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June 16, 2021

089 - Summit 04 - Reduce Clutter to Improve Productivity + Save Time & Money with Rebekah Saltzman

Free up more energy to focus on your most important projects, activities, and relationships by being more intentional and strategic about the things you invest in.

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Physical clutter creates mental and emotional clutter that drains our time, money, and energy.

When we have more things than we need, our energy gets scattered in different directions as we work to maintain the possessions we "own".

Rebekah will show you how to free up more energy to focus on your most important projects, activities, and relationships by being more intentional and strategic about the things you invest in.

 

ABOUT REBEKAH

Rebekah uses her professional design skills to help her clients create organized and beautiful spaces for themselves and their families.

By helping her clients streamline everything from clothing to papers to books and household goods, they have found that they get the most out of their possessions and stress less about managing it all.

Rebekah holds a degree in fashion design from Parsons School of Design, and for many years worked as a graphic designer. Her passion for the environment and helping people improve their lives drove her to change careers and create Balagan Be Gone.

A native of Silver Spring, Maryland, Rebekah lives with her husband and three children in Israel.

 

 REBEKAH's COMPANY

  • Balagan Be Gone - Clear your clutter, Clear Your Mind
  • GET YOUR CLUTTER CONQUERED AND MAKE YOUR STUFF WORK FOR YOU

 

5-DAY CHALLENGE FROM REBEKAH

 

CONNECT WITH REBEKAH

You can connect with Rebekah on LinkedIn or at rebekah@balaganbegone.com .

 

E-BOOK

 

GAME PLAN

 

 

Transcript

Rebekah is super awesome, and you're going hear me say, awesome, I'm still stuck on awesome. I'm a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. My brother grew up watching. I'm from the 80s. So in the 90s, we say, awesome, Rebekah is going to help you look at some of the things that you can let go of that maybe you don't need on your journey, that it may be kind of tying you down or making things less less smooth, less easy.

 

And so while you're going to hear me say, yes, let's focus on where we want to go, so much of the journey is just making room for stuff, letting go things. Yes, I love that Alcalay bunga boom. So thank you so much for joining us. I'm going to get off stage here and let you go. Rebekah is joining us from more than across the pond. Where are you coming to us from today, Rebekah?

 

And I'm from Israel today.

 

Awesome. Thank you so much for making the trip. We appreciate you. Hope Customs wasn't so good. I wasn't so bad. Thank you so much. I'm going to listen your stuff to get swabbed.

 

You know my Corona test now.

 

Oh, boom. There you go. Awesome. All right. Thanks, Rebekah.

 

OK, hi, everybody. OK, so sorry, Wade, I can share my screen, I have you can share your screen now. I like doing this but you can't see maybe you hear my voice. It's kind of like, all right, this is God. You can share your screen now.

 

All right. So here we go. Let me just make this full screen here so I can figure out how to do it. So I'm I'm Rebekah Saltzman. I'm really happy to to be here today. And I. Can't figure out how to make it if you go to view it should be under view and then full screens down a bit. Here we go, about halfway down, a little further down, boom.

 

OK, so hi, everybody. I'm Rebekah. And actually what Wade was talking about, I came on earlier just to hear what he was talking about. And the thing about stuff is that it actually really inhibits us from doing the things that we want to do because, you know, it takes up our time. So today we're going to talk about reducing clutter, improving productivity, saving time and money because you have less clutter. So let's let's just dove right in here.

 

OK, so my motto is clear your clutter, clear your mind. And the thing about doing that is that when you have, like, stuff constantly around, it just makes it more difficult to focus on exactly what what is going on. It makes it more difficult to focus on the task that you need to do. And what it ends up doing is it ends up taking longer to complete your tasks. So if you're, like, really interested and heading to the beach, if you are not working in an area that is clear and clean, I mean, unless you're sitting at your car at the beach.

 

Right, with your laptop plugged in, that's awesome, too. But if you're sitting in an area that's not conducive to having a clear mind, where you can think and focus is going to be a much, much more difficult to actually get out and reduce the amount of time that you're working. So I always like to tell people that clearing your clutter does improve productivity. It saves time and money. And today we're going to talk about exactly how that happens.

