Ep# 044: Declutter Your Life + Embracing Minimalism with Allie Casazza
If only I could fully express how excited I am to bring you this episode with Allie Casazza… Seriously!
I was actually anxiously awaiting our conversation not just to bring it to you guys, but for myself! Allie is globally recognized for her courses and content that focuses on simple and intentional living. THE DREAM! More simplicity. Less clutter. More peace. Less stress.
That’s literally what she helps other women do! From decluttering the home to decluttering the schedule, Allie is all about helping us experience freedom from stuff to experience freedom in our lives.
So in this episode, I got to have a chat with Allie to learn more about her journey from overwhelmed, depressed and feeling like she was falling short to minimalism, peace, and freedom!
You're a mama, wife, + clearly killing it in your fields. But I want to know you! So, what crazy twisted wild journey brought you to this space, this place now?
Well, it was a years ago, about seven years ago, and I was just in this space and my personal life, I did not have my business at the time. It was just like a little hobby blog that was for my own benefit at the time. And I just was in the thick of like having babies.
I was a stay at home mom. My husband worked really crazy hours. It just is like this dead-end job, really large company. Where it's just kind of like you're just a number. They didn't take very good care of anybody. It was just really, really hard, like barely making ends meet. Yeah. I never saw him. Just like always seeking out over time, like just this, this cycle of like never enough, never enough. And at the same time in my personal part of that life, there was too much. There was too much clutter, too much stuff, too much demand on me as a person to uphold our life at home and kind of hold down the fort. And I started to really struggle with depression and it was a really dark time. I kind of felt like every morning when I would wake up and like realize like, “Okay, it's daylight, I gotta do this again.”
I would just kind of have this feeling of like, “Ugh, I can't!” and having three really young toddlers and babies and knowing that you're on your own. I had to do everything! My husband would leave at five in the morning and not come back until 10:00 PM or later sometimes. And knowing that I had to do all of that and have high energy and be the mom that I wanted it to be, that's not a really great place to wake up and start today. So I believe that each of us is called to live an abundant life. I really don't think that we are created to just kind of get by and I knew that then, but I was just kind of like, where is that here though? And everyone told me the same thing. When you're just in that season… Good luck! Very negative like this is going to be a total crap show, but you'll get through it.
And then when they get a little older, it kind of gets easier, but then like they're the worst and there's hormones and it's even harder. And my husband was just kinda like in this negative space. And I just, the way that my brain tends to work is like if I'm told that there's no way to do something, I kind of go towards like, “Yeah, there is! I'll just make one.”
And so, I began to seek that out. And what I discovered is that if you don't have as much excess, if you're not making it harder on yourself than it already is (which we do in so many ways in every area of life) that it is so much easier! Even a joy to deal with the chaos of life and for me that was motherhood. So having, you know a baby having a diaper blown out and another kid having a runny nose over here and the other one's screaming for a snack. I could almost just sit back and laugh at it and slowly handle each thing one at a time because I had so much white space from decluttering my home to cluttering my calendar and like just saying no to all excess and choosing what was going to be my focus and my intent.
Can you tell us a little bit more about that transition from the chaos and too much stuff in your life and having that like heavy feeling of depression and feeling down and how that desperation shifted you into taking a different action, a different approach?
I think if I hadn't been so truly desperate and I'm giving you guys like the short version here cause it is a really long and really dark story. I was, it was really, really bad. I was about to go on medication for depression, which is nothing wrong with that if you need it. But that's not what I needed. It was like a situational result of something I had control over that I didn't realize. And I think it, if I hadn't been that desperate I wouldn't have tried what I ended up trying cause it was kind of just this like this one day it all just came to a head and I had had enough and I was yelling at my daughter who was three like who really yells at a three year old (very desperate person) and I’m yelling at a three year old little girl who's just upset that she lost her favorite toy.
And I just was standing there almost like aerial perspective watching myself do that and just feeling like “No! This is not abundance. This is not my purpose!”
This is not me living out what I'm here to do and I refused to be status quo, to be just reacting to the life circumstances. I wanted to know this is where I'm going, this is what I'm called to in motherhood and business and marriage and relationships and being a human, whatever it is, I want to know what that is and walk toward that vision with purpose and so I think I just tried it because I noticed that day, like all I did was clean up. I was like shooing the kids away, putting on Dora like “Go here…go watch that!” Frustrated that they wanted a snack again.
And I was just getting them away from me to maintain the mundane. And I noticed that and had this epiphany moment where it was like, I'm screaming at her, I'm not the person I want to be. My husband comes home from a long day and I'm wanting to see him all day and we ended up arguing because I'm nagging like my day was harder than yours. Can't you help to have to put your stuff down there? Literally all I did was like just this ridiculous, like almost stereotypical story and I just didn't want it anymore. And I realized if this is the common result that I'm trying to keep things afloat. I'm trying to keep things cleaned up and running smoothly and everything that I was touching during my day that I was putting away and picking up and dealing with was like, I don't even think we need this thing!
And that was just kind of like BAM this epiphany moment. It was like “What if it was just gone?!” “What if we just had way less?!” And I was just so frigging desperate. I tried it that next day and I just attacked my house. I got rid of a ton of stuff and it was only one night and that next day and I noticed the difference!
My kids played better with less toys. I felt lighter. I had less cleaning to do and we had like the best day we'd had since I became a mom. And it was like in a few hours if that's how I feel, what the heck is going to happen when I finish everything? And then I started to notice what if I uncomplicated health and wellness and just took better care of myself in a way that was really minimalistic and simplified. What if I did visit my calendar? What if I stopped saying yes to all these toxic energy sucking people and decided to say yes to what really matters to me and let them be disappointed. And I implemented minimalism in everything, and it became my business and my message.