Decluttering at the Speed of Life with Dana K. White
This week I'm talking with Dana K. White, the creator of A Slob Comes Clean and the author of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, and her newest book Procrastinators Get Stuff Done: How to Go from Overwhelmed to Finished. Her work grew out of her own struggles with clutter and home management, and she’s become known for practical, reality-based strategies designed for people who feel like traditional organizing advice just doesn’t work for them.
This was a real fun episode and I just gotta say that I love that title, A Slob Comes Clean - it’s a pun, it tells you exactly what to expect and gives that little of hey I was there too and we both can get out. Also as a slob myself, it’s very validating.
So, in our conversation today we work through her decluttering methodology, from where we should start to where something goes to how we really should be using containers. We also talk about clutter thresholds, family-buy-in, ways to reframe what a win actually looks like. She also shares some of the ways her advice has changed over the years, including things she used to recommend and now recommends against.
If you'd life to follow along on the show notes page you can find that at HackingYourADHD.com/315
YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/y835cnrk
William Curb: All right. This is going to be such a fun conversation because this is something that I know so many people struggle with: organization and feeling like they just don't have what it takes to do this kind of stuff. And so one of the interesting things that I found was that your brand is really built around this idea of being a recovering slob, which I relate to a lot—except for the recovering part. But can you take us back to how you came to that conclusion, how that was something you had to change, and what led to all of this?
Dana K. White: Well, I was born messy. Every space, whether an entire room, an entire apartment, a locker, a bag—any space that I had always ended up very messy, like to the embarrassing extreme. I have a very, very clear memory of my mother coming up to school for something when I was in first grade because we had these cubbies. And I remember her having this look on her face and being like, "Okay, you're going to take this bag with you to school tomorrow, and I want you to put everything in your cubby in this bag and bring it home, and we're going to go through it." Like, she had seen that mine was completely out of control.
So that was just always my story. But I always assumed that at a future phase of life, it would be easy to get this figured out because, oh my word, how hard could it be? It doesn't seem like it's a hard thing for other people. I don't know why it's so hard for me.
But I didn't worry too much about it because I was not yet in that phase of life where I was supposed to, where it was the thing that mattered to me. And then I got there, and I became a mom—which I had always thought, "Well, once I'm a mom, then I have to be organized, right?" Like you—
William Curb: Just going to fall into place.
Dana K. White: Yeah, you have no choice, right? And in life in general, I can tackle something and figure it out, so it was never that I didn't think I'd be able to figure it out someday. I just assumed it was going to be easy at some point. And so, I became a mom, became a stay-at-home mom, and instead of it becoming easier, it actually became more difficult. Because before that, I'd always thought, "Well, what else am I going to have to do once I'm a mom? Of course my whole house will be perfect." Ha ha! Even people who used to be completely organized tend to struggle once they have kids. And so, it became more difficult. At that point, I was like, "Okay, I care. I am legitimately trying. I cannot do this thing. I think there's something wrong with me."
Like, that was the point that I came to. And I also, at the same time, had become a stay-at-home mom. I used to be a theater arts teacher, and I had this idea that at some point when my kids are a little bit older, I want to be a writer. That was just one of those creative pursuits that I'd wanted to do, and I thought maybe I could kind of work that along with this stay-at-home mom job. And so, I had that idea in my head.
Then I found out what blogs were in 2008, back kind of when they were in their heyday, and I was like, "I've gotta have that. Like, that's it. How would I not have that if I want to be a writer someday?" And so, I was determined to start a blog to start writing, but I thought, "I've gotta get my house under control first," because this is an embarrassing secret. I wouldn't want to feel like I was hiding it. Um, also, I know myself. I throw myself into new projects, and everything goes to this. I've got to figure out my house first.
So I waited, working on my house, trying—still could not figure it out. And then, I started what I thought was a practice blog. I was like, "Okay, this is going to be just me, just an opportunity to learn about writing, to practice writing, but also a way to stay focused on my home so that I'll be able to get my house under control. It'll take me a couple of months. My house will be perfect, and then I'll start writing about things I want to write about," you know?
And that was almost 17 years ago now. So, yeah. I just started writing. I was anonymous in the beginning because this was my embarrassing secret. I didn't tell anybody what I was doing. I didn't even tell my husband what I was doing in the beginning. I just partly thought I was going to fail, but also, I was planning on this being done and over, and then I'll write about things that I'm not embarrassed to talk about.
