital just before Christmas of 1997 and unfortunately, she passed away and I was 13 years old, so it was very difficult. I think it’s always difficult to lose a parent but when I was 13 year old it was particularly hard I’d lost my mother but my best friend as well and it was a struggle after that. I’d always been quite attached to possessions growing up and I think that was a way of me trying to connect to my memories and events in my past that I wanted to keep with me. So I became a little bit of a hoarder when I was little and it was fine when I was a little girl, I didn’t really have that much stuff, but over the years, obviously that expanded and became much more of a problem. Also, I think just as a consequence of growing up in the environment that I did, I was very much wanting to be in control of things. I felt as though that allowed me to not have surprises and obviously that was then compounded when my mum died, because I thought if I was able to control things, I understood things more that could have been prevented. I know fine well that it wouldn’t have been able to prevent it. But it was a thought that was going through my mind, that if I was more aware of things and I could have helped out, then perhaps it wouldn’t have happened.
Hayley Forster [00:09:10]:
And that’s something that I carried into my adult life. Those two traits, really, was that I wanted to be in control, I wanted to be organized, I wanted to be aware of things and also hoarding a lot of possessions for memories. And I lived with that for a good few years and it was workable, it wasn’t really causing me too many problems until I became a mother and I fell pregnant with Annabelle, my eldest, in 2011. And I was a bit nervous, I won’t lie. I think for any of you out there that have lost a parent and then fallen pregnant, it was a bit daunting for me because I was thinking, oh God, I don’t know how to be a mam and the person that would teach me how to be a mam is not here. And I really struggled to try and grasp that concept. So as much as I was looking forward to having a child and being a mother, there was that sense of feeling a little bit lost and a lot of trepidation around it. So when my daughter Annabelle was born, it was lovely, I mean, I loved it a bit but goodness me, any first time mothers listening to this, I think you’ll get it.
Hayley Forster [00:10:34]:
But it was such a shock to the system, I just didn’t really know what I’d let myself in for, I think, and it was difficult, she wasn’t the easiest of babies. We had some complications in the early days but looking back, it was not an out of the ordinary, it was just because I was, I don’t know how old I was, let me think, I was about 27, I believe, when I had her. And I was a young woman just trying to get the grips with this young wiggly child that was in my arms, that needed me for everything and I struggled with that as most people do, and I had postnatal depression. I’m very open about mental health so I will talk about it a lot through these episodes and I struggled with postnatal depression for quite a while and I think it was a combination of lots of different things. I had the anxiety of being a new mam and not having my mam there to help and guide me because I was a hoarder and that had accumulated over years. It just seemed very because I was in poor mental health, it just seemed very it was just in in my eyes all the time, and I could see it. And I was panicking about having a baby and turning into a toddler and her trying to pull things out, and there was just too much stuff there and it just seemed like it was moving in on me, if that makes sense. And probably the biggest thing was that I like to be in control, as I mentioned earlier.
Hayley Forster [00:12:15]:
And of course, when you have a new baby, you are most definitely not in control. That little wiggly baby in my arms was the one that was in control. I couldn’t do things I wanted to do because she needed me. And as much as that might sound a bit like, well, yeah, you’re a mother, I don’t think I grasped necessarily what that meant prior to having a baby, was that my whole day revolved around her and my routine, which I’m a big routine woman, and I always had been since I was younger. I think it was kind of trying to have some sense of normality and making sure things would run smoothly that that just didn’t happen anymore because I had this little baby that just needed me at different points of the day. There was no routine or order to it and I was very anxious and confused about that and didn’t really know how to handle it. So all of those kind of three things, it got to me and it was really draining me. And then that just on top of just trying to get by normal day to day activities.
