S9E19:Strategies to Declutter your life.(p2)

0:00 Hello beautiful stroke survivors. This is Karina, the host and creator of this top 2 podcast. The show was all about reclaiming your life and moving forward after the events of the stroke. Yes, 27 years ago I had a stroke myself, a brain stem dissection that led me to coma in a locked in syndrome.

0:20 But as you can see, I am here today sharing all my tricks, hacks, how choose strategies, everything that helped me in the last 27 years build my life to what it is today. And let me tell you, there is so much more life to live after stroke. Grab a drink, pen and paper because the faintus of ink is better than the best memory.

0:43 Come and join me here as we do Part 2 of yesterday's episode on reasons why we have clutter and understanding it. Before I commence the show, I would like to do a little bit of Clean House and remind you that you can like follow and subscribe on any and all platforms that you are listening to your podcast. I am very fired up because I have amazing news to tell you guys.

1:09 At the end of today's episode, I also want to remind you that you can share the episode with the world. Let the algorithm know that the movement of stroke survivors, we are here to stay and we have things to say. So go ahead and share the podcast. Don't forget you can also download. That way you can listen to it as you are recuperating yourself.

1:36 So what do you think we get today's show on the road. Quick recap, yesterday we talked about what is clutter exactly. The three types of clutter, the mental, emotional, and spatial clutter. I told you how sentimental overload, where you have the fear of letting go, security issues, attachment issues. We talked all about that good stuff yesterday. If you want to know, check it out on Season 9 Episode 18. Today's show is going to be very proactive. Now that we know what it is, why we have it now. Today is all about reframing, thinking differently about clutter, thinking how it can come to clarity at some point. Let me show you how.

2:33 The first thing I would like for you in order to reflame clutter as an invitation for clarity. I have a question and you need to write this down and answer it to yourself, not to me, to you, because this is your story. The question is as such, what, what truth did you uncover about your own individual clutter?

3:02 Is it physical, sentimental, spatial around you? What type of clutter and what have you discovered? I would even say that there's a second question. I would like you to write down the one word that comes to mind. Whatever's in your mouth, whatever's in your head, whatever is in your heart, Anything about mental clutter, let it out. I'll give you an example yourself. Talk.

3:34 Maybe you're looking around your room and you're saying, I'm such a slob. Oh my God, I'm so gross. I want you to write it down because when you write it down, you are letting it out. I call it verbal diarrhea. It's very graphic, I know, but that's the point. I want it to be graphic, for you to be disgusted enough to do something about it. Yesterday I talked about the avoidance. The accumulation of clutter is a symptom of something. It's an accumulation of feelings. Some people have a really, really uncluttered clean house, but they have so much toxic people around them or toxic thoughts about themselves, or they grew up just with bad ideas and bad communication with themselves or with others. That is also a form of clutter.

4:43 What is the avoidance of that clutter? Very often it it's caused by procrastination, and procrastination has to do exactly with that, the avoidance of an emotion of any kind. It is much easier, let's admit it. It's much easier sitting down watching a movie on Netflix than going to clean our closets.

5:14 It's much cooler to continue playing our video game than to go clean out the garage. So when you get to the root cause, it makes sense. And I always say when you're a stroke survivor, we don't have time to lose, guys. We don't have time to lose. So I say RIP the Pandaid, get over with. That way your life can move on.

5:42 So I'm simplifying this for you. Go ahead and write it down. Avoidance equals procrastination equals clutter equals poor quality of life. You might be someone that says, I have no mess. I'm all right. Let me ask you this. Have you ever told yourself, oh, I'll do it tomorrow? Oh, I'll do it later.

6:12 Oh my God, I'm so busy. I had then. That task is so big. I have so much junk in there. I don't know where to start. Or you simply admit it. Oh my gosh, this is way too much. I don't want to deal with this. So if you have said one of these three phrases, my darling, you have to deal with shit. And again, stroke survivors, we have enough shit to deal with on a daily basis. You don't need to have clutter.

6:44 You don't have to have a hard time going in your house. You, you. If you don't have any clear surfaces on your counters or on your dressers, how, how can the inside of you really recover? You don't have space around you to recover, so you feel guilty all the time. You feel guilty about having had this stroke.

7:14 You feel guilty that you can't help cleaning out the stuff you feel guilty about. Again. We're going round and round and round. Same thing, Same shit, different day, guys. That's the definition of insanity. And often that guilt is going into your relationship at home. Most stroke survivors, their caregivers are spouses.

7:50 And it creates a lot of tension. When there's guilt, there's resentment, guaranteed, the unspoken resentment. I don't want you to have that. So that's why I keep doing these episodes in the hopes that I say something in a way that will capture your attention. This is something that I personally had to do over the course of 27 years because I'll give you an example. I can't have anything on the floor. I trip on the flowers that are in my carpet. I can't have no shoes, no Roomba, no vacuum, no toys, nothing other than dust bunnies because I'm going to trip over it.

8:43 My surface is if they if they have a whole. Let's say I I just opened my mail when I came in on my console table. I put my mail, my envelopes and all that. The top of my glass table was for me. It was physically bothering me. I could have said, oh I'll do it later. I'm too tired. Today though, I'm not feeling well. I'm just going to sit my ass down and watch my shows on Prime that I like to watch.

