Welcome to Nobody Told Me.

I'm Laura Owens.

And I'm Jan Black.

And we are so thrilled to welcome extreme cleaning specialist Matt Paxton back to the show.

Matt has spent decades helping people sort through all

the things they've accumulated in attics, basements, garages, and you name it anywhere. You may,

you may know Matt from his years on the television show's hoarders or legacy list with Matt

Paxton. And Matt is also the author of a great new book called Keep the

Memories, Lose the Stuff, Declutter, Downsize, and Move Forward with Your Life. Matt, we thank you

so much for joining us once again. Thanks for having me back. Tell us why you decided to write the

book. Well, I was beginning of the pandemic and I always wanted to put this information

down in a book. I've been doing it for 20 years. And quite honestly, I just get probably 20 messages

a night on Facebook, people saying, hey, what should I do here? What should I do here? What should I do here?

And so I actually went back during the pandemic in the beginning. And I got like, I went through two years of social media posts and emails of questions and put all those questions together. And I was like, I'm just going to write a book. Like I'm going to get everybody's questions together. And I'm going to put it down in one big format so that, you know, if people want to do

it themselves, they can. And it ended up being a bigger project than I expected.

I'm imagining that a million people are asking you, how do I even start out? And I just, I love

the 10 minute sweep idea. I think that makes it so much less overwhelming. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, so 10 minute sweep is just, you know, and you're exactly right, everybody's overwhelmed. They don't know where to start. And always compare it to like working out, you know, like you're exercising, like you're not, I mean, I used to run marathons. It's's always compared to that like you're not going to run a

marathon in the first week you're going to maybe walk 10 minutes you're going to maybe run 20 and then

over five months you get up to you know the 26 miles and so my deal is 10 minute sweep is it's just

start man you just got to get started and it about practice. It's actually not about what you

accomplish. It is about getting in the habit of doing it nightly for 10 minutes. So I really don't care what you clean. I pick a one foot by one foot area. Honestly, since I've written the book, I've even trimmed it down to as simple as, hey, man, if you don't know where to start, clean the dishes. like just get the sink done every night if you can wash all the dishes and leave the sink

empty at the end of the if you don't know where to start, clean the dishes. Like, just get the sink done every night.

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