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Sept. 10, 2019 - Dr. Oz Podcast

25:35

Gretchen Rubin on Outer Order for Inner Calm

Are you living in constant clutter? Renowned happiness expert and New York Times bestselling author Gretchen Rubin is weighing in on the best way to order your home to make room for happiness without having to purge your entire life in her new book “Outer Order, Inner Calm.” Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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	We all know that, you know, cleaning out your closet is not going to save the world, but there is this feeling of like, if I can get control of my stuff, maybe I'll feel more control of my life generally.
	And I think people do experience that.
	They get a sense of energy and control and kind of a revitalized feeling from creating outer order.
	And so it's a way to offset this feeling of being overwhelmed by uncertainty and by negative information.
	Hi, I'm Dr. Oz, and this is the Dr. Oz podcast. and this is the Dr. Oz podcast. .
	Take a look around the room that you're in right now.
	Just stop what you're doing and take a quick look.
	Is it filled to the brim with clutter and boxes that you have not opened for years?
	Or have you already heeded the Marie Kondo approach to cleaning and you only surround yourself with the things you absolutely need that spark joy?
	Well, renowned happiness expert and New York Times bestselling author Gretchen Rubin is weighing in on the best way to order your house to make room for the happiness without having to purge your entire life.
	She talks all about it in her new book, Outer Order, Inner Calm.
	The cover itself makes you calm.
	Rajen, welcome back to the podcast.
	Oh, I'm so happy to be back.
	Thanks for having me.
	So for everyone at home, we've seen this huge shift in society with an obsession with purging things we don't need theoretically to declutter our lives.
	And I'm curious, when did we all become aspiring minimalists?
	Well, you know, I think part of it is, I think there's a couple of things going on right in this cultural moment.
	One is that I think people feel very overwhelmed by information, by developments in the world.
	And they're seeking some kind of equilibrium.
	And so we all know that cleaning out your closet is not going to save the world, but there is this feeling of like, if I can get control of my stuff, maybe I'll feel more control of my life generally.
	And I think people do experience that.
	that they get a sense of energy and control and kind of a revitalized feeling from creating outer order.
	And so it's a way to offset this feeling of being overwhelmed by uncertainty and by negative information.
	And then also demographically, there's a lot of people who are downsizing, who are dying, and so stuff is coming down.
	And then they're the people who are in the season of stuff.
	So they have children who generate their own kinds of clutter.
	And so I think there are just a lot of people who, for whatever reason, just feel like, oh my gosh, there's just too much stuff in my life.
	I need to figure out how to dig my way out of here.
	You seem to know a lot about this.
	Were you ever a clutter bug?
	What's your natural instinct if you weren't a happiness expert?
	Well, you know, I'm pretty orderly.
	But I feel this connection very strongly myself.
	Like, if I'm feeling blue or if I'm feeling kind of listless...
	I will often sort of clean something up to get the buzz, to get the little energy fix.
	And so that's always struck me as curious because, like, why is there this disproportionate reaction?
	Like, I know that in the context of a happy life, something like a neat coat closet is trivial, and yet I feel so much better when I do it.
	And so that's what drew me to that subject because I wanted to understand why so many people feel that kind of connection.
	I think it's not the neat coat closet that makes you happy.
	It's the really stuffed...
	Yes.
	Terrible cluttered closet that makes you feel bad.
	Yeah.
	It's that nagging feeling hanging over your head with the clutter.
	Absolutely.
	And stuff can make us feel bad because partly it's hard to put things away.
	It's hard to find things.
	Research suggests that the average American adult spends 55 minutes a day looking for misplaced items.
	Are you kidding me?
	Come on!
	Imagine what you can do with 55 minutes a day.
	Exactly.
	So there's that.
	And then there's also a lot of times they remind us we feel regret.
	Oh, I spent too much on this pair of boots.
	And so every time I see it, I get a little zing of guilt or...
	It's related to a fantasy self.
	I'm going to learn to play guitar or I'm going to use that treadmill.
	And so you feel guilty when you look at it.
	Or it's like an unfinished project, something like a thousand-piece puzzle or a knitting project that you haven't finished.
	It's sort of lingering there.
	And when you look at it, it brings you down.
	And as you say, when you have that space and all that stuff is cleared away, you just feel so much freer and lighter.
