At some point in our lives, we will eventually accumulate personal baggage that will require us to start decluttering inside out. This is not only about going to your closet and throwing away the things you don’t need, but releasing those emotions that don’t do you any good at all. Susi Vine sits down with decluttering expert Mel Robertson to discuss:

• Mel’s belief that it is every person’s birthright to be happy and abundant in every area

• The Principle of Correspondence: As above, so it is below, and as within, so without

• The avoidance of decluttering your space is a mirror of the resistance to look within

• When we make space for ourselves, it’s easier to create space in our environment

• The practice of “Allowing the Now”

• How clutter can be blocking your natural abundance

• Discovering the magic in each moment through the power of being present
• “Letting go” is like building a muscle

You can check out Mel’s website here, and join her email list for great tips + opportunities to book a free coaching session!

Find Mel on YouTube here to see all her latest videos, and submit a question to info@declutteringspaces.com for her to answer in an upcoming video.

Watch the episode here:

The Power Of Making Space – Inside + Out

Decluttering expert Mel Robertson joins me to discuss the magic of making space. In her own life Mel has worked through personal trauma, and in the process discovered that her environment naturally – almost magically – became less cluttered. Now she shares her experience through coaching clients in releasing inner resistance and patterns of “clinging” to things that don’t serve them so that they can enjoy more space, inside and out.

Welcome back. I am so happy to bring another interview out of the archives. We’re going to be talking with Mel Robertson, decluttering expert. She’s going to talk about the magic of making space. Mel believes that it’s our birthright to be happy and abundant in every area. She works with her clients to help clear clutter from the inside out. By making more space inside, you will find that naturally you start creating more space outside in your life, relationships, even in your relationships with food. This is a fascinating conversation. I’m excited to bring it back for you. We’re going to talk about how there is magic in every moment when we can be present in the here and now. Thanks for joining us. I’m looking forward to share all of this with you.

—

I’m so excited to share with you an expert cleaning up your act. I came across Mel and her brilliant work when I was working with the senior move management business. What I was doing was helping people downsize. My clients were typically in their 80s and 90s. It was really difficult. When I found Mel and found the work that she’s doing and the way that she’s inspiring people to start now, start where you are, I knew we had to get connected. We’ve known each other for a couple of years now. She’s moved from the San Diego area out to the desert, but as we all do, she’s been doing virtual work online. It’s so easy to get connected. She’s got some great work and ways to find her. I’ll let her share that with you, but first I want to start the conversation with Mel Robertson. She is the declutter expert and Coach and Founder of Decluttering Spaces. She helps people address working from the inside out. I’d like her to introduce herself because she’s got a great way of putting it all into a nugget and then we’re going to let this conversation go. Mel, thanks for joining me.

Susi, thank you so much for having me. It’s been a while. It’s nice to see you. I’m excited to see what you’re doing in the world. My little nugget is I help my clients get free from clutter, physical, mental and emotional. They can make space for the magic to happen and experience happiness and abundance in every area of their life. It’s your birthright to be happy and abundant in every area of your life. It’s my opinion that clutter is anything that gets in the way of that. Whether it’s repressed emotions, resentments, fears, limiting beliefs, all that stuff is the inner clutter that then gets represented in the external clutter that shows up in piles or excess weight or drug addiction, alcoholism, all those other things.

People don’t make that connection. That’s why I love that you are bringing your message out because people tend to compartmentalize and say, “My house is a mess. I just never have time to address it.” Put that aside and not recognize that there’s a deep connection in the way that we operate, the way that we are and the way that shows up in our environment.

What I try to explain to people is that the outside is a mirror of the inside. There’s a principle in the universe and operation called the Principle of Correspondence. It states as above, so below, as within or so without. What that means is the outside is a mirror of the inside so to get the outside to change, all you need to do is change the inside. That’s why when you try to change the outside first and you are hiring an organizer or trying to drag yourself to get organized, it’s like trying to get molasses to run up a hill in the middle of January. It’s like hell. It’s not happening. When it happens from the inside out, it’s effortless. You want to do it. There’s no dread. There’s no drag. When you make space on the inside, outside has to change. You start showing up for yourself and making space on the inside. That starts to match.

