The Roots Behind Your Clutter Problem + How to Fix Them || with Tracy McCubbin

Unfortunately, perfectly curated Pinterest boards don't always translate to perfectly organized homes. And while you can appreciate the beauty of a rainbow bookshelf, or a pantry full of labeled clear jars, those things may not actually serve you. And if in this pursuit of picture-perfect organization you've labeled yourself a bad housekeeper, or too lazy, you likely feel so off track that you don't even know where to begin again.

Professional organizer and author Tracy McCubbin has spent thousands of hours helping her clients and now she is sharing the most insightful things she has learned along the way. And while she does have practical tips, including five questions to ask yourself about your organization right now, she also addresses the emotional component of clutter. Tune in to this episode to learn how to declutter by starting small, and in ways that are meaningful to you and your space.

About a few other things...

Do you struggle to create habits that stick? It's not your fault. The truth is simple: you've been trying to form habits using methods designed for perfect robots--not real women living real lives. It's time to change that. If I could help you gain confidence in creating habits AND guide you to uncover the ONE supportive habit to deeply care for yourself, could you commit 21 days to learning this method? The Sticky Habit Method is a 21-day course that revolutionizes the habit-formation process. It's real habits for real women.

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TRANSCRIPT

Monica: Tracy McCubbin, welcome to about,

Tracy: Thank you, Monica. I'm so happy to be here about progress. I love it.

Monica: I love what you teach, and I love how you teach it, which is why you're here today. And we're gonna start a little bit controversially and not on purpose. So because it's my own confession, I take full ownership at this confession. This is not Tracy's confession. I have tried to read the, I have to keep looking at my notes cause I always miss what the title too.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. And I keep trying and I just can't finish it. And this isn't a bash on Marie Kondo. I actually love her show on Netflix. I, I like her personality, but to me it translates to this bigger problem. That I have with how organization is often taught or the methods that are given, and you have a different perspective, which again is why you were here.

And I wanted to start with what insight you have as an organization expert on why people struggle with implementation and the maintenance of the organization. Advice that we see so prevalent out.

Tracy: This is such a great question and I wanna start by saying, I am forever grateful to Marie Kondo. I have been doing this a little bit longer than she has in terms of actually working with clients, not necessarily being in a public forum so much. And she started a conversation that is so important. She really opened it up.

She really got us to look at are our homes making us happy? Are we happy in our homes? Mm-hmm. So I am forever, forever grateful. That being said, I have been doing this for 15 years. I have 40,000 hours of organizing with clients under my belt and. I think for a lot of people, her methodology stops short.

I think that she doesn't give an, from my perspective, look, I don't work with the people that it works for because it works for them. They don't call me, so I get the calls from the people that it didn't work. And like every other system, every other thing you implement in your. Some will work for you and some won't.

Life is about gathering all the information you can and saying, all right, this part works for me. This part doesn't work for me. But I think that she, for a lot of people, she glosses over the emotional attachment. I think she glosses over the shame that a lot of people feel. They're very wrapped up in, I'm a bad housekeeper, I'm lazy.

You know, all these words, these negative words and connotations of ourselves. And I having done this for so long, I grew up the child of a hoarder. So I watched a person's struggle. For me, I came at it from a direction of you're not wrong. You're not bad. Your house isn't working for you, so let's fix it.

Monica: Mm.

Tracy: Let's fix it. The great news is that you can change if you want to and need to. So I think I always sort of think my books pick off where she left, pick up where she left off.

Monica: Yeah, and, and both the depth, but also the practical side of it too, which I find really, really refreshing and helpful. I, I teach women on habits, which is something I did not decide like to focus on, but it's become a part of my path. But the reason I'm bringing this up is we might be starting to talk about laundry or their morning routine and it always goes deeper to this identity piece that you just brought up.