	Yeah.
	You know, when Mike Roizen was working out the real-age test, the best test to figure out how old your body thinks you are, there was a whole category of nuts, nagging unfinished tasks.
	And the metaphor he would always use was the broken screen door that whips your butt as you walk out of your house every morning, that one day you're going to fix.
	And I think you're both right that it's the fact that you didn't fix it that bothers you, not the fact that it exists, which I think explains some of the medical benefits.
	There's actually a – you sacrifice several – I mean it's a significant amount of life by having a life filled with these nagging tasks because it underlines your incompetence.
	Yes.
	Well, and one of the ways that I suggest in the book about tackling that is power hour.
	And power hours, you keep a list of those things, like I need to take the shoes to the shoe place, or I need to go to the hardware store to get that weird light bulb, or I need to fix that screen door, and you keep a list of it.
	And then – so even if you're a very, very busy person and you feel like I don't have time to deal with it, it's like, OK, for one hour once a week, can you do power hour?
	And just start making your way through those tasks.
	And often people find – it's like the old saying, the stewing is worse than the doing.
	And that when you actually have some kind of system for tackling something like the screen door, which it's sort of like – things that can be done at any time are often done at no time.
	So when you create a time when those kinds of things get done, then it's – I think for a lot of people that makes it a lot easier to get those things crossed off the list.
	And then as you say, get that boost of sort of self-efficacy that comes from finally getting it done.
	I had not heard stewing worse than doing, but that may come up in future conversations.
	Do you have a technique for...
	For sorting out which things to do first.
	Because I have a trillion of them.
	And that's why none of them ever get done.
	Because I can't figure out which...
	Do I do my books first?
	Do I do my closet first?
	Do I do my leftover toys?
	My makeup?
	My vitamins?
	Where do you get started?
	Where do you start?
	You should know this is actually an intervention.
	I've been asking for this segment for a while.
	I'm telling you, it is a walking example of nuts.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Well, and it's often a conflict in couples where one person just has a different place they want to be.
	Is there a conflict in our couple over this, Lisa?
	No.
	There should be.
	Someone is complaining about it all the time and someone else isn't listening.
	Oh, yeah.
	Some people are just clutter blind.
	My sister, who's the co-host of the Happier podcast with me, she just doesn't see it.
	She wouldn't close a kitchen cabinet door for the rest of her life if she didn't live with other people.
	But if you say where to get started, one place not to get started is don't get started by saying, I'm going to get organized.
	Because a lot of times when people decide they want to get organized, they feel this impulse to run out and buy stuff like complicated hangers.
	or binders.
	People love to buy binders.
	Or, you know, storage containers.
	Like, first, get rid of everything that's just clogging the system because you may find that you don't need to get organized.
	Like, there's just, there's not enough left that needs to be organized.
	You can just, like, put it away.
	But then that raises the question of how do you decide what to keep and what to relinquish?
	And you mentioned Marie Kondo, and her test is SparkJoy.
	I have to say that for myself, that works really well for a lot of people.
	I just felt like I had many things in my life that I wouldn't say truly sparked joy, and yet they were doing their little jobs well.
	I didn't find for me that was a helpful test.
	For me, I say, do I need it?
	Do I use it?
	Do I love it?
	Because there are things that I need and use that I don't love.
	And there are things that I love that I don't really use and I don't really need, but I love them.
	So for me, that's the test.
	Do I need it?
	Do I use it?
	Do I love it?
	What about if it's useful in the zombie apocalypse?
	I mean, people save stuff for the unknown future.
	There is.
	That's a kind of anticipatory clutter.
	Anticipatory clutter is a whole word for it?
	Yes, yes.
	Well, so one of the things you can do is if you buy things for that, So if you're a person like, I need this for the winter, I need this for birthday, one thing you can do is you can say, I'm going to store it at the store.
	I'm going to leave it at the store.
	They'll hang on to it for me.
	And then when I decide if I need this kind of thermal underwear, I'm going to go get it at that point.
	But for now, I'm just going to let them hang on to it.
	So that's a kind of clutter.
	Then there's accidental stockpiling, which is when you're like, you can always use a good glass jar.
	So I'm going to keep all the good glass jars that come into my house.