That’s apparent when people say, “I’m going to get to cleaning out my closet. I’m going to get to reorganizing my kitchen,” and then they keep putting it off. They are focused on should do and pleasing other people. There’s much you can do to start working within yourself. When you get clear, when you start to cultivate other practices like meditation or things that restore you, suddenly you’re inspired. You can clean out a drawer that you’ve been avoiding for three months, you can clean it in 5 to 7 minutes.

That avoidance that you’re talking about like, “I’ll get to it later.” That avoidance of looking at what’s going on in the outside is a mirror reflection of our unwillingness to look within ourselves. We need to be willing to stop and show up for ourselves and make the space for us first. When we can make space for ourselves in the moment, wherever we are, meeting ourselves right where we are, the magic can happen.

People don’t recognize what a drain on energy and attention it is to be putting off something like that visible disorganization. You’re carrying that along with you. Adding it to one more thing, on the list obligations that we’re not attending to, the failures, if I’m going to be bold about it. We don’t want to feel that way, but we put a lot of stuff on ourselves. It’s one thing that we can’t do.

We keep attaching these balls and chains to ourselves that we want to keep dragging around all these pressures that were added on, “I’ll get to it later.” That energy is dragging you over there. It’s pulling from you from the presence. It’s sucking the life force right out of you and you don’t realize it.

I like to use the analogy when I’m talking in terms of general stress. There’s the bucket. That’s a popular analogy and things pile up. You don’t recognize how much you’re carrying, how heavy that is until something happens. You get to put that down. You’re like, “What the heck?” The frog in the boiling pot, that little story too. You don’t recognize the danger that you’re putting yourself in. You lose resilience with all of this that’s occupying space. We don’t need to give it. How long have you been doing the work that you’re doing now?

I am in business for several years.

Soon after that, I discovered you had done an awesome series called Happiness Is Your Own Damn Fault.

It’s how to drop the baggage, increase your frequency and live a bliss-filled life. All those videos are on my YouTube channel. People can still access that content. I still have that on my YouTube channel so people can watch all those.

Another example of how we love to look outside for what’s going to make us happy, feel better, what’s going to help us relax. I’ll get a massage. I’ll book an hour or two at the spa. It’s our own fault. We have to start within. Is there any way that you, in working with your clients, you help them begin to be aware of what they’ve got their blinders on to?

One of the things that I love to teach my clients is a practice I teach them called Allowing the Now, which is instead of calling it meditation, because meditation has such a negative connotation where you have to quiet your mind. People think, “I can’t meditate. I can’t quiet my mind. I can’t focus. I can’t do anything.” Allowing the now is becoming willing to show up for yourself in each moment and allow whatever is to be there. The clutter accumulates because of our unwillingness to look, make space and be willing to be there.

The first and most important thing we need to do is to bring our presence back to our life. We need to come home to ourselves and meet ourselves right where we are so we can move forward from there. It’s like GPS doesn’t need to know where the hell we’ve been all our lives. It just needs to know where we’re standing right now and where we want to go. We need to meet ourselves right here. We don’t need to beat ourselves up for all the piles that have accumulated. It is what it is. We have to be willing to meet ourselves without judgment and with that loving presence. When we can do that, even for a moment, that starts to make space on the inside.

Because you make space on the inside, there’s that law and operation. The outside has to start to match. Little by little, you’ll want to start looking at the stuff in your life as you become willing to make the space for yourself. That’s how it happened for me when I was younger. I learned how to become present with all the repressed emotions, resentments and fears from all the traumas and losses that I went through. I was a cluttered, messy kid. You couldn’t see my attachments to stuff. I was collecting things. I became willing to start making this space, I spontaneously wanted to start to look at the stuff in my environment and start doing something about it.

