it's not you; it's your environment

So, quick update: I’m still working on engineering my experiment to understand how the algorithm affects postpartum people. Turns out, it’s a lot more complicated to set up than I thought it would be. There’s a lot of thinking about what exactly they would look at and how to “mimic” their activity correctly. I’ve accepted there will be a margin of error, and I’ll be sure to report that in my results.

In the meantime, I’ve been living an entirely separate experiment of my own: simplifying my home. I’ve always been into Marie Kondo, the idea of minimalism, and more. However, I’ve never been able to implement anything even close to it.

Why? Well, I think it’s because of a few things, including (but not limited to):

• I have ADHD, and my hobbies include starting hobbies... which includes collecting things to do said hobbies

• I have two kids under 6 years old

• I have a husband (lol)

Inevitably, stuff comes in the house every single day, whether it’s worksheets from school, things I buy that are meant to make my life cozier or easier, things that are meant to be used for the new hobby I just researched and did a deep dive on, projects I want my husband to do, toddler things that are just cute, etc.

Unfortunately, I’ve noticed that while we acquire new things nearly every day (even just from walks with the toddler who likes to pick things up and carry them home, or from buying too much), we rarely get rid of things.

So things have been coming into the house, but not much has been leaving. And after a while, that certainly adds up. I got to the point where I was looking around, feeling my stress levels rise as all the to-dos ran through my head.

But it felt unmanageable. Completely overwhelming. Being me, I researched decluttering methods and did a deep dive on those. None of them really seemed to fit my situation. Especially not the Marie Kondo method. It just didn’t seem doable or sustainable. So, I made up my own, taking little pieces from everything I’d learned and adapting them to my own situation.

Isn’t that the best way to do most things anyway? Take the pieces that work for you and disregard the rest?

So, here’s what I ended up doing:

• Ordered a big dumpster

• Planned for support (in the form of my parents), which was a CRUCIAL PART to making this happen

• Took it room by room, surface level

• Got rid of anything that:

  • didn’t matter to us (toys that the boys were no longer interested in or sat unused, hobby items I was never going to get back to)

  • was broken (lots of toys—I have two rough boys)

  • I didn’t know what to do with

  • I couldn’t find a home for

  • was trash (duh, but I have to list this)

  • didn’t fit (and wouldn’t fit in the future)

    • I saved my older boy's clothes for my younger boy, sorted them by size, and labeled the bins.

• Celebrated! Very important step in the process

I really wish I'd taken before-and-after pictures. The difference is honestly night and day. Of course, as soon as I got a room clear, my kids would come in and mess up the room, but I also got them in on the process and explained that we are going to become a family that cares about cleanliness, which is odd to have to explain, but it’s the situation we are in, and that’s okay.

I’m explaining to my almost 6-year-old that we aren’t going to leave trash around, we aren’t going to drop things and not pick them up, and we are going to do the dishes right after we are done eating.

I’ve modeled this behavior but not talked about how important it is, and I’ve frankly let the boys get away with being messy for far too long. My kiddo has moaned and groaned about our new “cleanliness” being “so boring,” but he’s already getting on board, especially when we found toys he had forgotten about!

Now, there’s still a very long way to go. As I said, this was surface-level, so all the things I could just look around at and worry about cleaning up or taking care of later. Honestly, it is so embarrassing how bad it had gotten, and I’m determined not to feel that way again. So, I’m going to do at least one more area a day. Today, it was my kitchen window shelf that had both live and dead plants. Tomorrow, I’ll tackle something else. Every day, I’ll work to improve my space. And every time something comes in, something else will go out. It should be a bit like an equilibrium.

I know it’s only been a few days, but already my brain feels so much lighter and less noisy, and that is worth so much to me.