Jessica Alba explains the hardest, most 'irrational' part of renovating – 'people have a hard time letting go'

Renovating a home can be an uphill battle. In addition to the physical strains of redoing the walls and floors and bringing in new furniture, the process can be accompanied by emotional baggage. What's the hardest? According to Jessica Alba, letting go of things.

Alba recently went on the talk show Late Night with Seth Meyers to talk about her show about how to renovate a house successfully, called Honest Renovations. The show hosted by Alba and fellow actress Lizzy Mathis on the Roku Channel. The program features Mathis and Alba taking on difficult renovation projects and transforming them into beautiful homes.

What's the most difficult part of hosting a renovation show? Home decluttering. 'Everybody is attached to stuff. Like people are like, "but wait, this, you know, tables or this desk I had" and they think of all the memories and everything,' Alba tells Meyers. He responds, 'As the person who's renovating, are you like, "oh, that desk is gone"?'. Alba laughs. 'Oh yeah. I'm like, "it's got three legs, you're never going to see this desk again, it's being propped up by books." People have such a hard time letting go.'

The pitfall isn't limited to her clients. Seth inquires if Alba falls into this same pattern. He states: 'Would you, hypothetically, have irrational connections to things?'. Alba jokes: 'My husband says that I am kind of a hoarder, even though I'm not. He's like, "Just because it's organized doesn't make you less of a hoarder."' No matter who you are, it's difficult to make letting go easier.

This idea of 'organized hoarding' presents an interesting complication to the binary between those who are organized and decluttered and those who are messy in their homes. Just because everything has a place doesn't mean there isn't room to get rid of a few things from the house.

Shop H&G's Decluttering Edit

Though we can't promise that organizational containers will keep you from getting attached to your objects, keeping organized can help to maximize storage in every room and keep the clutter to a minimum. No matter how many things you have, if they have a place, your home will never look messy.

To avoid becoming an 'organized hoarder,' practice doing an annual clean out of your home. There are many methods to do this from the 'one in one out' technique where you sell or give away something for every new thing you bring into the home, to the classic Konmari method, which involves only keeping items that 'spark joy.' By choosing items with intentionality and care, you can keep your home clutter free.

Clutter isn't the problem, it's how you deal with it. Learning to be less attached to your items is a great place to start with getting organized.