40: Decluttering Your Life: From Chaos to Simple Joy with Hayley Forster
Declutter coach, Hayley Forster, shares her personal journey with hoarding and how she transformed her mental and emotional health by decluttering 70% of her possessions.
Hayley offers practical tips on how to declutter not just physical possessions but also how to declutter how people spend their time. She recommends starting with a time audit and making sustainable changes, prioritizing, and being kind to oneself throughout the process.
This podcast will inspire listeners to create more white space in their lives and pursue the things that truly matter.
Summary
Decluttering can be a life-changing experience for people looking to create more space, time, and energy in their lives. Hayley Forster, a declutter coach with over ten years of experience, knows this firsthand. Her personal journey with hoarding led her to declutter her home and about 70% of her possessions, leading to a transformation in her mental and emotional health.
Hayley believes that decluttering is not just about getting rid of physical possessions but also about decluttering how people spend their time. People can map their time for an average week and think about what they do outside of work hours, what activities they do with their family, and how much time they spend on themselves. This exercise can be a big eye-opener for people because they don't necessarily realize how much time they spend doing certain activities that aren't work.
To get started with decluttering, Hayley recommends doing a time audit to identify areas where time can be saved and then making changes to make those areas more efficient. This can include decluttering the home, meal planning, and organizing the calendar. She advises against going too hard and too fast when decluttering, as this can lead to overwhelm and make the changes unsustainable. Instead, she recommends prioritizing and making changes slowly but surely.
Sentimental items can be difficult to process and can derail the decluttering journey. Hayley recommends starting with easier areas to declutter before tackling sentimental items. She also emphasizes the importance of sustainable change and being kind to oneself throughout the decluttering process.
Hayley's website, simplejoy.co.uk, offers a free PDF guide on getting started with decluttering when feeling overwhelmed. Her Instagram handle, @hellosimplejoy, showcases her work and offers further insights into the decluttering process.
At the heart of decluttering, for Hayley, is the idea of creating more white space, which is precious time that people can choose what they want to do with. By removing the excess clutter in their lives, including excess stuff in their cupboards, calendars, and relationships that aren't adding anything to them, people can create more time to do things they want to do, such as pursuing hobbies, spending time with family, or engaging in self-care.
In a world that bombards people with things to do, buy, and be, decluttering can provide a powerful pathway to achieving more freedom and choice in one's life. As Hayley notes, decluttering is not just about the physical act of tidying up but about creating a mindset of simplicity and intentionality in all aspects of one's life.
Mentioned In This Episode
Where to find Hayley: Website and Instagram
Free gift: 8 Tips to Get Started Decluttering When Overwhelmed
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Transcript:
Destini Copp 0:00:02
And my special guest today is Hayley Forster. Haley is a mother, wife, entrepreneur and declutter coach who is dedicated to helping you on your journey to living a simple life through the power of decluttering. She has over ten years experience in professional decluttering and organizing with clients from all over the world, helping them declutter their lives to make more space, time and energy so that they can focus on what's important to them. And Haley, I am super excited to jump into this topic with you to hear today, but before we get into all the questions I have for you, can you tell the audience a little bit more about you and how you got started?
Hayley Forster 0:00:52
Sure. Thank you for having me. So, I'm Hayley Forster and I've been working in my declutter business now, as you say, for over ten years, which when you said that, I kind of forget how long I've been doing it, but how it stemmed really was it was all from a very personal journey that I had. So years ago, I was a hoarder, and that came from a childhood bereavement that I had. And it was a way of me really kind of coping with my grief. And I ended up hoarding a lot of belongings in my home. And again, to try and cope with just the overwhelming feelings I was having, I was really kind of cluttering every part of my life. So it wasn't necessarily just hoarding things in my home. I made myself extremely busy just to try and get away from those feelings I had. So it was all very deep in an emotional period for me, but actually it got to the point where I needed to make some change. So I started by decluttering my home and I actually ended up decluttering about 70% of my possessions. And I saw the difference that that made on my whole being. It wasn't necessarily just the impact that it had on my home, it was my day to day life, my mental health, my emotional health, I saw benefits in all of it. So it was really from my personal journey and what I got out of it that I thought, you know what, I need to show other people how to do this so that they can see the benefits as well. Because what I was feeling and what I was going through, it wasn't unique, it wasn't specific to me.
Hayley Forster 0:02:54
I see so many people feeling those emotions and going through the same things that I was. And for me, there's a really nice way out of it by the power that you said earlier, the power of decluttering and the benefits that you can get from doing that activity in your life.
