SPEAKER_01 0:13

Hello and welcome to another episode of Empower Your Menopause, the podcast where we talk about all things health, hormones, and happiness for women over 40. It's James and Julie from Fabulous Beyond 40 here. And before we dive into today's episode, we just want to tell you about something that we're really excited about. That's our brand new, totally free, you don't have to pay to join 360-degree feel better challenge, and that's going to kick off on September the 15th. So, you know, summer's over, the kids are back at school, routines are settling in again, it's the perfect moment to start focusing on you, and that's exactly what this challenge is designed to do. Over five days, we're going to cover the five pillars of feeling better in midlife. That's how you think, how you eat, how you move, how you relax, and how you sleep. And each day you're going to get a short life training with us, a small but powerful action to put into practice, some bonus content, and you get an action guide to keep you on track as well. And that's all housed inside a private Facebook group. You're going to be supported every step of the way by myself and Julie. And because we love a bit of fun, there's also a great prize draw. Who doesn't like prizes, right? Complete your action guide every day, fill in that scorecard and return it to us at the end of the week. And you'll be in with the chance of winning one of some fantastic prizes, including the top level prize, which is three months VIP membership of our Club Fabulous Beyond 40 program. That's worth about £500 or around $650, depending on the exchange rate. So if that sounds like what you need right now, head over to 360 360 feelbetterchallenge.com to grab your free spot. And we're going to pop the link to that in the show notes as well. So do dive into that as soon as you can. Julie.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Yes, we're excited to have you join us there. Um, but for now, let's get on with today's show. So today we're gonna delve into a topic that might make you wonder how in the heck is this related to menopause? But it's probably gonna surprise you when you see how closely the two are actually linked. This week is all about decluttering and why it's not just about your wardrobe, why it's not just about the mail pile, why it's about so many other things. So the truth is the stuff around us affects the stuff inside of us. And whether that's our hormones, stress, brain fog, our emotional well-being, or all of those things packaged together, this is a big, a big issue for so many people. So if you consider yourself to be a bit of a clutter bug, hello, full disclosure, that would be me, or even a borderline hoarder, sometimes happens. There's no shame there. Um, we're here to share some insights, a bit of empathy, and some ideas to help you feel lighter both inside and out. So, James, you want to start us off?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Sure. So again, I empathize here, right? I'm a little bit of a uh moniker myself when it comes to cleanliness around the house. Anybody who's a friends fan, like we, big, big friends fans in our family. Monica was the one who was always sort of like kind of straight and on the now and things like that. But there's one episode where she reveals that she's got a clutter drawer where everything goes into it. And that that is me, right? I try and be clean, but generally, if I can stuff something somewhere where it's out of sight, out of mind, that is the way I go. So I end up with lots of clutter around the house. Um, so as Julie said, this is not about trying to delve into anybody or throw any shade on anybody or anything, but you know, the truth is that there's loads of research that shows that clutter reduces the ability to focus, it increases stress, and it leads to what scientists call cognitive overload. So, really, sort of like just your mind being full, as full of clutter as your your house might be. And there's a really great study by um UCLA, that's University of California, uh Los Angeles, it's in LA, of course. So, of course, they would have a department called the Center of Everyday Lives of Families, and you know, they do some really good research. This read piece of research is a little bit old now, I think it was 2012, 2013, but it still holds today and it's still often quoted. They found there's a really a link in midlife women between a high density of household objects, that's what they call clutter scientifically, um, and elevated cortisol levels. Now, that's the stress hormone that we talk about a lot, and we always say that stress is the enemy of women in the menopause transition. So the women who took part in this study who described their homes as messy or chaotic, they had higher cortisol levels. So just the the act of living in a house that had some clutter in it actually had a really strong link to those higher cortisol levels and also thereby, therefore, a link with depressed mood as well. So it shows that clutter doesn't just reflect the stress that might be going on in your life, but it actually contributes to it, and that can turn into, therefore, a spiral that can impact on your mental well-being. And then you, of course, you tie that into that hormonal roller coaster of midlife as well, and you know, our ability to tolerate stuff goes down as stress, the menopause transition increases, and as oestrogen drops. So that is even an extra contributing factor as well into all this. The truth is that your when this is going on, your brain never really gets a break. And if you think about it, there's a almost like a decision fatigue that goes on. I know that we see this a lot in our house. As I said, I like to sort of like try and do clear outs every so often. My wife is much more of a horde, she likes to hang on to things that have got uh an emotional attachment to her. We