Clutter steals your joy and robs you of happiness.

The other day, I was going through my closet and it was a mess! I had way too many clothes, shoes, and purses. I started to clean it up, but then my bedroom was a mess from throwing clothes out of my closet. I honestly just wanted to quit, because it was just so much work! I sat down, staring at the massive pile of clothing, and saw that I had to come up with a system fast or else I was going to end up sleeping on top of a pile of clothes. I sat on the floor surrounded by clothes and figured out what my system would be. I would assign categories to my clothes that would help make the process much easier and less emotional since I have a habit of getting emotionally attached to things. If I loved an item, it went back into the closet immediately. If I wasn’t sure about it, I put it in a pile on my bed. If I hadn’t worn it in a long time, it went into a bag to either sell online or donate. The system sped up my project, and by the end of the day my closet was organized and I felt I had accomplished something important. Furthermore, I set up future rules for clothes once they go into the closet. For example, a new shirt that I love will get hung up immediately, but then I have to take one thing out of the closet. It takes rules like this to keep things organized, because if I don’t set up rules, the closet will just get messy again and I will have wasted hours of my time.

Cleaning out my closet is a good example of what it was like when I first learned how to budget. My finances were a complete mess. I had bills that were being automatically deducted from my checking account that I had no idea I was paying. I had no filing or organizational system for my paper bills, things were getting lost, and I had no idea how much debt I was in (partly because I was too afraid to know). It was embarrassing, and I didn’t want anyone to see my messy room with bills and credit cards stacked high. Just like cleaning out my closet, things got a whole lot messier before they got cleaner when I first started dealing with my money. I had many nights of tears, confusion, and embarrassment as I dealt with the mess. It was so overwhelming that there were a lot of times that I wanted to quit. Knowing why I wanted to get out of debt helped me to keep on going.

It took a little time, but I finally started to declutter my finances and get my money organized and back into some sort of order. The first step was putting together my first budget, and I did it using rules similar to those I used for my closet cleanup. Those budgeting rules are necessary to keep my finances organized and decluttered. If I stop sticking to the rules I set as part of my budgeting, chaos and clutter seem to sneak in again.

After a while, the new norm becomes a clear set of financial rules. At first you have to keep reminding yourself that your hard work will pay off over time. When I first started to budget I would tell myself, “Don’t look at the negative side of what I feel I can’t do, look at the positive side of what I can do.” A Bible verse I would frequently say out loud was Philippians 4:13: I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Armed with a positive mind-set, I felt much more capable of moving forward and becoming successful.

This was such a life transformation for me that the number one thing I tell Recovering Spenders who come to me for financial help is, “Clean your house.” Why? Because clutter steals your joy and zaps your energy. It makes you feel that you can never get ahead.

If you want to get out of debt, you need laser focus. Money management expert Dave Ramsey calls it acting with “gazelle intensity.” If you don’t have laser focus, it is easy to get discouraged and quit. I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to have any sort of clarity when all I am looking at is a mess. Cleaning your house can help free up some of your mental space, so that you can make room for all of the new information you are about to receive. Think of my organized closet again for a second. If I were to step into a messy home I could (and would) feel drained.

I have four small children, and keeping my house clean all the time is just not practical or realistic. As I write this, I am sitting in my dining room looking at a beautiful crayon drawing on my freshly painted dining room wall. But don’t let life’s little messes stop you. When I say clean your house, I mean it. Give it a real spring cleaning, no matter the season. Make places for things, organize, and then sit in that clean house and stare at the clean walls. Bask in the relaxation you feel in your clean house. And when your kids leave the occasional drawing on the wall, take time to laugh, then clean it up and move on.

I was recently inspired by the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, in which author Marie Kondo writes that one should go through a content audit at home. While holding up every item in your home, you should ask yourself, “Does this item bring me joy?” If the item does not, it gets donated or thrown away.

When I started to do that exercise in my own home, I would come up with a multitude of reasons why I needed to keep all my stuff. I would say things like, “I may need that someday,” or “I forgot I had that.” I made so many excuses, and those kept me from letting go of things. This contributed to living in mental clutter. Once I started to be bold and give more and more away, my mental clutter finally started to break up. I started to see through the fog!

When we moved back to New York from South Carolina and into that tiny town house, we had many reservations about where we would put our stuff. With the help of some men in our new church, we moved all of our belongings into our new home. One man asked, “Do you think you are downsizing too much?” I knew we were, but I didn’t see any other option. We were so determined to get out of debt that we told ourselves we didn’t care what anyone thought of us (but secretly I did).

