Welcome to Naked Sustainability Podcast. This bold podcast helps busy millennials navigate real-life sustainability with practical tips, no-nonsense advice, and a zero-fucks-given attitude, all through a transparent and authentic lens of living in the real world. Join Ginny for lively conversations, expert interviews, and hilarious anecdotes. From eco-fashion to zero-waste living, we’ll empower you to be an eco-warrior without compromising your badass lifestyle. Get ready to kick some eco-ass.
Feeling the weight of the world on your eco-conscious shoulders? Dive into our latest episode where we unpack the ins and outs of eco-anxiety: what it is, why it matters, and most importantly, how to deal with it like a boss. From actionable tips to sassy insights, join us as we navigate the rollercoaster of emotions that come with being an environmental warrior. Tune in for a dose of empowerment and a sprinkle of badassery, because saving the planet shouldn’t mean sacrificing your life or your sanity.
Let’s dive into the art of simplifying the clutter in our lives and explore Ginny’s method and rationale behind decluttering. Listen as Ginny discusses practical strategies to streamline consumerism, minimize possessions, and cultivate sustainable habits, all aimed at nurturing a healthier planet. Whether you’re a millennial seeking to embrace minimalism or simply looking to live a more sustainable lifestyle, this episode offers valuable insights to help you declutter and simplify your life. Tune in to gain actionable tips and inspiration for creating a more sustainable and minimalist lifestyle.
Want a FREE guide to help you declutter by Zone? There’s one in our Sustainable Spring Cleaning Planner, which you can get here!
.
Table of Contents
Cluttered Chaos in our Lives
Hey, hey! Welcome back to the Naked Sustainability Podcast, where we discuss living our busy lives as sustainably as possible. It’s Ginny, and today I want to share some insights on limiting the chaos in your life by simply decluttering. And because she downsized and my home was empty, I got a lot of her stuff.
A couple couches, end tables, blankets, you name it. I couldn’t let items that were perfectly fine be thrown out and ending up in the landfill. A couple months later, my parents moved from Pennsylvania to Tennessee and ended up having a lot of items they didn’t want to pack and move. Everything that was hand me down to me was diverted from the landfill, which is friggin awesome.
And I did have dreams of utilizing all of these items for future projects as I updated and decorated and built out the house and the garden and the yard to be exactly what I wanted it to be in our home. My hand me down washer and dryer that my mom gave me is still going strong at 21 or 22 years old.
It’s had a couple DIY repairs sprinkled in, but it is going strong and I’m very happy with it. All of that to say that I am eight plus years into living in our home, and I’m seeing things that I haven’t once touched since they were passed from my grandmother or my mother to me. And I’ve never made time for some of those projects that I had visualized in my head.
Home Renovations have brought our Clutter Front-and-Center
With several areas of our home undergoing some pretty massive renovations at the moment, we’ve had to get creative with what we’re keeping. And what we intend to move back into the new spaces that we’re building. You guys know about the ongoing closet and the basement turned home office renovation, but last week we had to break our rule of no more than three ongoing projects at once and add kitchen renovation to our ongoing project list.
I’ll dive into the necessity of the renovation maybe in a later episode. Suffice it to say the kitchen renovation is a complete surprise. But as we clear out half of our kitchen and stack it all on the other half, we are once again left with chaotic clutter in our house, and I’m starting to feel it.
The Clutter Impact
Okay, so I have all of this shit literally clustered in piles in various rooms of my home. All of the items that I would love to store in our closet are in our spare bedroom right now. All of the basement items that were here before we put the office in here are stored in our workout room right now. They’re stacked upon things and in boxes that we have to go through. And now one half of our kitchen is littered through the living room and precariously piled on the kitchen table. Clutter is something that many people underestimate the impact of, but it truly does affect various aspects of our lives.
All of these little clutter arenas in our house can have some pretty negative effects on my life and have definitely started to weasel their way into my brain and my thoughts. First, clutter can take a toll on our mental well being. Living or working in a cluttered environment can lead to increased stress and anxiety, making it harder to relax or concentrate on your tasks at hand.
