Amy Sedaris was on Seth Meyers last week and she was hilarious as usual. She’s promoting her role on Girls5Eva, season two of which is airing now on Peacock. Amy was wearing a huge Agnes B dress that her equally hilarious brother, David, convinced her to buy. She said it made her feel pregnant. Amy told Seth that she’s been decluttering her place as it was starting to look like the storage unit from Silence of The Lambs, “clutter on clutter.” She’s going to auction off some things to benefit diabetes research and rabbit charities. Amy loves her little kitschy objects though and it’s been so stressful for her to get rid of stuff that she lost six pounds. Here’s a little of what she told Seth and you can watch that video below.
I have been decluttering like crazy. It’s been very stressful having to say goodbye to things. [I have] a lot of anxiety. I lost 6 pounds doing it. I had some friends helping me, and they were like, “You have to make a quick decision. Are you gonna keep it, are you gonna get rid of it?”
After that they showed some things that Amy got rid of, including some old fashioned children’s crutches that she has for visiting kids to play with. She also has a mobile made of rusty nails and some bizarre cookbooks. I hate decluttering and have put it off so long! I can relate to being stressed about it except for the weight loss part. I eat when I’m stressed out and it’s only when I’m devastated that I lose weight.
While I’m not as much of a collector as Amy I also enjoy thrift shopping and acquiring weird little pieces that I then have trouble getting rid of. I’ve donated clothing to the Goodwill, seen it there and gotten nostalgic and bought it back. I’m not proud of this but I’ll admit to it! If you read the Amazon posts you’ll also know that I am easily convinced that I need something that might improve my life in even the slightest way. My love language is gifts so it’s self care to me to buy stuff. It’s likely I need to move soon and that will involve getting rid of countless things, including items from my son’s childhood. I’m not looking forward to that at all! Maybe I can rest assured that if Amy can do it I can too.
Also I’m glad to hear that Amy’s rabbit Tina, who is now over nine, is still doing well. Tina is actually a boy, Amy only found that out when she took Tina to the vet at four years old. Tina has had a charmed life although Amy is looking for a new rabbit sitter for him. She found the last rabbit sitter at a rabbit conference! She’s a hoot, as my mom would say. (Apologies to Hecate for swiping this story from her. Hecate has been covering Amy for years.)
Here’s that interview! It will brighten your day.
Photos credit: Avalon.red, Getty and via Instagram
I’m always buying stuff too. I tell my husband “I am one purchase away from total happiness”.
Ah… Fellow Gen-Xer! Keeping every info available because we are older than internet.
‘What if I get eczema? This looks like a good source of information on how to deal with it’
As someone who just randomly developed eczema, that made me literally laugh out loud! I was so confused…and I need that book lol
OMG I keep stuff because I grew up without the Internet! I didn’t ever put two and two together like that, it’s crazy.
Yes! There’s a drawer full of product manuals and stuff like that at my house, like I couldn’t just look it up online.
I love Amy, and I bet her collection of things is interesting and fun to go through, and she has a story behind everything.
LOL No, I can’t relate. I know this is a thing that happens to people but I stress-eat so I would gain weight. I also don’t de-clutter because I just regularly throw stuff out. I can’t have every drawer etc. stuffed, I need to be able to open some of them and there’s one lonely iPhone charger in there. I’m also trying not to buy so much crap but I haven’t mastered that yet. My apartment is small so that’s a problem.
I can’t relate either. I can’t stand a lot of clutter and STUFF clogging up my house and my mind. I love to get rid of stuff, clear things out, and be organised. Thinking about hoarders stresses me out, even though docs and tv shows about hoarders are weirdly fascinating to me. I get so frustrated at the people who won’t get rid of anything, and who get defensive and agressive at the people trying to help them.
The saving old crutches for visiting children to play with is relatable. When my neiblings were younger I started accumulating stuff I thought they’d like to play with at Auntie’s house. But at one point I realized nearly my entire den/guest room was getting filled with it, and they grew up a lot between visits and aged out of stuff fast. So I pared in down to a drawer and a shelf. And those became the places they’d run to when they came to visit to explore what was there.
But then as they moved into the tween/teen years they started bringing their own stuff (books, mom’s old iPad), so now I’ve pared it down to a couple of board games, decks of cards we play with together and they seem happy with that.
I recently moved from the burbs to the city and had to majorly downsize. In addition to the stress of what/not to let go there’s the act of moving/throwing out. I lost 13 pounds on a small frame in a month without realizing it as my mind was on other things. While I had actually accumulated that weight over Covid and was happy it was gone I was shocked that while NOT focusing on it , it dropped off
I totally get it, i buy my self a lot of stuff, i’ve only just figured out, the difference between, spoil and nuture. I am going to have a huge task getting rid of stuff.
I really like her.
I eventually came to love purging and find it so peaceful now at home. Clean look, uncluttered, it feels so good! It’s given me more space and highlights artwork and photos. I’d inherited many things from mom and my grandmother that I’ve loved and enjoyed over the years but over it now. Amy is hilarious, some of her videos make me choke laugh.
There is a video on Youtube of her doing an apartment tour a few years ago for New York Magazine which includes her rabbit Tina so you can see the craziness for yourself. The decor is definitely not my style lol, it is completely off the wall bonkers whimsical and vibrant and completely mismatched. And watching it does stress me out a bit because it it SUPER cluttered. She isn’t a hoarder where she’s got piles of bags and boxes all over the house but she’s a hoarder in the sense that she has so many useless knick-knacks and needs to Marie Kondo her one bedroom apartment. And she’s got a very manic energy so it is a bit exhausting to watch but you can’t argue she isn’t creative.
She is hilarious!
The best thing we did was move. We were in our house for 12 years and the amount of stuff we collected was ridiculous. A lot of it was gifts from other people that you feel obligated to keep but then just stick in a closet. My husband and I filled my car to the point it was probably unsafe to drive and did that THREE times to donate stuff. I get really anxious around clutter but the thought of sorting it stresses me out so I just don’t. Our new house has a lot less storage space so that helps, but I still need to go through the stuff I wasn’t sure about and kept.
I made the mistake of moving to a bigger house, and thinking “sure, there will be room for all this stuff!” I just purged a LOT for a town yard sale, so that helped, but there’s still a lot of stuff. I have a lot of hobbies and am an artist, so there’s always art supplies coming into the house.
The clutter is so relatable. However, I only lose weight when stressed in my dreams. When I am stressed, I eat everything in sight and then add ice cream and pizza on top.
I just love Amy Sedaris! Her energy is wonderful. Maybe because she’s opposite me in every aspect 😉
I am in the process of cleaning out two homes in Mexico, preparing them to sell so I can move back to the US. I have a terminal cancer, and no spouse or children, so this has been an act of love for my siblings/heirs. It’s taking me longer than I expected because when I go too fast, I feel like I am ‘erasing’ myself and that sends me into a pity party meltdown. Throwing out the junk was easy, and now I am trying to thoughtfully ‘re-home’ as much of the good stuff as possible. It’s astonishing to me how MUCH stuff one acquires when your life is spread over multiple homes. I try to be kind to myself but I can’t count how many times I have shaken my head in WTFness over everything. Donating it in Mexico does give me life though because there is SUCH NEED, especially after the pandemic, and I like to know my shame is someone else’s good fortune. I found a charity that gives stuff directly to families in need, and then they send me pictures so I can see for myself how much joy it brought someone. No sure if I am losing weight other than in the metaphorical sense…
RMS very sorry to hear of your diagnosis. What a beautiful thought to rehome your things for the people who love and care about you.
Just here to say I love Amy Sedaris.