Destini Copp 0:03:15
And I love that because what you said there, once you started decluttering, it helped you mentally, probably even physically too, and your emotional health just got, it was much improved. So definitely want to dig into this in a little bit more detail. I'll just go out and say that I think a lot of us can relate to what you were going through. My son passed away a few years ago and he had a lot of stuff. And honestly, to be quite honest with you, I've been like, fortunate. I haven't had the fortitude, if you would, to get rid of a lot of it. So I've been trying to decide, what do I do with it? Because there's a lot of emotional feelings, I think, that goes along with all of those belongings. Now, one of the things that you said, or one of the things we want to talk about is I really want to dig into a little bit more about how decluttering and creating that white space can impact your mental well being and give you the ability to focus on other passions in your life. So can you talk about that in a little bit more detail?
Hayley Forster 0:04:29
Yeah, definitely. This is probably, for me, the biggest passion part of it for my job because there's a lot of people out there who help people declutter their homes. And it may be very much orientated around the space and how it looks and the cleanliness and the organization. But for me, it's more about the benefits you get personally in your life to then be able to create the freedom that you can then choose what to do with, which I think is so powerful. And at the end of the day, that's why we're all here, isn't it? We want to be living the life that we want to be living, rather than what we're forced into. And really, how decluttering can help with that is the kind of modern day living is incredibly difficult at the moment. We're being bombarded constantly with things to do, things to buy, things to be as well. And we're expected to be busy, we're expected to have all of the things. And that can really lead to you spending a lot of time and a lot of wasted energy on things that aren't necessarily what you want to be doing. And the amount of times that I've had people come to me to work with me and we do an evaluation of their life in general and including their home, and we'll look at where they spend their time. And the majority of it is on stuff that the fielder should be doing that they don't necessarily have a passion for or a drive to do. And it's all accumulated over time and all of this stuff that we should be doing, for me, it's all classed as clutter. Clutter can be multiple aspects. Yes, it can be all of the excess stuff in your cupboards, but it can also be the excess stuff in your calendars and excess relationships that aren't adding anything to you, for example.
Hayley Forster 0:06:46
So all of these elements added together end up taking a lot of our free time and a lot of our what I call white space, which is that really precious time that you have where you can choose what you want to do. You can lie down and have a nap if you want or you can go out and you can go on a hike or you can explore new hobbies and activities or long lost hobbies and aspirations that you may have had from a few years ago. Because by being able to remove that clutter yet taken out a lot of the shoulds kind of think even in your own life as well. Like how much time a day do you spend looking for things around your home that you're trying to I don't know, you might be wrapping presents and you're looking for the saladape and the scissors, things like that. Or perhaps you're trying to organize your children's lunches for the next day and it ends up taking half an hour longer because you haven't got the right things and you might need to pop to the shop. And all of those different elements of your life where you've got this excess clutter and lack of organization, it's amazing how much time that takes out of your day. And when you add that up, that is a lot of wasted time. So for me, that's where I really start working with my clients, seeing basically kind of like a time map, I suppose. On an average week, what time are you spending on certain elements, and how can we cut that back? And how can we utilize your home in the best way so that you're spending less time on that? So you can create more time to be doing things that you want. I mean, the amount of clients I've worked with where they've went on to get improved fitness because they've had more time to go to the gym or go out for a walk with the dogs or they spend more time with their children. There's some women that I've worked with where they've started a side hustle, they've started a job and then that's ended up being their main income earner. So there's so many things. I mean, if you just think about if you had an hour extra a day, even what you could do with that hour extra.
Hayley Forster 0:09:21
And I think whether that be doing a different project or an activity or a hobby or it might just be a bit of self care and a bit of downtime, and that can really transform what you do and how you lead your life on a day to day basis.
Destini Copp 0:09:39
So that's very interesting to me. And I don't think I've ever looked at decluttering in the way that you're talking about it today because you're not only speaking to yes, we might need to declutter some things in our house and get rid of some. Things that we don't need or we haven't used in a long time. But you're also talking about things that it's really how we spend our time. Whether it's doing things that we don't really enjoy doing or having a relationship with somebody that's just not been serving us, maybe that we need to declutter something like that out of our life. And I don't think I've ever really thought about it that way. So when somebody wants to start this process and they are a very beginner in it, how would you suggest they get started?
