It’s Not About the Stuff: A Mental Health Conversation on Hoarding and Healing

We sit with Melanie Cohen to unpack the human side of hoarding—how trauma and OCD shape clutter, why trust matters more than trash bags, and how tiny goals build real change. We share language for hard family talks, safety-first priorities, and ways to give belongings a second life.

• early signs of hoarding masked as productivity and space mismatch
• divorce, bankruptcy, and trauma as drivers of escalating clutter
• OCD, depression, perfectionism, and executive function hurdles
• the failed doctor-room reveal and rebuilding trust over time
• mental clutter vs physical clutter and why both matter
• “ridiculously simple goals” that create momentum
• safety triggers for change and emergency access needs
• donate, sell, recycle strategies and second-life framing
• talking to a hoarding partner without blame
• aging parents, paper mountains, and shred-or-scan decisions
• digital hoarding patterns and small, weekly rituals
• coaching options via Zoom and sustainable wins

Free 30-minute discovery session—find me at thoughtfullycoaching.com

Thank you for being here, for listening, and for holding space for conversations just like this. If this episode made you feel seen, understood, or reminded you that you're not the only one walking through hard things, I'd be so grateful if you'd leave a review, share it with a friend, or just reach out and let me know you were here. And if you want more support like this, real talk, soulful tools, and reminders that you are not alone, you can join my newsletter at advancingwithany.com

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening: Naming Hoarding Without Shame
• 1:30 Melanie’s Early Signs and Family Backstory
• 3:40 From Paper Piles to Full-Scale Clutter
• 7:20 Divorce, Bankruptcy, And Space Shrinking
• 12:36 Trauma, OCD, And Hidden Diagnoses
• 16:06 The Doctor Visit And The Word “Hoarder”
• 20:16 Trust, Boundaries, And Rebuilding Access
• 23:56 Who Melanie Helps: Mental vs Physical Clutter
• 26:46 The Weight Of Stuff And Energy Of Things
• 29:36 Reality TV Myths And Real Change
• 32:46 Small Wins: Magazines, Stoop Sales, Letting Go
• 36:36 Safety, Emergencies, And When Help Must Come

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Did you grow up when they were hoarding or was it after you were grown?

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

There were hoarding tendencies or you know, the signs that hoarding would be an issue later. But I didn't experience or really understand. I guess my dad hop has hoarded paper my whole life, but I don't think I really saw it until they both went through their divorce and all the other subsequent stuff that happened.

SPEAKER_00: 0:30

Welcome back, lawyers. Today we're shining a light on a topic that doesn't get talked about nearly enough. Hoarding. It's a word that often comes with judgment, shame, or even sensationalized TV shows. But the truth is, hoarding affects entire families, not just the person struggling with it. I'm honored to be joined today by Melanie Cohen, who grew up with parents who were drug users and had a dysfunctional family life. She is here not only as a specialist in this area, but also someone who's lived through the reality of navigating life in a hoarded home. That lived experience gives her a unique perspective on the emotional, the hidden, and also the resilience that can come from it. Together, we're going to talk about what it's really like to grow up in that environment, the misunderstandings about hoarding, and how hoarding is possible for both individuals and families. Welcome, Melanie. Amy, thank you for having me. Oh, you're very welcome. I'm happy to have you here. So can you tell me a little bit about when you knew there was hoarding going on?

