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Introduction to Donna Barwald and Professional Organizing with Matt Feret [1:09]

Matt Feret:

Hello everyone. This is Matt Feret, author of Prepare for Medicare and Prepare for Social Security Insider's, guidebooks, and online course training series. Welcome to another episode of The Matt Feret Show, where I interview insiders and experts to help light a path to successful living in midlife retirement and beyond. Donna, welcome to the show.

Donna Barwald:

Thanks for having me. This is great.

Matt Feret:

So tell everybody what you do, how long you've been doing it, and how you help people.

Donna Barwald:

Okay. I'm a professional organizer. I've been doing it for well all my life, but only professionally, maybe 20 years. I help people by making them feel better about themselves and making their house look and function better. I transform people's lives and their homes. How about that?

Matt Feret:

That's fantastic. So I've only known the concept of professional organizers through, I think maybe looking over my wife's shoulder at HGTV, couldn't possibly have been watching it on my own without her. Hahaha. So what is a professional organizer? I mean, I get the name, the job scope is in the title, but what do you do?

Donna Barwald:

Okay, so first of all, it's not as easy as it looks on HGTV, and I also am not Marie Kondo. I don't work like that. I don't dump everything out of your closet onto your bed and tell you to go through it and leave. I mean, that's overwhelming.

Matt Feret:

Sounds like my Saturday mornings growing up.

Donna Barwald:

The point is you're overwhelmed to begin with, and you don't know where to start and what people don't realize is it's not your fault, first of all, and it's scientifically proven that clutter affects stress, and stress affects clutter. Meaning if you're stressed in general, you don't have time, you're busy working, whatever clutter happens, people are sick or pass away and clutter happens and then you get stressed from having the clutter there. So this clutter feedback loop, I guess is what you would call it. So the problem is, is that it gets to be so bad that you need to do something, but it's the last thing you feel like doing. You just want to shut the door and go away. And you could see that happening during the pandemic. I mean, people had all kinds of time. They were home, they could now tackle the garage and clean out their closets.

And some people did it a little bit, but most didn't, and it was just easier to shut the door. So I come in and I assess the situation and I ask people what their priorities are because I could spend all year there. In fact, I have one project right now with a senior who has her five-year plan because she wants to enjoy her house while she can and get it down to a point where then if she needs to or when she's ready, can go into a senior residence and hopefully it won't have to be assisted living at that point, but when she needs it, that'll be that. But I do whatever people want. The first thing I do is assure them that their house is not as bad as I've ever seen.

Matt Feret:

Where am I on the clutter scale? Is that what they're saying? And please tell me I'm not as bad as I think I am.

Donna Barwald:

Well, no, I mean they're embarrassed, they're ashamed, and this is the point. And sometimes people are afraid to even have me over. They're so ashamed. I'm like, this is my job. And if there weren't people that had clutter, I would be out of a job. So I'm not one to judge at all because I want to help you. So the first thing I do, I look around and they show me what is going on and then I asked them to dream what would this space be if it could be, and you didn't have to physically move things around, wave a magic wand. What would you like to see happen here? And people would say, well, I wanted this to be an exercise room, but then it became a junk room, but I didn't like the light in here, so I think maybe this would be better for the game room for the kids, or whatever it is. And so I go through and I sort of see what's happening in each room and what could be happening if we can make it happen like that.

So that's one thing that I do. And then the other that I do is physically work with people. I don't just come in say, do this, do that. Wave a magic wand, have them go away and do the big reveal. No, that doesn't work. The point is that they have to work with me and by the end of working with me, they've made the decisions. People always say, oh, you're an organizer. You're going to make me throw everything out. No, I'm not going to make you throw everything out. I'm going to make you look at everything and see if it's something that you want in your life. And the most important part of that is to ask, is this good for me? Is it good for me to be surrounded by whatever it is and stuff that annoys me or makes me sad or makes me angry that it happened?

I mean, you'd be surprised. People save all kinds of things as if they were a presidential library and you really don't have to because some of them aren't. Don't bring good memories and rejection letters and divorce papers and houses that you had to sell in a short sale and didn't expect to leave, all that kind of stuff. People keep that and it just doesn't make any sense. You want them to feel better in their home. I mean, this is the place where you're supposed to feel the best come home and you want to breathe. So I create rooms to breathe for the expression room to breathe. I need room to breathe. You need rooms to breathe and you want to be comfortable. And so we're going to look at what's there and decide what belongs in there by figuring out what's going to happen in that room because you only want things in a room that you need to do the things you're going to do in that room.

So, you don't want to keep exercise equipment in the living room if that's not where you're going to use it and you don't want bills and papers in the kitchen because you don't do bills and papers in the kitchen. Most people will then take those things and go sit somewhere else and do it. So the idea is that you only want to have the things that make you happy, bring you joy as everybody knows, spark joy and are useful. And it's not until you start organizing that you actually see what you have and when you see what you have and you see the duplicates and triple kits and whatever, and you can put collections of stuff together and then you pick out your favorites and because people only use their favorites, you may have five, ten, twenty types, right? But you're going to wear the same two or three because they're your favorites.

