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Episode: 274 - Clear the Clutter, Boost Your Happiness: Tips with Shannon Layko

Feeling overwhelmed by clutter? You're not alone. In a recent episode of the Debt Free Dad podcast, Brad Nelson sat down with Shannon Laco, host of the Paring Down podcast, to talk about how decluttering your physical and mental space can lead to a more productive and happier life. 

 

 

 

Shannon’s Journey to Decluttering 

Shannon began her decluttering journey during a major life transition. As a military family, she and her husband moved from Alaska to Florida, experiencing a massive transition not just geographically but emotionally and mentally. Shannon shares how she began to take decluttering more seriously after feeling overwhelmed by the accumulation of stuff, especially after becoming a parent. Her story resonates with many who find that the clutter in their homes distracts from what truly matters in life. 

Taking the First Step 

Starting can feel like the hardest part, but Shannon suggests beginning with spaces that aren’t emotionally charged. Areas like entryways or dressers can offer quick wins and help build momentum. The key is to start small and keep going. 

Navigating Consumerism 

In a world of constant consumer pressure, Shannon shares practical tips for avoiding the urge to accumulate. She recommends unfollowing accounts that encourage impulsive buys and replacing them with those that focus on contentment and simplicity. 

Shannon’s Practical Tips: 

  1. Be mindful of influences: Unfollow accounts that promote consumerism and follow those focused on minimalism. 
  1. Delay gratification: Screenshot items you want and revisit them later—you’ll often realize you don’t need them. 
  1. Start small: Begin decluttering with non-sentimental areas for quick progress. 

Finding Contentment 

For Shannon, decluttering isn’t about getting rid of everything—it’s about creating a balance that brings more joy and fulfillment. Less clutter means less stress and more time for the things that really matter. 

Contentment in Simplicity 

Shannon stresses that contentment is about appreciating what you have. Decluttering helps remove the barriers that keep you from living a purposeful life. 

Managing Kids’ Clutter 

Dealing with children’s toys can be tough. Shannon suggests the “10-minute rule,” which limits cleanup to just 10 minutes, creating a more manageable environment for both kids and parents. Surprisingly, fewer toys often lead to more imaginative play. 

Partnering in Decluttering 

Getting the whole family on board can be tricky. Shannon recommends leading by example with your own items and approaching your partner's things with curiosity rather than judgment to foster collaboration. 

Conclusion 

Decluttering your life is a journey, but with guidance from experts like Shannon Laco, it's easier to streamline and focus on what truly matters. If you're ready to tackle both your physical and financial clutter, now is the perfect time to start. 

 

Want more from Shannon? Check out her podcast, Paring Down, at theexpertbeginner.com, follow Shannon on Instagram at @paring_down. 

 

Resources Mentioned
Get better results with your finances in 30-60 days - GUARANTEED. Watch this video to learn how! - https://www.debtfreedad.com/payoff-debt-in-60-to-90-days 

Free Tools and Downloads at www.debtfreedad.com

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Transcript
Brad Nelson: 0:00
Do you ever feel bogged down by all of the stuff inside your house? Now, today's guest, shannon Layko, is here to help. She is the host of Paring Down, a podcast dedicated to helping you declutter not only your home but any area of your life that feels overwhelming. Now, through our conversation today, shannon will help us explore the physical and mental clutter that distracts us from what truly matters in our lives. Stay tuned.

0:28
You're listening to the Debt-Free Dad Podcast with Brad Nelson. Brad and his co-hosts experience the anxiety of living paycheck to paycheck before learning the fundamentals of financial success. They are now on a mission to empower regular people to pay off their debt for good and enjoy happier, less stressful lives. Keep listening for inspirational interviews, tips, tricks and practical advice to gain financial freedom.

Brad Nelson: 0:59
Hey guys, welcome to today's episode. I am Brad Nelson, founder of Debt Free Dad. I paid off about $45,000 of debt, have been debt free now for more than 11 years. I've also helped thousands of other people save and pay off tens of millions of dollars with the work that we do here at Debt Free Dad. Now, after listening to this episode, if you're someone who wants to take your finances a step further and you'd like to get better results, like with saving money and getting out of debt and as little as 30 to 60 days, you can start seeing these results. I'll be sharing some details about how you get started with that later on in today's episode. Hey, shannon, welcome to the Debt-Free Dad podcast. So glad that you are taking some time to hang out with us here today and share all of your expertise on paring down.

Shannon Leyko: 1:42
Thank you, yeah, I'm so happy to be here.

Brad Nelson: 1:44
Yeah, absolutely so. Can you share quick you know how you got into this, what motivated you to start your podcast and really start you on this journey of helping people with this complicated and challenging thing of reading yourself of things and stuff and clutter, and even if it's not physical clutter, just you know clutter that's in your mind and really giving you the opportunities to focus more on purpose clutter that's in your mind and really giving you the opportunities to focus more on purpose.