But because it was anonymous, because I had already called myself a slob—which I'd often said, "It's not like I'm a slob," but because I'd used that in my title, A Slob Comes Clean—I just had no reason to not be completely honest. Nobody I knew was reading this, and so I started really being honest about what was going through my head and why was I doing this or resisting doing that, or what did I do that actually made an impact, what did I do that I thought would make an impact that backfired spectacularly. So I just started writing about that. People started reading it—nobody I knew. But over time, people started saying, "Please teach us what you're doing," and I thought, "That is the weirdest thing. Why would anyone want to learn about this from me?"
Like, and I would tell them that. I was like, "Don't... You don't want to learn this from me. That doesn't make any sense. Go back and read what I was doing if that helps you." So about two and a half years in, and people had really been asking like, "Please write a guide," and I finally went, "Oh, okay." Well, in my mind, the reason I was resisting is I thought they wanted what I had always wanted, which was somebody to tell me exactly what to do to go from disaster to perfect.
And what I had learned—one of the biggest things I had learned—is that I was never going to have a perfect home. But I absolutely had learned how to not be overwhelmed by my house and to keep it under control. Was it magazine worthy? Absolutely not. But I had learned what it takes to get a house under control and keep it under control. And I realized, okay, I can't tell someone how to have a perfect home, but I can absolutely tell you how to go from overwhelmed to, "Oh, that's what you do? Okay, I can do this," which is the piece that was missing.
Most people... And that was my frustration. I would look at people's before pictures who were giving advice, and I was like, "Yeah, your before picture is my dream after picture." Like, you can't even imagine where I'm starting. And because of that, nobody that I had found was talking about what do you do when you are literally knee-deep in some rooms, or higher.
William Curb: Yeah. And I think this is something that so many listeners are going to be completely on board with, with this like, "I'm embarrassed by this. Even asking for help is going to be embarrassing, and I can't."
Dana K. White: Well, and I had asked for help occasionally from like a close friend. My mother was always willing to help me, but when they would try to help me, what they were doing wasn't making sense to my brain. Like, there was this communication gap. And now that's a lot of what I do, is I fill in those communication gaps. Like, "Hey, these are the things that naturally organized people just kind of... This is how they see the world," that people who are not naturally organized, like me, we don't see it that way. But once I actually have it in words and understanding, I'm like, "Oh, now I get it," and then I can start making change.
But one of the biggest things is my mom would come and help me, and she was always trying to help me get organized.
William Curb: Because she was trying to be kind and not get rid of all my stuff, so it's like, "Let's just get it organized." Well, I could not maintain that. And what I needed was to declutter, but I also didn't want somebody telling me, "You shouldn't have this, and you shouldn't have this. This is dumb," because that would make me shut down since I have a creative personality and I'm like, "Oh, I can use it." You want to ask me if I'll ever use it? Oh, I'll come up with 10 ways I can use that thing.
William Curb: Oh, and I always get mad at myself when I do find a use for something that I've held onto for 10 years, because I'm like, "Mm, this is just reinforcing bad habits."
Dana K. White: Yeah, but that's the thing is what I have found in working with so many people now over the years is it is rarely—at least the people who are my heart and soul people—it's really not greed. You know what I mean? It's not, "I'm collecting all this stuff out of greed and wanting to have more and have more and have more." It is out of good intentions. It is out of trying to be resourceful, you know? So I'm going to keep this broken thing because I could fix it someday, or I'm going to keep this item that... I've known people in the past who would've been excited to have that, so I'm going to keep it so I could be the hero someday and give them this item. Like, this... It generally comes out of a very good place, but I had so much stuff in my house that I was completely overwhelmed and then couldn't do any of the stuff I needed to do with it.
William Curb: Yeah, and there's like a lot of the... Yeah, all these good intentions that are behind there of like, "Oh yeah, I'm going to get back into this hobby. I'm not going to let myself give it up." Or, you know, "So-and-so gave me this thing, and it'd be wrong for me to get rid of it." So I see a lot of this being... Yeah, I think the decluttering piece is such a huge issue for people with ADHD because we want to do all of these things, and we have all these ideas, and we have all these good intentions, but we also have this like out-of-sight, out-of-mind problem where we're like, "Well, if we put it away, it's going to be forgotten and never seen again."
Dana K. White: I have a solution, but yes, go ahead.
William Curb: Well, yeah, let's... I'd love to hear some more as to the solution to that.
Dana K. White: Yeah, so that was me. I was like, "No, no, no, no. I can't..." Like you said, "I can't put it away, I'll forget I have it. It will just end up wasted." Except that meant I kept it out, which meant it ended up in a pile because I was keeping everything out. And so I was really ending up in an actual worse situation because, oh no, I have to have it out, but now it's completely overwhelming because everything is out, plus more, plus more, plus more, right?