Hayley Forster [00:13:27]:
I’d had about nine months off work, so I didn’t have work to worry about, but there was the normal kind of home life admin, things like that, that I needed to keep on top of and it was just so overwhelming to me. And I had a few years of mental health problems up until that point, and then the postnatal depression really kind of took it to a different level. And I’m not ashamed to say that I probably reached the lowest point I have ever reached with my mental health. At that point, I was incredibly low and as much as I’d become a new mother and I was looking around and people were like, oh, you should be so happy, you’ve got a new baby and it’s a wonderful time and they’re only little for so long, I couldn’t really see the joy in the situation. I was really struggling with it and it got to the point where I was just so incredibly low. I didn’t want to leave the house, I would have panic attacks and I just didn’t want to be here. And as much as that is difficult for me to talk about, sometimes, I think it’s very important to discuss that when you’re a new mum, all of these emotions come flooding at you that you don’t necessarily expect. And it was hard for me to deal with and I didn’t necessarily have anyone there to be
Hayley Forster [00:14:54]:
my sounding board, I didn’t have my mam, and that compounded everything for me. And I just felt so low. And really the turning point for me was a day that I was incredibly low and I thought, I need to distract myself from some of these negative thoughts are going through my head. So I sat playing around on YouTube, which is the thing you do when you’re bored, don’t you? Sitting on the toilet, you think, what should I watch? Let’s watch some stupid cat videos, or something like that. Cats getting scared by cucumbers, perhaps. And I stumbled across a video that I watched and I’ve got it on my website. I’ve got a blog post about this particular day and it’s called The Day Captain America Saved My Life. So I’ll link to that in the show notes if you want to watch the actual video.
Hayley Forster [00:15:45]:
But it was with an interview with the guy who plays Captain America, Chris Evans. And it was quite, I suppose, a unique celebrity interview in the fact that it wasn’t necessarily talking about particular movies that he was doing or how he was bulking up to be Captain America or anything like that. It was a lot deeper than that. And one of the questions that he was asked was what advice would you give your twelve year old self if he could go back? And his advice was very, very simple and the only words he said were “shhhhhh”. And it really resonated with me. I kind of stopped the video. I thought about it for a few minutes and then I listened to it again and then I listened to his explanation of it and it really struck a chord with me and I think that’s exactly what I needed to hear at that moment in time. Because what he was meaning was that we have so many things in our lives that are telling us how we should feel and how we should act and what we should do that that can just be so overwhelming
Hayley Forster [00:17:06]:
and restrictive. And it can cause you to feel that you’re inadequate and that you’re not good enough and that there’s something wrong with you. And that is exactly how I felt. I felt so overwhelmed with everything in my life. Being a mother, knowing that I was going back to work and I was having to juggle all of these different things in my life, that my home was a mess. And I couldn’t keep up with the tidiness of it and the cleaning because there was just so much stuff and there were so many thoughts running through my mind constantly about how I wasn’t a good person and how my house was a mess and I wasn’t a good mother. And the good mothers are able to cope with all this stuff and they can manage things. All these other mothers online and I see my friends that are becoming new mothers and they all seem to be able to cope with life and all of those things going around my head and it made me realize I needed to shut some of that out.
Hayley Forster [00:18:09]:
And I completely really, as I say, resonated with what he’d said. And at that point it was a massive change for me. I was like, right, this is something I need to look into and I need to make changes because if I don’t, we’re going to end up in a very bad place. And from that moment on, I researched the concept of minimalism, tried to really understand what it was and how I could try and bring it into my life. And from then on in my life started to improve. I decided for me the easiest spot to try and tackle first was my possessions. Because really that was the part of my life that was causing me the most stress at that moment in time. Because as I say, one of the thoughts that was going through my head is that I can’t keep a home.
Hayley Forster [00:19:05]:
Like, what kind of mother, it’s very old fashioned of me, but what kind of mother can’t keep a home? My home is messy, it’s untidy, it’s unclean. I’ve got a young baby. Like, what am I doing? So I thought that, for me, was a really good place to tackle. So I started well, I hired a cleaner, which was I’ve still got a cleaner to this day. Absolutely advocate for that. I love it. I’d much rather be spending time with my kids than cleaning my bathroom. So I don’t mind saying that I have a cleaner, but for me, the work that I undertook really was to start decluttering.
