Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kat Reichmuth. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Kat, thanks for joining us today. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry? Any stories or anecdotes that illustrate why this matters?

There is a $12.2 BILLION dollar home organizing industry, just for the stuff you can buy to contain your stuff.

Let that sink in for a minute. We are spending billions of dollars to hold stuff we don’t even use. When I’ve surveyed my thousands of clients, the biggest problem they report on average is Too. Much. Stuff. When I travel overseas acquaintances say “Wait, you do what? People have that much stuff?”

The clutter is a symptom of stuck emotions, a bandaid hit of dopamine, rather than taking a moment to look deeper into why a person (myself included before doing this work professionally), would feel so dysregulated that they would spend money on stuff they will never use, just to feel better in the moment.

I’m working to change the industry by using a trauma-informed approach to help clients get to the root of their clutter, not just label and store in cute little bins the symptom of a deeper problem.

I’ve had clients on every rung of the socioeconomic scale from broke college kids to billionaires, and the billionaire’s wife, through tears, summed it up best: “It’s not about the stuff, is it?”.

Kat, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi, I’m Kat, and I was a former burnt-out, cluttered packrat. After moving 10 times in as many years, I started to connect the dots that each time I moved, I only brought my favorite things, and having less made me feel calmer. I could quickly “put my toys away” each day because I finally had an appropriate amount of stuff for my space. It was a game-changer and helped me feel calmer.

In 2007 I started The Simplified Life to help clients declutter and simplify their homes and lives. I felt so much better and wanted to share that with others.

At first, I totally fell into line with the other home organizers I found. I would help the clients declutter some, and then put everything left into cute bins and label it. I did this for years, until that day I made the billionaire’s wife cry with the realization that it wasn’t about the stuff. From then on I vowed to use my psychology background and try to get to the why of clutter with clients.

As I tuned into this skill, it was like this intuitive laser I could use to immediately hone in on why they were stuck and cluttered and how to help them break through it. It was magical and I started calling myself a home alchemist.

Now I’ve expanded into offering a 10-week trauma-informed course (group and self-study) called Sanctuary to help clients begin to get to the root of their clutter. The feedback has been amazing and I hope that this changes the trajectory of this industry. I also offer a lower price ($11/mo) membership where they get one group call with me and one bonus call with a self-care expert per month. Creating this community has been a dream come true.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

In mid-2022, I escaped an abusive relationship. That was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My nickname is Kat and I always seem to land on my feet, but this situation led to me moving back with family and losing most of what we’d built during the pandemic.

I always tell my clients I’m just a little ahead of them on the journey of life, and this was definitely a humbling experience. To have everything disappear and be saddled with the shame of “how did I let this happen to me?” and “how could I have lost everything I worked so hard for?” led to more than a few dark nights of the soul.

The thing is, the breakdown always leads to the breakthrough and I doubled down on healing the parts of me that I had pushed aside. I simplified my own life again, working on creating a more stable environment for myself. There were more than a few tear-filled calls with mentors asking how I could be possibly teaching about overcoming trauma when I felt like such an impostor. But that’s life. Sometimes we get caught up in things and make the best decisions we can at the time, and our stumbling blocks can always help us help someone else avoid them.

Through all of this, I’ve launched courses and memberships and am actively creating a life I love, even when things felt so bleak last year. If you’re reading this, know that you can overcome anything and there will be another bright day.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I think the fact that I’m human and don’t put myself on a pedestal as a guru has helped me the most.

I can honestly relate on a visceral level with my clients. I’m not a minimalist at heart, nor did organizing come easily to me. It was a long road of working through my own trauma and beliefs to get to the point where I realized that happiness didn’t come from having all the toys and that the hit of dopamine from an impulse purchase was short-lived.

In the past year, I’ve gone from living in a multi-million dollar Silicon Valley home to tiny housing in my 1961 Aloha trailer and I’ve never been happier or more grounded.

I’ve lived this and I think people get inspired around me because if I can do it, they can do it. I’ve leaned into quality over quantity and I’ve seen how infectious that can be.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thesimplifiedlife.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesimplifiedlife/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/simplifiedsanctuary
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/thesimplifiedlife
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-simplified-life-burlingame-5