SPEAKER_01: 1:43

I didn't know it as hoarding until adulthood, although, you know, hoarding's only been coined in the last 30 years. So what was going on before was probably just like messy people or things like that. In fact, I remember above my mother's desk, which her desk was one of those places that was very messy, like a comic from maybe the New Yorker that showed a messy desk, and it was like a messy desk is the sign of genius. And so I which for sure permitted that to happen, you know, like it made it okay. My dad was a or is a chemical engineer and an applied physicist, and he always had an office at home. He was always consulting for other companies, and his desk also piled high with paper. And in fact, so much so that he had bought like a circle, like a semicircle banquet table to put in the office, in addition to his desk. So he had all the paper accessible to him. So I think the hoarding that I saw growing up was in relationship to that. It wasn't other stuff. It wasn't China and crystal and clothing and other things that we often associate with hoarders. That came much later. I said there was drug use. My parents were hippies in the 60s and they studied science and they were, you know, cool and smoked pot. And my dad sold pot on the side a little extra money for the special things in life, but he ended up with a failed business. My parents went bankrupt. They lost their home, my father's car, the business. I was in college when there was this was happening. I went to college 3,000 miles away from home. I think I knew get out of Dodge. It was like everyone had told me, go, go wherever you want to, explore and learn the world. And there was something in me that told me, like, get out of town. And so while I was in college, my father went to rehab numerous times before it hit, and my mother was left with nothing. She went on Section Eight and on welfare. And I was kicked out of school because my parents hadn't been paying. And so I finished two and three quarters of years of college before, like literally the rug was just ripped out from under me. My parents lived in a very large New York City apartment. And all of a sudden, my mother's things were at my grandmother's house and at her boyfriend's home and in the small apartment that she could afford. And so when my husband and I got married and subsequently moved back to New York, I was at her apartment with my baby and I saw a clutter, but I still didn't understand it. Like in my head, it was because she had gone from like a 2,300 square foot apartment to like 400 square foot of space, and that she had too much stuff. She didn't have too much stuff. She had too much stuff for the space. So in my head, you know, when she's been working for a few years, or when my dad pays her back money that he owes her, she'll find a bigger place and then have enough room for her stuff. But that didn't really happen. When she did get a bigger space, she still didn't get rid of anything. And that has now grown. And so what I know working as a clutter coach now, that so much of that high-level hoarding comes from trauma. Everything I just said was a huge trauma, but also comes from OCD. And it wasn't until more recently that while my mother has not been officially diagnosed as someone with OCD, she has all the markers. And I think perhaps the diagnosis hasn't come because she hasn't been a hundred percent upfront with her doctors in really explaining what's going on. Like they don't know there's hoarding going on. And my mother isn't living a messy life. She's living a hoarded life. The OCD has shown up in in many ways in my life growing up, but because it's both trauma and OCD, I see how much harder it is for her to address what's going on around her. I know that was a long story to answer a simple question.

SPEAKER_00: 6:15

No, that was great. So I was wondering how does that affect your relationship with your parents now?

SPEAKER_01: 6:22

So I convinced my mom somewhere around 10 years ago that it was finally time for me to start going to the doctor with her. She's an aging woman. I should be aware of all of the medical issues. My mother is what I thought perhaps was agoraphobic growing up, only to discover her gastrointestinal issues were really what made her afraid to leave the house. I get it, because I now have some of those issues. Mine are more under control than hers are. And so I went to the doctor and I made a big mistake. I said, wait, there's one more thing I'd like to address. I think we need to address the fact that my mother is a hoarder. And my mother like flew off the table. She just was so angry. And the doctor said something that she should say. And it was, well, let's not label anything right now. Let's talk a little bit about this. And my mother, much to her credit, said, Yeah, there's a big mess that I live in. And I just, I'm too tired to address it. And I just need help cleaning. And the doctor turned to me and said, Could you help? And I said, Of course I can help. I want to help. And I wasn't given that opportunity. I think once I said hoarding, my mother shut me out because she was afraid that I was judging and shaming and embarrassing her. And I understand all of that. The reality is that clutter is we are embarrassed and ashamed by that stuff. And as someone who once weighed over 200 pounds, I have that same relationship to my body. It's embarrassing and shaming to address challenges with weight. And so they're very tightly connected. It wasn't until last year that she finally let me in her house. And a lot of things needed to go and get into motion to make that happen. One of them, I think, is just that now that I work as a clutter expert, she trusts me a little bit more. And seeing me work with other people or hearing the stories lets her see that I don't go into anyone's home and embarrass them and shame them for what is around them. And I think that opened her up a little bit. And then the last thing that opened her up, the same with my dad, was saying wonderful words that an organ organizer friend of mine put in my mouth. And it was, we've got two choices here. We can either fix this now, and then when you're gone, like as soon as you're gone, we can start honoring you. We can listen to your favorite music and eat your favorite food and do your favorite things and tell stories and just memorialize you minute one. Or we don't take care of it. It's only going to get worse. And then when you're gone, we're not going to be honoring you. We're going to be cursing you out because we're going to be so frustrated by how much we're going to need to get done that won't end up costing us a fortune in maintaining your apartment for more months than we should. When I said this to my father, he was like working on it right away. He was like, no, this is not what I want to leave for them, which is amazing considering how much he how much chaos he created in the past. My mother, it took a little bit longer. We work in very small amounts occasionally. We try to be there every week, and it usually ends up being only once or twice a month. So it's going to be a slow progress. But there's progress.