	Well, you know, your family likes pickles and pretty soon you've got 60 glass jars.
	I'm like, what do you do with them?
	So you want to watch out for accidental stockpiling because then you have a lot of stuff to manage and these things are useful in their way, but you have too many of them.
	Ketchup packets.
	Because every time they got food, she's like, oh, just throw the ketchup packets in the drawer instead of saying to the takeout people, no condiments.
	You know, you don't want to accidentally stockpile.
	You want to avoid the stockpile.
	And then there, I have to say, you know how they say with gamblers, you win one time and it's so exciting and thrilling to you that you just go back, go back, go back.
	I think for many people who want to keep everything for the zombie apocalypse, it's like one time somebody came to them and was like, Do you happen to have a power cord for a 1984 fax machine?
	And you're like, I do!
	And you feel so good that you were able to meet that need that you want to hang on to everything because you can imagine a fantasy future where some XYZ thing would come into play.
	I think if that is an issue for you and your clutter, you really need to say, is it reasonably foreseeable that this thing is actually going to be useful?
	If I don't need it, don't use it, don't love it right now, why do I think five years from now I'm going to want to use this bread machine?
	And also, how much would it cost to replace it?
	How difficult would it be to replace this thing if you gave it away to somebody who's actually making bread right now, and then you decided in five years, wow, I really want to make bread.
	Because a lot of it is like, things are useful now, put them into the hands of someone who's going to use them now, and then you may or may not in the future need them.
	Now, if it's your high school diary, that's irreplaceable.
	Most things are not irreplaceable.
	Most things can be replaced.
	Do you recommend saving your high school diaries?
	Well, I think that's a very individual decision.
	Like, I would keep something like that because even symbolically, you know, I think it's important.
	But then many people say that they feel very free when they get rid of those things.
	Some people in this area want to say things aren't important.
	This is related to the past.
	You've got to let it go.
	Make room for the future.
	To me, this is not the common experience of mankind.
	We invest possessions with meaning, and they remind us of the people and places and activities that we love, and they help us project our identity into our environment.
	So they have an important role to play, but you want to make sure that this is actually serving that purpose.
	What is my feeling about this high school diary?
	If it's important to me, then it's important to me.
	If it makes me feel bad every time I look at it, then get rid of it.
	There's lots more when we come back.
	There is a value I think of chaos in creativity.
	I was only partially jesting when I said this is an intervention on Lisa.
	Lisa will leave stuff around and she somehow knows where they are.
	All I see is that same...
	Dumb power cord hanging in the corner there that's been there, and I'm not sure.
	At some point, someone actually has to use it.
	But it never clicks to me.
	In the meantime, it's irritating to me that it's there.
	So those are the kinds of things we quibble over.
	So how do you know if it's actually...
	If you've got a busy desk, you've got papers everywhere, but you know where they are, and they somehow come in handy every once in a blue moon, even though you never know that that's ever going to happen.
	Yeah.
	Well, I think this is a case where you really have to know yourself in your own process.
	And there's a fascinating book called Daily Rituals by Mason Curry.
	And he just – it's not even daily rituals.
	It's daily habits.
	And he goes through the kind of – the habits of these highly successful people, scientists, painters, philosophers, choreographers.
	So it's all these people and how they live their lives.
	And what's very striking is that these are all extraordinarily productive, creative, intellectual people.
	people, but some work in silence and solitude, and some work in the middle of a busy studio, and some stay up late, and some get up early, and some drink vodka, and some drink coffee, and some work for half an hour a day, and some work for 14 hours a day.
	And what you see is that these people have all figured out themselves, and they know what works for them, and they just make sure they have the environment that works for them, and they stick to that.
	And so I think there are absolutely people who find that piles are useful, doesn't slow them down, unexpected juxtapositions, create creativity.
	And then there are people who want one laptop, and one pen, and one notebook, and that's the only thing on their desk, and that's what they need to be productive.
	So I really think that when people say, like, well, what's the best way?
	What does that even mean?
	Because your best way, your best way, my best way could all be different.
	So it's more like think about, well, what do I need to thrive?
	thrive?
	Where do I feel the most creative, productive, calm, focused?
	And how do I get that environment?
	I mean, I think the problem comes when a boss says something like, well, a cluttered desk means a cluttered mind.