 

So when you have less stuff, you actually have less to worry about. There's a Jewish proverb that says more possessions, more worry. And I find that to be totally true, because when you have, like, just more stuff than you actually need, when you actually have, like an excess of stuff, it actually becomes more difficult to care for things because there's just more to manage. Like a bigger house is actually harder to take care of.

 

There's more rooms to clean. There's more toilets to clean, there's more floor space to clean. There's more to pick up. Oftentimes I find that when people have larger homes, they tend to put more stuff in the house, which means that there's more stuff to care for. So when you have less stuff, you have less to care for. That usually equals less to pay for. And when you have less to care for and less to pay for, you don't have to earn less money.

 

But earning more money doesn't become necessarily the priority anymore because you can find a way to live comfortably within your means and be happy and feel gratitude for the things that you have. And you'll have much less stuff on your to do list. But I just want to highlight that actually. I think that sometimes having less allows you to make better purchases when you need something and it allows you to focus on gratitude, which, as you all know, is a receptor for bringing more good things into your life.

 

So the more gratitude we have, the happier we feel and the easier it is for for for good things to come our way. I always say, if you want abundance to come into your life, then you've got to make space for the abundance. Right. So that's really important when you have less stuff there, space for abundance to come in. So let's define what clutter is exactly. And clutter, according to Webster's, is just a collection of things lying about an untidy mess.

 

And while sometimes that just happens because that's life. And I mean, I have three kids. I don't know if you guys have any kids or not or you have a spouse or whatever, like animals. Pets. Right. Like sometimes things just come into our lives and and they are untidy. But the ideal is when you can actually get them very quickly resolved, it makes things much, much easier. The important thing to remember is that we actually excuse me, we actually.

 

Accumulate clutter by buying it like we are saying, like, oh, yes, I am going to consciously bring this thing into my life, right. I'm going to go to the store. I'm going to get online, go on Amazon, and I'm going to order ten thousand things. And there are all just going to magically show up at my house. Right. Or if you go to Target. Right. Like it's all going to show up in your house and you've gone shopping without planning, you've gone shopping without being thoughtful, you've gone shopping without being grateful.

 

And I think that what happens is, is you end up accumulating a lot a lot of stuff and you haven't made a plan for any of that stuff. So when we go out and like not and we're not thoughtful about what we're purchasing, we actually cause ourselves to be more cluttered and we bring it on ourselves. It's true. Sometimes you get it as gifts, but I think that's less less frequent than actually what we are purchasing for ourselves. And the ironic part is there's a lot of times we purchase things because we think it will make us more productive or it will save us time or it will save us energy or money or make us healthier.

 

And then we don't end up using it. Like, I can't tell you how many times I go to someone's house and there's like, I don't know, 20 bottles of vitamins that nobody ever used and they're like expired for ten years or fitness equipment or workout clothing or just any kind of clothing, really. Like we have these high hopes. We have some sort of like disposable income and we go ahead and we just let ourselves accumulate. And what that does is it creates clutter, but it also creates more responsibility for us.

 

So the big question is, of course, how do you actually get rid of the clutter? So I, I want to before I talk about that, I just want to go through exactly why we keep Gauthreaux, why exactly we keep clutter, because I think once you understand why you keep it, it's easier to let things go. And and in my experience, what I have found is that you keep clutter either because of worry, fear, sentiment or obligation.

 

And I have to say that there are some times when I feel when I fall prey to this to like, oh, well, you know, this item was new and I barely used it. And, you know, if I if I give it up, then, you know, maybe I'll need it in the future. But I think we're fooling ourselves thinking that if we haven't used something in a long time, said for things that come in like emergency situations, but I think we are fooling ourselves when we say to ourselves, like, oh, one day we'll need this.

 

And it's true. Sometimes once you find something and you give it away, then, you know, the next day you're like, oh, that would have come in really handy. Right. But here's the thing about that. You probably didn't even remember that you had that object before you found it. When you're declaring and once you and like even if you knew that you had it, you didn't know where it was. So it was like not on your mind.