Shannon Leyko: 2:06
Sure, I think, like so many people, when they become parents, all of a sudden things become clear and I started getting really overwhelmed with the amount of stuff that my kids came with. And even when I got married, my husband and I had different thresholds for the amount of stuff we wanted to have around us. And yeah, and then once you add in one, two, now we have three kids it just kind of it just gets out of hand so fast. And so we are a military family and we were moving from Alaska to Florida, which is already an insane move in itself. And you know, as we were getting ready to move, and even a little bit during the pandemic when we were in Alaska, you know I would watch like tidying up with Marie Kondo and the whole edit that kind of thing, you know, and I've always been pretty good about getting stuff out.

Shannon Leyko: 2:49
But I started kind of taking it more seriously and and then that big move and we got to Florida and it was just it was a really stressful transition. I mean, I was very happy in Alaska. I'm a mountains girl, all of that, and it was very secluded and I love that. I am a hermit by nature. So then we're suddenly in a very high traffic area. That is just not my cup of tea. And on top of that I just was overwhelmed by our house, right. And so that's when I was like I want to recreate that piece that I felt in Alaska, not just in our house, but like I can't bring the mountains and the orcas here Right. So like, how do I find that? And what I realized upon a lot of reflection is that it was really the slower way of life up there, right. Like there is no such thing as two day Amazon Prime. Like you can't get stuff on the barge to catch a can Alaska that fast.

Shannon Leyko: 3:41
So I tried to recreate a slower life here as much as possible for my own mental health during that transition, and a big piece of that was just getting rid of as much clutter as possible inside of my home and as I was sharing that process on my kind of private Instagram page, so many people were interested.

Shannon Leyko: 3:57
This is such a common problem, especially with parents that are just overwhelmed by this stuff, and I thought, you know, I really feel like there's room for more voices on this. You know, we live in a consumer society where we're constantly bombarded with every Amazon influencer and fashion blogger all of that on social media, not to villainize them by any means, but we're getting so much of that messaging and I don't think we're getting enough to counteract that of those who are out there really kind of pushing contentment and decluttering. And so, yeah, I decided to go ahead and start my own podcast to kind of talk about my experience so far, and it's really gone well because, believe it or not, like all my friends who couldn't you know, who couldn't agree more about my experience, it seems to be like there's a lot of us out there that are very overwhelmed. So, yeah, so I have my Instagram at pairing underscore down and the podcast. It's been great.

Brad Nelson: 4:48
Right, yeah, it almost takes a message like yours to actually wake us up sometimes, because, I mean, consuming stuff is just so normal, having lots of things is just it's normal for a lot of us. It's like the stress you talked about. It's that, you know, you have that feeling of just overwhelm and maybe sometimes people can't pinpoint. It's that you know, you have that feeling of just overwhelm and maybe sometimes people can't pinpoint. Maybe it's the stuff that you have in your house. How do you know if that's the issue?

Shannon Leyko: 5:11
Well, I think you, I think everyone has had the experience I would say most people would have had the experience of cleaning out just even like one dresser drawer. You're like I can't fit all my t-shirts in here, I'm going to reorganize, and that dopamine hit. You get from having a dresser drawer that is now perfect and you open it. Sometimes you just open the drawer and you look at it, right, Like you finally take care of your junk drawer and then you just walk by it, open it just to look at how calming it is, right, it's like I walk into my closet sometimes just to take a deep breath. Now, you know, and I think the more I discovered that, that kind of reaction, the more I realized, oh, this would be really helpful if my whole house felt this way and for me.

Shannon Leyko: 5:51
I've done a lot of research into stress. So when I was 24, my mom passed away of bladder cancer. It was very fast, it was like a five-month battle, very unexpected. So she was a triathlete and a registered nurse and cardiac rehab nurse. So I mean she ran five to seven miles every morning. She swam a mile after work. She didn't drink, she didn't smoke, you know it was.

Shannon Leyko: 6:12
I mean she'd have like a glass of wine here and there you know, but like very healthy, and she was only 54 and everyone on her side of the family lived into their nineties, and in her last days she shared with me that she really felt that this had been brought on by heightened stress. My mom really struggled with managing stress and so, especially as I entered motherhood, as my life became more stressful and I noticed those patterns in myself, easily getting stressed I actively have searched for ways to decrease stress, and there's a study from UCLA in 2014 that came out and said that our cortisol levels actually rise with the amount of clutter in our homes, and that's particularly true for women. So that stat in itself goes into my deeper why of having lost my mom and wanting to be healthy for my own family, and that has, you know, has been a huge reason that I've grabbed the bull by the horns when it comes to decluttering.

Brad Nelson: 7:10
Yeah, man, it's interesting. I was on your show. We haven't talked about this. Our stories are very similar. My mom passed away from cancer at 57 years old. I was only 27 at the time.