	So in this office, we're going to have a clear desk policy.
	But then there's someone like Lisa who works best in a different environment.
	And so it's like, why am I forcing, as your boss, why am I forcing you to work in a way that works for me?
	It might not work best for you.
	She doesn't have a desk.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	Well, It's called the bed.
	So there you go.
	To me, the idea, I need a desk.
	I need hundreds of desks.
	And then there are people who just don't work at a desk.
	I had a desk.
	He kicked me off of it.
	I'm like, how can you work without a desk?
	But people do.
	I see people working on their laptops in airports, and it just hurts me to see them sitting in that posture.
	But I know people who have written whole books that way.
	So you just don't know what other people can do.
	That's me.
	I can't do that.
	I love it.
	Really?
	I only have one computer.
	I don't want to have information like that all over the place.
	Not for security reasons.
	My mind doesn't work that way.
	Yes, there you go.
	And with desks, I don't want any drawers.
	Maybe one small drawer for knickknacks, like pens and stuff.
	Paperclips.
	Paperclips.
	And then the rest of the desk has to be a big, wide space.
	There you go.
	I can see it all.
	Yes.
	But I do check things off the box, and then they leave the desk.
	Yes.
	It's like my desktop on the computer.
	Same thing.
	I don't actually discard.
	Most people have ways of putting these files away, the different emails that come to her.
	I don't do any of that.
	I don't either.
	Everything's there.
	I thought that I was strange.
	You're saying to find out what works for you.
	How do you kick the tires and figure out if it truly does work for you?
	Maybe if you don't mind, explain a little bit about outer order, this concept that you talk about.
	Well, I think that part of it is to say, well, when do I feel most comfortable?
	When am I most productive?
	And then also, one thing you can say to yourself, too, is always a helpful question.
	Is there a time in the past when I succeeded better?
	Because sometimes people are like, oh, well, I did excellent work.
	When I was in college, I would go to the college library and I would get so much done.
	It's like, okay, well, what was it about that environment that was conducive to you?
	What made that feel like the right environment for you?
	And then if you're sort of like, oh my gosh, this open office is like, I can't get any work done here.
	It's like, okay, is it the solitude?
	Is it the other people?
	Like, what is it that's helpful to you and what's not helpful to you?
	Because it might be the different characteristics of a space or surroundings.
	It might be what's helping you or hurting you.
	And for outer order, one of the things that's interesting about outer order is that people really want to get to different places.
	And so some people, it sounds like you're like me, are simplicity lovers.
	And they like bare counters and a lot of room on the shelf and not much on the walls and just sort of like...
	Lots of simplicity and space and quiet.
	And then there are abundance lovers and they love profusion and choice and collections and a lot going on.
	And often they do like piles that create unexpected juxtapositions.
	And it's not that one is right and one is wrong and one is efficient or one is creative.
	It's just that some people love simplicity and some people love abundance.
	And even abundance lovers, I don't think like clutter because clutter is stuff that you don't need, don't use, don't love.
	That's the charging cord to the device that you got rid of two years ago.
	That's the vacuum cleaner that doesn't really work so you use the other vacuum.
	So why do you have this vacuum if you always use the other vacuum?
	It's the fax machine that's not plugged in.
	Why do you have a fax machine?
	It's not even plugged in.
	Get rid of that thing.
	That's not abundance.
	But it is true that people want to end up with different...
	How much stuff is on a coffee table?
	Some people have a lot of stuff on a coffee table.
	They love the way that looks.
	I like to visit that.
	That's not the way my coffee table looks because that's not my preference because people have different preferences.
	What about the opposite extreme of people who are spending their entire life being perfect?
	Meticulously moving.
	The book on the coffee table is not at a right angle to the edge of the coffee table.
	Yes.
	Well, for some people, that's procrasticleering.
	Procrasticleering.
	Procrasticleering is when your desire to avoid working on something, it can often manifest.
	I'm like, I need to vacuum every surface or I need to go through my house and make sure everything is at 90 degree angles or whatever.
	I need to alphabetize the books in this bookcase before I can move forward in writing the annual report.
	So sometimes you have to be careful that your urge to clear is just...
	Because working is one of the most dangerous forms of procrastination because when we kid ourselves that we're being productive, it's easy to pretend like we're not actually delaying on what is our true priority.