Doesn't matter if they're useful. So you want to ask, are they useful to me? Are they useful to anybody and is this my favorite if I have enough or more than one or five or whatever it is that you feel you need. I go through people's kitchens and they've got five spatulas and ten frying pans. Well, which one do you like? One do you use? Generally the things that are in the sink are the ones they use, so you always want to look there first and see, okay, we know what you're using. You'll probably like those things. It's the stuff that's hiding in the cabinets and closets that we want to tackle first because need to make room to keep the things that you want and the things that are back there, clearly you're not using or they're not your favorites, so why not use your favorites?

Matt Feret:

How do you define clutter?

Donna Barwald:

Clutter is anything that's sitting in a room that's not supposed to be there.

Matt Feret:

In a room or on a countertop?

Donna Barwald:

Yeah, most surfaces have a lot of clutter. The idea is to be able to get your house ready for company in maybe an hour or two, and it doesn't always have to look beautiful. I mean, my desk clearly did not look beautiful before we started talking.

But you can get it if you're organized and you've decluttered to the point where you just don't have so much stuff sitting around, you can get it to a place where you can put everything back the way it's supposed to go in an hour or two and then clean and then have people over. People are so embarrassed because the house doesn't look the way they want and they're embarrassed to have people over. And it's so sad because we were isolated for so long with the pandemic that now we forget, oh yeah, we can see each other, we can have people over, we can do those parties again. And then people are like, well, I wouldn't have anybody over because my house looks like this. Well, I don't want you to feel like that. I don't want you to feel less than, I don't want you to look at HGTV and see this impossibility of staged houses. And there's a difference between organized and staged. I'm not talking about looking staged. That's the big reveals. That's the home edit on HGTV, Marie Kondo, whatever, all that stuff. I'm more practical than that. I'm very realistic and my philosophy is form follows function and pretty comes later. So I want to get your house into a place where everything has a place and everything there is something that you know and want and use and hopefully love.

Then it can be put back together after the tornado comes, the guests have come and you need to put your house back together or your kids have a party and you got to put your house back together. Or you are frantically looking for something because you can't remember where you put it, which happens a lot. Once you organize, you remember the thinking about where you're going to put it and then you sometimes forget where you actually did. But anyway, you should be able to put everything back together in a way that you can have people over and not feel bad. I don't want anybody feeling bad about themselves and they come to this usually feeling terrible like they failed. But then there's what I say is, do you feel terrible and ashamed and embarrassed that you can't play the saxophone? Well, no. Right. So it's a talent you could probably learn, but it's a talent like anything else or painting like Monet are, you can't go sit and paint a Monet.

And do you feel like less than and embarrassed and ashamed that you can't do that? No. It's a talent. Well, organizing is one of those executive function skills and executive people have it or they don't and they can learn. And there are people like executive function coaches, people with ADHD use executive function coaches a lot lately. That's been a big help. But so you can learn to organize, you can learn to prioritize and initiate and all those things that are executive function skills and those seem to be the one, the things that people who need my help need the most because they just don't have that maybe. Maybe they have ADHD or autism. I have a kid who has both, and so I'm very attuned to the fact that some people are just never going to be Felix Unger and that's going too far anyway.

In my book, I'm using the reference. I know your audience knows who that is and they might be Oscar Madison, but they can be a little bit better about it. And most of it is just having less stuff around. If you have less stuff, then you have less to clean up. And I'm not talking minimalism. It’s nice when you go to a hotel and there's hardly anything there and you feel calm and relaxed and yeah, that's nice, but you've lived a whole life. I'm about to turn 61 at the end of the month. I made it this far. But you've accumulated, you have a whole life and you have your memories and you have souvenirs from your travels and you've had things as long as your house is big enough for them and things are put away and not sitting out and you can actually see what you have, then that's fine.

It's when people become clutter blind and stuff got put in a corner 10 years ago, it never got put away. It certainly doesn't belong there. And then you forget you have it, so then you have to go out and buy another one because you needed it. A lot of people come in from Home Depot and they've got the bag and the thing that they ran to Home Depot to get, and then there's all these things still in the bag that they bought while they were there. They saw it, but they've dropped it and it sits in the corner and they have no idea. They can't remember that they bought it and then they go buy another one. So I talk about having the right stuff surround you and clutter is the wrong stuff. You asked what clutter was, so clutter is the wrong stuff. It's stuff that maybe you have duplicates of because you forgot you had one and then you have triple kits of, because now you can't find the first two. There's stuff that makes you feel some negative emotion. There's sad or like we talked about sad or angry or regret or whatever it is. You don't want to feel that when you see things. So if that's what's in your house, let's get rid of it because there's no reason to keep things around that don't make you feel good or that you don't need.

When to Get a Professional Organizer with Donna Barwald [16:50]

Matt Feret:

I was going to ask you, but I think you already answered it. When do you know you need a professional? You said when someone wants to come over to your house and you're like, oh, it won't be ready in an hour. Is that kind of a marker or is that if you feel bad about like, oh my gosh, this is too much.

