4: Depressed Mess or Happy & Free? A Hoarding Choice

Christmas is a season of joy—but for those living with depression, it can feel heavy, lonely, and overwhelming. In this Christmas Eve episode of the Overcome Depression Podcast, Jennifer Stirling-Campbell explains how to take a depressed mess (whether that’s YOU or your environment) and make into one that feels happy and free during the holidays.

For Jennifer, Christmas was a rare source of joy even during her darkest seasons. However, she noticed that her clutter habits and hoarding behaviors mirrored the emotional pain, shame, and fear she felt—keeping her stuck in old patterns that quietly fueled her symptoms of depression.

Learn how true help for hoarding requires participation, education, and compassion—not just cleaning up others’ messes!  This episode asks each listener to consider what they need to release this Christmas season—physically, emotionally, or spiritually.

If you’re struggling with depression during the holidays, feeling weighed down by clutter, or longing for a simpler and more joyful life, this episode offers encouragement, insight, and hope for anyone willing to listen.

✨ Merry Christmas from the Overcome Depression Podcast. May you find joy, healing, and peace—one episode at a time.

This episode of the Overcome Depression Podcast is for you if you want to learn:

• Why Christmas can bring both joy and emotional struggle
• The connection between depression, clutter, and hoarding disorder
• How letting go of possessions can help us release emotional weight
• The healing power of giving, donating, and service
• Minimalism, maintenance, and creating harmonious spaces in the home
• Feng Shui principles, cleansing practices, and how to restore Qi 
• How decluttering can create space for joy, hope, and renewal

Chapters

• 0:00 Christmas Eve Reflections: How to Find Joy When Battling Depression
• 2:25 Hoarding Disorder and the Hoarder’s Burden: How to Let Go of Stuff
• 5:45 The Joy of Giving on Christmas Eve: Healing Hoarding Disorder
• 9:01 Depression, Memories, and Clutter: How Hoarders Carry the Weight of the Past
• 12:50 Service, Maintenance, and Hoarding Disorder: A Hoarder’s Path to Daily Care
• 16:46 Feng Shui, Energy, and Joy: How to Create Joy in Your Home
• 23:26 Cleansing Objects and Emotional Energy: How to Heal from Depression and Hoarding Disorder
• 26:04 Buy the Overcome Depression Workbook