SPEAKER_00: 11:16

That's great. That's wonderful. So she didn't shut you out permanently. She just shut you out for that day. She shut me out for a long time.

SPEAKER_01: 11:25

It was just, yeah, it was for a long time. It was just that first we weren't allowed at her place for a while. And the reason we knew about the mess was on multiple visits. We live in New York City and on multiple visits to seeing my grandparents in Florida, someone would have to take care of her cat or cats, depending on how many she had at the time. So we knew what it looked like. And it got to the point where she let my husband in but didn't let me in. And my husband's very easygoing and kind and warm. He is the calm to my excitable. And so I'm sure she felt much safer having him in the environment. Right.

SPEAKER_00: 12:05

She probably also cares more about what you think. Um, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01: 12:11

Perhaps.

SPEAKER_00: 12:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 12:13

So do you actually work with any hoarders? She and one other are the only hoarders that I work with. I typically work with women who are in the middle of life, you know, somewhere in their late 30s to early 60s, who are in the middle of everything, in the middle of raising kids and aging parents, in the middle of a career, in the middle of starting a business, in the middle of our bodies doing all these crazy things. And so, in that work, I address more of the mental clutter associated with our lives than the physical clutter, the digital clutter and the calendar clutter and the 24-hour news cycle clutter and social media clutter and work clutter and all of those things, which often lead to physical clutter and physical clutter then makes all of that clutter worse. So I have a lot of people come to me and they just think that there's a little problem and don't think they have clutter. And once we sit down and talk about it, we realize like there's a horde in our head that we're not addressing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 13:15

Wow. What kind of feelings come with that? Do you think for people?

SPEAKER_01: 13:18

It's heavy. It's heavy. I had clutter. I just I didn't realize it was clutter because it looks so much better than my mother's home. I didn't realize like how much my environment was affecting my physical and mental health. I did understand it because when I went to her home, I was so overwhelmed. And I was so anxious. And it did make me very uncomfortable. And it took me time to calm down from that. I didn't realize that it was happening in my own home too. And by no means, I have people who, when I talk to them about this, they're like, I was at your house so many times. I didn't, it didn't look cluttered to me. And I was like, well, sure. Because I got really good at hiding it, cramming it under beds and in closets and in drawers. And I also think that one person's clutter is another person's clean. And one person's clean is still someone's clutter that we all have, we all have a different threshold. But I also feel like it's also like what you desire. Like I work and with and know minimalists. I have no all the clutter that I've let go, no interest in being a minimalist. I love colors and patterns and textures and things, and I love books and pictures. It's just a matter of recognizing that everything in our environment has energy. And things have good energy and bad energy. If it has good energy, like even if it feels like it's too much, like keep it, love it, appreciate it, use it, look at it, whatever it is. And if it doesn't have good energy, it doesn't matter who it belonged to, how much it cost you, who gifted it to you, whether there's fear it might need to be replaced. If it's not got good energy, it's gotta go.

SPEAKER_00: 15:11

Yeah. My problem is sometimes things have good energy and they still gotta go. It's just not enough room for everything.

SPEAKER_01: 15:18

Like this is I live in a New York City apartment. I hear you.

SPEAKER_00: 15:22

Yeah. All right. So hoarding is something that a lot of people see on reality TV shows. And what do you think they get wrong from seeing those shows in what it's like in reality?