Donna Barwald:

People finally call me when they just feel too bad, it's just too much and they can't do it and they're overwhelmed and often there's an event coming up, I'm Jewish and in my community everybody has Bar and Bat Mitzvahs and so a lot of my clients come from people who are going to have this event and people are going to be over and the relatives are coming, or their mother-in-law keeps harping on them. Or a lot of times what happens is people's parents pass away and now the kid, the adult kid is responsible for getting rid of mom's stuff and it's too overwhelming in grief and a whole lot of it just comes to their house. And so that's a lot when you are completely overwhelmed. It's not just your stuff now it's mom's stuff and there's so much to go through and so many feelings swirling around and it's just really hard to even want to do it. But you know have to, especially if you have to sell the house.

Matt Feret:

And even sometimes if you've got grandma or grandpa's stuff that mom or dad had and now that you have, you're like, what am I doing with this? Do I throw this out? Do I store it? Am I throwing away something that was valuable that I should hold onto? I don't know.

Donna Barwald:

A lot of times people keep things because it was their mom's and they think because it was their moms, it's special and whatever. Then they find out from their aunt that their mom hated that thing that it came from their mother-in-law and they felt like they had to put it out every time she came over, but just as happy to get rid of it. It's just people don't take the time to get rid of things. So if they weren't important, that's definitely something that they can get rid of.

Decluttering Family or Sentimental Items with Donna Barwald [19:07]

Matt Feret:

I was going to say or ask, what do you tell people that when you run into this and they're like, oh, that was my mom's. I think they would probably tell you, well, that's off limits. That was my mom's. Do you actually go like, okay, let's break that down. Oh, that was my grandma's. Well, let's break that down.

Donna Barwald:

It depends on where you are in the process. At the beginning I just want people to see their stuff and then as we get stronger in making decisions, we do the easy stuff first and things that were your parents and not easy and memories not easy. And paperwork. I call paperwork P-worst because that's not easy. And so we start with easy things and you build up your decision-making muscles, and then you start to see kitchens and bathrooms and things that are easy and don't usually have attachments. You're usually not attached to negative or positive with things in your kitchen.

Matt Feret:

Yeah, I can't think of one pan I'm attached to.

Donna Barwald:

Right, but you have a favorite probably. Probably because you bought new ones because they were nicer than what you had. But a lot of people just keep the old ones pushed to the back. They do that a lot and run out of space and then get frustrated because they have this, I call it captive kangaroo's, closet of carrots falling out on them. I don't know if you know that-

Matt Feret:

Mr. Green Jeans, love Mr. Green Jeans.

Donna Barwald:

And then they get frustrated and aggravated and so we go through that kind of stuff first and then we get to the harder things and then people realize that they have this of moms and that of moms and the other thing. And how much do you need to be reminded of mom every day? Because I feel like showing you what I found yesterday, I was talking to a client, I do virtual consulting now, so I was talking to a client and she was busy going through stuff and I was sitting here going through my pencil drawer and cleaning out my desk and I found blue chip stamps, blue chip stamps because they came from my mother's house, her junk drawer or whatever, maybe her pencil drawer. And somehow it got into my desk, maybe I found them a long time ago when I was cleaning out her house and brought them over as memories.

They're little blue-chip stamps, they're sitting here. Then I have a grease pencil from my father. Little things are sitting in my pencil drawer and remind me of my parents. And so I don't need big huge things. I look at them and I smile and that's it. Or I write about this in the book. I have napkin rings. My mom was napkin ring crazy and I have a napkin ring that was hers that reminds me of a story, which all I have to see is this napkin ring and reminds me of the whole thing. And so I keep that.

It takes a very little space. I have a note now attached to it so that my kids know why I have that and they're not busy looking for the rest of the set. I have a napkin ring that was my great grandmother's and it's engraved with her initials. And so I don't have the whole set. I have the one because I guess it went to my grandmother and then my grandmother went to meet my mom and then my mom went to me. I mean, that's how things happen in our house. And so we have furniture that gets passed down because that person was the one who cleaned it out of their house and took it to their house. So anyways, but you don't need big things to remind you of your parents and you don't have to keep everything, especially if it's going to cause you aggravation because it takes up space that you need for something else.

Matt Feret:

Yeah, that's a really good barometer. If it takes up space that you need for something else, it almost feels like some people think it's some sort of, not a disservice, what's the word I'm looking for?

Donna Barwald:

They're throwing away mom when they throw away something that was moms. I get that all the time. But then you have to think, and it's especially funny because in this era, housekeeping was really important to mom and that self-worth a lot to people of that generation and baby boomers and before and their whole self-worth came from how clean their house was. So then you think, would mom want you to keep this if it's going to be clutter in your house and make it so it's not nice for company as they say. So then you just have to work through that kind of stuff. But by the time you make all these other little decisions, that stuff comes later, especially when you find everything that was moms and then you can make a decision, I can get rid of this, got that this is enough for me.

Or we find new uses for things, then it's not clutter. It's like I had a client who had parents' furniture in her living room and then we realized, oh, when we did their daughter's room, she needs a desk. Let's use that and bring it upstairs and use the desk. So when you actually make it intentional, clutter is something that's not intentional to have in your space, but when you very carefully curate what's in your space and everything's intentional, then you don't consider that clutter. That's the way you want to live. You want to live with everything carefully curated and not just thrown in there by circumstance.