Transcript

0:01

Welcome to the Overcome Depression podcast on this beautiful Christmas Eve, the most anticipated day of the year. And I say that because I've talked about in previous podcasts how the anticipation is almost more exciting than the event itself. And I really feel that on Christmas Eve. I love Christmas Eve or the day before anything exciting for that matter. Looking forward to it. It's a time of joy. And we talk a lot about Christmas being a time of immense joy and happiness. That is not necessarily the case for a lot of people who are struggling right now, and so I don't want to minimize that. But even amid struggle, I feel a sense of hope and renewal and just this ability to transcend whatever's in my life at Christmas time, either through giving and or receiving as well. And for those of you who struggle with depression, I feel you, I hear you, I've been there. In fact, my mom who has also struggled with depression, she's such a rock star and she's done so many things to improve and as have I. We've actually grown a lot together along the same trajectory, the same timeline. And when she was a little girl, however, she had a lot of reasons to be sad. Both of her parents were alcoholics. She had lot of reasons to be grateful as well, but she mentioned many times to me that Christmas was the one time every year that she felt truly happy. And I share that sentiment with her even when I was depressed, even when I struggled with depression. It was a day of the year that I felt true joy. And so we're going to be talking about a rather guess uh not necessarily something we normally talk about during Christmas time, but I wanted to talk about it because a lot of times Christmas has become about stuff and clutter and stuff and hoarding. It can be part of what people struggle with in depression and not wanting to let things go either for guilt or shame or a lack perspective. What if I need this down the road? and being unwilling to let things go. This can be a psychological thing as well. It carries over into your emotions and unwilling to let emotions go, unwilling to let people go that are hurting you. It can go into so many areas, but today we're going to be talking about stuff. And most recently, and every year for that matter, I try to purge things that I'm not using either before and or after Christmas. and kind of go through and do an inventory of my home and look at my stuff and go, am I using this? Have I used it in the past year, especially when it comes to clothing? Have I worn this in the past year? Does this bring me joy? That's a kind of a marker of should I give this away or should I keep it? Is when I take it out and look at it or when I see it sitting on my desk or when I see it on my wall, when I wear it, Does it make me smile? Does it give me joy? And if it doesn't, it's time to go. Because a lot of the stuff we have can become a burden. We have to take care of it, we have to wash it, we have to store it. If we move, we have to take it all with us. And minimalistic living can be a lot more joyful than a hoarding one. Let's just put it that way. Where we're holding onto all this stuff, or we live life. to have a bigger house so can fill it with more things. And is this necessary? I don't think so. I've seen some of the biggest houses that have some of the most stuff. And it's overwhelming to me. I wouldn't want that much stuff. I live in a very small home. It's about a little over thousand square feet. And so I really can't get away with having a lot of stuff, but I still have quite a lot of things, a lot of stuff. And so I'm constantly donating things on a regular basis. But especially at times of Christmas when I know I'm going to be accumulating a few things, additional is a good time to purge. So it can be a joyful experience if you're willing to make it that way or see it that way of letting go of the old and bringing on some of the new. Now, I wanted to say about giving things away. When we're holding on to things that we don't necessarily need or that we don't use, we've just been hanging on to, and we don't really use it, it's kind of a wasted opportunity to give it to someone who will. And I cannot tell you how many times I have been blessed by things that people donated to goodwill or things that people were trying to get rid of on OfferUp or Facebook Marketplace. In the old days, was Craigslist. I loved Craigslist. Even on eBay, I love finding used things that are cheaper than new that I could afford, especially in the past when I was struggling with finances. And I still wanted to give my kids a really nice Christmas or a really nice Halloween. And I was able to do it because I was able to purchase things used that people didn't want anymore or didn't need anymore, but that I found extremely valuable, whether it was clothes, shoes, furniture, toys, kitchen appliances. I can't tell you how many Halloween costumes, amazing Halloween costumes I have found at secondhand stores that have brought me so much joy and so much joy to my kids. And in fact, just recently, and this isn't a kid, this is a grownup kid, my Mike, my husband Mike, but we're all kids at heart and we all love to get things that excite us, right? He wanted a grill so bad. This was a couple years ago. And so he's like, we really don't have the money for a grill right now. I'm going to try to manifest a grill. And so that week he was driving and he saw this old grill, the kind that requires coal, sitting on the side of the road with a free sign next to it. And he grabbed that up, brought it home. And I was like, dang, that's ugly. So I went and got uh some paint and I painted it to make it look okay on the porch. And we used it and we loved it. And then we inherit, we actually were given, cause he's a, he goes out and works on people's yards and someone was getting rid of their grill. This was about a year ago. Beautiful grill. Probably a $1,500 grill that looked really nice, but he wanted a different one. And he didn't want to bother with selling it. He asked my husband if he wanted it. Yes, please. So he brought home this beautiful stainless steel grill. We still have it. And we ended up getting rid of the other one that was kind of rusty and falling apart anyway. But again, it got some good use out of it. And just this month, my husband was talking about how, wouldn't a smoker be nice? Because he just loves to cook meat. And in fact, he's making the entire family a roast this year's on