So the solution was decluttering, okay? And my way of decluttering is that I ask myself, "If I needed this item, where would I look for it first?" I'm not saying, "Where would it be?" I'm not asking, "Where would it go?" I'm definitely not asking, "Where should it go?" I am literally picturing the situation that I had been in over and over a bajillion times in my life: "Oh my goodness, I know I've got a pair of reading glasses. Oh no, where are my reading glasses?" And thinking, assuming because of past experience, that I was going to spend the next six hours tearing my house apart looking for my reading glasses. That was my normal, right?
Didn't like it, never liked it, never wanted it to be that way, but that was normal. But I was doing that because I had set them somewhere thinking I needed them out so I could remember.
Anyway, right. So instead of that, I'm picturing that scenario and I'm saying, "Okay, in that moment where I'm like, 'I need my reading glasses,' where's the first place where I would look for them?" Not where should they go, not the best place for them—because that allows my brain to spin out—but instead, in that moment where I think I'm going to spend the next seven hours looking, which drawer would I open first at the beginning of that search? With zero confidence that they're going to be there, but which one would I open first?
And then I take those glasses in that moment to that spot, and I put them there. And so what I'm doing is I'm not saying... Because what I used to do is I'd be like, "Okay, what's a good spot for my reading glasses? Okay, my reading glasses should go... You know what would be great? Um, on the little tray in my bathroom," right? Because I'm going to get up and I'm going to put them on. Or I don't know, whatever. That's where they should go. Well, then I put them there, and then for the next six months, I'm like, "I don't know where my reading glasses are," even though I'm probably seeing them every day, right? Like, they're right in that spot.
So instead of saying, "Where should they go?" and then going, "Remember, remember, remember," the next time when I need my reading glasses and I go, "Oh no, where are my reading glasses? Oh, I'm going to spend all day looking for those," I go to this drawer, open it up, and I'm like, "They're there." Like, I didn't have to remember. I just put them in the place where I would look for them first.
And I say "just," even though I try to avoid that word, because I know it's a big thing to wrap your brain around. The other thing I want to say, too, though, is that the volume of stuff that I had in my home was a huge factor in me not having any concept of what I had or where it was. There was just too much. I needed to have less stuff.
The less stuff that I have in my home, when I get out the stuff that I would never even go looking for, when I get that stuff out, then things are in actual places. And I go through this practice of, "Oh my goodness, where..." Every time I find something in the first place where I look for it, I gain a little bit of confidence in my ability for this to work, and then it builds upon itself.
And that's a very short version of what I have spoken and written about for hours and hours. So I always want to say that because I'm like, people go, "Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait." I'm like, "Oh, I guarantee you I've answered every 'wait, wait, wait' question that you have." But this is a really transformational thing for those of us who tend to forget and therefore think that things...
I also want to say with that, too, for my type of personality, the natural tendency is like, "Where would I look for this first? Well, I'd look for it in the pile right there." Like that's my first... Okay, well, if the pile was gone, which is my goal—I don't want the pile—then where would I look for it first? And it's like, "Oh, okay, I would look for it over there."
William Curb: Yeah, I think that is a great caveat there. Because like, that was one of my things. I'm like, "Oh yeah, there's that paperclip that's on the floor over there. I'm going to remember a paperclip there for no reason." But I don't, I just—
Dana K. White: But I don't want a paperclip on the floor. Yeah, yeah.
William Curb: So, but yeah, I would look in the junk drawer immediately for paperclips.
Dana K. White: Yeah, exactly.
William Curb: I think also just the point about decluttering and having less stuff is... Because often one of the biggest issues is just not having a place for something to go and live there. Um, I know one of the biggest frustrations I find is like when I have a drawer that has too much stuff in it and I have to pull stuff out to even look in it. I'm like, "This is too many steps to try and find something." And the solution has to be to have less stuff in the drawer. And—
Dana K. White: So can I tell you my—
William Curb: Yeah, go ahead.
Dana K. White: —transformational concept on that for me and for so many others? When you talk about the drawer and there's too much stuff in there, if you would have told me, "Dana, you don't understand what containers are for," I would've been offended. I would've been like, "Who are you to tell me that I don't know that? Of course I know what containers are for. They're for putting things in," right? Like, that's where stuff goes. That's what organized people love about containers. But the reality was I didn't actually understand the true function of a container. The true function of a container is to contain. It's to serve as a limit.