Shannon Leyko: 7:19
Oh, wow.

Brad Nelson: 7:20
And that really, yeah, I'm sorry as well, and that affected me, though, greatly with the way that I look at stuff, the way that I look at money, my life, how I wanted to live it. So it's interesting that we both have come from that and have had that experience. There was another study that I just recently shared on my workshop here earlier this week, from timecom that's found out. They did this study out in the UK and they found that, speaking of stress, 60% of people who deal with stress it comes, majority of it, comes from financial stress. It is the number one thing that causes most stress related illnesses is money and financial problems, which obviously goes right hand in hand with a lot of the things that we're consuming and things that we're spending our money on. So I think sometimes we're blind to that, like how much this stuff, how much our financial challenges, really affect our overall quality of life and really our health as well.

Shannon Leyko: 8:13
Right. And the consumerist piece. Decluttering doesn't exist without the consumerist piece. They go hand in hand, right? So as much as it's important to get the stuff out of your house because of the stress that causes, right, another study shows that it decreases your housework by 40%. And I did the math and I looked it up that the average woman who's in the workforce this isn't even women who are at home in general, all day, every day, they do 2.7 hours of housework per was. It per day? Yes, so if you take 40% of that, it was an hour and five minutes. So over an hour a day that you get back. That's seven and a half hours a week. That's 32 hours in a month.

Shannon Leyko: 8:55
We're all so stressed trying to fit everything in Our clutter. It's taking our time. It's stressful when you lose things, when you're tripping over things and speaking of money not only the money buying things to get that dopamine hit that fades so quickly, and then you're just left with another dress in your closet that you never wear, that you can't find, and everything in your closet's a mess. And when you go to get dressed you're stressed out by the decision fatigue. Or you're guilty because you see all the dollar signs hanging in there, or you feel bad about yourself because nothing fits you at your current weight, all of those things, not to mention that.

Shannon Leyko: 9:27
But then you, you know the money you spend on buying things you can't find again because you repeat purchasing. Because my husband he's open about this you know he will repeat purchase things that are lost in the garage and then we finally cleaned out the garage and he has like five or six hammers. It's a waste of your money. You know when you think I'm going to hold on to this, because what if I need it again? You know that's, I think, probably the biggest struggle I hear of people who you know they have these mental roadblocks when it comes to decluttering and that big what if? Comes up a lot as well as the money piece of feeling like I don't want to waste my money. No-transcript, it just makes more sense to pare down than to hold on to everything out of scarcity when in reality that's not going to benefit us anyway.

Brad Nelson: 10:40
Yeah, I love that, I love that. So what would you say? I mean, you mentioned just earlier. You know how that dopamine hits when you just clean out something as small as, say, like your junk drawer, which we all have right. What would you suggest to somebody? I just got done with a major move in my life and I feel like I didn't really have that much stuff because I had moved three years prior to it, so I had gotten rid of a lot but I still had a lot and it was still overwhelming and stressful at times. So what would you suggest to somebody who is looking around their house and they're like I do have a lot of things, but they are feeling that anxiousness, that overwhelmingness of like, just where do I even begin, where do I even start and how do you kind of tackle this?

Shannon Leyko: 11:18
Yeah, it is overwhelming. I think all of us even those of us who think we aren't particularly stuff-oriented people just being a human things show up in your house. You know we all have more that we could probably get rid of. You know, unless you're an extreme minimalist and have been doing this for years, you know there's always more to find, even for me, and I've been doing this for years. So I would say the best place to start is if you're feeling overwhelmed. There are two good places or not two good places, but two things to consider when choosing the first place to start. The first is choose somewhere that's not going to have sentimental items. So decluttering is kind of like a muscle that you're building and you don't want to jump right into the stuff that's going to have all those mental roadblocks. It's hard to move past right.

Shannon Leyko: 12:02
So the second thing to consider is make it a space that's going to impact you enough that you're going to want to keep going Like you're exposed to that space enough that you're going to see it and be like oh, I can get that dopamine hit over and over and over again, because that's going to make you want to go and do another space. So I give the example of like. Let's say you're like okay, the under the bathroom sink doesn't have any sentimental items. That's great and true. However, you probably don't go under the bathroom sink enough for it to propel you forward in your decluttering journey. So I always say that your entryway, or if you have a mudroom, is an excellent place to start. Usually there's not really a lot of sentimental stuff in there. You might have a basket full of sunscreen. Just get rid of the expired stuff. You might decide to keep your shoes somewhere else or get a different shoe organization system. You might have a bunch of like tote bags for grocery shopping or whatever you can declutter. It's not going to be sentimental and it's going to have a huge impact every time you walk in the door. You're going to feel really, really good about that.

