← podcasts Archives - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean
podcasts Archives - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean
001 Podcast – How to Start Getting Your House Under Control (Even When You’re Overwhelmed)
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I recorded my very first podcast! In this episode I share: Part One of my Slob Story How I’m getting back on track after summer, how to work yourself into a routine, and the importance of doing the dishes!!
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Hi, and welcome to A Slob Comes Clean, the podcast. I'm Dana White. I blog daily as Noni at A Slob Comes Clean Dot com. Noni is short for anonymous, since, you know, being a slob is my deep, dark secret. So that's how I started blogging there. I'm excited to be podcasting today. This is something I have meant to do for more than two years, and I just never have done it. I'm really a master procrastinator, but here I am. I'm getting going. So today I'm going to be sharing part of my slob story. And I'm also going to be talking about my own personal week this week and how I've been getting back into my routine after summer, which I love summer. I absolutely love the lack of routine. But there is something wonderful about getting back into that routine and hopefully getting my house back under control. So let me talk about what I've been doing and how that's based upon what I've learned over the last four years of what I call my deslobbification process. And finally, I'm going to tell you one decluttering. I'm sorry, one decluttering tip that you can apply today in your house as soon as you're done. So little something that I've learned because I've learned a lot over the past four years of getting rid of huge amounts of stuff in my home. So before we get started, I just wanted to advertise a little bit. On Thursday, September 5th, I will be hosting a Google Hangout at 10am and that's going to be very interactive. You can come, you can give me your questions, you can send me your questions ahead of time to aslobcomescleanmail.com and we're specifically going to be talking about the four habits in 28 days to hope for your home. I'm going to do one hangout each Thursday in September, and the first one will be about the first habit in 28 days. So whether or not you have the book, I think you'll learn a lot. Anytime that you hear something on my podcast that you need to find on the Internet, just go to aslobcomesclean.com that's aslobcomesclean.com podcast to find the info. And that's where I'm going to put the links. And just if you're listening to this later, just remember that this is podcast number one and there will be a link to that there. Okay, so, so I said I was going to Tell you some of my slob story. Basically, it's pretty simple. I have been messy my entire life. Like my whole entire life. I was a messy child with a messy room. I was a messy teenager with a really messy room and with a crazy messy locker. I was a messy college student with an insanely messy dorm room. I was messy when I was single and living by myself in an apartment. And unfortunately, I was a messy wife when I first got married. And even going past that, but I'll share that. Basically every phase of my life I have been messy. But it never bothered me that much because even though I didn't quite understand why I was so messy, it truly never occurred to me that at some point in my life I would not magically be organized and neat, because I liked things being organized and neat. But I just blamed it on all sorts of different things. I was a busy kid, I was into theater, I was always going and doing different things. And so I just thought, well, of course I don't care right now, but at some point in my life I will care. And at that point, you know, it's all just gonna get better, obviously. Well, when I got married, that was one of those life things that I assumed would change everything for me. I thought, well, you know, once I'm married and I'm a wife and I have a real home with someone else, then that's going to change my motivation and I will no longer be messy like this. Well, that is not what happened at all. And I remember being quite surprised by that. Frustrated by the fact that even though here I was, I was married, I'm very social person, I'd like to have people over, but I couldn't because our apartment was always a complete disaster. But even still, I assumed that the next phase of my life would be the one where all of these messy tendencies would just magically be cured. I thought, and I even said many, many times, okay, well, obviously, you know, it's a struggle now, but I mean, I'm teaching, I'm working full time, all that kind of stuff. I had great reasons why it was a struggle for me. But once I'm a stay at home mom, after we have kids, well, then obviously that's going to be my focus and my house will be under control. It never occurred to me that that was delusional at all. I really truly thought that that was the way it was going to be, that I was going to stay home and what else am I going to have to do once I stay home with kids Anyway, during That time where I was married and before we had children, we did crisis cleaning basically. Basically the house would get more and more and more and more ridiculous and just an absolute disaster. And then my husband, he'd go on a camping trip for a weekend and I would stay home and I would clean the apartment from top to bottom. I mean, it was perfect when I was done. So there was no question that I