Hayley Forster 0:10:33
I think the best way to do it is to really start mapping your time for an average week and thinking about, yes, we've all got work to do, but also what do you do outside of those work hours? What do you do at home, what's your activities you do with your family, how much time do you spend on yourself? And just really kind of count those up and you could even create yourself like a little calendar. And just as you're going through your day, just mark down what you're doing throughout that day, small or large. You can even get like time tracking apps on your phones, on any apps that are out there that could really help you to do that as well. Because sometimes I know it's harder to do it on paper and I think even just doing that exercise is a big eye opener for a lot of people because they don't necessarily realize how much time they spend doing certain activities that aren't work. Because we all know we spend a lot of hours during the week working. That's how we make our money. That's how we pay the bills. But the additional pieces can be massive because you might say that, okay, on an average week, I'm actually spending 3 hours doing laundry or I'm spending 4 hours preparing meals for the family. And when you add up all these during the week, you can really see how much you can see that's spent on personal care, on family care, on working development and things like that. And it's good to just see what that spread is. And then what I think the really good exercise to then do is say this is an average week for me, but what is an ideal week and how does that look and how would that time be split? And then really, it's a case of comparing the two and understanding how you can get to that ideal point. Because using my example before might say, right, I don't want to be spending 3 hours doing laundry.
Hayley Forster 0:12:51
I'd rather be spending an hour and a half. So what can I do to help that process? And it might be a case of, okay, the reason why I spend 3 hours doing laundry a week is because I've got too many clothes and it takes me a long time to sort them out and get them back in the cupboard. And actually I just end up with piles of clothes everywhere because I don't want to kind of dive into that job because it's frustrating for me. It gets my anxiety up and then that for me. Then I go, okay, super, well, let's look at sorting out your clothes. Let's look at that clutter side of it. Or if it's the meal prep, say, okay, I'm spending 4 hours on meal prep. How can I get that down? Because really I'd rather just be doing one to 2 hours a week of that. Okay, well let's look at how you could organize that. Could perhaps kitchen a little bit more so that you can spend your time more efficiently in there. Could you do some meal planning? Could you do some meal prep on one part of the week on a Sunday evening so that you can condense all that time together and through the week it's much easier. So it's really about doing that audit of your time.
Hayley Forster 0:14:11
And that will include things from your home, from your calendar, your relationships, it will include everything because that is an average week for you. And just compare it to what your ideal would be. And really what you'll see are things starting to pop out that just aren't working for you. And that's kind of the starting point of where your focus should be and the things that you should start eliminating and start shaving off. And really it snowballs from there. Doing these little time shaves or little space savers in your house can make such an impact that you feel the benefits pretty quickly. I mean, think about if, I don't know, you've got groceries coming and you decide to just have a quick clear out of your fridge before your groceries are getting delivered. Even just that initial feeling of having an organized fridge can make you feel so much better about wanting to start cooking because you've got the right ingredients, you've got everything in the right place, you can find it. And just think about that, but on an amplified scale, just a sense of contentment, knowing that things are organized, things are in their place. You're not spending any more time on things than you need to because you've just got order to them and that can make a massive difference and it becomes quite addictive, really. That's why usually most people start with decluttering their home and they end up thinking, well, what else can I get rid of? Because there's so much stuff in our lives these days that actually there's a lot of stuff you can get rid of and still leave a very happy and convenient life.
Destini Copp 0:16:00
I agree with you as you were going through that. I'm like, this sounds like so much fun to me. I would love to delve into this and doing that time mapping because I don't think I've ever done that. And I think it would show you, you're probably spending some time in some areas that you really didn't know that you were. So let me ask you this. Let's say that somebody has done the time mapping and they did the I love the laundry exercise that you talked about there. What are some mistakes that you see some beginners making in kind of going through and declutter after they've done that time mapping exercise? What are some mistakes you see them making?
Hayley Forster 0:16:49
I think sometimes what I see people do is going too hard, too fast. And the problem is that you're trying to go for long term changes here. You don't want to get to your ideal time map and just stay there for one or two weeks because you're not going to see the benefits of that. You're not going to feel it. What you want is long term change. You want to be able to make the changes in your calendar in your home and make them sustainable. And the biggest enemy for that really is going too hard and too fast. And by that I mean by trying to get rid of everything all at once. Because take it as in an example of we come to January the first and we say, right, New Year's resolutions. I'm going to lose X amount of weight, I'm going to start eating healthier, I'm going to join the gym and I'm going to start a business idea, and I'm going to decorate the spare bedroom by piling your plate full high of all of those things. It's very difficult for you then actually complete those goals because there's too many and you're trying to cramp them in all at once and without having any real plan. And it goes exactly the same for this. That was adding things to your plate. This is you're trying to remove it, but you want to try and do it slowly but surely because if you don't, you're going to just start finding ways. That when you're going to become overwhelmed, for a start, because you'll be like, right, I need to not sign up for that.
