This year, I had the opportunity to follow the progress of one family as they simplified their home with the help of Uncluttered, a 12-week online course intentionally designed to help you own less and live more. The course includes videos, live webinars, interviews, weekly challenges, practical tips and articles, accountability and an engaged community.
As a member of the Uncluttered community for the last three years and his new co-host, I’ve heard story after story of how this course has changed lives, but it was fun and extremely rewarding to visit this family in person. While I was confident they would make good progress, their results absolutely blew me away. It’s incredible what this course can do for you if you let it.
I’m honored to share Mike and Liana Hall’s Uncluttered Journey with you. The Hall family and I hope it inspires you to set out on one of your own.
Liana shares:
“My husband Mike signed us up for the Uncluttered course as a sort of belated Christmas gift. I had just read Joshua Becker’s first book, The More of Less, and was thrilled to have some solid answers to questions I’d been asking for years about getting rid of stuff.
We had started decluttering probably five or six years ago at our old house, but then we moved, had more kids, and I found myself right back to step one again. It felt like I was spending all day every day dealing with kid-toy-mess and house-mess. I had become a slave to our stuff. We have four young kids, and it seemed as though I had been pregnant or nursing pretty much non-stop for 8 years. On top of that, I struggled with postpartum depression and anxiety after each birth.
With some help, I realized that clutter was a major trigger for my anxiety. I had a series of panic attacks shortly after Christmas, probably due to all the incoming gifts I didn’t have space for. It was then that I knew we needed to get serious about getting rid of our clutter!
The Uncluttered Course gave me the tools and the community I needed to tackle it with purpose. Joshua’s method of decluttering is much like Dave Ramsey’s debt snowball. You work on the small, easy stuff first so you can celebrate early progress. From there you move onto the more difficult things using the momentum you’ve achieved by tackling the “small wins” first. It helped keep us from getting stuck and overwhelmed.
The course encouraged us to keep going, especially in those moments when decluttering looks like you have more than you thought you did! Decluttering our kids things with them helped them better understand why we were doing this.
My uncluttered home has helped to significantly cut down on any sort of anxiety I had been struggling with. If there’s something you are serious about achieving in life, it’s best to surround yourself with like-minded people who can speak truths into your journey and cheer you on along the way. That’s what we found here. There’s not only Joshua’s Q&A’s and feedback but also that of the collective community – all the people going through the same process as you at the same time! That alone is a very powerful and encouraging resource!
In the community, I found encouragement when we felt “stuck,” suggestions and advice about things like where to donate our items and when it’s best to donate versus sell our possessions. And having paid for the course left me feeling obliged actually to do the work! We’ve made back our investment and then some. So far we’ve been able to sell about $400 worth of things we were no longer using and donate over 950 items! It’s crazy to see the sheer volume of items leaving your house, items that used to stress you out!
One of my biggest takeaways so far is learning the difference between tidying up and decluttering. What I was doing before was primarily focusing on organizing my stuff. Once I started deowning, by throwing out, donating, and selling items, I felt a giant weight lifted off my shoulders.
With 4 young kids, you can pretty much guarantee they’ll unorganize anything they have access to pretty quickly. Organizing always left me stuck in this vicious cycle of tidying and organizing over and over again. The solution is actually to own less. And we will be taking the course again (lifetime membership!)”
Registration closes Sunday, January 17, so don’t wait. . Once you’ve registered, you’re a member for life. If for any reason you aren’t able to complete the course this round, you can take it on the next round for no charge. I think that’s pretty awesome! I know many have found it extremely beneficial to take the course more than once.
You can sign up for Uncluttered and use my friends and family discount (FF25) for 25% off at checkout! The cost of the course is originally $89. But with the 25% off, the 12-week course is just $66.75.
A heartfelt thank you to the Hall family for having me over and opening their home to the world. You can follow along with this beautiful family and their simplicity journey at Maycomb Co. Their kitchen garden is amazing!
We’re all searching for happiness and self-improvement in hopes of living a more fulfilling life. There’s no shortage of online improve-your-life-courses, and the phrase “life-changing” can be tossed around like an empty promise. But life-changing is what so many are saying after completing the Uncluttered Course. Through it, people are finding hope and life buried under everything they used to own!