were clearing out ourselves, I'll go into that a bit later later on the other week, but she found a map book of the UK, we call it an A to Z here in the UK, that was in our the first car that she owned when we first met each other. Um, now this book is falling to pieces, all the pages are coming out. You know, who uses an actual physical map book anymore? She would not let it go during this clear out stage. And but we had a long chat about it, and that is kind of like an element of decision fatigue because every time you see something that is cluttered or lying around the house, you've got a decision that is either that is usually unmade. So, do I have to keep it? If I do keep it, where does it go? Why have I not dealt with it yet? And all those sort of like small decisions can just accumulate and take away from your mental capacity, take away from your mental energy, make all other tasks around the house, around decluttering, seem even greater and more daunting than what they are. So, particularly if you're already dealing with high levels of stress, if you're dealing with high levels of anxiety, high levels of depression, that added mental load can be really debilitating. So it's something that we really need to delve into, I feel at least, if we can, and you know, we're not talking about trying to do everything perfect here. You don't have to go around after this episode, sprinkling the whole house, put everything away, take everything out to the dumpster or whatever it may be. But I know Julie, you call this visual noise, don't you? This one that I really like. So why don't you just give us your take on it?

SPEAKER_00 7:46

Yeah, and this, you know, this is something I have to deal with pretty frequently myself. And I find that the more stuff there is around us, the I call it visual noise because it's distracting, it's pulling your attention, it's filling your eye space, your visual space and your brain with all of the stuff that's there. There's a reason that European styles seem to be so much more calming. And you don't have to go minimalist, you don't have to conmari, as they say, your entire house to do this. But even those who have these collections of knick-knacks and things, even that can contribute because there's something there that's constantly saying, handle me, handle me, handle me, handle me. And it feels overwhelming when you already have so much going on in your life. And I know that myself and many other people I talk to, my environment often is a reflection of what's going on inside my brain. So when I'm overcommitted, when I have trouble saying no to things, when I want to do all the things and I get myself almost paralyzed, when I look around me, my workspace is piled up with stuff. And, you know, we're in the process of getting prepared to move sometime in the next six months. And we have a very large house right now where we live, and we're moving into a smaller house, and we're going to have to be getting rid of a lot of things. And we've been having these discussions as well, because sometimes there is a romantic or emotional attachment to something. But we we need to look at this from a physical perspective and help re-regulate our nervous system because that's really where this is all going on, creating that cortisol spike. And when we're in that constant stress loop, it even takes uh blood and circulation and body functions away that need to be happening. So our digestion isn't as good because we're stressed. Our brain thinks we have to deal with that stress, right? The attack of the tiger, whatever it is. So we're constantly trying to escape the emergency situation. So we don't digest as well, we don't repair and restore as well, we don't sleep as well, and all of the other things that go along with high levels of stress. And the this research studies, they talk about tidying up being a somatic signal of safety. Now that's fancy science speak for just making you physically feel better. And when you can get a little bit better control over your environment, your space, it does help to lower your cortisol, it helps to regulate your nervous system. You can feel more in control and take that deep breath and just have a moment of, huh, right? Because we don't need more stuff. And I this this was really interesting because my mom died when I was 19. And for years, um, my years later, my dad gave me this little Ziploc baggie of these um plastic-coated clips, paper, they not a regular paper clip, but like the binder clips. And she used to use those to clip the bit the household bills and keep them organized when she so when she was ready to pay them, they were all in one space. And he gave those to me and I hung on to them for I don't know how many years. I never used them because you know they were moms. And but I finally realized that's not my mom. I don't have a particular memory attached to those. I was hanging on to them because it was something that was hers that I thought for some reason I needed to keep. There's so many things like that that we do to ourselves on a daily basis. So when we can feel a little bit better in control, and it could just be one tiny corner of your space, but it it just helps you feel so much more powerful, especially at a phase of life where so many things feel like they're beyond our control, right? So we don't need to be spotless, we don't need to do anything. I think just doing a five-minute reset, which is actually something I'm doing right now because my workspace has gotten a bit cluttered lately, and that's just set the timer for five minutes, clear out a pile, a drawer, a stack, or reorganize, just do that five minutes. It's amazing how much better even that thing can help you feel. And I'm gonna do that with uh a favorite podcast in the background. You know, these are ways to make it sort of rewarding. Um, yeah, because it is a really emotional thing.