Hayley Forster 0:18:40
I need to take my name off that activity. I need to declutter my fridge, I need to sort out my laundry plan. I need to do a meal plan for X, Y and Z. And you're going to be initially adding a lot more to your plate to get rid of these things because you've got to get systems into place. You've got to get organized. You've got to make sure that you've got time slots allocated to getting all of these things and all your ducks in a row. And by trying to do it all at once, it becomes overwhelming. You don't want to do it anymore and you feel frustrated. You're like, well, what was the point of that? Because I've tried to declutter this or I've tried to remove these things from my calendar and it just actually takes up too much of my time. So it's the opposite effect when actually if you take it step by step and just say, okay, I've done my time map. Which one of these am I going to prioritize? Let's focus on that. Get the system into place for that. Focus on eliminating that part of my life.
Hayley Forster 0:19:40
And then once that's established, let's move on to the next thing. And it's just slowly building up the changes so that they can be more sustainable. And that's the biggest thing. It's like really trying to pace people because also a lot of people get excited by it, so they're like, wow, this is great. I've done a couple of things already and I can see the benefits of it. My home feels more relaxing, I'm able to spend more time with my children. I want to do more. And they'll get excited, they'll want to do it fast. And I'm all for people wanting to make positive change and making change as fast as they can, but a lot of the time you see that, then that isn't sustainable because they're trying to make these changes too quickly. So really it's just about pacing and trying to select the things that will make the biggest impact initially and be very selective about where you start and making sure that you don't overwhelm yourself, because that's a surefire way of stopping and never actually achieving what you want to achieve.
Destini Copp 0:20:52
And I think that's some great tips. Don't go too hard, too fast. I think that's great. Hayley, before we wrap it up here, any last minute tips for the audience today?
Hayley Forster 0:21:06
Yeah, sure. It's another kind of tip that I would add on at the end of that question you asked me, and we both briefly touched on it at the beginning of our chat. One part that can be really difficult when you're going through decluttering is sentimental things. So what I would highly recommend is to not dive into doing sentimental things immediately. They can be extremely difficult to process and it can be something that can derail your decluttering journey because there's a lot of emotions involved in that and it can really hinder you moving forward with it. So I would recommend do things in your life, in your home that are so much easier for you to process. So start with things like the spice rack or the bathroom cabinet or perhaps activities in your calendar that you've been wanting to get rid of for a while but you've just never got around to it. Rather than some commitments that perhaps are a little bit more emotional for you. And just start from the easier things. You'll build up a decluttering muscle, you'll get used to it, and then you can move on to the more emotional side of it that can usually derail you. So just try and park that to the part where you're feeling a little bit more emotionally prepared. You've got a little bit more time because you've already done a lot of decluttering activities and you're more ready to tackle it and just go easy on yourself. As I said, this is all about sustainable change. So just go easy on yourself, be kind to yourself. Allow yourself to process any emotions that come up and remind yourself you're doing it for the positive good at the end of the day.
Destini Copp 0:23:14
And Hayley, thank you so much for all of these tips in joining us today to talk about how we can declutter not only our house and kind of where we're living, but also our life in general. And before we go, can you let people know where they can find you? And I believe you have a free gift for them also.
Hayley Forster 0:23:36
Yes, definitely. So I've got a website, so that's simplejoy co UK you could follow me on Instagram as well, and that's at hellosimplejoy. And my free gift is I've got a PDF, which is Eight steps to how to get started decluttering when you're overwhelmed. So it'll take you through some mindset, prep work, some little fun activities to do before you start diving into it, and some initial tips for getting started. And it's really, as the title says there, for people who know that they can see benefits in decluttering and they want to get started, but actually, the act of it feels so overwhelming initially that it's just stopping them from moving forward. So it's a little activity book for you to dive into, to just get that motivation flowing. And, yeah, we'll include the link so you can down lord that and dive into your decluttering journey.
Destini Copp 0:24:39
And definitely we'll include the links in the podcast, show notes and go and follow Hayley on Instagram. She has a great Instagram account. And Haley, again, thank you so much for joining us and sharing all of your wonderful wisdom with us.
Hayley Forster 0:24:53
No problem. Thank you for having me.