SPEAKER_01: 15:36

I think some of the shows have done a decent job of communicating. This isn't something someone desires. Like no one woke up one morning and said, you know, it'd be cool. I want to be a hoarder. I think they've done a decent job of that. I don't think they've done a good enough job really doing a deep dive in understanding where the hoarding is coming from, really understanding trauma, really understanding things like OCD. I use those two, deep depression, other extreme mood changes can all be behind that. And this overwhelming need for perfection can get in the way, which is related to OCD, but not exactly the same. Because someone, and this is what I see in my mother and in so many people, is there really is this desire for everything to be clean and neat. The desire is strong. But the feeling is, well, I want that. So I have to go get that. And what they're talking about is something that's so far away. And because it's so far away, it's very overwhelming. I don't even know where to start. Do I start with this drawer or that cabinet or and I'll just do it all on Saturday? And Saturday rolls around, and you don't know where to start, you don't know how to get started. And as a result, it's so much easier to say, you know what, I can't deal with it today. I'll deal with it tomorrow. And tomorrow becomes tomorrow, and tomorrow becomes next week and next month and next year. And then all of a sudden, what may have been a small problem now is really a great big problem. And I want people to understand that, like you just can't walk in and do it all in one fell swoop the way they do it on the shows.

SPEAKER_00: 17:21

Yeah. Yeah. I always think that's a little unrealistic. So tell me a little bit about how your mom's doing now.

SPEAKER_01: 17:29

She's appreciative, which is amazing. And she has a willingness to let things go. That's incredible. I can't even begin to tell you how much clothing we've brought into different consignment stores and how many books we've put in free libraries. We've had many stoop sales. I say stoop sale for I don't know where your listeners typically listen in from, but in New York we don't have yard sales, we have stoop sales. Where we've sold jewelry of hers, and I'm Jewish, the only way I know how to say is like Tchotchkis, How's Ride, like Thingamajs, like all of the stuff. And it is amazing how much there is. So it's the papers that I think that are gonna take time. Oh, she was so proud of herself last week. Someone in one of our buy nothing groups on Facebook had a collection of national geographics that they were trying to unload. And I couldn't believe how many people were like, Oh, I'll take it, I'll take it. I was like, Oh my god, my mother has like 10 years of National Geographic from the 90s. And I messaged her and said, I have people who are interested. And she was like, Melanie, you told me that I should get rid of the magazines, and I did. Wow. But apparently I told her that last year, and she had done it last year, and like for some reason it hadn't clicked. I think there's still so much in her home that it's hard to remember. Like, did I see that last time or was it the time before that? So she's just so proud of herself that she got rid of the magazines, which to me was an opportunity to like, you're right, mom, that's great. I can't believe I forgot that. What a big thing for you. Like overdoing it, like if I were working with my kids when they were younger at home or something like that.

SPEAKER_00: 19:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 19:15

So, yeah, so it's a very different experience now.

SPEAKER_00: 19:18

Has she stopped bringing stuff in?

SPEAKER_01: 19:20

I think so. I think so. I think, you know, one of the things that we talked about trauma and OCD being big drivers, but age is a big driver too. And when we talk about things having energy, for so many of us, our things are like proof of life, you know, my gymnastics medals or my letterman's jacket or my yearbooks. And I know all of that sounded very school-like, but I think, you know, you know what I mean, like in terms of proof of life. So the more like we recognize our mortality, the harder it is to let those things go because it's like our attachment to who we were once or who we are now. And I see more of a willingness on her part to let go of some of those things. But it's still so hard. Like, I don't want anybody to think, whether it's high-level hoarding, low-level hoarding, or somewhere in between, that it's not as easy to let something go as looking at looking at a thing and saying, we really don't need this anymore. And then letting it go. There's like 50 different questions we need to ask ourselves in order to feel comfortable with making that decision. Let it go and keep it.

SPEAKER_00: 20:36

Well, and I've had a friend from years ago, haven't seen her in a long time, so I don't know how they're doing now, but she had a husband who hoarded. And she would get the place all clean again, and he would just bring more stuff in and more stuff in. How do you help someone like that?

SPEAKER_01: 20:56

Well, I think for starters, we have to recognize that the clutter isn't the problem. It's the symptom of the problem. And so if you go in and clean someone's house out and make it perfect without them being a part of it, they'll bring it back in. That they really need to be a partner in that. If they can be, I recognize that in some cases, clutter is dangerous for a host of reasons, whether it's paper and fire or one of the other ways we were able to convince my mom that we needed to start decluttering was hey, guess what? If the fire department has to come or a paramedic has to come because you've fallen, or you're having a medical emergency, they have to be able to get into your apartment. And so a lot of clutter doesn't get addressed until after the emergency has happened.