SPEAKER_01 12:23

Yeah, I think that sense of control is a real um strong point to just talk through a little bit at a time when it can feel that so much is out of a woman over 40s control, because you know the truth is you can put lots of stuff in place from a lifestyle perspective that will help with support your hormonal balance, but you can't really do anything physically about what's going on internally, and that is why so many women I think feel out of control at this time in life. So controlling the stuff that you can control is a really powerful thing, right? And if that is just spending five minutes to tidy a desk so that your work environment feels calmer, Lord knows all of our work is getting more and more stressful, right? You know, prices are going up, the cost of living goes up, wages are pretty stagnant for most of us, and income is pretty stagnant. That adds an extra stress level to work, work is harder to come by for many people, particularly people who might be freelancing when it comes to work and things like that. And so when you there's so many, so much other stuff that you can't control, putting some kind of calmness back into an environment can be really, really helpful. So it could work, could be your desk, it could be your your kitchen. You know, if you've got a better idea of what's in each drawer, does that help you make better food choices? I know that one draw one space that really goes out of control in our house in the kitchen. Well, two spaces actually, one is the kids' snack draw, because they get given shit all the time, pardon my French, and that get ends up getting dumped in there, whether they go around to a friend's for a party and they're given some gummies or something like that. Suddenly that starts to spiral out of control. And the other one, sadly, is our spice draw. We use loads and loads of spices, but like many people, you often get a new recipe and it calls for a spice, you go and buy that spice, then you don't use it for about six years, so it's just stuck to the back constantly, right? And so getting decluttering, throwing out the old stuff, going through your freezer and and dumping the stuff that's out of date, going through the kid's snack drawer and re-re removing the stuff, donate it to a free food bank if need be, or whatever. But make getting rid of all that clutter around it can actually help you make better choices because even if the kid's snack drawer is 10% healthier, that means when you are tempted to delve into the kid's snack drawer, you've got a better chance of picking up something that won't be as let's say unhealthy in inverted commas or or be working against your goals. So I think it's really, really important to just control things where you can, and as you said, it's not about being spotless, it's just about trying to reduce some of the overwhelm. So, like you said, five-minute reset, pick a small space and work work on it. And I suppose the other thing to talk about really is where does this all come from? Where does our want and need to hang on to stuff? You talked about your mum's paper clips there. I know that for many years, I've shared this story before, but I was estranged from my father for 10, 15, 20 years of my life growing up. And when we he'd been estranged from his father, but when his dad died, his dad left a couple of old electric shavers, those with the three heads on from the 1970s, in a box, and my dad had picked those up from his house. I only met my granddad once. I held on to those two shavers for the next 20 years, and I had nothing but you know, like the little sort of like greyness of the bristles in in the in the shaver that were there. That was the only sort of like contact I had with my granddad or memory of my granddad. I'd ever I'd only met the guy once when I was about five or five or six, and I realized I was holding on to these things for no reason at all because I had zero memory of him. So so what did what did those two objects mean? I shared story before the story of my wife with her A to Z map. Things that we feel have some kind of emotional connection to, or we feel some kind of guilt or grief or sense of identity around it are are things that we tend to hang on to massively. Um clothes that no longer fit us. How many people have got something in their wardrobe that they wore 15-20 years ago and they're keeping it there for the day that they lose somewhere in the future? That miracle day that is never gonna come, yeah, or yeah, or it's gonna be very hard to come by because their bodies have changed shape and form since they were younger, and therefore it's there, and not only is it acting as clutter in that wardrobe, but it's also a negative reminder because every time you go out into the wardrobe to open it up and pick and look at that item of clothing, you're reminded that you're not 18 or 20 or or 25 anymore, right? So on top of the physical stuff, of course, you've also got all the mental stuff as well, you