Kathi (00:00)
hey friends, welcome to Clutter Free Academy where our heart is to help you take small doable steps to live every day with less clutter and more life.

And I am here with Tonya Kubo, who is the leader over in our Clutter Free Academy Facebook group. And if you’re not a part of that, I don’t even know why not. It’s free, it’s amazing, she does such a great job there. But we are doing a new kind of episode here today. We’re calling it a mailbag episode. Tonya explain what we’re talking about here today.

Tonya Kubo (00:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, so what happens over in Clutter Free Academy, Clutter Free for Life, but it’s more pronounced over in Clutter Free Academy is, you know, folks join our community and they assume that they are the only person that struggles with clutter, or at least the only person who struggles with clutter like they do. And then they discover that there’s like, you know, we’ve got over 15 ,000 close friends in that group who have the exact same struggles as them, that they are not alone. At the same time, though, when they’re brand new, especially, they…

you know, they hesitate to ask certain questions because they don’t know what kind of response they’ll get. So oftentimes they will email me their question or they’ll send me a private message on Facebook with their question. And sometimes, you know, we’ll just have that private conversation. Other times I will generalize it and post it anonymously to the group and answer it that way. But what I realized is that our podcast listeners who aren’t in the Facebook group, they don’t get the benefit and they also don’t know.

that they can submit specific questions for us to answer here on the show. So what better way than to make all of that known is rather than is to have the mailbag episode.

Kathi (01:35)
Yes.

Okay, and I think we’re going to be doing this about once a month. So if you have a question, what’s the best way for them to ask it, Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (01:50)
Well, you know what I would love for them to do is if they are in the group, then they can just post it to the group and say, hey, Tonya, consider this for a mailbag episode and put their question there. The reason I would love that is it gives everybody in the community an opportunity to speak into it. And I think that will help us make an even better episode. So they don’t just get Tonya and Kathi’s perspective, but they get everybody’s perspective. However, if you’re not in the Facebook group and Facebook isn’t your thing, email me at Tonya at kathilipp.org.

Kathi (02:03)
Mmm, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (02:20)
and just put mailbag in the subject line and I will take care of you from there.

Kathi (02:25)
I love it. Okay, so what is today’s mailbag question?

Tonya Kubo (02:30)
Okay, so we’ve titled the this episode with you know what to do when everybody wants to leave their stuff at your house. That was not the specific question that was asked at the same time. I think that is most likely the most acute problem a lot of our listeners have. So I’m going to tell you the question and we’ll answer that specific question, but it also speaks to the title of the episode. So stick with us on this. So the question that came in,

Kathi (02:49)
Yes.

Okay.

Tonya Kubo (02:59)
was from a parent, right? So sandwich generation, right? So they’ve got, they have parents and then, you know, they’ve got adult children. And the issue that they were, well, actually it was the observation that they made was that kids these days, and I use the term kids lightly, because I think to them, I would be a kid, but live differently. Young adults live differently now than they did 30 years ago.

Kathi (03:03)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (03:29)
And so what this member was acknowledging was that, you know, when they were 19, they were married and in their first home. And that home, that very first home was furnished with things that their parents had been saving for them for when they moved out of the house, right? They brought in their hope chest. They had, you know,

Kathi (03:47)
Right.

Tonya Kubo (03:51)
the hand -me -down dining room table, so on, so forth. And they were very appreciative of those things because it gave them a great start in life. And by the time they were 21, they already had kids and they were still, they have this history of welcoming items from either their parents or from their in -laws as they were building this house out. Fast forward to today, they’ve got kids in their late 20s, early 30s.

They don’t own a home. They maybe don’t even want to own a home. They don’t have kids. So here our member has been storing all this stuff, saving it up for their kids to take to help get them that strong start as they build their new home or they live with their family and their kids don’t have that need. And so their question is like, what do I do? Right? Because it feels it.

Kathi (04:25)
Right.

Right.

Yes.

Tonya Kubo (04:50)
It feels bad. It feels like being a bad parent to get rid of that stuff. Because what if the kids need So tell me your thoughts, Kathi.

Kathi (04:56)
Right. So I think it’s interesting and you know, we’re talking about that sandwich generation. I will tell you that also my mom wants to give me stuff and also my kids don’t want to take the stuff that they want. You know what I mean? Like we had, we had a

Tonya Kubo (05:11)
Mm -hmm.

Mmm.

Kathi (05:25)
a situation where all the kids had moved out of the house and they were expecting us to store all of their stuff. So there’s so many different situations to this. So I would say to our gentle listener or, you know, Clutter Free Academy member is to say, it’s time to have a heart to heart with your kids and say, do you want this stuff? Will it serve you? And if they’re saying,

Tonya Kubo (05:34)
Mm -hmm.