Gradually, it took about twelve years for me to get from the person who is super cluttered and attached, and hanging on to things, to someone who has completely let go. I don’t accumulate stuff. I have so much free space. I don’t even own furniture. I rent furnished rooms so I don’t have to accumulate furniture and have tons of space. It was a gradual twelve-year process of being willing to show up and make that space for myself over and over again. It starts to translate into other things. It’s not just the physical clutter.

You start to declutter your life of the things that no longer serve you. That’s in all kinds of areas like toxic relationships, food. A few years ago, I was a hardcore carnivore. I never thought that I would give up meat. I went vegetarian. I claimed that I was the dairytarian because I didn’t eat vegetables and I lived off milk and cheese. I never thought that I would get off that. Last December 2020, I went vegan. All these changes start happening from the inside out more and more.

You stop buying so much at the store. You stop accumulating. You think before you purchase. You’re willing to let go of more and more. As you look at stuff, you let go of more and more. The more space you make inside, the more space you have to have outside. I went from someone who didn’t take any time for myself at all, or any self-care to someone who has to have like two hours to myself in the morning before I go anywhere. That’s my core time of what I do my spiritual practices before I start my day, but it’s making that space on the inside that changes everything.

That one simple practice of allowing the now showing up. You can do it in line at the grocery store. You don’t have to be sitting. It doesn’t have to be fancy. You can do it with your eyes open. It’s being willing to breathe, be present and feel what it feels like to be in your body with whatever’s coming up. Is there a pain? Is there an itch? Is there an emotion? Whatever’s there, being willing to be present with it. As you do that, space starts to get made and you make space for the magic to happen.

That in itself sounds simple, simpler than the practices. There’s so much in what you were saying that I want to come back to. First, I want to support the fact that it was a long process. It wasn’t like flipping the switch. It wasn’t a dawning of insight that said, “I can ditch all this stuff. I don’t need it anymore.” You kept coming back to it, kept meeting yourself exactly where you are, and started to recognize that the story, your history doesn’t define you.

In the work that I do with flower essences and working with people on the emotional level, it’s interesting. A mentor of mine brought this to my attention and now I can’t help but see it. When people are stuck in their story, that’s their bad honor. It’s not to say that people don’t deserve to be proud of what they have survived. However, when we keep defining ourselves by our past and our history, that’s a lot to carry with us. We don’t have any space to see what we could become. We’ve already defined it. What could be out there? We can’t even see for the history. We lose all this beauty of being present in the moment, of being in the now, and being okay with a thought that comes to us and we let it go. We think of something in our past or something that was painful. We recognize it. We love ourselves and support ourselves in that. We accept where we are and be totally present with that.

With my clients, I hold the loving, nonjudgmental support and space. That’s where the transformation comes because they feel comfortable being themselves and meeting themselves where they are when they’re in that container of love and support.

Even when it’s not sad, but when they perceive from other relationships, family, friends, when they feel like they’re being judged for where they are, for how things look, for that thing, that’s one more layer we need to break free of. One more obligation we don’t need to be carrying around. We do the work. We make change. We lighten our own load for our own benefit. It’s not so somebody else finds it easier to be with us. It’s easier to make friends. We are the ones that reap that reward. It’s easier to bring in light, to bring in joy when we’re not carrying all that around. It’s like somebody turned on a light switch and everybody wants to hang out with you.

When you think of things energetically, we all have access to the same life force. The creator of the universe is abundant and that life force is what animates us. When I think about things, when I think about clutter, we have things that we’re avoiding, and there’s this resistance. We have things that we’re attached to. There’s this clinging and this resistance. When you’re doing that, it blocks that flow. That flow wants to come through, but if you’re pushing against it and you’re hanging onto it, you’re restricting the flow of abundance from coming to you. The more space you make, the more abundance can flow to you because you’re opening up the channel.