SPEAKER_00: 21:51

That makes perfect sense. So, what has helped you feel better or feel safe now that you're in your own home?

SPEAKER_01: 21:59

Well, that's a loaded question. I mean, one is creating a space that makes me feel good. And one of the things that I've learned is I am more heavily affected by clutter than my husband is. But the reality is in the research, it shows that women are like three times more likely to be stressed by stuff than men are. But he gets it when I explain to him. So this is how this makes me feel. So he is more helpful in removing the clutter. We also got maybe a little lucky this summer. We finally became empty nesters or second daughter, moved out. And so the space that I'm in for the listeners, beautiful purple walls that I chose. This is now my office, which means there's more room. We didn't bring more stuff in, we just renegotiated space. I lie. We did bring new stuff in. I brought in curtains and I brought in a rug and I brought in a new lamp and a new desk, a new chair, and everything secondhand. I'm a huge proponent of sustainability and giving things a second life. And that's one of the things that helped with my mom was letting her know, you know what, if you're getting rid of this scarf, this necklace or whatever, it doesn't mean it dies. We're gonna give it a second life. Someone else is now going to be able to enjoy it. Well, maybe in exactly the same way, or maybe very different ways they were. That scarf was something you never would have worn it with before. So I appreciate having been given the space, but we still live in a New York City apartment. It's still a small space, but we just we work faster, we work more productively, we work with less stress when there isn't a lot of stuff around us.

SPEAKER_00: 23:52

I love your concept of giving things a second life. So, how do you help people? What would you say about that whole do I just throw it away, give it away, or donate? Give it to a friend, have a garage sell, donate it. Do you just see what's quickest?

SPEAKER_01: 24:11

It depends on the person. It really depends on the person. I think it depends on how much there is to let go, the condition of the stuff. I know the greatest question is there's someone else that can use this, and who is that person? And it may be you're ready to get rid of a coat, and there was this one person who every time you wore it complimented you. Maybe that person would like the coat. And then the second life is one that you actually almost get to see. Books to me are fairly I have to be careful how I say that because my husband's a book collector and I love busts. I said that I love books, and so it's not necessarily easy to let them go, but it is easy to have a place for them to go to when you're ready to let them go, especially. I don't know about where you live, but there are those little put free libraries in front of people's homes all over the place. And so because libraries won't take them anymore, but that's fine. There are all these little libraries, and we know in our neighborhood there's one that's like specifically for cookbooks. I love that. There's ones that focus more on children's books. We have a friend in the neighborhood who's very political and he really tries to keep everything like really radical and interesting and spicy to you know politics and the world and history. So I love that. When it comes to some things, though, it's broken. Someone else doesn't want it if it's broken. Unless, of course, you know it's a piece of tech and there's a school in your area that has the kids take computers apart and take broken things and try to fix them, then someone wants your broken stuff. So it's asking a lot of questions about something's worth and not having judgment assigned to it either.

SPEAKER_00: 25:59

What would you recommend to someone like I talked about, my friend earlier, who her husband is the hoarder and she's not? How does she figure out what's causing it for her husband? Just recommend he goes to therapy or I I think it yes.

SPEAKER_01: 26:17

The question is, how responsive is he going to be to that? Some are more responsive than others. But I think it takes like a really calm sit-down, not to say, I think you have a problem, because the minute you tell someone I think you have a problem, that like la la la, I can't hear you anymore, they are not paying attention. So better to say, there's something I want to talk to you about, and it's very uncomfortable for me. And it's creating stress and anxiety. And I need you to know what it is about, and then maybe we can talk about how we find help for each other. Make it a combined thing. This isn't your problem and you need to take care of it, but rather this is something I would like us to work on together. How can I support you in us making that change? It could be simple, like, I didn't realize it was such a big problem. I didn't realize it affected you that way, or it could cause a super big fight, you know. Well, that's your problem, not my problem. Your problem is my problem in our relationship. Period. End of story.

SPEAKER_00: 27:26

Definitely, definitely. What do you think we've missed today? Is there anything that you'd like to share with people? Sure.