Can we spend a little bit more time on that? Like how does that identity piece, if I'm lazy, I'm, some people might even say I'm a hoarder and you know, there are definitely deeper issues with that full like

Tracy: Absolutely, and, and let me take a second to just point this out. If you listeners feel you are a hoarder, you have hoarding tendencies, please, please, please seek help. It is a true disorder. It is a very real disorder. People throw that word around lightly, like I'm such a harder to say. You're like you're not.

So if that's something that you're struggling with, there's amazing help out there. There's very fantastic therapeutic modalities, cognitive behavior therapy. So if that's something you're struggling with, understand that that is above your everyday garden variety clutter. So I just want those people to be heard and feel seen and understand that, that there's help for the rest of us.

You know, some people aren't born organized. It's just a gene they don't have. Either they were raised in a disorganized house. They have a D H D. They've never been taught. I mean, I've worked with so many young women in their twenties who were never just taught to fold clothes and put things away, and so, I always come from a point of I want your house to work for you.

I want your house to support you, you, you and your family. If you have kids, if you don't have kids, if you partner, I want your house. Ultimately, Monica, your house is a tool. That's that that supports you, that gets you rest, that gives you rejuvenation, that replenishes you. If you are managing clutter, if you're moving your stuff across the counter to cook or close off the bed to go to sleep at night, if you're sort of moving clutter back and forth, your house isn't working for you.

So that's the place we start. Not you're wrong, not you're bad. And I'm gonna say this. Here's a little actionable step, stop looking at those pictures on Pinterest. Stop looking at those perfect pantries cuz I am here to tell you those perfectly labeled, you know, restock pantries take so much time. They take so much time.

If you want it and it gets you excited to do it, great people pay me a lot of money to do them and I don't have one in my own home because that's not where I wanna spend my time.

Monica: I love hearing.

Tracy: You know, and if you want to, absolutely my closet color coordinated by category that I enjoy doing it and it makes me feel good when I open it in the morning.

My pantry, it's in clear jar. Ours, I'm gonna label it. I know what black beans look like, I know what walnuts look like. I'm fine. Laundry room decanting into glass jars to do. It's just seems like an extra step that I don't really understand. So I think that we, in this conversation about decluttering and getting organized in the age of social media, it's sort of fed to us that it needs to look perfect.

It's not about looking perfect.

It's not about looking perfect. It's about working for you.

Monica: Hmm.

Tracy: And I know that this is a conversation, hear a lot about perfectionism being perfect or not even starting because if you can't do it perfectly, why do it at all? We're not looking for perfect. We're not, yeah. I always say done is better than perfect.

Like let's get it to work. Let's get it to work. I just worked with a young woman this week who, who had a whole story about herself very successful. Has a business doing quite well. Just, I'm messy, I'm disorganized, I'm lazy. I'm like, you're not lazy. You are single-handedly running a very successful photography business.

Like that's not lazy. She just had never implemented it. And so it's like we worked, went through, one of my organizers, went in there, we set up systems, we talked through, here's why it makes sense to put your scissors in this drawer. You are left-handed. You're gonna grab your scissors with this hand. I just get an email from her that.

This changed my life. Like I know where everything is. I'm not beating myself up. I didn't understand how systems worked or implement them. I will keep this up. So I, I think that it's, it's really understanding at the root of it, that it's about making your home work for you. It's not about how it.

Monica: That's a huge shift. I think that alone will change a lot for how the, the listeners approach, how they want to organize and, and, and, and make it function. And less about the appearance and more about how effective it is and, and how functional it is. That alone, huge shift. I, I would love to hear about clutter specif. Because I actually, I have, I did this organization course years ago. It's not for sale now. I had experts on it and over and over and over. It was like, you wanna get organized, gotta work on clutter, you gotta work on purging. And this also has deeper roots and they're connected to what we've already talked about for sure.

But I would like to dig into that subset of organization in particular. What are the real roots behind why we are struggling with clutter so much?