Hayley Forster [00:19:46]:
And it was the easiest area for me to start to look at, because I think there’s so many areas I could have decluttered, because as you’ll learn, as I go through these episodes, that decluttering isn’t necessarily just about your possessions. You can talk about commitments and relationships, negative thoughts, things like that, and those seemed much too big of a task for me at that moment in time. So I wanted to start with something that I felt that would make the biggest impact. And for me, it was my home. I was in the house for I mean, because I said earlier that I would have panic attacks thinking about leaving the house, that I was in the house a lot for those first nine months of my baby’s life. And yes, I took her out for classes and stuff like that, but I spent a lot of time in my home, so that was my sanctuary, that was my haven. And it did not feel like it. It felt like something that was just dragging me down and making me feel horrible.
Hayley Forster [00:20:47]:
So I started decluttering. And I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t something I was just able to start doing. And then I just continued and it was all amazing. There were some difficult moments, but I ended up decluttering about 70% of my possessions. And it was I don’t know how to describe it other than amazing. It made me realize that I didn’t need all of the stuff that was in my house. I was holding on to all of these things, but I didn’t need them.
Hayley Forster [00:21:18]:
And actually not having them in my house made me feel a hell of a lot better. There was a lot of things I was keeping that either some memories I didn’t want to have or were making me have negative thoughts about myself, or just making life difficult. You want to look for something like, oh, I want to wrap a present, and you try to find the Sellotape and you’ve just got no idea where it is, and you end up buying another roll, and they end up with 20 rolls of Sellotape in your cupboard. And it’s like just things like that. It was just annoying. My home wasn’t somewhere where I could relax in and enjoy. It was somewhere that was just a chore. And actually it became so much more enjoyable when I was able to move freely around my house, when I was able to find things, when everything that I had in my house, something that I used or something that I loved, something that gave me good memories, that is where I got to.
Hayley Forster [00:22:15]:
And it took a long time, it took a few years, it took a lot of hard work, but I got there and as I was going through that process, actually, I realized, wow, this feels amazing. Like, what other areas can I get rid of? Things that are just like dead weight? So I started decluttering other things. I was going through my calendar and looking at things that I’d committed myself to and I started to get rid of things. I wasn’t necessarily enjoying anything, any relationships that were kind of dragging me down and not making me feel my best self, I would just kind of like step back from a little bit. And because of this, I really started to create a lot more white space in my day. And that is what really changed my life. So I say decluttering saved my life. It really did because decluttering caused this knock on effect of me being able to find so much more space, so much more time, so much more energy in myself as well.
Hayley Forster [00:23:21]:
That then allowed me to explore different areas of my life. And initially there was a period of where there was this white space and it terrified me a little bit. I was like, oh my God, I’m left alone with my thoughts. And it was actually pretty scary at first because I was like, oh, I don’t think I like this. But actually what it allowed me to do was just to process some of those feelings a little bit that I was having. And I really felt like I could process my grief from my childhood so much easier without having all these things to distract me because I think I was keeping my calendar and my life just so busy because I was trying to stay away from those negative thoughts and those negative feelings I was getting from my childhood. And it was doing its effect because I was forgetting how I felt, but it wasn’t addressing the problems I was having and it was just compounding it. It was making it worse.
Hayley Forster [00:24:15]:
So actually, I had a period of where I had this white space and I went through some really deep thoughts with myself. I had some counseling and it was like I felt like I was decluttering those as well, which was amazing. It was well overdue and it was a lot of trauma that I was kind of releasing in a way. And fast forward to now, I am just so much happier than I ever have been. And looking back on it, it’s because I really focused on having less in my life. And to some people that might sound a bit like, oh, God, well, how dull is that? But actually, for me, it was about having less of the things in my life that were taking me away from the things that I wanted to do, the things that I wanted to be. So having less in my life allowed me to focus on the bigger things in life. I was able to feel more joy because I was spending more time with my family.
Hayley Forster [00:25:17]:
I was able to follow dreams, perhaps, that I’d had for a long time. I always wanted to be self employed, but having that white space in my life really allowed me to kind of process what I wanted to do, what I needed to do, and actually take action to it as well. So when I say declutter and save my life, I really mean it, because I went from feeling lost, feeling desperate, in a way, to being really content and really happy. And I think that would be the biggest word for me, is content. I just feel so relaxed and calm with life now and I can take things in my stride. I used to be very uptight, I was tightly wound and very anxious and worrying about things all the time and very, I suppose, anal with my organization and worrying about things that might happen. Whereas now I’m just so much more relaxed and I’m able to just tackle things. And that’s because I’ve created more in a time and space in my life that, yes, life will throw us crap.
