Clutter That Keeps Coming Back | Katy Joy Wells (EP437)
Minimalist Moms Podcast | Purposeful Life & Parenting Tips
Diane Boden
4.7 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 February 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
If you’ve ever decluttered your home only to find the mess creeping back weeks later, you’re not alone - and it’s not a willpower problem. In this episode, Diane sits down with Katy Wells, author of Making Home Your Happy Place, to explore why traditional organizing methods often fail busy moms. After realizing clutter was keeping her from connecting with her toddler, Katy began uncovering the deeper emotional and behavioral roots behind accumulation. We talk about why some spaces feel impossible to manage, what “good enough” really looks like in a home with kids, and how to stop tying your self-worth to the state of your home.
Links Discussed in This Episode |
- Checkout the podcast storefront for recommendations from Diane.
- Book: How to Deal with Your ____ So Your Kids Don't Have to: An Encyclopedia for Ditching Your Emotional Baggage
- Eli Harwood
- Connect with Katy:
- Website
- Book: Making Home Your Happy Place: A Real-Life Guide to Decluttering Without the Overwhelm
About Katy |
Katy Wells, author of Making Home Your Happy Place: A Real-Life Guide to Decluttering without the Overwhelm, created Holistic Decluttering—an approach that tackles clutter at its roots and pairs it with simple, sustainable systems. As host of The Maximized Minimalist podcast (5 million listens), Katy helps families break the cycle of clutter that keeps coming back. Her work has been featured on NBC News Daily, Martha Stewart, Better Homes & Gardens, Real Simple and more. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina with her husband and two sons.
Episode Sponsors |
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's tricky because when is enough enough? This is a question I constantly ruminate on. When is |
| 0:07.3 | enough? When is enough skin care enough? When is enough nail polish enough? When is enough stuff enough? |
| 0:12.8 | And I think being able to just be a little reflective and define what those parameters look like for you, |
| 0:18.1 | even in a super tangible way, like, I have to run out of this |
| 0:21.2 | product before I buy more can be helpful. So yeah, a little side tangent there. But I mean, |
| 0:26.0 | the way we consume and the way we're exposed to consumption in this day and age is just, it's such a |
| 0:31.8 | big piece to the puzzle. This is Diane Bowden, and you're listening to the minimalist mom's podcast. |
| 0:37.2 | What if the reason your |
| 0:38.1 | clutter keeps coming back has nothing to do with willpower and everything to do with what's |
| 0:42.3 | going on beneath the surface? In today's episode, I sit down with Katie Wells, author of the new |
| 0:47.8 | book, Making Home Your Happy Place, to explore why traditional organizing methods often fail busy |
| 0:53.3 | families. After an emotional moment of |
| 0:55.7 | repeatedly saying no to playing with her toddler because she felt overwhelmed by the state of her home, |
| 1:00.9 | Katie began to question the real root of clutter and discovered that stress, convenience shopping, |
| 1:06.2 | and social media-driven consumption can quietly pull us back into old habits, especially during |
| 1:12.1 | survival mode seasons of motherhood. My hope is that this episode will help you overcome, |
| 1:16.9 | overwhelm with actionable strategies to declutter with confidence and most importantly to uncover |
| 1:22.1 | the deeper roots of clutter by identifying emotional ties, limiting beliefs, and habits that |
| 1:27.2 | keep you stuck. |
| 1:28.6 | Clutter may keep coming back because you don't yet have the tools for how to get it out |
| 1:32.7 | once and for all. |
| 1:33.9 | But quickly, before we get to the conversation with Katie, if you have yet to leave |
... |
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