know. What other decluttering can you do from an emotional point of view? Relationships, your beliefs, your identities. You know, this is a time of life where things reset biologically for a woman, and therefore it's a great time. We're often told that this is a negative point in life, you know, it's the beginning of the end, where really it's just another uh new beginning. So if this is a threshold, if this is a point where things are changing, what are you gonna take with you? What serves you and what doesn't serve you? So it's a simple question, but with quite difficult answers when you uh get down and think about it. But I think it is worth just thinking about. So, what can you let go of? What does your future want to feel like? Do you want it to be cluttered with both the physical and the emotional stuff of the first of your life? Or is there some of that stuff that you can can get rid of? Um talked a little bit about both of our personal experiences. Any other decluttering stuff you want to share, Julie, before we before we move on?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Um, yeah, actually, there's a this is brought to mind because we think about the emotional connection and we think about sometimes we feel guilty about things, we feel maybe shame around relationships, and we hang on to those things thinking it's somehow going to repair. Stuff is just stuff. It's not people, it's not memories, it's not emotions. And and if you lost everything today, the most important thing you have is your memory, your relationships, those things that really deserve more of your attention. So hanging on to the stuff really is a is a non-essential part of life, even though I can appreciate. I have plenty of mementos and things that we've collected over time. But one of the things that we started doing when we moved to Italy was deciding that instead of purchasing something everywhere we traveled that was just a memento, we decided to start buying things that had some function. So we bought some handmade ceramic cruets, so we use those for our olive oil serving. We bought a beautiful hand-carved olive oil fruit bowl or fruit that we use as a fruit bowl. And I had, because of all the different events I've participated in bike rides, hikes, runs, when I was in the States, I had two big boxes of t-shirts. I don't wear t-shirts. And I didn't want to throw them away because those were all important events in my life. So what I ended up doing was cutting out the designs, and my cousin, who's very gifted with um stitching and sewing, created a quilt with those t-shirts. So now I have that on our guest bed, and I get to look at that and enjoy and remember, and it serves a purpose rather than hanging on to those boxes of t-shirts that I never wore. My grandmother had hand-quilted and hand-cross-stitched two gorgeous quilts that I remember from when I was old enough to remember that were on hers and my granddad's beds. And I inherited those two things. Again, they were sitting in plastic sealed bags and serving no real purpose. And I didn't want to use them because they were so old and falling apart. They're probably 70 years old now. But having pillows made out of those designs gives me the chance to display the beautiful handiwork that she that she did and have something useful at the same time without taking up more space of storage space in the basement. So doing those things just gave me such a sense of lightness and freedom. And as I go around the house, again, preparing for for a move in the you know, next six months or so, I'm thinking about all of these things. What do I really need and want? I just I just found though being able to do something like that made the decluttering feel good. And I could still hang on to things that I had an emotional attachment to without just being stuff that's stuck away somewhere. And I know in the US, because the houses are big, closets, attics, basements, people even rent storage facilities to keep all their stuff in. Nine times out of ten, they don't even know what's in there. So when you think about the cost, you think about the monetary cost of storing that stuff. I mean, how much does a house cost per square foot, right? It's a lot. And you're paying for every single thing that you're storing. And then on top of it, you add the emotional part of it. And that stress can accumulate over time. So finding a way to really make those things have meaning and purpose, I think, is a is a good way to use it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