It’s like you have clogged plumbing. You’ve got to get the plumber in there and clean out all the plumbing so that the flow can come back. Once you do, your life starts to get so much more abundant. Things start to shift. Money comes in, relationships come in, jobs come in, opportunities come in, magic happens. I was driving to San Diego and I had at least three ospreys fly over my windshield, not just up in the air. Their timing was perfect. Magic is every moment when you can be present here and now.

The things that we miss when we’re caught up in the past or concerned about what the future holds can be heartbreaking to think what people are saying by not using this moment that we have right now. Not this moment, like this pause button that’s been pressed, where we’re trying to figure out what to do with ourselves, who we want to be, how we want to move forward from this. Do we want to do work right now and change? Do we want to be so kind to ourselves and take the time that we haven’t allowed?

It’s interesting right now I’m hearing about people who have even time for themselves, which is again, I feel like what you’re talking about that resistance and the reaching, there are influences beyond our control. There are jobs where people are making demands on us. They’re expecting more because you don’t have that time. However, I think that when you check in, when you hold that space for yourself and you say, “This is what I need,” like you discovered in your own practice, “This is what I need. I need time for me in the morning. I need to get out and feel the sun to wake me up and feel the earth beneath my feet and get grounded.” That time starts to be available.

When you make the space, the time shows up, and the more time shows up.

I’ve done a little bit over the last couple of years. It helps that I’ve been able to make my schedule flexible in doing massage work, but I feel hectic. I still feel there aren’t enough hours in the day. I started expecting there was going to be enough time. Everything took enough time. I was able to get on the road when I needed to, to get to the appointment that I needed to. It was all in the flow. The more we expect, the more we bring it in. The magic is, I need to get to the point where I have extra time in the day. It’s not just enough. Doing that experiment opened my eyes to the fact that we create this feeling of not enough time, money, where’s mine coming from? That is to jump off that hamster wheel.

As we keep telling ourselves that’s what our focus is so that’s what we keep seeing. Whatever we’re focused on is what we’re going to perceive. If we think we don’t have enough time, we’re going to keep seeing, we don’t have enough time. If we think we don’t have enough money, we’re going to keep seeing, I don’t have enough money. When we can trust and know that all is well and everything is happening exactly as it’s supposed to, everything just works out. The money shows up. The time shows up. When you begin to make the space, it just opens up.

When I took no time for myself, it started with five minutes. In my situation, I had to take my five minutes in the car before work in the situation that I was in because there was no place in my house to do it. I started taking five minutes for myself outside of work before I would go into work. Within three months of practicing that for myself, this huge shift happened, my ex-wife was able to move her mom in with us, and her anxiety was relieved.

Three months later from continuing that practice, I was able to quit my job. That’s when I received a $50,000 check and took six months off to create Decluttering Spaces. It all came from making the space for myself. All that magic starts to happen, not just the clutter, but in every area of your life, more abundance, more happiness in every area. That’s our birthright. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy and abundant all the time in every area of your life. It’s that you have the ability to experience it in every area of your life.

By waiting around for permission, we’re missing the opportunity. We have to take that power back. That’s ours to claim.

We have to make the choice.

You’re doing work personally. You’re doing work online with clients through the magic of internet. You can work with people anywhere. Do you spend a lot of time in conversation? Do you do a lot of looking around the room and helping people when they get to roadblocks?

I do a lot of both. I offer in-home decluttering services in person, but I also serve as a coach. I do phone sessions with my clients. A lot of people when they first come, their problem is, “I want to get my office organized. I want to get this organized.” They don’t think that anything else is going on. You can’t necessarily force them into that either. As I’m working with them in their house, I’m talking little by little, but they also want a result to happen. They’re expecting the office to get organized or that. It’s dropping little pieces and teaching along the way and watching them come along. With my very first client, it took four years of us working in her home before she became ready to coach with me.