Shannon Leyko: 12:57
Another option would be like, especially if you work from home, tackling just your desk, you know, and you always zone down. So you might say, oh, my desk is kind of overwhelming, okay, focus on one area. I'm just going to do my drawer, or I'm just going to clear the surface, or I'm going to go through my files, and I'm going to do 15 files today, you know. So don't be afraid to break things down. But I would say that my two favorite are your mudroom or entryway, or your dresser, because the dresser is automatically a physical boundary.

Shannon Leyko: 13:28
It's not going to. You can't get more than what's in there. I mean, you might be trying to push those, the stuff down and push those drawers shut, but there's only so much that can go in there and then it's good for zoning. It's pretty clear. You can start with the top drawer, start with your underwear and socks drawer, because no one wants to dig through all the underwear they don't want to wear just to find the one pair they actually like. Just get rid of the ones with the holes that are uncomfortable. You know what I mean.

Shannon Leyko: 13:49
I always say, underwear is a great place to start, because you're going to see that every day. It's going to feel real good to pick out the pair you like. So those are my suggestions.

Brad Nelson: 13:57
Yeah, absolutely. I think we talked about this on your show. It's just really, it's starting small and when you get out of debt, you know, sometimes people get so overwhelmed because they looked at this huge mountain that they have to climb in order to get completely out of debt and it's like, well, no, let's focus on just that little one first. You know, when we focus on that little one, it's like you said, you'll see it, you'll check it off. It provides that motivation to keep moving forward and seeing that progress. So I love that. Who are? I'll give you an example here. I'm going to hold this up these little Stanley cups.

Brad Nelson: 14:25
I'm sure you've seen all the crazy about these right? I've got there's girls in our family, right, we? Of course we needed those Right, need right. But so how do you, what do you suggest to people who are overcome by that social influence of what everybody else is doing? How? Because I mean, we were so driven by. That was especially now with the onset of social media and phones I mean it's all right there, all the time in front of us. What do you suggest to somebody who's constantly overwhelmed with that kind of emotion to to do what everybody else is doing and ultimately bring stuff into the life that really isn't needed to really serve their purpose or what they're wanting to do.

Shannon Leyko: 15:02
Yeah, you know it's a tough one. I think we need to be gentle with ourselves. It's so easy to be really critical of people or of ourselves who get swept away by these trends that are obviously very shallow and unimportant. But as human beings, one of our primary needs is belonging. But as human beings, one of our primary needs is belonging, and so sometimes these items serve as an opportunity to feel like we belong, and whether that's right or wrong, it is what it is. So it takes a lot of courage in many ways to say I'm not going to jump on that train, I'm going to find belonging and trust that I'll find belonging without these external objects getting it for me. Because at the end of the day, I don't think any of us have ever bought something like that and then felt more accepted by a group maybe in middle school, frankly but even then we then feel like imposters. We then just feel like I know I'm not a cool girl, but I have my Stanley, so maybe they think I am right. It's still insecurity driven. So these are nuanced conversations to have internally with ourselves, but also with our children, to be gentle and help learn that it's okay to want to feel like you belong. That's natural, and let's find some healthier avenues to help our friendships flourish in a deeper, more fulfilling way.

Shannon Leyko: 16:31
You know, a really practical step here is to change what's happening in your social media feeds. I think we all know this, but when we see the influencers, and a lot of us might kind of justify it by saying it's just giving me ideas so that next time I do need a water bottle, I know which one works really well, right, but what really happens is it leads us to impulse buy. So something I've done is I, you know, I appreciate sometimes with influencers kind of telling me what to get and what to do, because I don't know where to start when I want to buy a new tennis dress, you know. So, um, but what I've done is I've actually I have a list in my iPhone, uh, on my notes app, of handles that I really love, like fashion bloggers that I really like their stuff, or Amazon bloggers that I know often put up really cool kids stuff that might be useful or whatever. I just don't have them in my feed. So then the next time I'm trying to pack for a trip and I have, you know, I'm like, oh gosh, I wonder if there's something that would be helpful for being on an airplane with my kids. I can then go into my list. I find the one that I know has kid stuff. I go look at it and see if they have something that might be helpful for me. Or I'm looking for a tennis dress. I go to my fashion blogger. I might go to her like to know it page and I search tennis dress right and she might have one that she shared.

Shannon Leyko: 17:46
But that makes this slow down and be more intentional about using influencers for only when we're actively in need of something. We're not just getting random ideas from them in our feeds. And furthermore, I think it's important that, because we have so much of that messaging, like I talked about at the beginning, that we of the consumerist side of things, that we purposefully follow people who have contentment and decluttering accounts and debt-free accounts, that kind of thing, because if we're going to have the other stuff in our feeds, we really got to balance it out, and it's a much smaller group of people that are doing the opposite. Right, but they are out there.