We only had room for our beds, a dresser, and one of our couches in that small house. Everything else sat in the garage until we figured out what to do with it. But despite the uncomfortable feeling of being in a rental and having all of our belongings shoved into a dirty garage and storage unit, that first night in the town house was special. We borrowed a folding card table and two folding chairs from my in-laws because we had already sold our dining room set. We didn’t have our coffee mugs unpacked yet, so that night we went out and bought two red coffee mugs at Walmart. We had a Keurig and some K-Cups from our old house that we unpacked, and we sat in the chairs at the table in our empty living room (which was about the size of the master suite closet in our last house). The heat wasn’t even turned on, except for the space heaters in our kids’ bedroom, yet the peace I felt was indescribable. I sat and looked around the dark and empty room and was overcome with gratitude. I realized that all the stuff we had was suffocating me. That stuff that I had loved so much, that had put us into debt, was now sitting in a dirty garage waiting to be sold. It had gotten us deep into debt, and I started to hate it. That stuff had robbed me of my joy, and as I sat in our empty room drinking from that red Walmart coffee mug, I was glad to be done with it all.

But the excitement of living so simply was brief. I started missing my old stuff and my beautiful custom house. I loved that home so much.

Our junky little town house sat in a row of run-down rental houses at the entrance to a dead-end street. On the other end of the street were beautiful custom-built homes. I would take my children for walks down that road every single day past those beautiful houses. Angry thoughts would creep in. “I used to live in one of those houses. I wasn’t supposed to live in this crappy town house.” I would walk by the kids playing street hockey in the road, and wave to the moms who were sitting in their driveways socializing with each other, and I would think to myself, “They know where I live, what do they think of me? I used to be just like them. They have no idea of the sacrifices that I am making in order to be debt-free.”

It was as if I had dropped a social class and I was seeing things from a completely different perspective. Eventually my self-pity wore off and I would walk by those homes and wonder if the people living in them were just like I used to be. Were they drowning in debt, or were they doing all right? It’s impossible to know, but I slowly became secure in the knowledge that my housing did not define me. I gained confidence in knowing that we were making the best decision for our family, and that because of this sacrifice we were going to be debt-free much faster.

Over the next two months, we sold almost everything we owned except for our beds and the couch. Mark even sold his beloved drum set (he made this sacrifice for the second time since we had been together). Every dime that we made got us closer to our goal of being debt-free; every item that left our house got us closer and closer to mental clarity. I started to feel increasingly at peace and relaxed. We were paying off debt and the space in our garage was opening up.

To realize what an impact moving into this small house was for us, here is our budget from when were living in South Carolina and had $7 left over, compared to our budget back in New York:

Savings of $800 per month!

Savings of $150 per month

Savings of $50 per month

Savings of $45 per month

Savings of $250 per month

Savings of $60 per month

Just by moving from that huge house into a rental town house, we were saving $1,355 per month! That means that even though Mark had the same salary in New York as he had in South Carolina, we were able to put an extra $1,355 per month toward our debt payments.

Suddenly, that small town house didn’t seem so small anymore; it felt right. We literally had no room for anything new, so I couldn’t buy anything. We were seeing debt disappear quicker than we imagined, and I was seeing hope by reducing the stuff around me.

I started to sell items from around my house on eBay and Craigslist. Every extra cent that I made from having a garage sale, selling a piece of clothing on eBay, or selling a piece of furniture on Craigslist went to paying down our debt even more.

I continued to declutter throughout that year, and after finding out we were pregnant with our third child, we decided to buy a house a year later. We purposely bought a smaller house so we wouldn’t fill it again with unnecessary things. We purchased an old 1920s home of 1,800 square feet. It was a simple home, not much flash, but significantly larger than the 800-square-foot town house. Our mortgage payments were less than the rent payments at the town house, and we were able to get approved for a loan even after the short sale a year earlier. Shortly after we moved into the new house (eighteen months after having our third child), I discovered we were pregnant with baby number four. We were thrilled at this new life, and started to talk about moving to another house that was bigger, with more bedrooms. We went house hunting a couple of times, but my gut kept on saying no. I was terrified of putting myself into an expensive home again. I would wake up at night with bad dreams about our money. So we decided to stay put in our modest 1,800-square-foot historic home.

I wish I had realized earlier in life that decluttering your finances and your home is life-changing. When I started to realize that the stuff around me was stealing my joy, it made it a little bit easier to let it go.

Now let’s talk about how you can have this life-changing experience for yourself.

1. Sign up for a free eBay account.

2. Go through your house and find everything that you no longer use or need.

3. Start selling items on eBay, Facebook buy/sell pages, and/or Craigslist.

4. Use the money you make from selling to fund an emergency account or pay down debt.

Chapter 21

Recovering Spender Step 8:

Declutter Your Life to Regain Your Joy

ACTION STEPS FOR THE RECOVERING SPENDER

STEP 8