It's to be a boundary, and when I view it as a limit, it just frees me. Because what happens is I might find—and this feels like an exaggeration, but it's not—1,700 paperclips all over my house, right? Absolutely could happen in my house. Yeah. So if I'm finding paperclips all over the house and I'm putting them in the place where I would look for them first, the junk drawer, but now the junk drawer is overflowing with paperclips, then that doesn't work either, right? Because I can't get to and access what I need.
So the reality is that the drawer itself, or more likely some sort of a bin inside of the drawer, or the box they came in, whatever—that is the container. That is the boundary. That's the limit for paperclips, and that was incredibly freeing for me. Like, the purpose of that container is to contain. It's to serve as a boundary for the paperclips.
And so then I was able to say, "Paperclips are good. Paperclips are useful, but the size of this space that I have for paperclips is limited. And therefore, I can't keep things just because they're good and useful. They have to have a place to be." And so the container decides how many paperclips I keep. I don't have to decide that. Because I used to pick up every paperclip and think, "Okay, is this a good one? Is it useful? Might I ever use it?" Well, that lets my brain spin out forever. Instead, I say, "This is my spot that I have for paperclips, and I'm going to keep putting them in there." And then when it's full, I go, "Oh, wait. Is this one better than any others in there? Okay, I'm going to switch it out."
But I let that be the decision, with function being the goal. Like, I call myself a functionalist. So like you said, it's not just a matter of it fitting in the space, it also has to be functional where I don't have to move three other things. And when I start to look at it that way, it lets me get rid of the lesser stuff that I realize, "Oh, I like that thing. It could be useful, but not at the expense of the function of this space."
William Curb: Yeah, I went through that recently when I was trying to find my passport for something. And I went to the place where I'm like, "I'm sure this is where I kept it," and looked—wasn't in there. Then I was like, "Okay, I need to search everywhere else." Went back the next day and was like, "Oh, it was under some other papers that were in that drawer, too." And I was like, "There's too much stuff in here." I am putting other things in here that don't need to be in here just because they kind of feel related.
Dana K. White: Did you find it? So you did find it! I actually lost my passport and I had... I honestly, I would not have even gone looking for it early, but we needed it for some reason. Because like, I don't have that problem anymore. I know exactly where my passport is. Like, it's always in that one spot. I always put it right back. And we think maybe my husband had taken it to work to scan for something for the travel agent or something like that. I don't know. I mean, I'm putting the blame on him. Is that okay?
William Curb: Yes!
Dana K. White: Okay, good. He's fine with it. Anyway, but because I could look in that drawer... Now, I did tear everything apart in the entire room and every last little crevice and everything. I did do that. But because I could look in that drawer and it wasn't just this mass of stuff, I could rest going, "It literally is not there. I am not imagining this." Like, it has a spot, and that spot is for it alone and not 15,000 other things. And so I actually know for a fact it really isn't there.
So for a lot of this, what I'm thinking about right now is that a lot of cleaning systems that I see involve doing big purges or resets, but you seem to have a much more incremental approach. Could you tell me a little bit about that choice?
Yeah. Um, well, the reason was that I had always done what I thought was what you had to do, because that's what a lot of the experts will tell you, which is to pull everything out of a space and make all these piles, and then make decisions. And so I would do that, but after I did that, I'd pull everything out of the space, I would look at the empty cabinet and think, "Oh, it looks amazing empty."
And then I would turn around and I would see all those piles either covering the entire living room, or the entire hallway, or the entire table, or whatever. I would see those, and it would cause me to shut down. Because they would tell you, "Oh, just put back the things that deserve to be there, and then get rid of everything else." And I'm like, "Well, I didn't think about the knife that we used to cut our wedding cake. Of course I don't need that, but can I really get..." You know, like, all these thoughts would go through my brain, and I couldn't do it.
And so my whole goal was, "How can I declutter without making a bigger mess?" And basically, it comes down to one item at a time. Instead of pulling everything out, I go one item at a time, make a final decision about that item, and act on that final decision. And when I do that, I make real, legitimate progress. I never make piles. I never set things in a box for later to deal with later, or even thinking that I know what I'm going to do with it, I'm just going to do it later.
It is better for me to go one item at a time, because what that does is it allows me to stop at any moment. So I have a five-step process that's in my book, Decluttering at the Speed of Life, that I teach a lot on my YouTube channel and my podcast. But this five-step process takes you through how to do that.
Like, we start with the trash. What trash can you see and access that's obvious to you? We're not talking about decision-making trash. We're literally just saying, "Is there anything that you already know is trash?" and then put that in the trash bag or the recycling bin.