Tracy: Absolutely. So I describe clutter as the stuff that gets in the way of what you wanna be doing. So you wanna pay your bills. On time, but your desk is a disaster. I use that word loosely. You know, piled high. You can't find them to pay them. You wanna get dressed in the morning, but your closet is full of clothes that aren't your size anymore, you don't like anymore.

So you're getting dressed outta the laundry basket. Sort of all those things are what clutter is. So it's not about the quantity, it's about how it gets in your way. I see a lot of, I mean, doing air quotes experts, they miss where the clutter comes from and.

I believe it's sort of two, two parallel paths. There is these stories that we tell ourselves about why we can't let go of the stuff we don't want to use or need. I call these our clutter blocks. We all, there're seven stories. We all have them. It's everything from keeps 'em stuck in the past to the stuff I keep paying for.

I paid good money for it. Stuff that someone passed away and left me, you know, set this avoiding my stuff, which is me. Full confession. I don't like to open mail. I don't like to go through paperwork. So those clutter blocks keep us from letting go. Then on the other side, and no one is talking about this, I am out in the space. You can't talk about clutter if you don't talk about what you're buying. You can't talk about it. If you don't talk about what you're bringing into your house. You can declutter all you want, but if you're shopping at a mock 10 rate, you're gonna have clutter. So I think you know why I wrote the second book Make Space for Happiness is that.

I wanted people to look at their acquisition cycle and how that plays into it. Why are you buying? What are you buying? You know, are you getting sucked in? Do you always get sucked into the siren song of the sale? You know, I had this, I had this moment where I was looking at a blouse online that was on sale.

It was a very nice blouse. It was on very good. It was yellow. I have determined, I have been on this planet for 57 years. I do not look good in yellow. I think I wanna look good in yellow, but I don't. I buy something yellow, it hangs in my closet. And I was like, but it's on sale. And I was like, but it's yellow.

You won't wear it. We've done this before. I'd rather pay a little more for a blouse that's blue than I know I'll wear. So I think it's getting really honest with ourselves about why we're consuming.

Monica: And that honesty is really hard to do, and I think.

Tracy: Yeah.

Monica: Honestly why we keep falling back into old patterns. Like let's say we spend the hours getting that perfect pantry set up, but if we haven't analyzed the roots behind why we have a hard time letting go of things or why we keep bringing things in, then we're just gonna fall back into those same patterns

Tracy: Exactly, and I think probably one of the things with the decluttering and organizing process is if you're not looking at the emotional side of it, exactly what you said, you're gonna go back if you don't understand. Why I'm doing this, you know, why do I buy, you know, 80 million face creams and moisturizers and eye creams because I'm really scared of my own mortality.

And also you're not, you're not gonna change overnight, and that's okay. It's gonna be a process. You're gonna, you know, everybody's sort of, if you lean towards the perfectionist, you dive in and you do fantastic, and then you slip back and then you beat yourself up and you're like, well, it doesn't work anyway.

It's like you build on it and you know, to go back to her. I think that that's another sticking point for a lot of people with Marie Kondo's method is it's like, she's like, well, you take six weeks off of work and you do your whole house and you never have to do it again. It. I don't know what world you live in.

There are three people and a dog that live in my house. Like it is a constant. It is constant. And that's life, right? That's life. Like we constantly need to work on our health. We constantly need to work on changing our habits. That's the amazing part. Like, I think that's, that's the progress and that's the joy of life, the constant learning.

So it's like we don't just get it right and then stay there. We're, you know, and as your life changes, I'm gonna work with someone in their thirties much differently than I'm gonna work with someone in their seventies.

Monica: Hmm.

Tracy: goals are very different. We're gonna. About different things. So I think this one size fits all for decluttering.

I don't, I don't think it's the case.

Monica: I love that you're focusing too, on how it's never a one and done deal. It reminds me of something Stephen King said about writing. He said, good writers are good editors cuz you are willing to go back again and again and again. But, I've also felt that way about all of the people I've talked about organization with is a good organizer as someone who is willing to revisit what they're organizing over and over and over.