Kathi (05:54)
Yes, we want that stuff, but not now. You need to make the decision. Do you have the room and the desire to keep it until they’re ready for it? Or do you need to say that’s not really going to work for us now? Because here’s what I would gently say to our Clutter Free Academy member, that having that stuff for your kids could actually be costing them money.

You know, do they need an apartment that could handle that dining room table, that hope chest, that China, whatever that is. And like you said, a lot of people don’t live that way. You know, there’s also so many articles right now about how people who are in the baby boomer generation are living in these giant houses because it makes no financial sense for them to downsize.

Tonya Kubo (06:50)
Mm -hmm.

Kathi (06:54)
It would actually cost them money so a lot of people who are in who are Millennials who need the bigger houses can’t have the bigger houses because it doesn’t make sense for baby boomers to move out like there are so many factors here at work and It I Know this that we have some friends who are in their early 30s They don’t want the stuff they want

to be able to move their entire house in the two cars that they own. They want to be able to live in cheap apartments and live that way. So I think it’s worth having that conversation. But here’s the key, being okay with whatever your kids tell you. So if they say, we don’t want the China cabinet, we don’t want the formal dining room.

Tonya Kubo (07:32)
Hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (07:53)
We don’t want those things to be okay to say, be okay with them saying that and you getting, you finding a new home for it. Now here is where I will push back on your kids having a say. If they say, I want all my stuff from my childhood, but I don’t have room for it.

Tonya Kubo (08:03)
Mm -hmm.

Kathi (08:21)
then I think it’s up to the child to come back to the house and go through the stuff and say, you know, you can say, hey, I’m willing to keep two tubs of this or 10 tubs, whatever it is. You get to decide how much space you will allot to storing other people’s items. But it’s not, you have to keep it because I don’t want it. Does that make sense, Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (08:32)
Mm -hmm.

It does, it makes complete sense. Because what I’m hearing is, first of all, you as the parent have only so much responsibility in this situation. I think that’s the big thing is it’s hard for parents to realize that as children grow up, they…

eventually come to a place where they need to take responsibility for their stuff, right? It’s no longer on you to store things for me. It is on me to take possession of the things that are important to me or to find a solution to keeping those things if my lifestyle right now doesn’t fit them.

Kathi (09:12)
Mm -hmm.

Yes. Tonya, here’s what I, the other point I want to make, and then we’re going to take a break and we’ll come back and talk more about this. What I see as being a major point of contention is I, as the parent, feel you should want this stuff. And what do you do with those feelings? So we’re going to take a quick break and come right back. Okay, we’re back.

We’re talking about when everybody wants to leave their stuff at your house. So if your kids are saying, I don’t want that stuff, and you’re saying, but you will someday, can I tell you? For me, that was not true. I don’t need a thousand of my baby pictures. I don’t need my bronze shoes. I don’t need X, Y, and Z. Now,

There may be parents out there who say, but you’re going to want this and it’s not true. And we have to trust our adult children to say, no, that’s not important to me. And that’s okay. It’s okay to say, I think that we come from a long line of people who, you know, I spent so much money bronzing these shoes. And to say, well then as a…

Tonya Kubo (10:38)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (10:55)
as a parent, you can keep those, but as a child, I don’t have to receive those. So I think it’s okay, and we have to, as parents, say it’s okay for our kids to say, what is important to me as a parent is not necessarily important to my child, and I have to be okay with that. That the stuff does not always represent a life. And…

Tonya Kubo (11:00)
Mm -hmm.

Kathi (11:23)
You know, when my grandmother passed away, there were a thousand things I could have taken. I think I took four and that was enough to represent my relationship with my grandmother and my mom was okay with that. And so to be okay with the amount of stuff and not put a burden on our children to say, but you’re going to regret it someday. You’re going to regret. I think we instinctually know what will be important to us even 10 to 20 years from now.

Tonya Kubo (11:31)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (11:53)
And there are ways of preserving those things, taking pictures of them or incorporating them into our decor. But I don’t want storage boxes of my stuff that I then have to burden my children with. And I don’t want them to have storage boxes of stuff that then have to be a burden to them.

Tonya Kubo (12:06)
Mm -hmm.

Exactly. Well, and I think, you know…

What some parents worry about, and I’m, I think some adult kids, honestly, are not willing to have the hard conversation. You know, hard conversations don’t have to be conflict conversations. But a lot of times, you know, when, when mom says, well, but you want this, right? It’s just easier to say yes than to actually take a pause and say, you know, actually, mom,

Kathi (12:35)
Right.

Right.