Once she started coaching with me, her results were astronomically fast. Someone who couldn’t get through a box of paper on her own, after a year of coaching with me, says, “I don’t need you to come to my house anymore.” Ten months after coaching with me, she’s like, “I’m ready to graduate.” It took six years, but the first four years, were not willing and not ready to do the other piece. Once she became willing to do that piece, then once you started doing that, she had a temporary contract job and she was always subject to layoff. She’d been laid off twice in the first four years we’d worked together. That job became permanent and she got a raise and really cool employee benefits after she started coaching with me. All these things started to shift after she started making the space. It comes from the inside out.

That’s such a powerful illustration too and people do think, “I can do it on my own. I can find a resource. I can watch a video. I can read a book. If I need to make myself better, I can work on that on my own.” I need you to take care of this. Isn’t that amazing? Four years, she could have saved so much money.

Everything is necessary. It takes what it takes. The other thing too, is that when you go through years of accumulating, hanging on to stuff, you were in this state of resistance and attachment all the time. You become very contracted and rigid. It becomes hard for you to open up. It’s a gradual process. You can’t just open right up. It’s little by little and that’s what it takes. That’s why when I work with my clients, it’s one square foot at a time. Even when we tackle a pantry or the closet, it’s one square foot at a time, little by little building on that little by little, because that’s the only way you can do it or you get overwhelmed.

You have to keep celebrating all those wins, all progress. When I was working with my clients, every drawer, every closet, you have to work where they are.

Celebrate the wins, focus on what you let go of. I don’t ever focus on with my clients, hang on to them. I don’t care about what you’re hanging on to. Not that I don’t care, but that’s not what we’re focused on. We’re going to focus on what you let go of today because that’s what we’re focusing on. That’s the progress. You’re learning how to let go and that right there, letting go is a muscle. You have to build over time. If you’re in a state of hanging on, you’re not just going to go, “Let go.” It’s little by little. Every time you let go of something, you’re doing a rep at the gym.

You don’t go to the gym and do one rep. You’ve got to do a bunch of reps and a bunch of sets. Every week you go and work those muscle groups. You keep letting go and a great example is when we go through stuff and decide that they want to keep this stuff. When it goes time to put it away and they look at it again, they’ll let go of more just because they let look at it again. The more you look at it, you’ll let go of more and more every time. There’ll be stuff that you’re not ready to let go of yet and that’s okay too. Meet yourself right where you are.

I didn’t go to college. I’m almost self-taught, but I audited a couple of classes. There was this one class I fell in love with. It was called Symbolic Logic. I kept all my coursework. I kept all my notes, all the teacher’s notes. I carried it with me everywhere I moved. I only looked at it when I moved. I didn’t do anything with it, but I was super attached to it. I had this attachment to it and I couldn’t let it go for years. Finally, I let go of all of my writing and kept the teacher’s worksheets. Finally, I let go of all of it, but it was years of looking at it over and over again, not being willing to let go of it until I got to a place to where I was. It was being willing to meet myself there every time and not judge myself for hanging onto it. I let go of it when I was ready. You’ll let go of stuff when you’re ready and not in a moment before.

I did discover that. I went to a session where it was a training for first responders to help them be aware of thought process behind hoarding. It was so the point and I never got into that TV show, Hoarders, because I saw close enough in my work. I didn’t need to see it on screen. If you take it away before they’re ready, they’re going to find something else to fill that. It comes back again to that point. It’s not something that anyone else can tell you you’re ready for, tell you, “You need to get rid of this so that you can X, Y, or Z.” You have to be in that place.

I never tell my clients to get rid of anything. I’ll joke with them. I’ll be funny about it, but I’m like, “No, you don’t have to get rid of anything you don’t want to. I will never force you to get rid of anything. I’m going to know you’re going to keep that one too.” I’d be playful about it. We have fun. I have so much fun and laughter with my clients. We’re all laughing and having a blast.

Another thing that I took away from that training session was the awareness. The TV show did not illustrate this at all, but many people who get to that point, to get to that extreme situation of hoarding, come from very intellectual professions, lawyers, doctors, teachers. It’s not a matter of being smart enough to let go. It’s about not having that attachment. In many cases, it resulted from an emotional loss that was devastating. Again, pointing to that internal search for control, what I can control is my environment, and not realizing how hard they were making for themselves.