a smoker. And what smoker? One that someone, again, was giving away. Now this one was broken. His son had broken the screen on it or something and he didn't want to bother to fix it. So he asked my husband, do you want it? Yes, please. Brought it home. He spent a good day finding the parts to fix it. He fixed it. And we had an amazing roast on Thanksgiving. and now we're using it for Christmas, didn't cost us anything. So again, I am so grateful for people who get rid of stuff that they don't want, that they don't use, they're willing to let go of, and it's blessed my family. And I want to believe that some of the things that I have given up, because I give things to goodwill or a lot, I've also shared things like cloth diapers with people when I don't have a baby, I've shared my cloth diapers with people and then gotten them back when I needed them. But again, I think that we have this idea of, what if I need it later? Well, if you need it later, you can find it from someone who's giving it away at that time. It's not like, I feel like this lack perspective, especially I think it was a problem after the depression. There were some people who really had to scrimp and save and hold onto things because they really didn't know if they were gonna have it later. And I think sometimes those tendencies get passed down generations when we're not in the depression right now where we can't get aluminum foil. We can go find aluminum foil. If we were really desperate enough, we could probably go to our neighbor and ask if we could have some aluminum foil. Definitely can find it at the store. So realizing that we can give things away and think and down the road be like, shoot, I wish I hadn't given it away and get it again. in an affordable manner. It's just there's resources, there's auction, there's all kinds of ways that we can get things that we need at a later date. Now when it comes to, I guess memorabilia type things, how much do you need to remember a person? I uh dated a guy who his entire basement was full of boxes that were his grandmother's who had passed away. His mother refused to get rid of these boxes because they belonged to her mom. So it completely filled the basement. There was no room left in this basement for anything except these boxes and they just sat there for years. And I feel like that was maybe not the best use of those boxes. Open them up, see if it's inside, keep a few things, give the rest away. Or maybe, or throw them away. It's really okay. uh I think people on the other side, you would hope if they're healthy, would want you to move on and would want their belongings to be used by someone, not just sitting in a box. So with that said, ah a few rules of thumb that I use, I talked about if you haven't worn it in a year, give it away. I did have an exception to this. And it's kind of a funny story where I had this pair of pants that I probably brought at the end of my seventh grade year. So going into eighth grade and I didn't really wear them, but they They were like the kind of knee high, the ones that go down to your knee, the knickers. I can't remember their called, but I, just never wore them much, but they were a really nice pair of pants. Didn't take up a lot of room. I gave so many things away or grew out of things or things would get old and I never got rid of those pants for some reason. And I took them through college. I took them all the way till I want to say I was about 35 years old. So these pants had to have been around 25 years old. And I finally, around the age of 35, was like, you know, I really love these pants. I still fit in them. Same waist size pretty much as when I was in uh junior high school, which is crazy. But I wore those pants to death as a 35 year old and finally they wore out and I donated them to Goodwill for someone who doesn't mind wearing out pair of pants. Maybe they threw them away. Whatever happened to them, I'm not sure. I thought how many experiences and how many how many things have these pants been through in my I mean they were sitting in my closet most of time but that is an exception to the rule that I usually I'm pretty good about getting rid of stuff but for some reason those pants followed me for 25 years and I find it funny so again if it doesn't bring you joy let it go and if it tests it doesn't make you smile when you bring it out if it doesn't maybe think about donating it or even throwing it away. So there was a time in my life when I was asked by my Relief Society president, that's through church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We have what's called Relief Society. We are often asked to do service for people in our neighborhoods or especially specifically in our church and in our ward. And so she called me one day and asked me if I would be willing to help clean this little old lady's house. Her son had called her. or called my Relief Society president and expressed that they were really having trouble. She was having trouble cleaning and they just needed help. And I said yes. And I was pretty young at the time. I want to say I was like 21 or something like that. Twenty, twenty one. I didn't have any kids yet. And I remember the first time I stepped into this house and kind of wanting to puke because it smelled so bad and there was just clutter. everywhere, literally things growing under the couches. It was about as bad as it gets. And I remember thinking, well, okay, where do I start? I decided that the kitchen was the most important place to be clean for the sake of sanitation. That's where you eat. And it was completely covered, like completely covered. There was no counter space that you could see. And there were things again growing in there as well. I cleaned the entire kitchen. I think it took me three hours. and I was really proud of how it looked when I was done. Well, I came back a week later and it was almost like I hadn't come. It looked exactly the same. And I did it. I cleaned it again. I did this several weeks, just basically cleaning the kitchen every week. And I finally got kind of frustrated and I decided that I just, long story short, I couldn't continue to come if they weren't willing to. even try to maintain some of the cleanliness that I was leaving them. And if I was to do it again, I wouldn't just go in and start cleaning a house like that. I would insist that the people living in the house, which her sons would come and just talk with her and sit and they were, I don't