	And so if you spend a lot of time...
	If you're starting to do things like alphabetize your spices or, you know...
	You know, you feel like this is the time where you need to go through the deep files in the back cupboard.
	You're like, okay, but maybe you need to write the annual report.
	And then you can tackle those files.
	You should do that, but maybe you need to write the report first.
	So we're speaking with Gretchen Rubin, New York Times bestselling author, Outer Order Intercom, her newest book.
	You actually argue in the book against being organized in a way.
	It's counterintuitive.
	Well, it's just that you don't want to start by thinking that you're going to get organized because a lot of times then that becomes make work where you're organizing things that maybe you don't need, don't use, don't love.
	Like I was just talking to somebody the other day and he was saying how he was going to organize all his paperwork and he was very part of it.
	He had his binders.
	He had his tab.
	He had his three-hole punch.
	He was going to do this whole thing.
	And then he realized that a lot of his paperwork had to do with pet insurance.
	Pet insurance?
	Pet insurance.
	And that all of it was online anyway.
	And he just didn't need all this paperwork.
	Does he have any pets?
	Yeah, he does have pets.
	But it's like, okay, you don't need binders and binders and binders with all your back issues of your pet insurance statements.
	And so if you don't – by saying first, what can I get rid of?
	What can I give away?
	What can I recycle?
	What can I toss?
	You may not need to get organized because you just don't have enough left.
	It's the same thing in the kitchen.
	You can spend hours organizing all your plastic containers or you can really sit down and say, well, what do I actually use?
	Okay, maybe I only use five of these things, so I'm going to give away everything else.
	The other stuff doesn't need to be organized.
	I can just put it on the shelf because, you know, I've gotten rid of everything I don't need, don't use, don't love.
	More questions after the break There's other concept you speak about that was sort of foreign to me Which is the idea of becoming a tourist in your own house.
	Yeah Yes!
	I would have thought you want to be the most comfortable there.
	You know where everything is.
	Well, be a tourist in your own home is this idea that a lot of us have unexplored territories in our house, and it's like, what is under the bed in the guest room?
	I don't know.
	Or maybe there's a back closet where it's like stuff goes and then it's never seen again, or the Bermuda trial of the attic.
	Right.
	A lot of times because of decision fatigue.
	People go up there and they never come back.
	Yeah, yeah.
	They're like, what's up there?
	Decision fatigue, it takes energy for us to decide what to do with something.
	And so for a lot of people, the way this comes out is it's like, well, I'll just keep it.
	Rather than deciding, okay, my kids are out wearing their clothes.
	I'm going to decide what am I going to keep as a hand-me-down?
	What am I going to give away?
	What is really just too gross?
	I'm just going to – like these are just rags.
	I'm just going to put it all in a box and stick it in the garage and I'll deal with it later.
	Yeah.
	So be a tourist in your own home is like, really visit those places.
	I mean, you know, here I was writing the book and I'm like, what are in the cupboards above my refrigerator?
	I haven't been up there in a while.
	Well, there was a lot of good stuff up there, which I completely forgot about because I had not visited.
	So being a tourist is like, go like, you know, like a stranger to all those unexplored areas in your own home and you will often find things that you need and use and you're glad to have online.
	Or that you're like, well, I certainly don't need this because I didn't even remember it was here.
	It's time to give it away.
	Do you have a technique for preventing us from accumulating all that stuff?
	Because is there a way to sort when it's coming in rather than just ignore it?
	When you feel that urge, it's just easier to put it away.
	Be very careful about storing things.
	When you're like, I'm just going to store this, because unless it's something like holiday decorations or seasonal clothing, storing something suggests that I'm just going to put it away and I don't really need to get it out.
	It's going into just the basement, the attic, the garage.
	Some gigantic percentage of Americans can't park their cars in their garages because they're so full of stuff.
	So when you start just mindlessly keeping things...
	That sounds very familiar.
	Oh, really?
	Well, you're among good company.
	I thought we were unique.
	Yeah.
	Wait, wait.
	I'm sorry.
	Which car doesn't fit in our garage?
	The garage that I parked in, we could not park our second car in.
	Because you like so much space.
	You have man-spreading in your garage.
