Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff

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But I kept buying containers, filling them up, and buying more. And my house was worse off every time I did. I was using those containers incorrectly because I didn’t understand their purpose. I had to develop decluttering strategies out of necessity. I couldn’t go on living the way I’d been living, with stuff (quite literally) spilling out of every cabinet door, covering every surface, and taking up every last available space in my home. One-In-One-Out-Rule. "You can totally keeping that one!Just take one off the shelf that you don't like as much!"..."if you needed this, where would you look for it first?"..."If you needed this, would you remember you already had it?" pg.167

Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Step-by-Step Guide Mastering Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Step-by-Step Guide

Take a photo, set a timer for five minutes, and start working; then take another photo when the timer goes off. pg.57 One of the key ideas for Dana’s approach to decluttering your home is called the Container Concept. Accept the limitations of the space you have and declutter to the point that your stuff fits comfortably in that space. The space you have is a container, if things don’t fit in your container, get rid of them! This is perfect, because I probably won’t (in the foreseeable future) be able to afford a bigger apartment, and definitely never an actual house 😝 (*cough* Vancouver BC)But never once did I consider getting rid of the boxes that were making our everyday life difficult. I needed that stuff for the future. Or I might need it for the future.

Book - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean

The whole book, every chapter and every strategy, helps you make real progress in whatever amount of time you have available. Yay for that! Establishing a dependable routine for decluttering works wonders in maintaining an organized and clean space in the long run. Begin by setting aside a consistent time each day or week dedicated to declutter efforts. Whether it’s a solid hour or a brief 15 minutes, what’s important is adhering to this routine. But as long as I was using containers incorrectly, I was never going to reach that State of Organization.

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It’s thorough. My last book covered decluttering because decluttering is such an integral part of managing a home (without losing a mind). So what’s there to say that I didn’t say in How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind? Lots. About 60,000 words. In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, I’m putting my decluttering strategies into thorough, step-by-step instructions to help you work through your clutter, no matter how overwhelmed you feel. And I talk through those steps in specific rooms of your home, busting through the excuses I know you have because I have them, too. But even though Decluttering Paralysis and Decluttering Regret are terms that make me sigh, this one gives me hope: Decluttering Momentum. It’s a real phenomenon. By starting with easy stuff and working through the steps I’m sharing in this book, I saw visible, measurable improvement in my home. As my home changed, I changed. And decluttering got easier and easier. I’m so excited for you to experience that too. Chapter 2 MY CLUTTER HISTORY January 2021 :: Oh my, YES! This book came to me (thanks Robin!) exactly at the right time and mood. Dana White teaches her readers how to use five minutes or five hours to make a visible difference in clutter. This is NOT a take-everything-out-of-the-cupboard-and-make-a-big-mess method. She is not teaching how to organize your stuff, but how to get it out the door. This is the book I desperately needed. In it, I teach you the reality-based decluttering strategies and hard-learned lessons I've learned through my own deslobification process. They're here, in one place, as the guide you need to get control of your home. My first success was to trot down to the charity shop with no less than ELEVEN books on Decluttering! They were all written, not by hoarders but by people who are tidy and simply think they can teach a hoarder to be tidy and throw their stuff away and that doesn’t and can’t work. I bought each one in the hope that they would make life easier but each one sat on the shelf next to the last, gathering dust, creating more anxiety but yes – I kept them all – for years. It’s not about whether something gives you joy or when you last used it or whether it still fits, it’s much bigger than that - would that it was so simple.

Decluttering at the Speed of Life - Google Books

But more than simply offering strategies, Dana dives deep into how to implement them, no matter the reader's clutter level or emotional resistance to decluttering. She helps identify procrasticlutter--the stuff that will get done eventually so it doesn't seem urgent--as well as how to make progress when there's no time to declutter.

Between this book and a bit of journaling (which I’ve also had time for this week) I’ve come to realize how much progress I’ve made in the organizing of my household and I’m feeling quite optimistic about it.

Decluttering at the Speed of Life | Winning Your Never-Ending Decluttering at the Speed of Life | Winning Your Never-Ending

I did really like her ideas and the container concept was REALLY helpful for me. All of her stories of her own cluttered home over the years and what helped were very helpful too. I also enjoyed the author's tone. There were also a few more instances of helpful advice, like she says to always start decluttering in the most visible public areas because it inspires you to keep going, you see it all the time and see how much nicer things look, and makes it easier for you to move on to having people over while you're working on more private areas. procrasticlutter are clean laundry piled on the couch and clean dishes in the dish drainer or the dishwasher. If the dishes are clean and usable, the task feels finished pg.38 I plan to read this book a second time as it inspired me to actually donate six bags and boxes of household items to a local charity. However, six bags and boxes are not even the tip of the iceberg in my house. In that 960 square feet we had three dining tables. One formal dining table was in the dining area. Another formal dining table was awkwardly shoved in the teeny-tiny breakfast nook. And the small table (the one that actually made sense for a newlywed couple to have) was in the room we used for storage. The room that had boxes piled to the ceiling.What I've learned (actually these things I've already been doing because they seem like common sense): If office suits were mixed in with yoga pants and college sweat-shirts, I would have no idea how much space is being given to office suits pg.212