 

And I find that, like, what happens a lot of times is because people have so much clutter is that they they can't organize themselves and they end up buying duplicates and spending a lot more money on things and wasting time shopping for things that they already have because they can't find the first thing. So that's just a little side point. But the the biggest problem with Qatar is that it it delays us from finding what we need. And it's a big time waster, but we keep it because it seems like sometimes it's the right thing to do.

 

And I think that we have to just move past that and come from from the stuff as a as a as in an abundant mindset. So if you like the way that you want to work, you know, fewer days per per week, the same thing, like you've got to make space for that to happen. If you want that to happen, you've got to minimize and reduce what needs to happen in your day so that you can take care of the things that you want to take care of and the people you want to take care of.

 

So the most important way to actually getting cluttered is to dedicate time to this. And I know that people people are always like, OK, so can you just come to my house and throw out all the stuff? And I'm like, nope, can't do that. And the reason why I can't do that is because I don't know what you need. And so my job is to keep you on track. My job is to help you figure out where to put everything and figure out why you need something and why you don't.

 

It's something, but when it comes to actually declaring, if you don't dedicate time to dealing with it, it's just not going to happen. So many people are like, yeah, just come to my house and let it go. And I'm like, I just I can't I can't do that because it's like weight loss. If you want to lose weight, you have to put in the effort. You have to go to the gym, you have to eat healthy.

 

You have to reduce your calories. You have to meal plan. Right. Like if that's something that you want to happen in your life, you got to put in the time and the effort. The good news is, is once you put in the time and the effort, it takes a lot less time to maintain. It's fairly easy to maintain and it's a lot faster than trying to lose weight. So so once you dedicate time to dealing with it, that's going to that's going to be the first step and it's going to really move you forward.

 

I always say if it's not on your calendar, it's not real. So officially put, you know, every Sunday at three p.m. on your calendar, as you know, for our time slot, as a way to do clutter and and really. Stick to that and the way you can stick to that is by number two is getting help if you're struggling with actual process, if you're struggling with the time management aspect of it, because a lot of us, even though we want to declare we're just not motivated enough.

 

So you could get a pro like me, a personal organizer, and that's great. But you don't need to get a personal organizer. A lot of times it's enough if an older child helps you or a friend or your spouse, it doesn't have to be a pro. The advantage that I found to a pro is like getting a personal trainer when they're trying to work out is that they can help guide you in a way that your friend, your spouse, your kid, your whatever can't necessarily guide you.

 

Because, you know, I deal with this all day long. So when you get stuck psychologically, like, I can push you through. The other thing that I have found is that when people put money on the table and pay for a pro to help them. It gets done because they've invested in themselves. So if you're having trouble putting the time on the calendar and sticking to it, you know, get someone to help you who even if they're not a pro, like who you pay, like, OK, you're not going to pay your spouse but a friend, like, OK, I'm going to buy you lunch.

 

Your kid, like you're going to get to pick dinner tonight, whatever it is, put some sort of consequence out there so that or, you know, some sort of monetary penalty if you don't do it, like make yourself a penalty so that you can actually get things done and and again, get help wherever you need it. And number three is start small, fine places where you can have easy wins. I always like to have people start in the bathroom.

 

It seems like kind of ridiculous place, but it's actually not because most people can clear out their bathrooms in between 10 and 30 minutes. And most people, not all people, but most people. It depends on how good your bathroom is. But find these small little places where you can have big wins, hits a nice table next to your bed, hit one drawer in your desk. Wherever it is, it doesn't matter like starting small so you can have these easy wins and start to feel the difference makes a huge, huge, huge difference from a practical standpoint, when you're actually declaring you're going to just want to pull everything out of the space, wipe down the space and then slowly put things back.

 

I found that that when you're going by yourself is the easiest way to the fastest way to manage things. And and another thing is, if you have a lot of categories within the area, like so let's say we're talking about a bathroom. So you have like oral health, you have hair care, you have first aid, whatever categories. You have separate things by categories as you're as you're putting them back. And that's going to be your organizational system, which is huge because a lot of the time what happens and why people get cluttered in the first place is because they just don't have any systems in place.