Matt Feret:

That makes a lot of sense because you said earlier in the show you're like, this is not me walking in dumping everything out of your closet and saying, look there, get rid of that. It's curating. That's different than I think what most people think of is organizing or professional organizing. Yes, it's paring down, but the idea of curating is different than just say, well, I have ten of these, I need to go down to two. It's different. It might be five because it's curated or it might be one or none.

Donna Barwald:

And you've decided, you've looked at it, you've decided that this is what's going to be in my house. I have this client that I've been working with that has the five-year plan and she has a lot of stuff and they've never moved. And this is what happens. You live in a house for forty years, fifty years, whatever it is, and you never had to move the house, you fill the house, so you never had to look at things. So she has tons of stuff. So I'm trying to group together the same things and say, here, pick your favorites. And it's really hard for her, which is why it's the five year plan and we can only do a little bit at a time before she gets overwhelmed or distracted. But I'm learning a lot from her. And that's the thing, when you work with somebody, it's very intimate. I mean you're seeing everything they have in their house, you're listening to their stories and their relationships with people. And I tend to share a lot of my stories too, because I feel like it's unfair. Sort of one sided, if I'm going to get to know you this much, I want you to know who I am too.

Matt Feret:

Is that why you think a lot of people don't use a professional organizer, because they don't want anyone in their house?

Donna Barwald:

They don't want anybody to see the mess. But then also they don't want everybody in their business. And unfortunately you have to unless you've got a kid that will do it with you. Although I've never seen that work out well, but you know what? You kind of have to do it with your kids, some of it at least, because this is what happens. My mom passed nine years ago, and I told my mom even before she got sick, I said, we have to go through this house now and par down because my sisters can't do this and they're the ones who live up near you and I can't stand all of this. It's like visiting your entire, my mom's closet was visiting my entire wardrobe my whole life. She never took away. We all wore the same size and she never got rid of anything. Even if I did, it went into her closet sheets. I still have now from when I was six years old because my mom kept them. Then they became the sheets that I gave to my kids for pants.

Matt Feret:

But that's so common in that generation. I know firsthand that's very common in that generation. And people say, oh, well, it's because they went through the depression and everything had value because you had nothing. But is it common in that one or is it still common in the later gen?

Donna Barwald:

People keep stuff because it's useful, but then they don't use it unless it's garbage and you have to throw it away. People keep it. I mean a lot of people keep it. But now this decluttering phase is great because it's really helping. It's really the most loving thing you can do is to declutter your home while you still can while you're healthy and go through your life with your kids. A lot of people save stuff to show their kids and then they forget they have it and they never showed it or they saved it for grandkids. And the grandkids are now way past the age that they would've played with the doll or done the models with or whatever it is. And so you wanted to share these things and you haven't. And so when we declutter, it's kind of interesting because people find this stuff and it's fun to find these things that you've saved. And I tell people, you've saved it for this moment. This is the moment you saved it for. But now that the moment has come and gone, now you can release it.

Matt Feret:

You thought it was for a time earlier than this, but in fact you were saving it to throw it out with me.

Donna Barwald:

And it's really fun. And I never say throw out, I say, let go. You let go of something because it's one of those things. If you're holding tight to something, your hand is not open to receive. And a lot of times people are just holding tight to old dreams, but because they haven't happened yet. But then you think about it realistically, it's like I thought that I would scrapbook and sit there and do that, but now I'd rather travel. I don't want to sit in front of my TV and scrapbook old memories, so maybe I can get rid of that dream and all the things that went with that dream. Or you played baseball, you kept your baseball glove. Every dad keeps a baseball glove for their kid and then if not their kid, their grandkid. And then you find out your kids aren't having kids really a thing. Now my kids say that they're not going to have kids, and so you've saved it and now's the time that you realize it's just time. But also just downsizing people like the feeling of having less because the energy moves different and they don't dread going into the garage. I call the garage the dreaded garage or the room of broken dreams.

Matt Feret:

In my house it’s where all of my tools and garden supplies are, I no longer like to garden very much nor fix much stuff. But the tools are still there.

Donna Barwald:

And by the way, tools sell great at garage sales. That's what everybody spends money on. But yeah, so people hold onto things because yeah, they're useful, but they're an old lifestyle. So you really only want to keep the things around you that go with this lifestyle because that's exciting and it's nice to see and you don't have to keep the cabinets and the drawers cluttered with the old stuff because you want to make room for the new and you can't make room for the new until you get rid of the old. And that's the other thing is that I have this concept called crap equilibrium, and basically if you're going to bring something new into the house because people go shopping and they find things that they like better than what they have or they pick up stuff from a thrift stop or somebody's giving stuff away, other declutters are giving away their things, and so people bring things into their house. If you're going to bring something in your house, you only have so much closet space or cabinet space or drawer space, right?

Matt Feret:

Yeah. They get rid of something, right? Something's got to give.