Physically, clutter can pose hazards, such as tripping over objects. bumping into a table and knocking everything off of it, or obstructing airflow, which can impact indoor air quality. Productivity can also take a hit when we’re constantly searching for the items that are lost in the clutter, wasting valuable time and energy as we do so.
Financially, clutter can lead to unnecessary spending on duplicate items that you didn’t remember you had, or storage solutions that promise to solve your clutter. All of these can add up over time. Socially a cluttered home might deter guests from coming over, or make socializing uncomfortable which can impact our relationships we have.
Clutter and your Mental Well-Being
On a deeper level though, clutter can evoke negative emotions like guilt or embarrassment. Especially if we feel overwhelmed by the clutter, or it’s tied to past experiences, ex boyfriends, uh, things that you’re not proud or happy of. It’s not just the physical stuff. Clutter can weigh heavily on our minds, too, increasing our cognitive load as we constantly think about everything that needs to happen and what we need to do, and make it difficult to focus or make decisions.
Ultimately, clutter diminishes our overall quality of life by affecting these multiple facets of it. Statistics paint a stark picture of the scale of waste generated by our consumer driven society. According to the World Bank, global waste generation is projected to reach a staggering 3. 4 billion tons by 2050.
And while 2050 does seem like it’s far off, it’s not. With a significant portion of this waste stemming from consumer goods and packaging from those goods. Take, for example, the fashion industry. Which turns out in alarming 92 million tons of textile waste annually, as estimated by a couple foundations.
Overconsumption
This reflects overconsumption, and it highlights the disposability of fashion trends such as fast fashion contributing to environmental degradation. Moreover, the United Nations Environment Program reports that up to 5 trillion single use plastic bags, which are a byproduct of shopping, are consumed worldwide each year.
This is further exacerbating environmental pollution and posing a severe threat to marine life. These statistics underscore the urgent need for sustainable consumption practices and waste reduction initiatives to mitigate the detrimental effects of climate change. We have on our planet as we live here, it’s crucial to recognize that our individual choices as consumers with our wallets play a significant role in driving these alarming trends by embracing more mindful consumption habits and advocating for systemic changes, we can work towards a sustainable future for generations to come.
The Decluttering Process
In a way, all of these ongoing major renovations in our home are providing the perfect opportunity for us to start the decluttering process. For instance, we won’t want to put back anything into our brand new kitchen that is broken, that we won’t use, or it simply doesn’t belong there. Every decluttering plan is different, it’s personalized to your needs, your lifestyle, and your home, but here is my current plan for all of our spaces.
We have to go through everything and evaluate if we’re keeping it or not. During this initial review, I have piles for items I want to keep, piles for items that we need to donate, In piles for items, we need to look further into to see if they are recyclable or reusable or maybe there are things that I don’t quite want to donate yet.
This is the pile of items that I want to come back to, to, to re review basically to avoid having too many decisions at one time when I’m going through this process. I like to take this first initial step to get rid of any duplicates or broken items. And just because they are broken or duplicates does not mean they immediately get trashed and sent to the landfill.
The EcoMindful Method
With my method, items you know you can and want to donate are immediately removed from your living areas and are taken to local donation centers. This removes them from your house. The items in the keep pile get grouped together for organizational purposes, because that’s how my brain works. If we’re decluttering and filling in my closet, all of my dresses would be grouped together.
My short sleeved shirts might be grouped together by when they get worn, like garden or project shirts versus an out of the house shirts. Yes, I still have plate clothes. This process can take a minute and a little bit of brainpower, but it does make the final organization of the space. Now that we’ve dealt with the keep and the donate piles, it’s time to move on to the other items.
Minimizing our Waste
The ones that you need to deal with later. The ones that need further review. One powerful way to reduce your waste and extend the lifespan of our belongings is through recycling and reusing. This other pile, at least in my house, has everything that I wasn’t sure about donating. Maybe items that are broken, items that I haven’t used.