knew how to clean, but it would always go straight back to being a total mess. And I didn't know what happened in between, but that was how we lived our lives. Crisis cleaning. We also had a lot of stuff because when my husband and I got married, we were a little older than most of the people that we knew. He was 32, I was 25. Most of the people we knew were already married. And I had everything I needed for an apartment and he had everything he needed for an apartment. And we got so many wedding gifts, you would not believe it. Well, you probably would. But basically people were really excited for us to get married, especially him, since he was 32. And they were just thrilled for us. And so we got everything that we registered for. I've only recently started to realize how much stuff I actually need. So when I registered, I registered for all sorts of stuff, like seven sets of dishes and I got all of them. People were excited. We got so much. So we pretty much had enough for three households worth in our little two bedroom apartment, which most people don't start their marriage with a two bedroom apartment, but we had to have two bedrooms because one of them was storage, completely storage, floor to ceiling with all of my stuff and then his stuff on top of it. And then we used the stuff we got for our wedding. So we had a lot of stuff. We were dealing with a lot of that. So I really thought, well, once we have a house and I have a place for everything, obviously things are going to get better. Well, then we got a house and I had a lot more stuff than we needed for one house. And then we had children and things didn't get better. In fact, they got worse because crisis cleaning is close to impossible when you have young children. The whole husband leave for the weekend and me, you know, do nothing but clean for three days. That doesn't really happen when you have an infant because you cannot just clean non stop and go crazy because you have, you know, a child to feed and a child who's there and they need you. So everything changed and crisis cleaning wasn't working. So things kept getting worse and worse and worse. Well, I remember very clearly a day when my oldest child, my first child, was four months old, and I was still living under the delusion that at some point all of this was going to magically go away. And I was changing his diaper in his room, and I looked around and I suddenly saw that there were baby clothes all over the floor, dirty clothes. There were things in stacks and piles that were not neat and were not organized. You know, this was our first child. We had maybe three toys. They were all on the floor. I mean, there was no. It was a messy room. It was not neat. It was a messy room. And I realized since my child was four months old and couldn't even crawl yet, that there was nobody to blame for this but me. And it hit me that I was. Was the problem. I was the reason for all of this. And it just made me see very clearly that this was my issue and that this wasn't going to magically go away. Now, just realizing that didn't do much to help me. But next time we have a podcast, I will share with you the parts later on in my slob story that get me to the point where I am now, which is a point of hope. I now have hope, and I have talked about that for the last four years on a Slob Comes Clean Dot com. And I'm just going to share different things as we go through these podcasts. So that's part one of my slob story. Now I am going to share with you some things from my week personally. We just started school this week, and while I absolutely love summer, I never wish it away because I want every one of those days with my kids at home. There really is something comforting about getting back to routine. And it gives me some hope in my house to be back to routine because I kind of started ignoring a lot of my habits at the end of the summer because things would get crazy. We would get up in the morning and I thought I was going to do this, and then, oh, let's go do such and such. Well, we can, because it's summer. So things got really crazy, but I am now getting back on track. So this is a week of being back to habits, and that's what I'm doing. Basically. I'm starting like I did when I first started my blog. Let me just give a little background on starting my blog. I was in a moment of complete desperation. I could not figure out why my house was constantly a disaster. I would try and try. I'd do great for two weeks and I would stay Focused, and then life would happen. And it looked like something had exploded. And I just. I couldn't understand how I kept going through this endless process like that. Well, when I started my blog, I just started. I didn't follow a certain method to get started. I had read all the books. I knew all about the shiny sink. I had tried lots of different methods. And when I would fail at those methods, then I would get extremely discouraged. And I would think, well, I can't do this. And so each method that I then read, I would be more and more cynical about because I would think, well, nothing else has ever worked. What makes you think this one will work? And I'd read lots of books, and I loved the part of the books where they would talk about me, where they would give me insights into how my brain works and my personality. And I would be like, oh, yes, that's me, that's me, that's me. And I would love that part. But when it would get to the book, the part in the book that actually said, okay, now you need to do this, I would skip over that chapter. I