And for many of us, that can feel overwhelming cuz we just want it to be one and done. But I think if we can just embrace that this is what it looks like to be organized, you just keep revisiting things and you do it in more doable ways that don't require so much energy. That's a big part of accepting and actually staying organized.

Any thoughts on that?

Tracy: 100%. And also understanding that organizing, organizing is different than decluttering and cleaning your house. There are three separate tasks and that to have an organized house, you also have to have a regular organizing schedule. You know, it's, it's sort of like, oh, you know, for me, you know, I kind of visit my closet once a.

Or if I have a stressful day, then I go in there and shut the door and organize to make myself feel better.

Monica: Yeah.

Tracy: You know, I'm like, ah, I, I made, I got control of an out of control world. But it, it, it's, it's just never one and done. It's just not, and I think that, that, that idea is, It's, it's a fallacy and it makes people feel bad.

So in your, I want an organized home, it's like, well, then you need to put a regular decluttering practice in, and you need to put a regular organizing practice in on top of regular cleaning. And once you realize, oh, this is a cycle of keeping my home the way I want it. It become, it's not a chore. It's like this is what we do.

You know, we clean out the gutters on our house before winter so we don't break a roof. Okay, well we declutter so we can organize, so we can find our stuff. It's pretty simple. It's pretty simple. It's takes work to implement, but it's, I think when you understand that it is ongoing, then, especially if you lean towards perfectionism, right?

If you're like, it has to be this way and you're very rigid about, Then it's gonna feel especially disheartening, like, I can't believe I have to do this again. But guess what? Life is messy. Life is really messy. And so just, just understand that it's gonna be like going to the gym. It's gonna be like maintaining your house.

It's just put, make it a part of your life and you'll un you'll see the benefit and also the more you do. The easier it is to do like that fir if you're coming from a very disorganized place, a very cluttered place, that first hall is gonna be huge. But as it goes on, my goal with my clients is that they don't need me anymore.

Monica: Yeah.

Tracy: That's my goal. You know, it's a terrible business model, but it's, it's, that's my goal, that it gets to a place that they stop calling.

Monica: And I think the reason why that's the case is because you also take care of the roots. You know, you, you, you actually help them think about what is happening that is creating the disorganization. And I would also say you, you help them figure out what matters to them instead of it being about a prescribed model.

And so this is kind of leading me. The more practical side of our conversation. And, I wanna narrow in, I love how you broke those out into three areas, decluttering, organizing, and cleaning. Let's talk about decluttering specifically and just any tips that you would have that might encompass the roots part, or maybe it's just the practical side, however you wish.

Like what would you tell women who are like, I'm ready with a decluttering step. How can I do this in a way where it's matching all of what we've talked about? So,

Tracy: It's great. So one of the things that I say to people if they're getting started is, first of all, first step, very first. Why, why do you wanna be decluttered? And I don't want your why to be, I'm lazy. I'm a bad housekeeper. That's not a why. That's a beating yourself up. Out the window with that. I wanna have my family over for Thanksgiving.

I haven't felt comfortable in my home to have my family over for Thanksgiving. I wanna invite my best friend for a long weekend, and I want her to stay in the guest room, pick a positive, I wanna feel empty space. I wanna feel calm when I walk through the door. So start with a why, because the why is gonna keep you motivated.

Next thing is start small.

Monica: Hmm.

Tracy: small. Start one drawer, one shelf in a cabin. Look, when I go in and do people's homes with them, we do the whole house for a week. But I have a staff, I have trucks, I have a whole, you know, it's, it's unrealistic. For most people to think that they're gonna do it that way. So start small.

It's why I started the, the videos on Instagram. I do these five thing things to dec, I get the name wrong all the time, to declutter in under five minutes, and I pick one category and they blew up. I mean, they blew up. And people keep DMing me like I've been doing these and all of a sudden I turned around and my whole house is decluttered.