 

So, for example, if dishes tend to collect in your kitchen sink and you know, you don't really want to do the dishes, one thing that really makes it easier for a lot of people is to never put dishes in their kitchen sink and just throw them into the dishwasher or anything that needs to be wash my hand like I always tell my clients to have a basin in their kitchen sink full of water so that, like, everything just gets dropped in.

 

And then when you're ready to clean it, it's chalk and it's much faster. So putting these, like smaller systems in place is really, really important. And another thing that's really, really going to help with organization is to clearly define real estate for for whatever category of things you're putting there. So get your label maker out or get some masking tape or order labels on Amazon or whatever. You need to make it clear to you where things go, but not just to you, to other people who you live with.

 

And it's going to be like life changing once you designate a specific space of real estate for something, whatever it is, and actually know that it goes there. And when you're ready to clean up, it's much faster and it's easier to clean as you go when you know where things live. OK, the most important thing here is, to be honest, most people are just not honest about what they actually need and what they actually don't need. And so go through the list that we went through.

 

Are you holding on to it because you're worried? Afraid? It's it feels like obligatory. It's sentimental. You're worried like you might need it. Whatever it is, address that feeling, be like, OK, I'm worried. I need my phone because, you know, I can't I can't live without it. And OK, so maybe this is not the thing that you do clutter, but when you're going through your, let's say, electronics and you find like a bunch of broken charging cables and you're holding on to them because.

 

Oh, well, you know, I might need this. It's broken. You went out and you bought something new because that one was broken and you were holding on to it just in case. But even when the just in case comes, it's not going to work for you. So let it go. And and that's where the honesty needs to come in. Be honest about what you actually need and what you don't need. And and it's going to be a lot easier on that same note, when you have when you buy something to replace something that's broken, get rid of the broken item right away.

 

There's no point in saving it because it's broken. And finally, give everything a home, I touched upon this a little bit already, but it's worth mentioning again, give everything at home. If you can't give it a place to live, then I would question if you actually really need it, because if it's not important enough to give a piece of real estate to, do you actually need this item? And I think that asking yourself that question, and I know it's very popular to ask yourself, oh, does this spark joy or does this not spark joy?

 

I have your mortgage paper, Spark Joy, does your kitchen spatula spark joy? No. Do we need those things? Yes. So, like, if you can't give it a place to live, then maybe you have one too many kitchen spatulas. I also think that it's important because there are definitely some things that even though they don't bring us joy, we need to keep them like the mortgage paper. So setting up systems for how you manage your papers so that when new papers come in, you can quickly slot them and and deal with them, regardless of if they're digital or hard.

 

Copy, when a paper comes in, you want to know, like, OK, this is going to this file on my computer, this is going to that folder in my filing cabinet. Whatever it is, give it a home in the real world. In the digital world, it doesn't matter. Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate it. This is my contact information and I guess I'll check out the questions now. I saw that there were some things in the chat here, so I'm just going to stop the chair and ask for their questions for me.

 

Yeah. So first of all, thank you for sharing your your insights. There's so much to that that I think is so cool. We had with a couple comments and so OK, first of all, say yes. Let's see the. Debbie said, yes. Yeah, that's the end of my spaces, Alice's I can't stand clutter, I'm always trying to maximize my workspace and hobby space. I said my wife is an awesomely dedicated clutter. I always try to make sure that I remain useful because it's useful.

 

It's good. It's good to have a schlepper when you're and and I like that you took out the spa because I don't always spark joy in my life.

 

But I guess I get the useful the useful part keeps me keeps me safe. So one of the things that I've had people ask me about Rebekah and some of these are things that came even and I did the podcast interview and I had some people say two things. And you addressed one of them, which was which I liked, which is do I have to have a professional do Cloudera? And to me, it's like anything else. Well, there's there's different levels.

 

You might not need that person. I mean, it sounds like a person should just get started and try to do something first. Right. And then see if they can do it. And if five hours later they're looking at the same things, then then maybe they think maybe they need help.