That bucket gets full when they’re focused on other things. They don’t realize how much they’re carrying, how much they’re accommodating, trying to navigate the extra stuff, how many extra boxes they move every time they move. I am so guilty of that. I’ve moved a lot when I was working in the theater. Every nine months for a couple of years, I was moving. I still have texts. You’re making me think of textbooks from my undergrad. I kept teaching myself, “I should hold on to those kitchen design books. I should hold on to this therapy manual.” I’ve got some work to do.

We’re never done. Don’t think you’re ever done. We’re never done.

It’s all lessons in empathy. I can relate with my clients and whatever it is they feel like they’re tired of struggling with, they’re tired of carrying around. I can empathize because I still have things that I’m working on too, and we all do. We all need that grace. What do you have coming up? What can we look for coming down the line from you? Any projects in the wings? I’ve seen you out on YouTube a lot so your YouTube channel is happening.

I am focused on my YouTube channel right now. While we’re in quarantine, I’m putting out a weekly check-in video to check in and share my experience of what I’m experiencing and hopefully that helps others. That’s been getting some good reviews. In the next couple of weeks, I’m going to start doing a video series on my YouTube channel, answering people’s questions. If you have your decluttering questions you want answered, I’m going to start taking questions and answering them one a week. People can email me their questions. If they want their name read, I’ll pick your question and your name like, “This is a question from Susi Vine,” and then answer your question on video from my YouTube channel.

Is there anything else that comes to mind that you would share with folks who are feeling the stress right now?

What I can’t stress enough and I tell my clients this all the time, I give you the secret in the first appointment. If you make the space for yourself and make the time for yourself, your life will change drastically. Another example is, I was working with someone, her schedule was full of doing things for others that she had no time for herself. She was working at a job that she was completely miserable at. She was only 27 years old and she was already headed for burnout. She took a 30-day challenge to take five minutes a day for herself and start making time for herself.

Right after the 30 days ended, her relationship that she thought was going to be the one she was going to marry came to an end, but the very next day, she got a job offer for an 80% salary increase. She was able to take the month off before starting the job so she booked a three-week trip to Europe. That was from putting yourself first for five minutes a day. You have the secret. If you do that, you won’t need me. If you do this, you don’t need me. Five minutes a day and it will grow bigger than five minutes a day. You’ll find as you do it over time, you’ll want more time for yourself. You’ll have two hours a day for yourself like I do every morning.

You can tell the universe all you want. As soon as you start taking action and you show that you’re serious, you show that you’re ready for change to bring in more, that’s when it starts coming your way.

You’ve got to be willing to receive it. You’ve got to show up to receive it. You have to be present to receive. You can’t be in the past and you can’t be in the future. You’ve got to be present to receive. You’ve got to have both hands open. You can’t be pushing away and you can’t be hanging on. You need to have your hands open, “Here I am, I receive.” That’s the key. You have to be willing to show up for yourself and make the space. It’s allowing the now, it’s that simple.

I’m going to add five minutes to my daily routine. Thank you, Mel. I’m so glad you came and shared all of these fabulous nuggets of wisdom. I hope that there are a lot that people can take away. Even if you start with one, there’s a recording, you can always come back and check in on it. I’m going to share all the links so everybody can stay in touch, check out Mel, her YouTube channel and get your question online, addressed free coaching. Come on, kids.

If you go to my website and put your name and email address in, you’ll get the blueprint that I have on there, The Seven-Steps to Manage Overwhelm & Organize Any Space. That’ll put you on my email list so then you will get notified as new videos come out and stuff like that because I always share my videos with my list.

There are so much for folks to take away. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for the work that you do. I learned how necessary it is and I need it myself. I appreciate you.

I appreciate you. You’re awesome.

Important Links:

• Decluttering Spaces
• YouTube channel – Decluttering Spaces