Shannon Leyko: 18:25
I was amazed when I started my Pairing Down account at how quickly I found other people with similar messaging as me, and it's really nice to have that in my feed, because two weeks ago was Amazon Prime Week and most of my feed was telling me you don't need it, it's OK, don't worry about it, it will go on sale again. If you really need it down the line, you don't need to try it. You don't need all of the stuff that's being thrown in your face. And that reminded me so when I did see the Amazon Prime stuff in my ads because those will get you no matter what. I had that messaging in my brain to stop me from doing that quick thing.

Shannon Leyko: 18:59
And then my last little piece of advice, besides the notes and unfollowing and all that would be to, when it comes to those ads, on a really practical level, take a picture of it, screenshot it and then put it in an album in your phone. I do this all the time called Things I Want and I'm like, because the algorithm knows you, they're like. You definitely would love this matching sparkly dress with your daughter to take her to Taylor Swift, and I'm like you're right, I really would. And so then I screenshot it and I put it in my whatever and I go back every once in a while and I'll go look through that. It's similar to a save for later on Amazon.

Shannon Leyko: 19:33
And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad I didn't fall for that ad, or I definitely didn't need that, or that would have been a waste of money and so it just slows you down. You still kind of get the dopamine hit of making sure you don't forget about it, but then you're not actually spending the money or causing more clutter to come into your home.

Brad Nelson: 19:46
Yeah, those are all such great tips. I love that you say you know just slowing the process down because marketing is just so good and you know the social media algorithms are just so good and it's man, they're just so good at getting you to quickly act and spend that money. So I love that you use that word slow down. You also brought up the word contentment. I want to share this because you said in your podcast description you mentioned that it's not about reducing for the sake of reducing, but about finding the perfect balance to guide us towards a life of deep contentment, and I think the word contentment for a lot of people isn't something that they regularly think about as being content, because we're constantly being told what we have isn't good enough and we need to buy more and more and more. Can you talk about the word contentment and how that fits into your overall quality of life and just having less stress when it comes to wanting to buy things or having things in your home?

Shannon Leyko: 20:38
Yes, I could talk about this all day. You know, contentment isn't saying you don't have any ambition anymore. I think people confuse contentment with complacency, and we need to get past that, because contentment is when you are truly fulfilled in life as it is and you can be excited about the future. Um, and so I would say that, when it comes to contentment with our stuff, we often think I need, I'll be content when you know I'll be content when I have a house that has enough rooms for all my kids in it, or I'll be content when I get X, y and Z right, and it's counterintuitive, counterintuitive. But the truth is that contentment is found when you have less. The less you have, the more content you'll be able to find. Contentment you'll be able to find Because then you're getting off this rat race of saying when, when, when I get this, then I will be happy, and instead you're looking around finding ways to be grateful for what you have right now. As you get rid of stuff, as you declutter things out of your home, you are then more grateful for what you keep, because you've been intentional about keeping it, and that adds to the contentment piece. So that's huge. And then, on top of that I would say that living with less really underscores contentment, because when you free up your home and therefore free up your time because of that housework decreasing, your stress has gone down, so you have more energy to put forth towards the things that are truly fulfilling for you, then you're going to be, your life is going to start to have more purpose attached to it, because a lot of us would like to get to our deathbeds and look back and say I'm really happy with the life I lived. But most people research. We know they get there, they look back and they say I wish I had done that. They have these regrets and it really centers around being more purposeful in their lives, oftentimes with their relationships.

Shannon Leyko: 22:36
I love Joshua Becker's definition of purpose. It's where your skill set, your passions, and meeting the need of another person or of others collide. It's where your skill set, your passions and meeting the need of another person or of others collide. It's that intersection, that Venn diagram, and he says that the meeting the needs of other people piece is really where something goes from being a goal to then having purpose, and that can be as much as it was pouring into your immediate family, it can be on a community level or it can be global, but the point is is that those who look back on their lives without regret are the ones who feel like they really lived a purposeful life, that they did, they had a skill set or they were passionate about something and they found a way to better other people's lives.

Shannon Leyko: 23:16
And we might think well, should I really have to live my life for other people? You know, we live in such a me meie, individualistic culture, especially here in the United States and in Western cultures, and you know there was a study that showed that high generosity people are 80% more likely to feel fulfilled in their lives when we are generous with our time, with our money, with our purposes. Right, and so it is really important, if you want to be living a life of contentment, to be generous, and I think most of us. We are bogged down by over-scheduled calendars. We are running from one extracurricular to the next.

Shannon Leyko: 23:53
We're bogged down by the amount of stuff in our house. We don't want to have anyone over because we're embarrassed by the amount of stuff in our house. We're exhausted at the end of the day and therefore generosity goes out the window because we can barely get by ourselves. How are we supposed to give to others? Right, and by decluttering and finding that contentment, your energy just goes way up. You're not bogged down by all these things that don't matter, by desiring more and more and more that you're just going to not care about on your deathbed right. Instead, you're going to be starting to have this energy to pour out into the world around you. So decluttering is not just about having an aesthetically pleasing home. Instead, it's about making space for that contentment and therefore for that purposeful life.