Hayley Forster [00:26:24]:
Life will throw things at us that aren’t necessarily joyful all of the time. But because I’ve got that space, time and energy in my life and in my days, I’m able to perhaps handle those in a much better way than I would have done in the past. And it’s so much healthier for me. I feel as much as I have struggled with physical health, I caught COVID in the very early days of 2020. So physically, I’m not in the greatest health that I ever have been, but mentally and emotionally, I feel the healthiest that I ever have done because of that decluttering. Now, I’m not saying that you have to feel as low as I did in the early days for decluttering to make a big impact on your life. I urge you, really, to make some changes now before it gets to that point. So if you’re the type of person where your home causes you stress, it causes you anxiety, really, now is the time for you to really start to slow down, simplify things a little bit.
Hayley Forster [00:27:38]:
Look at decluttering your home, what to dos and commitments can you start reducing and really just understand what it is in life that you love, what it is that you want to focus on and really start to get rid of everything else? That isn’t that. That’s essentially what it is. It’s taking the dead weight from your life, the things that you don’t like doing, the things that you don’t want, the things that you don’t need, and getting rid of them so that you can fill your life with all the stuff that you love doing, that you want to do and build it up and spend so much more time on it. And that really is life changing. So if you’re feeling as though you’re trapped, like I did, then I really would urge you to start making some changes. And that’s what this podcast is really going to help you to do. I’m going to try and give you some really bite sized snippets of how to get started. We’ll talk about lots of different areas.
Hayley Forster [00:28:37]:
So the clutter in your home, organizing your home, but also looking at things like digital decluttering, your to dos, your commitments, mindset, things as well. And really that is what my mission is, is to help you find more time, more space, more energy, and live a more joyful life at the end of the day. And that is what I hope this podcast will allow you to do. And I just want to urge you that living a simple life with a young family, because I’ve got two young kids, I’ve got three pets and they’re all very messy, those five living creatures that live in my house. And for me, it’s not about having a picture perfect home that will be on the cover of Home Beautiful. It’s about having a home that you feel relaxed in, that you isn’t necessarily always tidy and pristine, but you can enjoy yourself in and it’s something that doesn’t cause you stress. And living that kind of lifestyle with a young family in this modern day era might feel as though it’s impossible for you, but I promised you it’s not. If I can do it, you can.
Hayley Forster [00:29:53]:
I’ve got two, as I say, two very messy children and it is a miracle, actually that I can live in a house and not want to scream. So the decluttering life really works. So I just want to assure you that it is possible. But to start off small, you want to make it sustainable and we’ll cover on different episodes exactly how to do that. But before I wrap it up, I just want to say thank you so much for being here. And don’t worry, this isn’t like an extreme, minimalism lifestyle. I’m going to start talking about where we’ll all start competing and saying, well, I’ve only got ten pairs of shoes and oh, I’ve only got two.
Hayley Forster [00:30:39]:
For me, it’s very much about having a lived in home that feels clutter free, it feels organized, it brings you comfort, it eases your anxiety. And it’s not just a stark white home with nothing in it and no soul and no personality. My home’s, a family home, it’s filled with love, laughter, and yes, it’s got a little bit of mess in it as well, but who cares? We’re kind of living our lives out here, so it’s going to be a little bit messy at points, but it’s streamlined, it’s organized, it doesn’t cause me anxiety, and that’s really what Simple Joy is all about and what this podcast is all about. So I’m glad that you’re here with me on this journey. I’m going to help you kind of rediscover yourself, in a way, with that white space, find yourself again, find what you want to do, find how you want to live your life. So thank you so much for joining me on the very first episode of The Simple Joy Show. I will be back every Friday with some lovely nuggets about minimalism decluttering and how to live a simpler life.
Hayley Forster [00:31:52]:
But until next time, let’s keep things simple and find joy in every day. Speak to you soon.