Okay, is there anything that you know what to do with, and it goes somewhere other than here, and you know exactly where it goes? Okay, go ahead and get that out of here. With everything that you do in those first three steps—the third one is obvious donations—those first three steps are decision-free. So you're not using any emotional energy, you're not using any decision-making energy, but you're making legitimate progress by doing that.
And then, like I talked about before, the question: "If I needed this item, where would I look for it first?" Okay. And so once I get to the stuff that isn't easy anymore and it's not decision-free, I ask myself that question. Excuse me. And then when I have an answer to where would I look for this paperclip first, I take it there now. It's annoying, because I don't want to walk over there now for a paperclip. It feels so much more efficient to make a pile.
But the pile is the problem, because the pile is still there after I've gotten distracted and come back. A lot of times it's morphed from little piles of where things should go into one big pile that I shove back in, because now I'm not in that zone anymore to be working, and I've got to move on. And that's why I just shove things back in. It's worse than it was before. So I had to figure out how to declutter without making a bigger mess.
So my process leads me through the overwhelming space, getting to the point where I can get it all the way completely decluttered. Does that make sense? I know that's a short version, but yeah.
William Curb: Yeah. Well, I really love the one concept I've been playing with a lot for myself: not making problems worse to try and get through them. Because that does feel like it should work, where it's like, "Oh, if it's so bad, then I have to do something." But often that doesn't work how I want it to.
Dana K. White: Yep, yep, exactly.
William Curb: I think especially for decluttering, it's so easy to just get immediately overwhelmed with like a doom box where you're just like, "Oh no, what have I done?"
Dana K. White: Well, that idea that if I go big in the beginning, I will force myself to have to finish—that worked? You know, because I had that same mentality. Like, I would be like, "Oh, I've gotta go big. I've gotta go really big to force myself to finish." And yet I would find a way to not finish, you know? Or I would... And so it wouldn't work, and then the next time I was like, "Well, that didn't work last time. This time I need to go even bigger." Well, that just never works.
But the legitimate, un-backtrackable progress is so incredibly powerful for making real change. It's not dramatic; it doesn't have the whoosh, whoosh—that's the before-and-after sounds—but...
William Curb: Yeah, yeah, the montage where it's just like, "Oh yeah, now everything looks amazing." And it's like, yeah, but that's... I mean, this is just like the word "just," where it hand-waves away so much stuff.
Dana K. White: Mm-hmm, yes.
William Curb: And it doesn't approach the sustainability of the change either.
Dana K. White: Mm-mm. Yeah, like legitimate small change is so much more maintainable. Like, if you're just going for the whoosh, whoosh before and after, that's where you get to one point and you don't know what to do, so you just kind of shove everything in a different place just for the sake of getting to that after photo when you want it to be.
Well, that's not actually decluttering, because now you've just shifted your things to another place, and then now that place is cluttered, and it's its own thing. And then it just goes back and forth and back and forth. Where making real decisions about, "Where would I look for this first?" and then taking it there now, and if there's not room for it, getting rid of something else to make the room for it if it deserves space in my home—like, that truly is how you actually sustainably change your home.
William Curb: Yeah. I know my wife and I tried to really redo our pantry a couple years ago and got all the stuff that we didn't use out, and then we were like, "This is amazing." And then like six months later, it was like, "Wow, we cannot find anything in this place again." Because we just have to change the systems of how we're using it, rather than treating the symptom rather than what's causing the problem.
This is also making me think of this cycle of shame that people go through with this, too, where they just feel like they can't do it, which we touched on in the beginning. But I feel like it's a very important point of trying to figure out how to navigate the shame of messiness—especially when, like you were talking about, this feels like it should be easy. But I often find that we so often mistake a simple idea for something being easy. Like, the idea is like, "Oh, there's just less stuff," but the actual execution is much harder.
Dana K. White: Right, right. So, yes, all of that. Exactly. That's why I do Q&As on YouTube, and so I'll answer somebody's question in two to five minutes, and I say so many times, "I'm answering this really quickly." It may be a really long process. Like, it's not just, "Oh, got it. I'm done." No, then you have to get in there and actually deal with the stuff and run across the knife that you used to cut your wedding cake with. You know, like, those kinds of things happen, and you have to get through that.
But the thing that was transformational for me was realizing that I have a clutter threshold. So what I mean when I call it a clutter threshold is there is a point at which there is a level of stuff that I personally can easily keep under control.