So it's. Bite size pieces, they're manageable. You can do 'em, you know, in a half an hour when you get home from work, five minutes on a Saturday. And I think that, I think that if you're struggling with clutter, all you can see is, you know, you just have the bird's eye view and you're like, I'm never gonna get through this.

And I was like, no, no, no. Start with bathing suits. Summer's over. What bathing suit didn't you wear? What bathing suit is the elastic out of? Start with bathing suits. One category, one. You're done. And

Monica: you share the name of that series again because I, I was, I

Tracy: yeah, it's called 5 things to Declutter in under five minutes. And it's on Instagram.

It's on YouTube too, but it, I, I do 'em on Instagram. And I think that understanding that you can break it down into bite side, just chunks. And then also when you're doing a small category, you get to really feel what comes up for you,

Monica: Mm-hmm.

Tracy: right?

Like if you're doing pants, Is stuff around your weight coming up is stuff around your body image coming up. Like I think if you're trying to do your whole house, you're like, you know, chop wood, carry water, like so exhausted that you don't get to sort of sort through. So it's really, really people have been loving them and they're super successful.

So I would say if you struggle, start small, just start.

Monica: My community knows. That's a big focus for us because it creates momentum. You know, cuz when we're looking at the whole house, we know all the energy that whole house is gonna require. And if we were to employ people like you, I mean, it would literally take team, a team of people and a lot of hours and a lot of investment.

And I think you would be worth it for sure. But, but if someone who's like, I just need to do this for myself, th that's where a lot of people get. Is just thinking about all of it. Intel, so I love this so much. I love this focus of starting small and that you said it's a good way to practice connecting back to the roots so that way you don't maybe have to book a couple or a lot of therapy sessions, but maybe that would be helpful too.

But you can even just practice. Why is this part of the My closet hard for me? Why is it hard for me to let go of this gift My, my best friend gave me that I actually really. Or never use, you know, just practice it.

Tracy: Exactly. And also the great thing about starting small and having successes is that you build on them. You're like, oh, this, this utensil drawer was a disaster. It was full of plastic utensils and one chopstick and straws, and now it's, and it feels good when I open it and when I go to unload the dishwasher, I know where everything goes.

This feels good. I wanna do one more drawer. You know, because if you try and do the whole house without a ton of help, you're just gonna get frustrated and it's gonna feel disorganized and you're gonna be like, why am I bothering? Look. Decluttering is hard. I'm not gonna protect decluttering.

Getting organized is hard. Like I said, I have a team, like I have 11 people. We are busy all the time. There are many jobs that we go into the, there are three and four of us, so I want people to understand that it's a big job and if you can break it down into bite size pieces, you can get it done.

Monica: And with that, maybe it helps to just even prioritize, you know, instead of going right to like, I love the home edit too. So like instead of going right to their homepage and like looking at the beautiful pantry or the beautiful closet and realizing actually it's my, what is it that you're always stumbling

Tracy: I, I always tell people to just spend a day. If you're starting on this journey, where's the log jam in your house? Where's it really not working for you? Is it the entryway? Is it like where, really look at, at the idea of where it, your house isn't working, as opposed to it's not pretty, it's not rainbow.

I love books. I love looking at those rainbow bookshelves. I'm never gonna do it. I'm just not. I've done it for a million clients. I, it's just, I don't wanna upkeep it. I love looking at 'em. I will look at those pictures all day. You know, so it's, it's an understanding of there's, there's decluttering, there's organizing, there's, and then there's like this other level of like, Perfection.

I don't know. I don't necessarily think it's perfect, but that kind of visual and you have to understand how much work and upkeep that takes, and if you wanna put your time into it, fantastic. I'd rather go to Farmer's Market, you know?