And I think if you know decluttering sounds like quite a strong word sometimes, isn't it? So, you know, you might want to think about this as an editing process. So I had to go up into our attic the other day. Uh Martha and Gracie our two daughters. From when they were little, we've kept almost everything related to their lives. So I went up there and they've got tons of poxas, some with Martha on them, some with Gracie on them, and I opened a couple of them up because I was looking for something else. And I realized there's so much stuff in there that really will have no emotional attachment for them. So we've got every single birthday card from both of their first birthdays. Now they might want to keep those because it was their first birthday and it's quite significant. But maybe by the time you get to three or four, because we've kept every single birthday card from every single birthday, there's some there that could just think, you know what, I want to keep the ones from mum and dad, I want to keep the ones from my grandparents, I want to keep the ones from my aunts and uncles. And really, the friend that I used to have in kindergarten that I've not seen for 20 years, because by the time they get to do all this stuff, they'll be in their 20s themselves, you know. Maybe then that is stuff that they can we can edit edit out. So my plan is to go up into the attic and do some editing there. But then the other thing that I think about as well is I realized about three or four weeks ago, Laura and I we went and did a huge clear out of our our cellar. Our cellar had become a real dumping ground for everything camping equipment, beach equipment from summer holidays, you know, the stand-up paddle board, uh, the boxes that we take the cats to the vets in, uh tables and chairs that weren't out um in the garden anymore because a couple of them had broken. We'd got some uh stools that had broken, we put them down there, yeah, you know, all this stuff. It was you could you couldn't even walk into our our basement, it was so cluttered. And the one thing that made me think was this is right under our house, it's also where the oil boiler is that keeps the house warm, right? So there's combustion going on there. It's not really safe to keep all that stuff in that kind of environment, and so it's also both a physical health hazard because I've lost times kind of the times that I've tried to get in there and stub my toe or scrape my arm trying to get past something, but also from a fire hazard point of view as well. So you you know, there are actually safety reasons to do this kind of edit moving forwards, right? So I think we've kind of hammered home about why this might be important, but you know, just to go through it all again, the more clutter you have, whether that's physical or emotional, studies show that the more it increases your stress. We know that stress plays a huge role, and the stress hormones play a huge role in disrupting uh the hormonal system, the endocrine system of the body, anyway, at a time when it's already challenged by the menopause. And so it is really uh an important aspect of managing life and managing stress moving forward. You if you see it as a health practice rather than a chore or a health and safety practice, as I just said, I think that's really, really important. I've said it several times, don't have to become a minimalist, create some space to breathe. That's all you need to do. And you could also think about it as this is not just about what you're getting rid of, but what are you creating space for moving forward? Julie.

SPEAKER_00 26:35

Yeah, so so think about what's one small space you could clear today? What how might that make you feel? I mean, one of the one of the things that really helped me think about this instead of because it can be overwhelming to think about all this stuff we want to clear out. And again, just taking one room at a time, one space at a time, one tiny stack at a time. Um it's it's it's as much about opening up space for new things to come in. We want prosperity, we want abundance, we want positivity. It's hard to have room for that if we're so packed down with stuff and stress. So think about what you could clear out today and how might it feel once you do that, and then do it five minutes, set your timer, five minutes, and then let us know how it goes because this is important stuff to share. So I'll just say if your internal world feels just as cluttered as your external one, which is so true for so many of us in this phase of life, that free 360 Feel Good Better challenge is coming up on September 15th, and that might be a really great place for you to start. We'd love to have you join us over those five days. We're going to cover things like how to think, eat, move, relax, and sleep better. So we'll give you simple steps that you actually can take no matter how busy your life is right now. And don't forget there's going to be a prize draw culminating with that three-month VIP membership to Club Fabulous Beyond 40, which is an amazing prize to have. So if you'd like to join us for that, head to 360 feel better challenge.com. We'll put the link in the show notes, and we can't wait to see you there. So we'll just say thanks for joining us today. We're coaches James and Julie from Fabulous Beyond 40, and we're here to remind you to stay strong and stay fabulous. We'll see you next week.