 

So the thing about help is that I find that for certain areas, people might be like really efficient at it, but they might need help on other areas. So a lot of times people are like, hey, I'm feeling really good about getting through the papers, but I'm really stuck on the garage. And so, like, because that task seems much more overwhelming and they they don't know how to approach it, actually, one of the things that I talk about a lot with my with my people is kids.

 

And a lot of times people say, like God parents say to kids, go clean your room. Right. Well, what what does that mean, like, it's not clear, so it's the same for you, like when you're standing in the garage or the basement or the attic or someplace that you don't go a lot and it's just sort of become the dump. It all feels overwhelming because you just don't know where to start. So if you're feeling like, OK, yeah, I can manage the kitchen.

 

Yeah, I can manage the paperwork. Yeah, I can do my bedroom closet. I just need help in this one area. That's fine. Like I think you have to sort of know your limits. It's like if you can go to the gym, if you want to train for a marathon. Right. Like you can, you can hire someone to coach you like part of the time and and give you a routine to manage the rest. Like I always give my clients homework in between.

 

So like, if they're stuck, like. They can also do some by themselves and also do some with me, like it's not so it doesn't have to be like an all or nothing thing.

 

I think that's awesome. I think, you know, people forget like anything else. It's usually not going to happen right away. I know in the case of my parents, they had moved after having they had moved a while before, but they had kept a house. There's little overlap while they had the house and had been in the second house. So now was time to OK, we're finally going to let go of this house that they'd had for 40 something years.

 

And so we as the kids all went over, it's about an hour and a half from where we live. And just like you said, there were certain things I would watch my father and my mother. There's certain things they could tear right through. And it was the more practical stuff like, OK, you know, the I mean, like like, OK, does this shaving lotion. Is there anything in here? No, great toss. Whatever.

 

That was simple. Yeah. But there were some of the things where I remember as the kids were like, OK, then we're just going to bring it across, we're going to load it. It was literally quicker. And this is not on my parents. My parents are very intelligent people. They're very coherent, they're very clear. But there's so much depth and memory with some of their stuff that we couldn't just like. I'd see my dad looking at it and, you know, he was getting lost in the memory and that's not a bad thing.

 

But we were like, we need to get our butts over to the other side of the state soon. So it really and we did it over, I think, like four or five trips. And I mean, there was a lot of stuff and they're very generous. They gave away a lot of the stuff and whatnot. But there was so much stuff that we couldn't. Delegate it because, yeah, you can I mean, you could, you know, somebody says, well, why don't I do it for you?

 

Well, you can pay somebody 15 bucks now and say, great, take out the trash. That's a very different thing. But if you want some sort of. You know, here to it, like I've even there's two things I've let go by my middle school yearbooks and I'm still mad that I did that. But of all the things that's fine, that the one or the two things of literally hundreds of things I've let go of, but I got to do it.

 

Whereas if somebody else did it for me, I might be carrying a story of how well they did that and why do they do that. So it's almost it's almost like a little dangerous. No.

 

One of my rules of declaring is don't throw out other people's stuff. Because especially if it's your spouse, because it just creates so much tension in the relationship. And so what I always say is when a wife says to me, oh, but my husband's really the problem. That's like a common refrain that I hear. When a wife says that to me, I said, listen, if his stuff is getting in the way of your cleanliness, just box it up, put the date on it.

 

So you know, when you did it and put it in the basement, if he really needs it, he'll go down and get it. Like most of the stuff they don't even notice it's not there. And this this goes the other way, too, for wives to like. I have some clients who are husbands. Right. And and I just say, like, if it's in your way and it's bothering you, then just box it up.

 

Like you're not throwing it out when they need it. They can go in search for it, but it doesn't need to be in prime real estate.

 

Yeah, and that's the other thing that I've learned so much is, you know, sometimes people get caught up in the you know, I could sell it for this amount.

 

Oh, that's the worst.

 

OK, I have my idea on that. But what what do you tell people when they say I could I could sell it?

 

OK, so I'm assuming it's not some like it's not like, you know, something that's worth ten dollars million, but the normal I can sell it.