Donna Barwald:

So I'm not saying go through everything and I'm really not saying do it all at the same time. You don't have to, and I suggest not going through your whole house at one point, but when you bring something in is a great time to go look at those things. For example, I brought home new prescriptions, and I'm looking at everything else that's there and I see that there's prescriptions that we don't use anymore. There's duplicates. So I can condense and combine kind of stuff, and that's the time to do it. When you're bringing something new in, is the time to go through whatever it is that category and where that's going to go and then take at least one thing out because you brought one thing in. If you bring three things in, take three things out just so you can keep that equilibrium and you don't get overrun with stuff.

Couples and Decluttering [33:49]

Matt Feret:

What kind of mental space do you have to be in? I get the frustration, but I would imagine you probably run into some scenarios where people thought they were ready to declutter and boy, they were not. Have you run into those?

Donna Barwald:

Or one person is and the other person isn't. And wives unfortunately usually are complaining about their husbands. He's a hoarder, which by the way, there's a really clinical definition of hoarding and most people are not, and especially if they have me in because hoarders want to keep everything, but people say, my husband's a hoarder or he keeps bringing in things from the street. We call them curb alerts when there's stuff sitting on the curb and he keeps bringing things in or gadgets or whatever it is, and he's hoarding and I say, you know what? Let's take care of your side of the street first. You stay in your lane, take care of your side of the street, and then when you have concentrated on your own stuff and it looks better, maybe that will have influenced your partner to do the same with theirs because you really can't, and I'm sure everybody knows this, you can't force anybody to get rid of anything.

And if you do it for them, it's a source of contention. And I certainly as an organizer, don't tell you what to get rid of it all because it's not my place. I want you to look at it. I want you to decide that yes, you're going to have it and then later on we're going to have to find space for it because decluttering is only the very first part. Then once you know what you're keeping, now we have to store it in a way that's accessible and not only to pull it out, but to put it back in. Because a whole lot of clutter is stuff that people never put away. It was too much of a pain to do it. I'm the first one. I need a step stool for everything. I don't have time to go grab the step stool and carry it around with me and put stuff away. I get it into the room where it has to be maybe into the cabinet where it has to be, but not into the plastic container. I have plastic containers and shoe boxes and things. I'm very organized.

Everything is labeled with blue painter's tape and a black sharpie. But as I'm picking up the house and taking things back to where they go, I'll just put it in the cabinet. And when I have to, now I did it today with gift bags. I don't want to open the container. I just opened the cabinet and I put it in. And when it's time now to go find a gift bag, I'll pull out the ones that are in the container as well as the ones that aren't and then organize it and put it back. That's how I operate. I'm very practical about stuff.

Organization and Consistency with Donna Barwald [36:57]

Matt Feret:

When you're done with the project, do you find your customers revert or have they gone through this enough and they've got a new mode of operating?

Donna Barwald:

Well, if their ADHD, it's always going to revert. That's just the way it is. And they may have learned things. They may not be keeping as much, but it's still going to be messy. They're not going to put things away. Most people, it's not in their consciousness. It's not important to them because they're creative. People with ADHD generally are creators, and so they'd rather be creating than putting things back the way they were supposed to be. But yeah, people revert or they relapse. People will call me and they say, I had a relapse. There was a sale at Macy's, or they're sick and they can't go out. And now they're on an Amazon kick. During the pandemic, everybody was buying online and so they were buying way more than they had to because it felt good to have contact even to see the glimpse of the Amazon guy knocking on your door as he leaves the package that happens or people can't get out because they're sick or they're hurt or whatever, and they're buying from the home shopping network. Does that still exist?

Matt Feret:

Oh boy, that's a good question.

Donna Barwald:

I think it does. I have clients who I see packages coming in and that's what we do. Shopping is a big source of clutter. I mean, really people have a shopping addiction because it makes them feel good and other things aren't happening in their lives that make them feel good, but then they feel worse because now they have a house full of stuff that they spent good money on. I'm not going to get rid of it because I spent good money on, I'm going to use it someday. And then they don't. And then I have to tell them, people put stuff in storage units. It's like the stuff people put in storage units are not worth the thousands of dollars that they pay for storage units because people don't just do it short term generally, they leave things in there for years, and I figured it out once and I have the exact figure in my book, but it's something like if you keep something for 10 years in an average 10x10 storage space that costs an average of $150, that is $18,000. It's like nothing is worth that. Even the antiques are not worth that. And so you're paying money for stuff you just don't want to see because really it, if you don't go clean out your storage unit, it's just because you don't want to see it. And I help people, and especially in my book, I come up with a way to get people started to see the stuff that they don't want to see because you don't have to just keep acquiring. There's a book called Stop Buying Bins. But basically I just think that's so funny. But basically, people buy stuff to contain stuff that they don't even need, but they don't want to look at it or take the time to look at it and get rid of it. And now, my husband has ADHD and both my kids have ADHD, so I'm very familiar with it. He doesn't ever get rid of clutter. He doesn't put anything away that he hasn't put there. And quite often, not even stuff that he put there, but he doesn't put anything away, but he makes it all pretty and nice and makes them into nice pretty piles or hides them in a box or back. You know what I mean? It's like, but that doesn't get rid of anything, and you can only do that so long.