9:13 But instead I moved my butt and I picked up on my things that were there and I put them where they belong. So it makes me happy to walk into my room and see it like that. That way the room is is ready to accept and welcome whatever is going to come into that room, whether it be a person or a feeling.

9:43 I have a question. Me myself. It's not part of the exercise. It's me, Karina, that is asking you this. OK. When we have emotional avoidance, it can be in the form of memories. It could create guilt, It could also create shame because of everything that's around. There's an overload of something.

10:07 You're low energy, you're you're mentally tired. These are things that you are going to feel when you have emotional avoidance. My question to you, where in your body do you feel that emotional avoidance? Do you feel it in your neck, in your stomach, in your throat, in your head? You can leave me a comment.

10:35 You can also leave me a comment on the Facebook group, the Facebook page. I will leave you all my information in the description. You can tell me where you feel emotional, emotional avoidance. Now I do have a question for you that you need to answer. Ask yourself, what am I afraid that's going to happen if I get rid of that thing today?

11:08 When I'm saying that you are, but what are you afraid if you get rid of that thing today again, whether it's a piece of clothing, a piece of furniture from grandpa, uh, your college T-shirt, a pair of shoes, pair of pants. You were in grade 12 when you're 60 years old today. What would happen either good or bad?

11:36 Here's my here's my favorite part of the show, the proactive. I'm going to share a few strategies that I have done. I don't say anything in my show that I have not done myself. I'm not reading anything from Google or ChatGPT or something. These are things that I have done. Oh yeah, write this down. My first strategy is called brain dump. Yep.

12:04 So whenever your mile you, well, whenever your brain is going at 100 miles an hour, it's speeding, it's swirling around, you have a gazillion thoughts in your head, I want you to write it down everything. Write down your frustration and what exactly is in your mind, something you want to tell someone, someone, something you want to tell yourself.

12:28 Just thoughts, brain dump it on a piece of paper and let it out. Let it out. Another strategy that I love. Now for the physical things. When would we have a room or our house has so much stuff? Clutter is stuff. All right, the minute I came home from rehab, I practiced this one. That's and I found the name perfect for it. It's called grab and go.

12:56 I would never go still to this day from 1:00 room to the next with nothing in my hands. Whether my apartment, my apartment right now is one floor, I used to have a house with two floors. I don't care. It's called grab and go. You grab something each and every time. My second favorite, especially when my daughter was young, is called is with the baskets.

13:22 I love going at the dollar store and grabbing a couple of laundry baskets. Just shove everything into it. You'll deal with it after, but you have to promise me that one surface per room is completely clear. When I used to work in cosmetics and I used to work in a big department store, that was something mandatory.

13:48 We couldn't put products all around the counter. We needed to have two feet with three feet with stuff, 2 feet with nothing. That way you can have a clear path of communication with your clients. So in your case, they're not clients, they're family members, probably their friends, their kids, your spouse.

14:17 OK, and another one that I absolutely love is called the power of 15. You put your, your timer on your clock on no, no radio, no TV, no nothing. And you just run around 1:00 room or run around the house for 15 minutes. I don't care if you're only going around each room slowly, carefully, and you only grab the garbage. I don't care if you do that.

14:49 But I want you to do something for 15 minutes. If you can only fold three towels because you can't move your extremities, your arms can't open and close, I don't mind. Just fold three towels if you have to. But do it. No distractions, no TV, no, no, no, no notifications, no nothing. When it comes to physical clutter, guys, whether in our closets or whatnot.

15:22 I'll tell you what, I personally have a rule that if I haven't worn it in the last 10 years, chances are, baby, you're not going to wear it. All right, Take a picture of it if you want, but get rid of the item. Give it to someone that's going to take care of it, that's going to use it, that's going to need it.

15:46 You. You'll thank me for this, I promise. I'm going to close today's episode by reminding you the clutter is only stuffed guys and the meaning in your heart and your mind is not on the living room table in that belongs to grandpa where you have 5 living room tables or your closet. You can't even close the doors because you have so much clothes, because you're holding onto memories from your college days and whatnot.

16:17 Memories are in your heart and in your mind and procrastination is is is a normal form of self preservation, self protection. What are you protecting yourself from? So your homework. Yep, I'm leaving you with one little homework. It's to declutter 1 area of your house in the next 24 hours and I would love to see your success.

16:53 Send me a picture, post it anonymously if you want, but post it before and after picture in the Facebook group. I will be giving you the description in All right quick quick. So I told you I had something super exciting to tell you. Well here it is. As of my next episode, I am starting A5 part series called Identity after Stroke. We're going to explore we're going to explore how stroke survivors can reclaim a sense of self even when everything has changed.

17:31 So I'm really excited about talking about that specifically. You guys know that it's close to my heart. It's it's, it's me, of course, and I know that it's going to help so many of you out there. So make sure that you're following the podcast that way. The minute I publish it, you guys are going to be notified right away.

17:55 Guys, this is what I had for you in today's episode. And remember that I love you immensely. If you have questions or comments, go right ahead and leave them here at Spotify. And I will be seeing you very shortly with my new five part Siri, thank you, love you. Bye.