SPEAKER_01: 27:33

Well, I think my poor mother, we tore her apart. We didn't we didn't tear my father apart enough. So let me do that for a moment. Oh, you go ahead. So my dad's clutter is different than my mom's. My dad was a scientist and he has a patent or two to his name, and he built chemical plants back in the 70s. And so he has boxes of paper. Boxes of paper that he thinks wholeheartedly are important because there may be, I don't know, I'm going to make it up as I go along, some chemical equation or some blueprint or some mathematical equation that's in there that he'll never be able to generate again. And my dad is closer to 80 than he is to 79, and he still works full-time, and that stuff is still important to him. And there's a reminder every once in a while, well, a lot of that stuff actually is on the internet now. Like that thing that you didn't have when you were first doing this work 40, 50, 60 years ago. And I think it's important for people in that situation to be given the support in sorting through that stuff. There's a lot of scanning that needs to happen, but there's also just a lot of shredding that needs to happen. And something that I tell my dad's in Florida, and so he has these boxes of paper, and I say, So, Dad, what would happen if the hurricane was so bad that all of that paper got destroyed? What would you do then? Oh, you know, I don't need to borrow trouble, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I get it. You like, you don't want to jinx it or something. You don't want to even put like that that idea out in the ether. But the reality is, if you took on water, you would lose all of that. I mean, the same could happen, you know, God forbid, none of this should happen in a fire. I lived in Southern California during a major earthquake and earthquake damage so much of what you own. We've seen terrible things. We have friends who lost their homes in the fires earlier this year. And it makes you realize how unimportant the things are and how important the people are.

SPEAKER_00: 29:57

Oh, definitely. Definitely. So I'm wondering when you talk about your dad being close to 80 and having all the paper, if that's a generational thing that we won't deal with anymore as our children grow up.

SPEAKER_01: 30:11

I mean, it's interesting because he's a science guy, he's pretty tech savvy, you know. I mean, he still uses an AOL account.

SPEAKER_00: 30:18

So I didn't even know that was a thing. Like it's I don't want to single anybody out with an AOL account. However, my dad's got an AOL account.

SPEAKER_01: 30:30

But he also has email on his business email and stuff like that. In his case, I don't know if it's like not being able to be technically savvy enough. Although maybe it's just similar to my mom in I need to take the time to, or that's not what I meant to say. What I meant to say was, I need help in getting this done because it's so overwhelming. It's such a massive project. And so, yeah. He's asked me to come help him with it, but the first time he asked, I said no because I did the legwork on having a shredder truck come to the house. When I heard how many boxes it was, I was like, for a couple hundred dollars. They'll come to you, they'll take the paper, they'll shred it in front of you so you can see it and then take it away. He's like, Well, I'm not getting rid of all of it just like that. And I said, Then you're not ready for me to come down and help you. You need to be ready to do that. So he's been working on it on his own.

SPEAKER_00: 31:34

Yeah. Such an attachment. Yeah. I can't even imagine. So what do you think about people with ADHD? Do you think that that executive functioning, like you were talking about earlier, is part of that? For me, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 31:51

For me, totally. I think all of all of it, you know, ADHD, depression, anxiety, other kinds of mood disorders, you know, all that makes our brains function a little differently makes the clutter a little bit harder because there's an assumption that we need to address it the same way everybody else does. Well, what makes me uniquely means that I'm going to need a unique approach. There isn't a one size fits all to decluttering. And I think that clutter coaches that do have a one size fits all are going to end up with clients for whom it's not going to go as smoothly as it potentially can. You really need to know who you're working with above and beyond what their needs are. Like it is important to know those things. And, you know, moms of young children who may not have ADD, but they're sleep deprived and a mess of things, that's going to affect your executive function for those of us who are either in periomenopause or as I am now in menopause. Our brains are also doing all these really crazy things that they weren't doing 20 years ago. And so we also need to take that into consideration, whether it's the ability to focus or how long you can focus for, or what you want to focus on, all of that plays a significant role.

SPEAKER_00: 33:18

Right. So if somebody wants to work with you, is it something you have to do in person or can you actually be on Zoom and help people?