So my mother grew up on a farm 30 minutes from town and had the mentality that she needed to go ahead and have everything she might need for any situation. And so that was just her personality. And she could bring all those things into her house, get everything while it was on sale, get things she might need in the future, and keep it all neat and under control and know where things were and access them—and it was not like an explosion of stuff.
So I grew up with this mentality that I needed to go ahead and bring everything into my house that I might ever need in the future. But I did not inherit her ability to keep it under control easily. And so I was fighting a losing battle because I had so much stuff in my house, and it was over my clutter threshold. It was more than I would ever be able to handle.
And realizing, "Oh, I can't handle as much stuff as she can," was huge for me, because neither one of those is right or wrong. I'm just accepting that, you know what? I want to win this battle. I want to be able to keep my house under control. The way I'm doing that is by getting rid of stuff.
And I always tell people, "You can't predict your clutter threshold. You can just know that you're not under it if your house feels overwhelming and is out of control to you." Like, the only way to find it is just to declutter, declutter some more, declutter some more, until one day you realize, "Oh, okay, I can totally do this. I can handle this amount of stuff in my house." That's when you know that you're under it.
So the clutter threshold is the reason why you could have the same setup as your best friend. You could go to the same thrift store as your friend, you could bring home the exact same stuff, you could literally have identical spaces and amounts of stuff, and somehow theirs looks like a magazine and yours looks like a thrift store. It's because you have different clutter thresholds, and that's perfectly fine. So the answer is, "Okay, well, then I need to have less stuff until it gets to the point where I can handle it."
William Curb: Yeah, and this makes so much sense with ADHD and our levels of executive function and just being like, yeah, at a certain point, you stop being able to just easily manage things, and then you kind of have this cascading effect where it's like, "Oh, this is way too much suddenly." We have a lot of things where it feels like zero to 100, where it's really like zero to 75, and then we don't realize that we're stepping off a cliff for that last step.
So my struggle here too is also thinking about how to get the rest of your family on board with this kind of thing. Because for me, we just had school end up here, and I'm trying to get my kids like, "Hey, we're going to start the summer. Let's not be unable to see the floor in your room. Let me talk to you about it." And they're just like, "Why? I don't care." And I'm like, "Yeah, but you want to play with your stuff..." So it's harder to get kids and probably, for a number of people, their spouses on board for these things.
Dana K. White: Yeah. So with that, my number one piece of advice is to work on your own stuff first. For me, that was probably one of the biggest benefits of the way I started what I call my "de-slobification" process—that I was not telling anybody what I was doing, so I couldn't place expectations on them first.
And so, because always before I was like, "Hey..." I have three kids, and it was summertime, and I would be like, "Hey, we're going to change everything about how we've been doing things in our home for your entire lives." I didn't say that, but that's basically what I was saying. Like, "Everything you've known about what our house was like—that's not the vision I have in my head. And so we're going to change everything."
And they were like, "What?" And they're kids, so one of their best life strategies is to resist until you give up, right? So that's just reality. So instead, because I was focusing on... I could only focus on my own stuff. I first of all realized that a lot of the problem was my stuff in our general areas and in my own spaces. And I was working on my own habits, maintenance routines, those kinds of things.
And our house started to change. As people saw my relationship with stuff change, as people saw how much easier it was to live and to function and to do things in our home with less stuff, it started to change everybody else's relationship with stuff as well.
The thing I will say for kids: the number one task to bring them in on is the five-minute pickup. And the goal—it's great if the goal can be the entire house—like, everybody works for five minutes, and we get the house back under control, things picked up and put away.
It's not going to be that way in the beginning. In the beginning, five minutes may barely make a dent. In the beginning with kids, your five minutes are spent reminding them, "Yes, you do know where your shoes go. Yes, you do know where this goes." It's just picking things up and putting them away, setting that five-minute timer to help them realize, "Oh, she really does (or he really does) mean five minutes, not 'grandma's coming so we're doing an entire house overhaul,'" which is what my kids always thought. Like, "Why are we cleaning? Who's coming over?"
And so it's like, no, a five-minute pickup is its own thing. We're just going to do five minutes. And then giving that goal as you declutter to say, "Our goal is that a five-minute pickup will get this space back under control." Like, "We're going to declutter your room, starting with the trash—what's obvious trash to them, not an argument over what you think is trash and they think is a treasure. Do you see any trash?" Go through the five-step process with them.