Brad Nelson: 24:33
Yeah, this is so good, Shannon. I mean I think everything you're saying because I'm just like so good, because it fits all in with what we talk about when it comes to reducing debt and reducing financial stress. It just goes hand in hand. It's awesome. And you brought up this whole idea of time and this loss of time. You actually did a social media post I saw was on your page and you had said that there are three invisible repercussions of making purchases that you don't need, and one of them was loss of time. The second one was distracted from your overall purpose and the third one was regret that you mentioned. I think a lot of people tend to forget about the opportunity cost of making these purchases. They'll think about that thing that they're getting, but what they tend to forget about is what they're losing. Can you dive in just a little bit to this post and how that all fits in?

Shannon Leyko: 25:20
Sure. So the biggest piece here is that everything you buy, everything that comes into your home, is also taking your time. You know whether it's part of the decision fatigue, because it's clothing and you're trying to figure out what to wear. You also have to figure out how to wash it. You have to all of that, right. Everything is time. You're going to be washing another water bottle. You're going to be putting everything time. You're going to be washing another water bottle. You're going to be putting everything away. You're going to be finding a place to store it.

Shannon Leyko: 25:46
It takes up space, so nothing is just. You get it in the moment and then that's the end of that. Everything in your house takes your time, and so there's so many like I said in that post invisible repercussions, because at the moment we don't see them. They're invisible to us. All we want is that dopamine hit. We want that cool new thing. We want that next gadget. We want whatever. It is that thing that told us at TJ Maxx you should buy me. I'm a cute salt and pepper shaker, right. But then what do you got to do? If you get a new salt and pepper shaker it's really cute you got to make sure you have salt and pepper and you got to pour it in there and you got to.

Shannon Leyko: 26:22
You know what I mean. You're gonna have to rent it out.

Shannon Leyko: 26:24
You got to find somewhere to put it. And then the kids take it off of the of the table and they pour it on the ground and then you have to clean it all up and you probably would have just been happier keeping your old salt and pepper shaker in the pantry and calling it a day you to put on your table. You know what I mean. So we don't think about those things. But the more you slow down your consumption and the more you declutter and you start to get rid of these things, that motivates you. I don't want to do that again. I don't want to buy that kind of stuff again and go through this.

Shannon Leyko: 26:51
But once you really slow down and start thinking, okay, what time could this add to my life, Then it becomes much easier to pass on a purchase. Yeah, and you mentioned TJ Maxx. That aisle to the checkout is crazy. You really got to have your blinders on in there, I know I'm like, oh, this cute notebook would be great to take notes on in church. I'm like, Shannon, you have an entire notebook pile in your office closet.

Brad Nelson: 27:13
It's fine, and sometimes it's not even you, sometimes it's your kids going through that aisle and that's my next question for you. So when you's like, how do you? So? When you got kids, you know how do you practice this balance between you know, decluttering and keeping, you know, a really good organized home that isn't overwhelming you, but then without depriving your kids or feeling like you're depriving your kids.

Shannon Leyko: 27:36
Yeah. So first of all, if you have young kids I have a three-year-old, a four-year-old and a six-year-old, oh my goodness, oh, you are busy, it's a time.

Shannon Leyko: 27:46
It is a time in life Let me tell you and the house, the biggest mistake, honestly, that I see what stresses a lot of parents out who are on their decluttering journey getting rid of toys and that kind of thing is that they feel like their home is supposed to look nice all the time if they've decluttered or if they're trying to declutter and then that stresses them out. So first let me just say this your house is going to look like a tornado came through it. If you have kids, I don't care how little of the amount of stuff you have is. I'm a babysitter here today, not every day. I'm so happy she's here today, but anyway, the point is is that I ran out this morning. I came back and we had cleaned the house, generally speaking, before she came over this morning and it just looked like a hurricane came through. Right, there's Play-Doh everywhere and there's toys everywhere and my daughter had changed her outfit four times and left every single outfit in the hallway, right, I mean just chaos, and I'd been gone for less than an hour and we have a really decluttered home. So I just want to encourage parents with that that the goal isn't that your house doesn't look like kids live there. Your children live there. They are allowed to live there. However, there are some really practical tips for ensuring that they can live there happily, but so can you. You deserve to have a calm space to live in as well, and this is possible. So for us, we implement the 10-minute rule when it comes to toys, which is, if the toys take longer than 10 minutes to clean up when there has been a kid tornado at, the worst kid tornado there is if it takes longer than 10 minutes to put all the toys away. We have too many toys, and so I literally will set an alarm clock when I do feel really overwhelmed, or like a timer on Alexa, and I will say set a 10 minute timer, and I start picking up and help. Of course, my kids help, but we start doing that, and if she goes off and there's still a fair amount on the ground, we say OK, it's time to declutter. So that's a big piece there too.