How to Approach Decluttering with Family [41:16]

Matt Feret:

So how do you approach a spouse or a brother or a sister or a mom or a dad? Can you or do they have to come up with this on their own? I mean maybe not a brother or sister, that might not be a good move.

Donna Barwald:

I can tell you what my sister felt when I walked into our house and started organizing it.

Matt Feret:

I bet it wasn't great. So let's forget the sibling piece. Let's go mom, right? Let's say mom or dad, they're looking, maybe they're looking to downsize. Maybe they're in the family home and they're sixties, seventies, and they're thinking, “Hey, I want to move to Florida in a two-bedroom adult community with no basement and we're going to start today.” But they've been in the house for thirty, forty years. How do you approach this? Is there a sensitive way to do it? Is there just a, “Hey, you should hire someone.” Is there a way to do this?

Donna Barwald:

You could say, I know it's overwhelming. I mean, adult kids with parents who want their parents to do something, need to approach it. I believe through the psychological aspect and how it feels. And so it's like, I know you love your things and I know you're going to love Florida, but you know, can't take everything. We can figure out what we're going to take. And what I always tell people is don't talk about what you're going to get rid of. Talk about what you're going to take, especially if somebody has to go into assisted living, most of the time that's not their own choice. If they could, they'd stay in their house or whatever. So you want people to think about what they would take with them if they're going into a vacation house for a year or you're going on a world cruise, what are you going to take?

Let's talk about the clothes. What clothes do you like? Then they'll start pulling out their favorite clothes and then they'll start telling you things like, oh, those shoes don't fit anymore, or I haven't fit into that in years or whatever. And it's like, great. Can we donate them? And people need to do it with somebody. And it doesn't have to be a professional organizer. You can do it with your kids or a friend. I have a concept called eating a plum, meaning there's a whole story about it, but organizing and decluttering or whatever, it's a lonely business and very tough and nobody wants to do it usually until they have experience doing it. So it's better when you have something that you don't want to do to have your friend come over and do it with you so that you're not alone and they'll keep you company and on track and you'll make it happen.

Matt Feret:

Better be a good friend.

Donna Barwald:

So you have to get over the part about how you're embarrassed about your house because your best friend will do this for you and then you have to do it for your friend. So if it's not going to be your kid, do it with a friend, but talk about what you're going to bring into the new life, into the new house, into the new mindset, whatever it is, rather than what you're going to let go of because it's like sculpting, right? And you've heard about sculptors who just take a piece of marble and they take away everything that's not supposed to be there into their vision. And so you know what your vision's going to be, and then you want to take everything that's not going to be there or not fit. It helps if you know the dimensions of the rooms that you're going into, so you know what furniture is going to fit and what's not, but you want to do it that way.

And if you're just downsizing because it has to be done while you're still healthy, while your parents still can participate, you want to tell them, it's not that I don't want to do this after you pass. And it's not that I don't want to do the hard work or I'm lazy or I don't want to be inconvenienced. It's how I'm going to feel. Because I can tell you from experience, my own personal and everybody else around me because very few of my friends still have parents with them, and they've all gone through this. It's the last thing you want to do when your parents have gone and you're grieving and you can't make decisions when you're stressed to begin with. And grief is a huge stress. So you also don't want to be angry at your parents. You don't want that to be the last image that you have of them or the last feeling that you have of them.

Matt Feret:

I don't want to leave that to my kids. I don't want them thinking, why did dad leave me a year's worth of clean out?

Donna Barwald:

Right? Well, because it's also lonely. It's like I don't want to be here by myself doing it. I want to be with her and how does it feel to be in their house with all their stuff and they're not there? It's horrible. You expect them to come walking out of the kitchen at any moment, you expect them to be there. It's really tough and you feel lonely. You already feel like an orphan, right? Everybody tells me I'm an orphan. I'm alone. And so you feel alone and lonely in this, and chances are your siblings aren't right there with you. They are somewhere else, and you are the one who's stuck doing it because you're the one who lives close or doesn't have kids at home or whatever it is. And then you don't want to resent your siblings because they're not here helping you.

The last thing mom is going to want or would want is for the family to fall apart and not be close because of something that they did. If you appeal to your parents like that first and tell them, this is what it's going to feel like, and this is why I don't want it to be left to me when you're gone, plus how's mom going to tell you the story of what's important or not? How's she going to tell you where she got this knickknack, and whether it's important or not to her, or you may have seen it in your house your whole life, but what if it wasn't important to her and it didn't have any meaning or if it did have meaning, you want to know what that meaning is to transmit to your kids and your grandkids. They're never going to have met her, and you want them to have a peace and know the stories behind it. Having the peace isn't enough. I have pieces of my great grandmother's china, but I don't know if it was special or every day or anything because I got it after she was gone.

Matt Feret:

My grandmother passed away and a year and a half later my aunt sent me a box, like a travel box with the old timey little hooks on it. And there was a note and said, this was in grandma's attic, and we think this was one of the travel crates that her family used when they immigrated from French Canada. And I went, wait, what? I'm French Canadian, number one. Number two, this was in her attic. Did she use it? What was in it? Is that true? Do we know that it was used or did she pick it up at a yard sale five years before she passed? There's no connection there, but guess what? It's sitting. It's sitting right at the foot of my bed and my sweaters are in it, so I put it to use, but I have this, it's not even an heirloom. It's a family thing.