And let them know, "Hey, our goal is that on a normal day, you'll be able to get your room picked up in five minutes. And if you can't do that, then we'll know that you have more stuff than you can handle, and we'll have to declutter some more." So there's motivation on both sides there, right? Like, "Oh, the decluttering is going to make the five-minute pickup easier." Also, "Oh, the five-minute pickup needs to be taken seriously, otherwise it's going to show that I need to declutter some more." So they both work together on that.
William Curb: Yeah. I love the idea of like, "Here's our goal. We're not going to hit it immediately." But also the goal informs what we actually need to do, rather than just being kind of like, "Oh, we're trying to get Instagram pretty."
Dana K. White: Yeah. Well, and taking those "before and better" pictures, right? Take a picture, pick stuff up and put it away for five minutes, and take another picture at the end of the five minutes. You'll be shocked at the impact of five minutes, even on a very messy space that's still very messy at the end of the five minutes. Seeing that it's better is really transformational in your mind of what's worth your time to take time to do.
William Curb: Yeah. And I think especially with time blindness issues where people are like, "Oh, this is going to take forever," and you do five minutes and you're like, "Oh, I can see way more of the floor now, and this actually feels good."
Dana K. White: Yep, exactly.
William Curb: And then also a very important point: "Yes, we're only going to do five minutes," because tricking your brain or tricking your family does not pay out in the long run.
Dana K. White: It doesn't. I don't like to be tricked, even by myself. And so so many people say, "Oh yeah, I'll do five minutes and then I'll really keep going until..." It's like, I can keep going if I want, but only because I want to. I'm literally going to stop at the end of five minutes and feel accomplished. I did what I said I was going to do, and I'm done. I can feel good about it.
William Curb: Yeah. And it's amazing also just how doing part of something can be fine, you know? Like, if I'm like, "Oh, I only loaded like half the dishwasher," but then later my wife comes by and she's like, "Oh, half the dishwasher's already full? Great. I can finish this real quick."
Dana K. White: I changed my goal from "done" to "better." Like, I just said, "I'm just going to make this better," whether it's putting a few dishes in the dishwasher, whether it's throwing away some trash, whatever. And when I change my goal to "better" or "less" when I'm decluttering—I just want to have less in this space—literally anything I do achieves my goal. Like, I am successful if I do anything at all if my goal is better. So that mindset shift is really powerful, especially when I'm feeling overwhelmed. I'm like, "What can I do to make this better?"
William Curb: Yeah. And yes, fantastic mindset shift because, yeah, there are so many tasks that are like, "This is going to be too big for a single day," or, "Even if I worked on this all day, I would not get this done." But if I do 5 or 10 minutes, it's better, and I can eventually get there. So I guess with that in mind too, are there areas that people should focus on first, or is it kind of just more individual to each person?
Dana K. White: Yeah, so I recommend that you follow what I have named the Visibility Rule. My whole house was a disaster, and every space overwhelmed me. I needed to work on all of it. And so I was like, "Well, I've gotta have a place to start." And so I started following the Visibility Rule. I said, "I'm going to start in the place that guests would see if they entered our home. So whether that's the front door, the entryway, wherever, I'm going to start there."
First of all, it just gave me a place to start, a way to prioritize. But also, the biggest impact, the biggest positive effect of following the Visibility Rule, is that if I will work in a space that we can see, then I experience the benefits, the perks, of having decluttered.
It is so normal to be like, "I'm going to declutter. I've got that itch. I'm ready to declutter. Oh, I just listened to this podcast and I'm ready to do this." And we tend to go to that top shelf in the closet where we're like, "Okay, this is this obscure little spot and I'm going to work in there." Well, I could spend all day working on that spot and then still be embarrassed to open the front door. Or my family comes home and they're like, "What have you been doing?"
"I've been decluttering." And they're like, "Really? It doesn't look any better." Well, that's so deflating to have put all that time and energy and not see the impact of what you've done.
Versus if I work in a visible space—even though sometimes I'm like, "Well, this is going to get messy again sooner than that would"—I'm going to work in this space, and then every time I walk by it, even though I didn't notice it when it was a mess because I'd blocked it out, now it looks good. It looks better, and I'm like, "It looks so good." And it increases my decluttering energy, and it perpetuates that energy. So it actually gives me energy to then declutter again sooner, and then I go back to that space, get it back under control in a couple of minutes, and then move to the next most visible space. So that's how to build momentum: following that Visibility Rule.
William Curb: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense because as much as this should be an internal, "I feel good about this," it does matter what other people say. That has a huge impact even if it shouldn't necessarily be the most important thing, but it is a factor.