Shannon Leyko: 29:40
I would also encourage parents to remember that kids, they play so much better. I mean, I've had a lot of early educators on my show to underscore this. They play so much better. Research proves that when they have fewer options, they become more imaginative with their play. They become more independent with their play and it helps their curiosity grow. It helps their like I said, their imaginations grow. All of these things that are so important for kids.

Shannon Leyko: 30:07
And as parents, we feel frustrated when our kids say they're bored, especially when we have a lot of toys. We're like, well, they just go play, but they don't know where to start, and so for us, we don't really keep toys in the kids' rooms. My daughter has one thing in her room because my kids do 90. It's the whole thing, but they do have to spend 90 minutes in their rooms by themselves a day. We do a quiet time, situation, slash nap, and so I want them to have something in there to do. You know, I'm not trying to send them to jail, anyway. So my, because we do have a playroom and we haven't always. It's a. It's a long story. You military family, you move from house to house. So we had a formal dining room in this house we moved into and I was like, well, we certainly don't need one of those in our life right now.

Brad Nelson: 30:48
Who uses those? By the way, we have one too, and we're like what do we do with this?

Shannon Leyko: 30:51
Right, we turned ours into a playroom, but again, by the way, is mostly just one big open space with a couple cubes and a couple baskets and that is it. Our toys are very minimal for that 10-minute rule, but also to give them space to play. If there's nowhere for them to make a giant train with their wooden train set, why even have it? But so back to their rooms. My daughter has just her Barbie dream house in her room and that is it. I mean literally. She has her stuffed animals on her bed and she's got her Barbie dream house. She has her stuffed animals on her bed and she's got her Barbie dream house and she has loved that thing.

Shannon Leyko: 31:28
So a lot of my friends will say oh, my daughter, she just gets over that really fast. She played with it for two days and then you see a bunch of them on Facebook Marketplace that came out this past year for Christmas. And I think one of the big reasons my daughter really sticks to that is it's her only option, and so now it's not that she begrudges playing with it, it's that she's attached to it, it's the only thing. So she knows what she likes to do in there and her little doggies play together and she puts the girl down the slide and she rearranges it and whatever she does. And on top of that we had our small group from church over this past Sunday and so there were a thousand children in our house and all the parents were like I cannot believe that my child hasn't come and asked me for anything in the last hour and a half.

Shannon Leyko: 32:13
And of course there's novelty being in another kid's house, play better. But at the same time I had a parent be like she's just been in there playing with the Barbie thing, and another one saying I think that because there's nothing else in there, it's just exposed to them. It's so clear to them what to play with that they say, okay, I don't have to make a decision. And so then they just go off in their little imaginative worlds and they can have these amazing experiences when we're not asking them to first sift through all of the options before they can get to the imagination. It's too much. So yeah, I think that you can really find a great balance by kind of implementing some of these ideas for you and your kids to both experience peace in your house.

Brad Nelson: 32:51
Yeah, I'm going through the same thing. I went through this move and my daughter is going to be turning six here next month and she too had a lot of toys, just a lot of things, and most of the stuff she didn't play with, and I did have that guilt of getting rid of it. But I was like you know what we have to, we do have to get rid of some of this stuff. And I got her included and she got to choose which things she kept, which things she got rid of. Some of those things that she decided to keep I decided to get rid of anyways later, Because it's like I know you're just keeping this but you don't play with it.

Shannon Leyko: 33:17
But it has been that way, and that's okay. You're the kids.

Brad Nelson: 33:24
Right, and I've noticed the same thing, though, like now that she has less toys. She has one toy box and everything fits in there. She has nothing else anywhere in the house and when she goes to play she opens it up and she's playing immediately rather than, you know, just being surrounded by all of these things. You know it really has been an improvement, for sure it's been. It's been great.

Brad Nelson: 33:42
So, now that you talked about the kids, my last question for you, shannon, before I want you to share where people can find out more information, because I love what you're doing and I love your message. What happens when you have a spouse or a partner that is the clutter bug and you're the one who wants to, you know, start getting rid of things and decluttering, because this is a battle that I find when it comes to taking control of your finances is you often have one partner who really wants to get motivated because they're feeling that stress, but the other one's kind of dragging their feet and not really wanting to come to the table on that, and I'm guessing you probably experienced that too. When it comes to relationships, when it comes to things and stuff and decluttering, what kind of suggestions do you give to a couple that is in that type of a situation.