Donna Barwald:

Yeah, it's a possession.

Matt Feret:

It doesn't look nice. It's a travel crate. It looks like it's been in travel, and here it is. I have somewhat of a story and it's at the foot of my bed again. I put my sweaters in it.

Donna Barwald:

And that's why you want to do it with your kids if you can while you're healthy enough to do it. Because when you don't feel good, nobody's going to want to do it. And if you are not well, the last thing your kids are going to want to do while you're not well is go through your house. They’d rather be spending time with you. Let's get your story on video, mom. Let's do almost anything else because they know you're not going to be there for very much longer. So let's take care of this stuff in our sixties and our seventies and hopefully your kids will start the healthy habit of organizing now so they don't get to this part because I'll tell you kids now, they don't want anything. Except your records. They want your records. If you've got jazz records, hold onto those things. Jazz and classic rock, because they are in and expensive and you can get a lot of money for them. If you need to fund your retirement, either use the records or save them for the kids going to like them.

Matt Feret:

Yeah, that's so true though, because I am at the very end of Gen X. It depends on which number, ‘80 or ‘70. I'm 1976, so there's my age. I'm 47. I don't want any of my mom's stuff. I don't want any of my grandparents. I got my stuff. I'm good. Maybe the time when I was buying my first home and there was an extra dining room table, but I don't want anything. I don't need anything. I'm good. I don't collect antiques. I don't need stuff. I think that is a generational thing. I have friends my age and older who are just like, no, no, no, no, no, I'm good. I want to keep these small organized. I don't need heirlooms.

Donna Barwald:

Everybody has a china cabinet now. I'm the very end of baby boomer. My little sister is Gen X, but I'm a baby boomer. So I grew up with and love china cabinets. I don't have a house big enough for one, so I didn't take it. They're the one thing you cannot get rid of, entertainment centers and china cabinets. You can't pay anybody to take it out of your house. Well, actually, you could pay them and they take it straight to the dump, but seriously, you can't donate them. The thrift stores don't want them. And so the china cabinet and every single thing in it and the formal dinners and the place settings for twenty or twenty-four, no, if you're going to have that many people, you're going to have paper because who wants to be washing dishes? Nobody. You want to spend time with your guests. And so all of that is going by the wayside and going to vintage stores, maybe people will pick it up at some point in 20 years, but your kids are not.

Matt Feret:

haven't seen a China cabinet outside of my grandma's house in decades,

Donna Barwald:

And people don't have that big of houses.

Matt Feret:

Well, even the newer houses, the dining rooms are going away. The formal dining rooms aren't even being built often anymore.

Donna Barwald:

People use the formal dining rooms for everything else. A lot of people use formal dining rooms for the homework room because it's close enough to the kitchen and it's open so moms can check on, see what their kids are doing, or it becomes a craft room. My sister-in-law made her dining room into an amazing craft room and talk about organized. It was with all these fabrics and threads and papers and all kinds of cool things, but people just don't live like that anymore.

Donating or Selling Clutter with Donna Barwald [53:34]

Matt Feret:

I think everybody thinks their stuff is worth more than it is. In general, what are the big things that you might want to take a second look at that someone might buy, and the other stuff you think might be valuable isn't at all?

Donna Barwald:

Well, here's the thing. I'm going to give everybody this, and these people should be giving me commission because I'm telling everybody about it. It's the greatest thing. It's called heritageauctions.com. You can take a picture of whatever you've got and you can give all the description that you need. It's like antique roadshow. It doesn't have to be antiques. So it's anything that you've been collecting or have that you think has been is worth something, and you send it in, they have it right there on their website and you send it in and they send you an email back and they tell you what it is, if it's anything or if they handle it or if they don't. And then for sure, if you're keeping 50 billion beanie babies because you think they're worth something, well, everybody had 50 billion beanie babies, so they're probably not. Or I have a cabbage patch doll that my mother-in-law saved for my kids. And I think in transit, the film broke how there's plastic film on dolls on the packages, I think it broke. So it's certainly not worth as much as you would think that it would be worth. And I don't even know if it was the original run of Cabbage Patch, but if you think that something's valuable, check it out. That will stop every question. And people have declutter regret. So it's like they feel bad that they got rid of something that they should have kept. Whether it was useful or that was a big thing, is that they feel like they threw away something that somebody now is going to get a lot of money for, right?