Monica: Yeah. An example of this is one of my friends, instead of separating the the utensils, she just puts them all in the drawer together. And that to her was like a, I can let that go because I like this drawer to always be perfect. You know, something like that I think is such a good example. Did you have any more tips specifically with decluttering?

I wanted to make sure I gave

Tracy: Yeah, I have also with people, I have a fantastic set of five questions that you can ask yourself about

Monica: what I was going to ask you about if you had some like filters, like

Tracy: Yep. I have five questions. So and if you go to my website, which I'm sure you'll put in the show notes, sign up for my newsletter. You get this PDF and it's fantastic. So it is, do you use it more than once a year? Right? Do you use it more than once a year? I have a giant platter.

I use it every Thanksgiving. It's a little impractical, but it's had 22 years of Thanksgiving. I keep it. It Does this item make you money? Meaning do you use it for your work? Not it's piled up in a corner for a garage sale. Right.

Monica: Yeah. Okay. Nice distinction.

Tracy: do you have a place to store it? Do you have an actual place?

Do you have room in your home to store? Like not, you know, my bills are shoved in my medicine cabinet cause I don't have any other place for it. But do you have a place to store it? If you let it go, could you reasonably borrow it or buy it again? Is it more expensive for you? Are you paying for outside storage to store things you don't use?

Could you actually just buy them 10 times over? That's a great one. And then the last one's my. You just love, love, love it. We have some things in our house that we just love. That's why I have a lot of throw pillows. I made 'em from fabrics I collected while I was traveling. My partner jokes all the time.

We have so many pillows on the bed, but every time I look at 'em, I'm like, my trip to Morocco, my trip to Guatemala, like they make me super happy. So tho those things, but this list is fantastic, and if you sign up for my newsletter, you get a downloadable printable blot.

Monica: Perfect. We'll make sure we link that in the show notes. So this is where Tracy, I'm gonna ask you to share one small way women can start who are listening. We've covered so, so much ground here and all of it's been incredibly helpful. One small way they can start.

Tracy: This you can implement immediately and this will make this cha. It's a change in language. That's it did a change in language and it will have such a profound effect. Instead of saying when you're going shopping, I need, I need a new pair of jeans. I need a new ski coat. I need a new pair of leggings. I'm gonna bet real money.

You don't need them. You have all the jeans you could ever possibly need. You just want. That's okay. So just flip your languaging for a while. I want a new pair of jeans. Somehow when you take the need, the grasp it has on you to shop and buy and consume filters away, you're like, oh, I want a new pair of jeans.

And then you're like, wait, I have 10 pairs of jeans that fit me perfectly fine. And I love them. I know. Okay. That language switch is so easy. It will resonate so deeply with people like, oh, right, I'm trying to satisfy my wants and not my actual needs. My need is I want my house to run smoothly.

Monica: Takes the urgency away for me.

Tracy: Yep. Takes the urgency away. Takes, that's a great way to put it. Monica takes the urgency away.

Monica: Ah, I love that tip so much. Thank you. Let's talk about your book, too. Make Space for Happiness. I want, I want to hear why you wrote this book and how it compares or is a companion piece to your first book too. I'm curious about that.

Tracy: Yeah, it's, it's fantastic. I wrote this during the pandemic it's called Make Space for Happiness, how to stop attracting clutter and Magnetizing the Life you Want. And my first book. Make space for happiness. What? No making space clutter free. I named them very close. Was about why we couldn't let go of things.

It was about these clutter blocks inside of us. Then all of a sudden I started to kind of really pay attention, and especially during the pandemic, I was just watching people shop like crazy, like. I would drive down the street and I'd be like, these leaning towers of packages on their front stoops and Amazon trucks and everywhere.

And I started to, and I got a lot of calls from clients. Hi. Remember all that decluttering? Well, I bought it all again and then some. And I started to look at why are we, why we shop? I did a very deep dive on the science of shopping about the dopamine we hit, we get what we're. What we're trying to fill in ourselves with shopping and how we actually really can get it in other ways.