Basically, this is my catch all pile that I will have to sort through. Since the items in this pile are in boxes for just a little bit longer than the items that I knew I wanted to keep or donate, It’s time for me to evaluate them. For items that I haven’t used in a while, perhaps since I put them in this other or miscellaneous box, or even prior to that, donating them to charities or thrift stores is a fantastic option.
This helps to declutter our spaces and gives these items a second life, benefiting those in need. Additionally, you could host a yard sale. Or, participate in online platforms for buying and selling preloved items. These are great ways to find new homes for items that you weren’t initially sure if you wanted to get rid of.
Plus, then you get something tangible in return for getting rid of your items. Cash. Repurposing items creatively is another eco friendly option. Old clothing can be transformed into cleaning rags, or upcycled into new garments, or accessories, or door drafts. Similarly, furniture and household items can be refurbished or repainted to give them a fresh look and extend their lifespan.
Recycling and Repurposing in Real Life
There will always be items that I have a repurposing or upcycled vision for. Keeping items for a someday project leads to chaos and clutter. So now, I only keep items if I have a planned project for them and a timeline for completion. By doing this, I’m avoiding the various partially completed and or planned projects that are just lying throughout the house.
For items that are no longer usable or are in rather poor condition, recycling is key. Many materials such as paper, glass, plastic, and metal can be recycled into new products. We take the time to properly sort through these items to recycle what we can, diverting them from ending up in landfills and trying to conserve these valuable natural resources.
This might mean we spend some time removing non recyclable plastic pieces from a metal frame that is completely recyclable besides the plastic attached to it. Or it might mean removing the elastic from my worn out modal style underwear and then composting the all natural beech wood from the underwear.
Incorporating recycling and reusing and composting practices into our decluttering efforts helps to minimize our waste and build sustainable habits while creating a more eco friendly and minimalistic lifestyle. By giving our belongings a second life or repurposing them creatively, we continue to contribute to a circular economy and reduce our environmental impact.
Clutter, Sustainability, and Minimalism
Next, let’s dive into how all of this is connected. Consumerism, your clutter, minimalism, sustainability, they’re all of these buzzwords, right? But they’re all interconnected parts that reach the far corners of our lives, like our overall financial goals, how we feel in social settings, our mental health, or even our quality of life.
Minimalism isn’t only about decluttering our physical spaces. It’s a mindset shift towards intentional living and prioritizing what truly matters. This aligns closely with the values of sustainability, as both movements advocate for consuming less. in reducing our overall footprint here on earth. By embracing a minimalist lifestyle, we inherently reduce our consumption.
This means buying only what we need. We’re opting for high quality and long lasting items over disposable or trendy ones. We’re basically trying to buy it for life. By doing so, we minimize the demand for new goods, which ultimately reduces the resources and energy required for production. Additionally, minimalism encourages us to simplify our lives, which often translates to downsizing or maybe living in smaller spaces. There’s a reason tiny homes have caught on. This leads to less material accumulation, and can also lead to lower energy consumption for heating, cooling, and maintenance of our homes. Embracing minimalism also prompts us to re evaluate our relationship with our possessions and consumerism.
Embracing Clutter-Free and Sustainable Living
Rather than constantly chasing after the next big purchase, we find contentment in what we already have. This shift towards contentment and fulfillment and gratitude fosters a deeper appreciation for our belongings, reducing the desire for constant upgrades and replacements. Overall, adopting a minimalist lifestyle brings about a multitude of environmental benefits.
It reduces your waste generation, conserves resources, and minimizes our ecological impact. By simplifying our lives and embracing mindful consumption, we not only contribute to a healthier planet, but we also are able to experience greater fulfillment and harmony in our lives. As always, thanks for listening, guys.
If you enjoyed this episode and found it helpful, please send it to Friend. Feel free to reach out at NakedSustainability.com. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a review, and join us next week as we explore more badass ways to care for the planet while living this busy millennial life. Until next time!