know. You can just use your imagination of the kind of person who would expect someone to come and clean for them, but they are not willing to make any changes themselves or do anything to help. it was obvious this was the case. I don't necessarily blame them. I think people who are just unaware or they don't understand these principles. But that's my point is that I wish I had gone in and said, look, I will help you, but I will clean beside you. I will show you what to do, how to clean well, and how to keep things clean and educate them and do it beside them in a loving way instead of begrudgingly and resentfully. which is kind of what I did when I started seeing their behavior. And, but it was, it was hard to watch that and to feel like, man, I'm not really making a difference. This isn't helping anyone. And I feel like I'm wasting my time. And it was just, it was, it was just icky. The house felt very icky and I wanted to clean it, but I really couldn't. I really couldn't because their hearts and their habits. were not in a place to accept the work that I was doing. so that service ended, but you have to be able to maintain what you're doing in a state of that much clutter. You have to be willing to throw things away. You have to be willing to clean up after yourself and have a place for everything, a container, a drawer, a cupboard. a box, a chest to keep things that are like together. And that's kind of a foreign concept to some people. When you have things everywhere, it's really hard to clean because things just accumulate dust and it's really hard to clean around things. It just takes way longer to clean. In fact, I don't even have proper shutters on my house because I don't want to clean them. I'd rather have like a cloth that covers the window that I can take down or a, I don't even know what it's called. It's like made out of the same thing you would make a basket out of, but really tall and fold out so I can cover the window when I want to and then uncover it when I want to and fold it up. So that's kind of how I do it. doesn't, the shutters gain so much dust and that maybe people think, that's weird. That's just not a big deal. But I would rather have things easy to clean. And that's how I think about things when I either accumulate, like get an ob, buy an object, accumulate something or accept a gift or whatever it is, is Do I want to maintain this? Because everything you get, especially electronics, an RV, a car, requires maintenance. Or it just sits there, or it gets broken. And I want to talk a little bit about Feng Shui. I think that's how you say it. But there's a website, www.purewow.com forward slash home, forward slash Feng dash Shui dash basic dash guide. And there's a whole list of things, but I wanted to focus on just these three that have to do with kind of decluttering. It's basically the way that you can bring good energy and keep good energy in your home. One of the things was to repaint often, and I actually wrote a blog post about this of touch painting so that your house basically always looks clean and pure. Whenever I've moved into a house, I've bought really ugly houses every single time and fixed them up. And the energy of the house when I moved in was terrible or when I when I bought the house not when I moved in because I didn't move in until I had cleansed it and what I mean by cleansed is cleaned it from top to bottom took weeks like this house I'm living in now took an entire two weeks to just clean before I prepped it to paint and do the floors and everything else that's how bad it was and that but I I'm very meticulous and then painted it from top to bottom Like it's like this whitewashing, cleanse. And this feng shi talks about it. How when you paint, a fresh coat of paint is a way to reset the energy of the house. And it really does make a difference. And before and after the feel of my houses, it's like whatever was there before, whatever icky dark entities or whatever they were, I feel like They couldn't stay anymore because I cleansed the home. And then of course we would bless the house as well, cleanse it in that way. And I would always ask my husband to cleanse the house and pray over it. And I would pray over it and ask for anything that wasn't pure or that had been left behind to depart, never to return. And so that we could give our home a new start and a new energy. I actually, plants can do this, bring good energy into the home. finding a place, a space for live plants that bring oxygen and life. I actually have a story that I want to tell about a piece of furniture that I got used. I think I paid $20 to $30 for this beautiful wood chair. The chairs I had were too wide for a desk that I had that I wanted my son to be able to use for his homework. So I went to pick up this chair and it almost looked like something you might find in a haunted house, but it was beautiful. and the carvings on it and everything and I saw it and immediately felt an energy from it that was kind like off but not alarming. Like I literally asked the Lord, should I not take this chair? Is there something wrong with it that I should be worried about? And I got the feeling that no, take the chair. So I took the chair home and that night, I want to say, or at least that week, we have a ring camera on our porch that that's right on the front door or the back door and it'll take pictures during the night. If there's no movement, it'll take a picture every hour. And funny, the next morning my husband goes out to go to work and he's trying to get out the back door and the screen won't open. And he's like, what the heck? He turned on the porch light and the carpet, it's kind of a mat, but it's also, it's like this Amish carpet that I have that I put in front of the the on the porch in the back door and it was rolled up perfectly like a yoga mat and it was keeping him from being able to open the door and eventually he was able to finagle and get out and he put it back in place but he went the night he went to the ring camera footage and he looked at I think it was like 11 o'clock midnight and 1 a.m. the carpet was completely flat and it's I would say about four feet by three feet long And then at, I think, 1 a.m., it was rolled up perfectly like a yoga mat. And it was just too perfect to be like, the wind blew it or hmm. And then no one was there. The wind camera didn't catch any movement other than that picture it got of this yoga mat. Or it rolled up like a yoga