 

The problem with selling it is that it takes time to sell it so know, so you have to hold onto it until it sells. And that means that it's still clutter in your space. So yeah, if you, if you have something that's like, OK, if you have some really good furniture, let's say, yeah, that's probably worth selling, but be prepared to sell it at a much lower price because like, you know, you're selling it secondhand.

 

You're not going to get what the retail value is for it. Right. I mean, for most things anyways. But like. I find that the best thing to do is to let it go, and what it does is it creates this space for you to have abundance, come into your life and the money will come back to you. I got to tell you that most of the time when I'm doing disordering with people, I would say 90 percent of the time people find significant amounts of money.

 

Like several hundred dollars, because it's like it created the space vacuum, first of all, people stash money in the weirdest places.

 

But like you mean they literally they find the cash. Oh, you're not free from selling stuff. Like they literally find cash.

 

All right. They find checks that they misplace. They find like gift cards.

 

And you know, the thing about the selling, it is just what you said, now you've got another job and how much do you make per hour and do you really want to do that? And then. Oh, by the way. You bet. OK, great. Now you've got to go to the UPS store and buy some stuff and shit like all this Fagel. And it's usually not worth what you paid for it. And then plus if you donate it, depending on how you do your taxes, you get a tax break for it.

 

So you might end up with the same amount of a tax break, you know, 20, 30 percent ish and close enough. And then you might help somebody. So there's there's so much, I think, confidence in gently letting something go. I mean, what have you found with that?

 

I find that it just. When you can let things go, it's like it's like the good karma comes to you when you can donate it and it's Univers, it's God, it's whatever you believe in, like being like, well, you are generous. I always say actually, what I always say to my to my clients is. You are blessed to receive it, pass the blessing on to somebody else.

 

I love that, and that's huge, like when you can reframe it for yourself in that way, it becomes more about like making space for yourself to do the things that you want to do and less about the stuff in the money. And I think that that's the whole point, like going to the beach doesn't make you any money, but it makes you happy. Right. And in the way that we earn more money is by being happy and having gratitude and and feeling good and like that attracts these other positive things to us.

 

So I feel like when you can when you can do that, it's. It's easier I'm actually coming to the U.S. next week and I'm going to clean out my parents house and I'm actually going to be documenting it on Instagram if anybody wants to watch it.

 

Oh, that should be cool.

 

Yeah, because I was like, OK, so I'm an organizer. It's my childhood home. Right? My parents live there for forty four years and my mom, my dad still is there, but my mom passed away and I haven't been able to get back since she passed away because of Katrina. And so I'm coming next week and I, I've already made a plan of exactly how I want to approach it. And I am anticipating having some emotional days.

 

But like I think and I said to my dad, I said, listen, even I am going to need help. I'm going to need help. First of all, from a physical standpoint, like I know in the basement, there's like a lot of stuff that's just going to be heavy lifting. So I'm going to need some help so that I'm waiting till my brother comes. But like the other areas in the house, I just was like, I'm going to need help with the paperwork because I'm not really sure I'm not in charge of the estate.

 

I'm not really sure what is necessary to keep and what is not necessary to keep. So I need your help. But everything else I can I have carte blanche to, like, make decisions on in that situation. I said to my dad, I was like, I need your help. And so, like, even I ask for help. Like, I don't think anybody can do all things alone, even if you professionally do those things. And this isn't necessarily about declaring, but related to the topic is when you can get help, outsource or just get assistance in general just to make projects easier for yourself.

 

It's always worth it, because in the end, even though you're spending money well, in my case, I'm not spending money on it. But even if you spend money on it, you get it back in time because working with somebody else helps you move more quickly.

 

Thank you. So, first of all, I'm sorry to hear about your mom. It's OK. Thoughts and prayers and all that stuff. Debbie Ford shared a couple of things. I just figured let her jump on real quick. And she had some really cool comments. I thought, I'm loving what you're sharing, Rebekah. It's so perfect. We my whole family just did what we call the great purge of twenty twenty, which is now continuing in twenty twenty one.