So if you want to end declutter regret or stop it before it begins, know what you've got, take the time to see, because if those baseball cards aren't worth anything, why are they taking up half your garage? And I kid you not. I have a friend, if she watches this, she will laugh. Actually, her husband will be mortified because he has had tons and tons and tons of baseball cards taking up half the garage. I'm not even kidding. He's never looked at them. He just bought them and kept them. And there they are in their long boxes, which are impossible to find containers for or whatever. So they're just sitting there in the garage. And people just keep these things because they think they're worth something and it's like probably not. Although he does have an ancient Atari I would've said to get rid of it, and then I found out, nope, it's worth something. So yeah, you're going to keep the Atari, but then keep it in a safe. If you're going to keep it because it's a money source that you'll need to fund your retirement or pay for kids college or whatever it is, or grandkids college at this point, then keep it safe because it's not doing any good just sitting in the back of a cabinet getting squished every single time you put something else in there or sitting out on a shelf or whatever it is. So if you want to know what's worth something, you can go to Heritage Auctions and see what kinds of things they sell memorabilia.

Matt Feret:

I'll put that link up on the website for everybody to click to if they need to.

Donna Barwald:

If you're downsizing, if you're downsizing and you think that, I mean, and you're ready to get rid of stuff, you don't have to wait until you leave the house to have an estate sale. You can call estate sale companies and they might buy something from you because they know their audience, they know their buyers, they know their customers. They may have something or you may be able to give something on consignment or whatever. People always forget about estate sale companies.

Matt Feret:

Yeah, no, I didn't think about that. So if I'm trying to move and downsize, do I first go to the stuff I think is valuable? Get it checked out, don't go crazy, right? Don't go into, what do you think, $100, $500? What's the level here that you think is valuable? Is it up to you?

Donna Barwald:

Whatever they think. I don't know. It depends.

Matt Feret:

Because you don't want them and then call a state sale person and then let them run through the house and pick out stuff.

Donna Barwald:

I wouldn't let them run through, I don't think they're going to come the house unless they're actually doing the sale. But I think you can send them pictures, send them pictures and descriptions of what you got. Appraisers, same thing. If you've got jewelry you're not wearing now and they're taking up space in your jewelry drawer, and so if your kids aren't going to wear them, it's not their taste. My mother-in-law left a bunch of rings for my daughter who wears rings, but she certainly doesn't wear these kind, and so if they're actually worth something, it's worth more to my daughter to have the money to save for a house, I guess, than that, so you can go get things appraised. Now, that's part of the whole downsizing bit, but I would first, I don't know if you want to do that first, but maybe have the person who's worried about getting rid of things that are valuable, take care of that, and then if you're just looking to just get rid of the duplicates and triplicates and pick out your favorites, and you don't need every size clothes because if you go to Goodwill, it's full of smalls because nobody, it's ever could get small again, and so you might as well give away the smaller sizes because at this point you're just going to get bigger.

Matt Feret:

It’s always stay the same. I have a pair of aspirational jeans in my closet. That's what I call them. They're my aspirational jeans.

Donna Barwald:

I mean, keep clothes a size up and maybe a size down, but you don't need many, many sizes because by the time you get there, you're going to want to celebrate and have a new wardrobe anyway. It's going to be old or the elastic's going to be gone. Or if you're saving clothes for your grandkids, like cute outfits that the elastic's gone, the stains, the yellow stains come out, even though you wash the clothes, all kinds of things are just ruined, but because you're saving them, if you're going to save something, I don't know, save it small enough that it fits on a doll or a stuffed animal, but the kids aren't probably going to wear it and at this point it may not even fit because most people forget they have things until the kid is past the age that they needed it.

Matt Feret:

And that goes quickly.

Donna Barwald:

Right.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion with Matt Feret [1:01:39]

Matt Feret:

This has been a lot of fun. This has been a fun conversation, even though we've been talking about decluttering and the stress and the mental stress that you can do, but you've been given a lot of solutions, a lot of tips. What questions about this topic did I not ask that I should have?

Donna Barwald:

Well, downsizing is a big thing. Moving is a big thing. There are tips for moving that I could tell you about that is actually going to be in the next book. And that really goes towards your, because it's either going to be moving out of the family house and into a downsized place probably, or into assisted living, or somebody's going to have to clear out your house and the best way to clear out the house we didn't talk about, but there's that kind of thing, the steps that you go through.

Matt Feret:

Is that in this upcoming book, when you have to clear out somebody else's house?

Donna Barwald:

That's going to be in the next one. I wrote it as part of this one and it got put off in the editing.

It's going to be out by Christmas. Yeah, because there's a lot in assisted living and all of that kind of stuff. Oh, what we didn't talk about and what I do talk about in This Mess is Making Me Stress is the magic binder you can put all of your paperwork and business affairs in, for if somebody else had to take over your life because you can’t, or you're gone. So all of that, yeah, that's a whole big thing about organizing that we really need to talk about, especially because half the stuff's on a computer and half the stuff's physical files, or not even in files and all over the house. I mean, you have to gather all that stuff together. Plus, if there's an emergency and you have to evacuate, you want to have all that stuff with you anyway, so that's a big thing.

Matt Feret:

Well, all they can do is just buy your book. And obviously the links will be on the webpage as well as the show. Donna, this has been a lot of fun. Thank you.

Donna Barwald:

Thank you. It was lovely meeting you, and I very much hope that people will get a lot out of this and at least start to think about things and if it gets too overwhelming, that's what professional organizers of for.

Matt Feret:

It was lovely meeting you, and thanks for the time, and I know they will. This has been really valuable. Thanks.

Matt Feret:

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