I'm Jennifer and this is my husband, Bill.
Hello.
And we're from Orange, Connecticut.
(purposeful music)
We have a lot of stuff in our basement.
It just multiplies and multiplies.
Seasonal items like Christmas time,
I don't know where to put that.
Very difficult to walk around and, kind of,
find something when we need to find something.
I wanna be like every other family
and eat at the dining room table with my family
but Bill has put piles of papers there.
In our bedroom, he ran out of space in his dressers
so he has about six bins with clothes in them.
Don't you think that you could, like, weed some of them out?
Oh I have, I've given a lot to Goodwill.
Remember, a couple about a year ago?
(Jennifer laughs) About a year ago.
It would make me so happy to have a third-party come in
and help us get a handle on the clutter in our house.
Hello?
Hey Jennifer, hey Bill.
I hear you have all this stuff accumulating.
Bill is having a really hard time giving up items.
There are a lot of things here that I say to myself,
I'll use again maybe next year, I don't use it.
Everything in your home has to have a home.
(upbeat music)
Let's start with paperwork.
I want you to identify main categories of stuff
that you have on the table.
Jennifer, you can start going through the cubbies
and clearing a number of the cubbies
so that that is where those files will go.
The second area I wanted to talk to you about,
Bill specifically, are the clothes in your bedroom.
Have you ever heard of the term 'Wish Clothes'?
No.
'Wish Clothes' are those clothes that
when you look at them, you think, oh,
I wish I could fit in them.
(laughs)
So today is the day, well this week is the time,
to really let go of clothes that you don't need,
won't fit in, or you don't look great in.
So guys, the main project over the next week is for you
to tackle the clutter and to have things in order
so that when I see you next week in New York,
we can all celebrate.
(upbeat music)
Day one of de-cluttering my home,
we're gonna be putting things that we don't want anymore
in the gray bag and anything that we can donate,
we're gonna put in the white bags.
We've actually found four bags of clothes
that we're gonna donate and we were actually able
to clean out two of the bins.
A big argument between Bill and I was this hat
that his father gave him that he loves
and we actually decided that we're probably going
to be hanging it in the bedroom.
May 7th, 2015 Newspaper.
TV guide from August 1971.
(laughs)
It's really scary for me to get rid of clothes
that I love that I can't fit into anymore but, you know,
this is what Pete told me to do.
I just wanna show you how many hangers
I just took out of my closet after I purged.
Last empty bin.
Done.
(crowd cheers and applauds)
Jennifer and Bill, I think you did
an amazing amount of work in a very short amount of time
considering it was twelve years in the making.
Yes.
Times change and it's the same with 'Wish Clothes'.
Yeah.
You have to let go of that dream.
She did, did you see that pile of hangers?
I know, this is why I just wanna run over there
and kiss her right on the lips
but I'm not allowed to do that right now.
(crowd applauds)
Well, she's seated next to her husband so, oh all right.
(cheers)
Get on back.
Great job, both of you.
You know, sometimes this can be super emotional
like the hat, I thought was so sweet,
I'm like, hang it on the wall, hang it on the wall!
And then you did, that was so cute.
But, was there a part of this that was more emotional
for either of you than another part,
or did it all just feel, like,
good once you started the process?
I know for me, it was therapeutic,
I always say Peter is the declutter therapist.
He made us understand the emotion behind all of the clutter
and to really make good choices so,
I had a lot of 'Wish Clothes' in my closet
and it was hard to part with it, but it felt good.
Now I open up my closet and it's like I know everything
in this closet fits, I can find everything easily,
it's actually a lot less stressful.
And you don't have that pressure on you anymore.
Yes.
Like, na-na, come over here, why don't you look at me?
Right, you just feel better.
(crowd applauds)
Any hard-goes for you?
It was difficult to see a lot of the stuff go
but it's stuff that I haven't used in so long.
The 1971 TV guide, I mean, like, really?
(crowd laughs)
It was physically exhausting
and your tips and tricks were great.
And all it needed, that's all it needed, a bit of a push.
(crowd applauds)
A little bit of a push.
Yeah, that's it, and then it looked,
as soon as you got into it, you got rolling,
this is just a start, twelve years in the making,
one week in, huge results, great job.
(crowd applauds)
And yeah.