 

They've gotten older. Right. My family is a little bit older and like Wade, you know, nothing saying anything negative. But my parents are amazing and they got to a point where my father was, you know, had fallen down the stairs and they've been on the second floor. And so we had to go through and kind of downsize a house that they lived in for over 50 years. And it literally took, I don't even know, maybe six months just to kind of get the main things done.

 

And like you were talking about the emotional pieces, my mom still has pictures of me from when I was in. I drew like in second grade. They're hanging on the wall, like and those things for her, like talismans to that time. And they're very precious. But she's done so good there on the first floor. Now they have the whole thing organized. And and what you said about getting help is so important. My aunt my uncle came over was during the middle of the pandemic's.

 

It was kind of crazy. But we managed to get through a lot of the pieces and we found that you had to just like kind of organize things into groups and then pick the group you were going to go at that day. And and and then my husband and I decided because of what's going on with them, that we were going to downsize our home. So literally in three weeks, we decided to put our house in the market, three weeks to downsize three quarters of a four bedroom home.

 

I moved our stuff across country from San Diego to DC, got an RV, three cats and an RV. We're like stuffing and stuff.

 

And to get Amber V..

 

But and then and then, you know, we close in the house by the time pretty much they're almost here. So everything kind of flowed. But we're now living in that space that had cleared out to be near them. We're renting that out with them. And I rented an office because I had way bigger space before. But the beauty of the space that was created is the love that is filled at the time that we have together. Now, they're not constantly swimming and things are wondering where things are.

 

Their mind is not consumed, which, you know, as you get older, some of your capacities are a little less are not consumed with where those things are. And we don't even realize, I think, how much of our mental process, if you think of like a CPU as our brain is being used up right on those things, decision fatigue is a real thing like and and when you're thinking about like all the things you have to do, it definitely related to like stuff and even to not stuff.

 

From a time management perspective, we have to do list. Right. When you think about all those things all the time, it's like it's stressful and it inhibits our ability to make decision and other important decisions. I mean, the most powerful people in. The world wear uniforms because, you know, presidents usually wear uniforms, Mark Zuckerberg wears the uniform. Carolina Herrera, Diane von Furstenberg, like famous fashion designers, wear uniforms because wearing a uniform and not thinking about what you're wearing enables you to spend more of your creative force doing what you love to do.

 

And it it frees up your your brain to function at a higher power, I think. And I think what's what's key about what you said, Debbie, is that when you. When you can free that up, it just it makes things so much easier, like some nights I sit at my house and I'm like, OK, what am I going to do? I look around, there's no dishes, there's nothing on the floor. Like, I'm like, Honey, you want to watch TV?

 

You want to go out like it's just nice. We can just sit there and have like a nice time together. And I think that's that's that's the point, right? Like, what else are we doing it if we can't sit on the couch and watch TV, if we want to make two new mantras or less is more. And I value space over stuff. I just do. Those are my two things. I love everything.

 

Thank you for sharing that. I wanted to really quickly make sure for people Rebekah didn't want to bring herself too much. You'll see in the workbook there's a thing she has that's called her power ours for cleaning. Check that out. That's really cool stuff. She helps people in a group setting over Zoom to declare their stuff. So that's something else that if you think you need help or want some help, that she can help you. That. Rebekah, thank you so much for sharing your stuff.

 

My pleasure. Doing just again, thinking of you and your family, hoping you go well with I just quickly add that this week is the last week for power hours this coming Sunday and will resume again in late July, August. So if you're interested, definitely send me an email and was awesome.

Safe travels for having me coming out. Absolutely. All right. Take care.

Rebekah SaltzmanProfile Photo

Rebekah Saltzman

Professional Organizer, Podcaster & Course Creator

Rebekah uses her professional design skills to help her clients create organized and beautiful spaces for themselves and their families.

By helping her clients streamline everything from clothing to papers to books and household goods, they have found that they get the most out of their possessions and stress less about managing it all.

Rebekah holds a degree in fashion design from Parsons School of Design, and for many years worked as a graphic designer. Her passion for the environment and helping people improve their lives drove her to change careers and create Balagan Be Gone.

A native of Silver Spring, Maryland, Rebekah lives with her husband and three children in Israel.