	He doesn't even have to open the door carefully.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	I don't need baby carriages for children who are now in college.
	See, this is a perfect example.
	Okay, something like a baby carriage.
	So you keep it because it seems useful.
	There will be another child in the family.
	But the fact is, no.
	An actual baby, you would buy a new one.
	Because first of all, the technology has changed so dramatically.
	And second of all, it's been sitting in your garage for 20 years.
	You have like your precious new baby.
	You're not going to buy your baby in a 20-year-old thing that's been in there with the spiders crawling all over it.
	So that's the kind of thing where to say like, maybe it's a precious memory.
	Take a picture of it.
	Oh, remember this baby carriage?
	Oh, I remember this stroller.
	So many happy memories.
	Take a picture.
	You have the picture.
	But I really do not think that you're going to use a 20-year-old stroller.
	No.
	He thinks they're 20-year-olds.
	They're actually from our most recent grandchild.
	Okay.
	They don't even get recycled among grandkids.
	He's normally complaining that we buy so many new things.
	Why don't you use the one from the last grandchildren?
	What is the right number of baby carriages for a child to have?
	He doesn't want any baby carriage in there.
	They do take up a lot of space.
	I went through this because I live in New York City in an apartment, so the stroller had to be right by the front door.
	There's no place to put it, and it just drove me crazy.
	But of course now I'm like, oh, the days are long, but the years are short.
	Remember the days of the stroller.
	Give us a bit of a pep talk.
	Yeah.
	Because you write about happiness.
	Yeah.
	And you make the argument that addressing clutter is not a chore.
	It's something that will lift you.
	Yes.
	And the fact is, for most people, it really is...
	Even if it's kind of a struggle while you're doing it, or you might find the decision fatigue a little tiring while you're doing it, for most people...
	There is just a sense of exhilaration.
	My sister, my co-host on the Happier podcast, my sister literally calls me a happiness bully because I can be kind of insistent when I think there's ways for people to become happier.
	And I beg my friends to let me come over and help them clean their closets because I get such a contact high from seeing like how charged up they get.
	You know, you feel so happy.
	Good.
	When you get – like part of it is what you said, Lisa.
	When you get rid of that stuff that's dragging you down, you feel that lift and people will say, oh my gosh.
	Like a friend of mine said, I finally cleaned out my fridge and now I know I can switch careers.
	It's like I know that feeling.
	It feels so good.
	And so I think – and part of what I wanted to do with this book is like get people fired up.
	You start getting into it and you're like, oh, I can't even read anymore.
	I have to run to the medicine cabinet or I have to run – You know, to that shelf that's just, like, got a bunch of stuff jammed in it.
	Because I know I'm going to feel so good when it gets cleaned out.
	I'm taking Christian home with us.
	Yeah, I jump.
	You said something, though, in that last statement, which was that you go over and help your friends.
	Yes.
	I think it's so much easier with another person.
	Well, see, this is interesting because some people really find it easier to do alone, but many, many people benefit from a companion.
	I think part of it is because there's the accountability of somebody just sitting there.
	Like sometimes I go and I'm helping a friend and I'm just like sitting on the bed drinking coffee while they mutter to themselves and put, you know, because they just need somebody to keep them on task.
	And my presence does that.
	Sometimes people help you make decisions.
	Like, what do you think about this?
	Sometimes people also, I've noticed with things that are emotionally important to us, like having somebody else kind of witness your appreciation for something can help you loosen your grip So if you say to your friend, oh my gosh, I remember this dress.
	This is when I just first moved to New York City and we were going to this fancy thing and I got this dress and it was exactly what I wanted and I got 65% off and I remember that day so well.
	And they're like, that's such a happy memory.
	That is so great.
	I remember those days.
	And then you're like, yeah, that was great, but now I don't need the dress anymore.
	Sometimes you need somebody to kind of have that conversation with you to kind of Testify to the role that possessions can play, and then that helps loosen your grip.
	So I think it can be really helpful to have a person with you.
	Gresham made me very happy.
	Oh, good.
	You can hear more from Gresham in her New York Times bestselling book, Outer Order Intercom, Declutter and Organized to Make More Room for Happiness.
	She also has the Happier Podcast.
	We can see her beat up her sister with happiness bullying.
	Thanks for joining us.

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