Have you ever decluttered your home only to watch it slowly fill right back up? This episode is for you.

Ashlee Piper is a sustainability expert, speaker, and author who has been featured on the Today Show, Good Morning America, and CNN, and in Vogue, the New York Times, and Newsweek. She created the No New Things Challenge in 2013. What started as a personal 30-day experiment turned into nearly two years of not buying anything new. The result? She saved over $36,000, paid off $22,000 in debt, reclaimed her time, and completely rewired her relationship with shopping. Her new book, No New Things: A Radically Simple 30-Day Guide to Saving Money, the Planet, and Your Sanity, guides readers through the same challenge.

In this conversation, Ashlee and Deanna dig into what she calls conditioned consumerism, the history of how post-WWII America reprogrammed an entire society from resourceful people into reflexive shoppers, and how that programming is the real reason your home keeps filling up no matter how many times you declutter.

In this episode you will learn:

• Why the urge to buy new things is not a personal failing but a historical and marketing construct
• The SUPER System: five ways to get your needs met without buying anything new
• How to use a trigger-tracking journal to discover the real emotions driving your shopping impulses
• The 2-7 minute rule and why riding it out changes everything
• How the challenge builds creativity, community, and connection as unexpected side effects
• Why Ashlee says women are the most powerful purchasing cohort on the planet and what that means for your household

Pick up No New Things wherever books are sold. You can also find it secondhand at ThriftBooks.

Find Ashlee on Instagram: @ashleepiper

Learn more at: ashleepiper.com

Full show notes: wannabeclutterfree.com/317

Have you ever spent a Saturday morning deep cleaning your entire house, and by noon you still feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and a little annoyed at everything? Your house looks great. You should feel amazing. But you don’t.

That’s not you being a perfectionist. It’s the sneaky kind of clutter that almost nobody in the decluttering world ever talks about.

Calendar clutter (or the mental load of keeping everything running)

In this episode I’m bringing it to light and giving you a real system to clear it. You’ll learn the two distinct forms calendar clutter takes (an overbooked calendar full of other people’s priorities, and the quieter weight of undone decisions with no home), the weekly capture method that gets everything out of your head and onto paper, and why protected blank space is not wasted time, it’s the time that makes everything else work.

This is the finale of my four-part series on the invisible weight of clutter, the stuff that doesn’t pile up on your counters but piles up in your mind instead.

In this episode you’ll learn:

• Why a clean house doesn’t always feel like a calm house
• The two kinds of calendar clutter (most people only ever deal with one)
• How to build a “vision filter” so you stop saying yes out of guilt
• The weekly capture method for clearing undone decisions out of your head
• Why blank space on your calendar is not wasted space
• A simple script for saying no without feeling like a flake

Mentioned in this episode:

• Effortless Home: DAILY Edition (use code EPISODE316 for $10 dollars off, 48 hours only): https://wannabeclutterfree.com/daily
• Fair Play by Eve Rodsky: https://amzn.to/4wpuSwF
• Niksen: Embracing the Dutch Art of Doing Nothing: https://amzn.to/4weJL4E

Your kid won't get rid of anything. You know their room has too much stuff. But every time you try to do something about it, it turns into a battle. What if you never had to be the bad guy again?

Dana K. White is the creator of the No Mess Decluttering Method, the blogger behind A Slob Comes Clean, and the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Decluttering at the Speed of Life. She has spent 17 years teaching overwhelmed, messy people how to get their homes under control without shame or perfection. And now she has taken everything she knows and put it into her very first children's book, Winnie's Pile of Pillows.

In this episode, Dana shares how to use a picture book as an actual decluttering tool, why her container concept works even better on kids than it does on adults, and how to get through a decluttering session with your child without convincing them of anything. This one will change how you approach your kid's stuff.

Covered in this episode:

• How to use Winnie's Pile of Pillows as more than a bedtime story
• Why the container concept makes the space the bad guy instead of you
• The five-minute pickup test that tells you if your child has too many toys
• What to say when your kid insists they need to keep everything
• How to declutter with your child without starting a power struggle
• Why you should never start with your kid's room
• The age when kids can really start to grasp the concept of having enough
• How to pass on a no-shame, no-guilt relationship with stuff to your kids

If you are fighting the toy clutter battle and losing, this episode is for you. Hit play, grab the book, and go find that trash bag.

LEARN MORE

Winnie's Pile of Pillows by Dana K. White: https://amzn.to/4afYyDH

A Slob Comes Clean: https://www.aslobcomesclean.com

Lenora and Her Super Duper Messy Room by Deanna Yates: https://amzn.to/4gDSp89

Show notes: https://www.wannabeclutterfree.com/315

CONNECT

Dana K. White on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aslobcomesclean/

Deanna Yates on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wannabeclutterfree/

LISTEN

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/wannabe-clutter-free-declutter-simplify-find-freedom/id1485473251

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ATUIVONi0kyoVUKOQV4OT?si=f555de5388164b10

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@wannabeclutterfree