Tonya Kubo (12:51)
No, I don’t. You know, I’m in my fourth apartment of my adult life and I’ve never seen a need to have my baby shoes or to have this or to have that. And, you know, I had a friend one time who her mom kept storing up stuff for grandbabies and my friend was having a very difficult time conceiving. And at one point,

we were cleaning out a closet and my friend was getting rid of all these things that had been stockpiled for her future children. And she says, you know, Tonya, I am just tired of holding space for babies that refuse to make an appearance. Right. And that was her thing. She was like, you know, I haven’t given up hope, but I need to stop like taking up all this space because the baby is just not here.

Kathi (13:32)
Right, wow.

Tonya Kubo (13:44)
And I was like, you know what, you’ve got a great point. And we did, we did a ton of decluttering. And the funny story was, is a year later, she ended up pregnant and we’re talking like 12 years of trying, right? She ends up pregnant and I asked her, I said, do you have any regrets? And she was like, no, I don’t actually. She goes, do you know how depressing it would have been to go through all those boxes and how overwhelming? She’s like, now I’m just going, okay, I know exactly how much space I have. I don’t have the, I don’t need a baby to fit the things that have been stored.

Kathi (13:44)
Right.

Of course. wow.

Yeah.

Tonya Kubo (14:12)
I can just buy what fits the lifestyle we have.

Kathi (14:12)
Yeah.

Hmm. You know what? It’s it’s so true. You know, everybody has to right size their life. And I think that there are some of us parents who are like, if I give this to my child, I’m not going to feel guilty for not wanting it.

Tonya Kubo (14:21)
Mm -hmm.

I think ultimately that’s really what it is, right? We all want to be good parents until the day we die. And I think sometimes what we, like our definition of a good parent isn’t always the same as our kids. And I think it’s a great idea to just have that conversation like you suggest.

Kathi (14:34)
and yeah right yes

Yeah, and it’s okay. I do not feel less loved because my kids do not want my stuff. And that we have a good relationship is the ultimate legacy I want to pass down, not my things. I also think that there is a space that we have to get into where my kids are not China people or quilt people.

Tonya Kubo (15:02)
Right.

Kathi (15:23)
or whatever it is, but there are those people out there who would love and appreciate those things. And so to find those people, it doesn’t have to be my child, but there are people who appreciate those quilts. There are people who appreciate milk glass. So find the people who will actually appreciate the things and…

Tonya Kubo (15:23)
Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Kathi (15:51)
You know, for the children who are out there who are like, I don’t want to keep the stuff. I don’t want to keep this stuff. May I gently suggest take some of the photographs, you know, take the photographs of you as a child, take the photographs of you with your parents and display a couple of those things that will be a signal to your parents about how much you appreciate them without having to have all the stuff in your household.

Tonya, for the kids who are listening, I would gently suggest having those conversations in small doses early and often and to let your parents know how much you love them without having to have this stuff. Did your mom try to put a lot of stuff on you, Tonya?

Tonya Kubo (16:47)
My mother was a hoarder. Of course she did.

Kathi (16:49)
Of course she did. How did you, in a hoarding situation, this will be my last question for you, in a hoarding situation, how do you have that conversation? And I know hoarders don’t receive those things well, but what was, yeah.

Tonya Kubo (17:05)
I was like, you can’t have that conversation. You just can’t. So it’s the same advice I give members of our community all the time. It’s like, you have to make a decision. You can say yes to everything to keep the peace and get rid of it on your end, however you choose to. Knowing full well they’re going to ask where it is every time they come to visit you all the time. They’re going to expect to see it, to visit it, just like it’s a museum. So that’s one choice. The other choice is to say no.

and have that conflict over and over and over again because it very rarely will not let like will not end in a conflicted conversation. Or you can go to your parents’ house and say I will go through it here and throw those items, donate those items in front of them, which you have to recognize will cause them extreme grief and extreme anxiety.

Kathi (17:58)
You had to make a rule with your mom that she couldn’t leave stuff at your house, right?

Tonya Kubo (18:02)
Exactly. Everything that she came with, she had to leave with. And that was hard because from her perspective, we had all of this space. Why were we so selfish with our space? We had a garage. We didn’t need to park our cars in the garage. We could store stuff that she wanted to leave there. We had closets. I had a car trunk. Why couldn’t my stuff, why couldn’t her stuff stay in my car trunk?

Kathi (18:12)
Yeah.

It’s a heartbreak, it really is. Fortunately, most of us don’t have to deal with a true hoarder. Most of us just have to have an awkward conversation and you can do it. But if you’re a parent, know that them taking or not taking your stuff is not a sign of how much they love you. It’s a sign of how well you’ve raised them to live with less and that’s a good thing.

Tonya Kubo (18:36)
Mm -hmm.

Kathi (18:55)
Friends, you’ve been listening to Clutter Free Academy. I’m Kathi Lipp. Now, go create the clutter free life you’ve always wanted to live.