Shannon Leyko: 34:24
Yeah, so I know this firsthand. My husband is a stuff guy, as I kind of. You know, referred to that story of getting married and being overwhelmed by his threshold for this, so I actually had him on the podcast. If anyone wants to listen to it. It's a very funny episode because it's just real life. You know, I found out on air that he has, like hidden ice cream scoops in the house. I mean it's hilarious.

Shannon Leyko: 34:48
That's episode 19 of the Pairing Down podcast, if you want to hear his side of things, because we went also through like hey, what have I done that's helped you declutter? What have I done that has kind of put up your defensive walls, like what could I have done better along the way to encourage you. It was a great conversation, also hilarious. But yeah, I would say the biggest thing, the biggest piece here, because I hear this question all the time like how am I supposed to declutter my home if my husband or my wife isn't on board? I promise you can start with your stuff. You know I think we use it as an excuse. Well, I'm never going to get there, so why even start? Because so my partner won't do it. But if you start with your stuff first of all. You're going to see a big improvement when you walk into your closet, open your drawers, anything that you use, your water bottles, your blankets that you use, whatever you can. Declutter your stuff first and I promise that almost by osmosis it starts to affect your spouse or your children even. But the more you start with kind of demanding someone to meet you where you already are, where your decision has been made that this would be good for your house and for yourself, your mental health, whatever, that demanding kind of a posture is only going to make them want to keep their stuff more.

Shannon Leyko: 36:02
And something my husband said that really helped was when I showed more curiosity and why he wanted to keep certain things, instead of saying, oh, like I cannot believe you have this ridiculous towel in here still, like this thing's a million years old, like why in the world won't you get rid of this?

Shannon Leyko: 36:18
Right, and I say why, but I'm not actually asking but saying, hey, this towel seems really important to you, is there a story attached here that I don't even know about, and it is amazing what they will share.

Shannon Leyko: 36:31
And my husband said that actually helps him then to get rid of the stuff, because what he really wants is acknowledgement of whatever that represents to him, and he wants it from his partner in life to validate that he is not an irresponsible human being for having acquired his stuff. Instead, he wants to tell me the story attached to it. He wants to tell me what his dreams were with this tool. He wants to tell me why this gadget excited him, and once he tells me about the podcast he listened to that made him wanna buy this gadget and why he got it, even though he never uses it. Once he tells me that whole story, he's happier to let it go, because then it feels like it validated his entire experience. And so I would just say to be gentle and approach with curiosity, in addition to just really starting with your own stuff.

Brad Nelson: 37:17
Yeah, those are all great tips, shannon. So, hey, where can our listeners learn more about you? Get your podcast and anything else that you're doing out there.

Shannon Leyko: 37:30
Sure, so you can find my podcast, the Pairing Down Podcast. I always try and let people know it does not have an I in it. I know that is confusing, so P-A-R-I-N-G is not like a pair of socks. So there's that and then Pairing Down. On Facebook it's pairing underscore down, and you can also visit my website, theexpertbeginnercom, where you can find my newsletter. I have a blog. I have a book that was published in 2020. All that stuff is on my website, theexpertbeginnercom.

Brad Nelson: 37:57
Awesome. Shannon, thanks so much for being here today. I appreciate it.

Shannon Leyko: 37:59
Thank you for having me.

Brad Nelson: 38:01
Absolutely All right, guys. If you want to pay off debt, save more money and take control of your finances and start seeing some amazing results in as little as 30 to 60 days, all you got to do is head over to debtfreedeadcom, click on the green button at the top of the page and we're going to show you how you can get started about that, baby.

38:21
Let's talk about your money. Let's talk about all the good things, all the bad things that may be. Let's talk about that. Let's talk about that tune into debt-free dad all right.

Brad Nelson: 38:44
As you guys know, that sound means it's time for the celebrations of the show, and today we are kicking off with Carla. Carla said I spent a lot of money yesterday for back-to-school expenses, but it was all allocated for and came out of my budget and paid cash, carla fantastic win. Back-to-school expenses are certainly expensive, sherry. I used my gift cards to pay for half of my kids' school supplies yesterday, which is awesome, sherry, congratulations to you and Hope. It's my birthday month and I was able to purchase a new dress for my birthday dinner. Best part, it was paid in cash and on sale. Awesome, win. Hope, congratulations and happy birthday to you.

Brad Nelson: 39:27
As always, guys, congratulations to all of you guys who are taking a stand for your financial life and you're wanting better. Hey, we get that. Getting out of debt isn't easy, but with our help and with your consistency and discipline, we promise you guys, this will be some of the best work that you guys do in your entire life. Thanks for joining us on today's show and we will see you guys on the next episode. Take care.

39:52
Thanks for listening to the Debt-Free Dad podcast. Connect with us on Facebook, tiktok, youtube and Instagram. Just search Debt-Free Dad. If you found value in today's episode, please leave us a rating and review. We so appreciate it. For resources, show notes and links mentioned in today's show visit debtfreedadcom. Catch you next week.

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