SPEAKER_01: 33:25

I've done both. And it's actually kind of fun when we do it via Zoom. I've had clients who we've met weekly and they've given me like a tour of the space and showed me what they wanted to work on, whether they thought they were capable of it or not. And we would talk a little bit about where did the clutter come from? Why is it so hard to let it go? What's getting in the way, not you're getting in the way, but what is actually getting in the way set goals. So when working with clients, I know that I have to lean into one of my favorite statements, and that is ridiculously simple goals. And when I say ridiculously simple, I mean like so little that you're afraid that if you told someone else that was your goal, they'd be like, that's not a goal, you could do it in a minute. But that's the perfect goal because that's the one you can do it, you accomplish it quickly, it feels good, you can pat yourself on the back, you're motivated and inspired to do more. And most importantly, feel confident in your ability to do more. So when if I'm sitting down with a client and they say, Well, this week I want to work on the closet, I might narrow it down and say, What part of the closet do you want to work on? Do you want to work on the hanging things? Do you want to work on something that's on a shelf up above or the things that are on the floor? Or maybe it's a category of things. Maybe it's the shirts, maybe it's the socks. I think people are afraid to set goals that are that small because it doesn't really sound admirable or something like that. And I think those are the most admirable goals. Because if you set the bowl of socks and you do the socks, you're gonna do something else because it was like, well, that was easy. I could do another 10 minutes, I could do another 15 minutes. Yeah. And then more stuff gets done.

SPEAKER_00: 35:15

Instead, I think because people think they do have to have a bigger goal, they do things like clear out the whole closet. And then they're like, oh my God, now I have this huge mess. Exactly. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01: 35:28

I know that there are a lot of clutter experts that are like, take it all out and sort it and all the things. That's great if you know for sure that you're gonna dedicate eight hours to it. But if you're not gonna dedicate eight hours to it, then you can't take everything out and sort everything because it's just gonna make it worse. At the end of the day, when you're still looking at these piles, stress you out, or they're gonna depress you, and then you're not sleeping well. And my history is well, if the clutter is stressing you out, something's gotta take care of the stress. Food, alcohol, cigarettes, shopping for more things, all of the things that give you a really quick dopamine hit will make you feel better, but the clutter's still there.

SPEAKER_00: 36:12

Right. Amen. Boy. So if people want to work with you, where do they find you?

SPEAKER_01: 36:17

They can find me on literally every social media platform as Melanie Cohen or my company Thoughtfully Coaching. Best way to reach me is at thoughtfullycoaching.com. I do a free 30-minute discovery session and which offer to everybody. And yeah, I also do group corporate wellness coaching that's not necessarily addressing the clutter in your closet, but addressing the clutter at the desk in your briefcase, in the car, and all of the mental clutter.

SPEAKER_00: 36:52

Right. Yeah, I personally have a big problem with my computer clutter. It's I had to buy an extra thing to put stuff on that was on my computer because I didn't have any space anymore. And I'm like, some of these are duplicates and triplicates, and I don't need all this.

SPEAKER_01: 37:09

So you know, when they first coined hoarders, it was the early 90s. I think it came out of Smith College, a professor and working with someone on their senior thesis, and it became something that they didn't expect it was going to become in terms of like how many people out there actually were facing the challenges of hoarding. But in the early 90s, when they were talking about hoarding, they were talking about stuff. Yeah. They didn't have social media, they didn't have digital libraries of 20,000 photos from the past couple of years, because there are six photos of all the same people in the same place, but one person has their eyes closed and the other person's looking it away, and someone else has their finger up their nose or whatever. And instead of deleting and keeping only one, they're all there. It's just all of these different aspects of clutter in our lives that none of us ever really anticipated being an issue, ever.

SPEAKER_00: 38:06

Yeah, it's a whole new world.

unknown: 38:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 38:09

All right. Well, Melanie, thank you so much for coming on and discussing such a sensitive topic. I appreciate it. No, thank you for having me. I appreciate it. And I will put all your information in the show notes so people can find you. Excellent. Thank you for being here, for listening, and for holding space for conversations just like this. Ones that aren't always easy but deeply needed. If this episode made you feel seen, understood, or reminded you that you're not the only one walking through hard things. I'd be so grateful if you'd leave a review, share it with a friend, or just reach out and let me know you were here. And if you want more support like this, real talk, soulful tools, and reminders that you are not alone, you can join my newsletter at advancingwithany.com. It's where I send the kind of stuff that helps you keep going when life feels heavy. Keep advancing, lawyer. You're doing better than you think.