mat. And it was just kind of odd, like, ooh. Something was almost like trying to get in the house and couldn't. uh Did it want the chair? That's the first thing that came to mind is, is it after the chair? Is it someone attached to this chair? Like someone who's dead? And so I decided I was going, I asked the Lord first, can I clean this chair? Can I cleanse this chair? And I got the answer. Yes. Because sometimes it's not worth it. Like sometimes you kind of can't. You got to just get rid of it, destroy it. We've talked about that before. But I got this chair and I surrounded it with, a circle of salt because salt is symbolically cleansing and I put it in this circle of salt almost like this safe place and I talked to this chair and I told I told this chair you are such a beautiful chair and I'm so glad that you're in our home now because I believe even items have an energy to it right and I just loved all over this chair and I and I asked whatever was attached to it in the name of Jesus Christ to depart anything dark uh anything unclean, etc. etc. etc. And then I got salt water, like a Himalayan salt soleil. And I got a rag and I stick this rag in the salt water and I just cleaned this entire chair with this salt water. And afterwards, clean the salt water off because it's not really great for wood, right, salt? But my intention was to clean and cleanse this chair of any of the negative energies that maybe what happened to this chair, I don't know, or what happened to people that were sitting on the chair, I don't know. But after I was done, it felt like it was joyful and clean. And never felt anything weird from the chair after that. Nothing weird ever happened after that as well. It ended it. And so this used item that I just thought was so beautiful, I was able to keep and cleanse and it was fine. Cleaning the items in your house and having it feel clean, the air, the water, purified, it makes a big difference. So decluttering, especially the entryway to your house. And what it said about this was kind of interesting. I'm going to read it and it says, let me find it really quick. There it is. From a feng shui perspective, clutter is a block or an impasse and the key cannot flow properly. Key as in good energy, right? The front door represents opportunities and is called the mouth of key where most of the energy enters the home. Removing clutter can be a way to get the energy moving, especially if you feel stuck. Rely on smart storage containers, trunks, coats, closets, et cetera, to keep your foyer and your mind cleansed. And again, like a clean... Amongst Guide to a Clean House and Home is an amazing book. I've talked about it a little bit before. As well as there's a book that's called Buried in Treasure, Help for Compulsive Acquiring, Saving, and Hoarding and Treatments that Work. So if you struggle with this, this might be an excellent book to read. I heard about it on a podcast and took note. I haven't read it. I don't struggle with hoarding, but It has a 4.7 star rating with 607 reviews. So I would say it's uh probably pretty good if you struggle with that sort of thing. So. I'm going to read a couple quotes. By tossing out the old and unworkable, we make a way for the new and suitable. A closet stuffed with ratty old clothes does not invite new ones. A house overflowing with odds and ends and tidbits you've held onto for some day has no space for the things for, or for the things that might truly enhance today. And that's by Julia Cameron from The Artist's Way. That's a book that I read earlier last year. And here's another one. I'm not living in a constant state of bliss. That's, think, an irrational idea. I think that often when we think of enlightened people, we think of them as someone who has so much compassion that there's no anger anymore. And I would offer that enlightenment is everything that has been so integrated and accepted that anger arises and fluidly moves out of the system as quickly as it arises. They are so fluid that nothing gets stuck in the system. And that's by Guy Ferdman. And if you think of that in terms of the stuff we acquire, is some of the stuff that you own keeping you stuck. Stuck in depression, possibly. Stuck in old ways, old memories, people from your past that you need to let go of, possibly old relationships, old ways of thinking. Sometimes it's really an amazing thing to let things go. And so I would challenge you this Christmas Eve if you've got nothing else better to do, to maybe urge some of your stuff. Go through and make it a joyful event. Turn on some music you love and consider what you need to keep and what you need to get rid of. Go under the bed. Toss, toss, toss. If you haven't worn a piece of clothing for a year, again, get rid of it. Don't let shame or guilt of, my mom gave this to me or my friend or I really need to use that stationary bike. I spent a lot of money on that, but I haven't used it for three years. Give it to someone else. Move on. It's okay that you spent the money. I've done it too. It's okay to get rid of it. And one of the things that women in particular keep that they really need to get rid of uh is old makeup. If it's the old you, if you're not gonna use it, let go of the old makeup. Just toss it or give it away if it hasn't been opened. It's okay. It's okay. Money flows, money flows, money flows. You don't have to guilt yourself over buying something that you thought would be good idea and wasn't. Get rid of it. So with that said, if you haven't found a Christmas present for your loved one yet, or you just want to get something nice for yourself for Christmas, go to BarnesAndNoble.com and check out the Overcome Depression Workbook by Jennifer Campbell. That's me. And it's got some tools and resources that you will not find anywhere else. I've collaborated with several other people on that book. It was a journey, a labor of love, and it's filled with colorful pages, beautiful artwork. And I want to encourage you to trust me and give this a try. It's something that I value very much. That's why I made it. And I think that it will make a difference to you too. So Merry Christmas to anyone who's made it to the end of this. Good job. And have a beautiful week, a beautiful year, and a beautiful day with yourself or your family or your loved ones. May you find hope and healing on this journey of overcoming depression. And that is my prayer. As I leave you with that, Merry Christmas again, and we'll see you next week.