Dana K. White: Yeah. Well, I feel so strongly that experiencing the benefits of decluttering—just being able to move more quickly through your space, see what you have, experience that I'm not as visually overwhelmed so therefore I actually have awareness of what I have and where it is—experiencing that is the best motivation to keep going on decluttering.
William Curb: Yeah. Whenever I've had spaces that are... Yeah, you want to be able to feel good in your space, and a lot of times we don't because there's too much stuff. And being like, "Oh, I can't use my desk because there's too much stuff on my desk. Well, then I'm not going to use my desk."
Dana K. White: Right, exactly.
William Curb: So you've been doing this for a long time now, and I'm wondering if there are things that you started off doing that you've just completely reversed course on?
Dana K. White: It's funny, I have a YouTube channel and I did videos back in I think it was 2013 or maybe 2012, I don't remember. Anyway, I was kind of just getting started, and I would just... Because I was just figuring it out, right? That was back before I had set things into a process and all that. And I did a series of videos where I was like, "I am really going to work on our primary bedroom." That was the space I was working on because it had always been our dumping ground. It had always been the place, because we could lock the door when people came over, that we would shove everything, and it was always so frustrating.
And back then, I was just figuring it out. I was just decluttering. And so I was like, "I'm going to do what they say to do. I'm going to take everything out of this room." And it's a long series, and I sometimes cringe because that's my big thing now: I'm like, "Don't ever take everything out of a space."
But I left it up there because I think it's really important that people see where I came from. But I don't regret it, because every time you try something and it doesn't work, you have gained information, you know? Like, you now know something that you didn't know before, and you're able to move forward. So I would say, because I was not teaching anything for those first several years and was just figuring it out, there were things that I did that I now am like, "Oh yeah, I don't do that anymore because I learned why it didn't work for me."
William Curb: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. And yeah, it's a great reframe on being like, "Yeah, this didn't work, and now I know."
Dana K. White: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's permission to learn, and I think that's so much of the hesitation. My next book that comes out in October is about procrastination in general, like not just with your home, but with all kinds of things. And one of my big strategies is to just do non-committal experimentation. Like, I'm not saying that I have to know ahead of time what I'm doing. I'm not saying I'm ever going to do it this way again, but I'm non-committally experimenting just to find out what does or doesn't work. And something about that is incredibly freeing to move me forward.
William Curb: Yeah, I do that a lot with my writing and stuff where I'm just like, "Oh yeah, I'm just going to put out what's out there, and if it's crap, I don't have to keep it."
Dana K. White: Exactly. Well, in writing specifically, I think of it as like you have to make the clay first before you can actually make something out of the clay. So there have to be words on the paper for you to be able to shape them and move them and make them beautiful and interesting and helpful and all those things. Like, the words have to be there first, because otherwise you're just staring at nothing. You have to have paint to make art. You have to have clay to make a sculpture. But you know what I mean.
William Curb: Yeah, and it makes total sense that it's the same with this. You don't know what's going to work for you until you try it.
Dana K. White: You literally have no idea. And so it's better to try it even if you fail, because you've moved forward and you've learned something from what happened.
William Curb: All right. Well, we're kind of coming up on time here. I was wondering if you had any final thoughts that you wanted to leave the audience with?
Dana K. White: Yeah. The first step in my process is to start with the trash. And there are always people who say, "I don't have trash." Those same people are always wrong. But even if you truly are the person who has no trash, this first step is still to start with the trash. And what it is, is you're looking for trash. It's not deciding that something is trash, but something about saying, "Okay, I'm just going to look for trash, see if there's any trash, even if I'm confident there isn't any."
Even if there is none, it's a way to get started. It's non-committal experimentation. "I'm just going to see if there is any. I'm not saying there's going to be. I'm not going to force myself to throw something away that I don't want to." I am literally just saying, "Is there any?" And I have looked, and just the looking means that I have done the first step in the process, and I've gotten started. And getting started is the hardest part.
William Curb: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I know I'm excited to put some of this stuff into action, and I'm sure a lot of the listeners are too.
Dana K. White: Well, thank you so much for having me on. I appreciate it.
This Episode's Top Tips
When putting stuff away it's important to decide where you'd look for an item and put it there instead of just thinking about where it "should" go. By putting something where you'd look for it first, when it comes time to look for the thing you know exactly where to go.
While a container's first job is to hold things, it also serves as a way to set limits on how much of something can go in there. When the container is full, that's it, that's the limit and that decision is made for you.
If we can change our goals from "done" to "better" we can shift our entire mentality around cleaning, organizing and decluttering. Instead of needing to set aside a whole weekend to completely upend your house, you can do five minutes and that progress still counts as a win.