And the science was so fascinating, and what I realized is that the way I see it is we are these whole beings and it's almost like we have a little. Jigsaw puzzle piece out of us, like we're missing this little piece. Like, and, and I was, I don't wanna say a hole, but like a little puzzle piece missing, and we're like, oh, if I shop, I'll be able to fill that hole.

I'll be able to fill that hole. So I started to call those holes, our clutter magnets, right? I'm gonna shop because I'm feeling lonely because I don't have. True connection right now, or I'm buying all these, you know, all these face serums because I don't have a lot of self-confidence right now. I'm buying all these uni-taskers and gadgets cause I'm trying to save time.

You know, it's these seven clutter magnets of the real reason that we're shopping. So in the book I look at the science of shopping, why we shop, how we were. We are hardwired to shop because we were hunters and gatherers, and we used to get rewarded when we found an apple tree in the wild. Well, now we still get that same reward when we go to Target and there's 7,000 apples that we don't even have to work to find.

So it's understanding why we shop, it's understanding how we're marketed to, and it's understanding other things that we can do. To fill those same feelings, like how can you get a sense of what's your real purpose? How do you get self-respect? So it's great. They're, they were written as companion pieces, but you don't have to re, you can read them independently.

People are losing their mind over it. It's really, I just, no one was having this conversation. Everyone was talking about decluttering and getting organized, but no one was talking about this stuff. And then a whole bunch of organizers started making products.

Monica: Yeah,

Tracy: So all of a

Monica: the wounds, right.

Tracy: Yeah. Yep. And all of a sudden you're like, wait, you're telling me to buy more stuff?

To wait, what?

Monica: funny. Yeah. I didn't

Tracy: So I'm really proud of this book. Yeah. I'm really proud of this book. I just think it's such an important conversation and holistically. In how we live our lives and also, you know, what our shopping and consuming is doing to our planet and how we are, you know, participating. And I do a deep breakdown on fast fashion and, you know, stuff that we really take for granted.

So I'm ex, I'm really excited for people to read this book.

Monica: It's on my nightstand right now. I'm already into it and having so many realizations and connections to. Even just a few years ago when I felt less stable in who I was, I shopped a lot more online and I was always going through those cycles of getting things and panicking and returning them, and it never felt good, and that's really just faded away as I've worked on these roots.

But reading this book has helped me identify them again and to see where they're still lurking and coming into play. I'm really grateful for the research you did for it and also how you put it together. It's, it's magnificently done. So

we make sure we'll link in the show notes, make space for happiness as well as your first book two, and that wonderful guide that you told us about with those five questions to help with the cluttering process. I also want you to share where they should go online if they're

Tracy: Oh, fantastic. Yeah. So Tracy McCubbin, m c c u b b i n.com. You can that's where you can sign up to get the free guide of the five questions you can ask yourself. I call it should it stay or should it go? And then and do you do it to the Clash? You

Monica: Oh, yes.

Tracy: and then Instagram is really my biggest platform.

I'm on Facebook and TikTok, but Instagram is where I do these five. Five minute decluttering challenges. I do about three four of 'em a week, and I've got a library of past ones and they're just, they're super positive, super encouraging, and I'm telling you, if you follow 'em, you're gonna get your whole house done and you're not even really gonna notice it, which is kind of amazing.

People are like, I decluttered and it wasn't such a big deal.

Monica: That's fantastic. We'll link to your Instagram page too, and then thank you, Tracy. This has been wonderful. I so enjoyed talking to you and learning from you.

Tracy: Thank you, Monica. Thank you so much for having me on.

 It's on YouTube too, but it, I, I do 'em on Instagram. That's that. I think there's a playlist. I don't know what the kids call it.

Monica: I like, what is it? But

Tracy: Yeah, so Instagram, they're on, they're on my Instagram and