didn't even want to read it because it was just too overwhelming for me. So instead of saying, I'm going to read a book or I'm going to look on the Internet and figure out the best way to get started at this, I just said, I just have to get started. And in my house, I knew that the one thing that drove me the most bananas was my kitchen. My kitchen was always a disaster. And whenever I had that moment of cleaning inspiration and that energy that just came upon me, and I've got to get this house under control. I had to start in the kitchen, because that's just where you have to start. Well, when I would start in the kitchen, and it took me 3, 4, 5, 6 hours to get the kitchen clean. By the time I was done with the kitchen, I was either too tired or had something else come up. With three kids that made me unable to keep going. And so the rest of my house never. I was never able to get to it because if I ever said, okay, it's time to clean the house, I spent so long in the kitchen, and I just thought, you know, I see other people whose kitchens are not a constant disaster. If I could get my kitchen under control, then maybe I could start to make some progress in my house. So I didn't know what that meant. I just knew I had to clean my kitchen. So I went and I cleaned my kitchen, and I just focused on cleaning my kitchen and I didn't worry about all the other mess that was on my house because it was a really bad disaster. And I just said, excuse me. I just said, I am going to clean my kitchen. That's all I'm going to do. And I did that. And I didn't worry about anything else. And over time, I started to realize how the routine best worked for me. I didn't figure out the routine before I started. I just did it. And by doing it, then it started to sink into my brain the best way to do it. So that's what I'm doing this week. I am back to the kitchen. I am focusing on, if nothing else ever happens in this house, that kitchen will be clean. I'm going to keep my dishes done, and I'm going to get that under control and then getting back into that habit. So it's much easier to get back into now because I know how the routine works. What I have figured out is if I will run my dishwasher every single night and empty it every single morning, my kitchen magically, but not magically at all, magically stays under control. If I will do that, that is the key for me. Let me explain a little bit, because I know that there are people out there who do not have to run their dishwasher every single night and their kitchen stays under control. But for me, what happened was I. Okay, so I have no cleaning intuition at all. It does not exist within me. So I can look at some dishes in the sink, a few dishes, and I'll think, oh, I need to do the dishes. But that's really not enough dishes to make it worth my time. I don't want to waste the water and the soap and all that. I just need to wait until there are a few more and then I'll do the dishes, and then that will make so much more sense. I'm really, really logical anyway, so the next time that it ever occurred to me that there were dishes in the sink was when the dishes were up over the top of the sink. It's full of dishes now. And I would look at it and think, ugh, I have got to do the dishes. But that is a lot of dishes in there, and I do not have time to do the dishes right now. I am a busy mother. I have three kids. I have lots of things to do. I can't do the dishes right now. Well, the next time I even thought about dishes was when I was washing five single forks in the 2 inches of water between the top of the dishes and the bottom of the faucet because the dishes were all the way piled above the sink and out onto the counters and all of a sudden we had no dishes. So I had to take the need for intuition out of the equation. I made running the dishwasher every night a non negotiable for me. And what that means is at night I have to run the dishwasher. So if I look in the sink and I look on the tables and I see, oh, you know what, I automatically look at it and think, oh, well, that's not enough dishes to really fill up the dishwasher. But it's a non negotiable for me. I have to run the dishwasher anyway, so I'm going to put them in there. Well, once I put them in there, I'm always amazed at how the dishwasher is really close to full. But even if it's not all the way full and I look in it, I used to would have thought, well, you know, it's not actually full, so I probably shouldn't run it. But because I now have taken that decision away and I know that I have to run it, well, then I look at the dishwasher and I think, okay, well, I don't have a choice, so I might as well look around my kitchen, see if there's anything else to stick in there. And lo and behold, I look around and I'm telling you, every single time there on the counters, there are more dishes that I have not seen before. They were invisible to me until I just have to run the dishwasher anyway. So I look around and maybe there's one on the table. And all of a sudden my entire kitchen has benefited from the fact that it's not a decision for me to run the dishwasher every night. I have to do it. It's a non negotiable. Well, then I look and I think, you know, there's still a little bit of room in there and I have to run it anyway, so I might as well walk around the house and see if there's any dishes. And guess what? There just about always are. And then suddenly my entire house has benefited from the fact that I run my dishwasher every single night, whether or not I would have thought it needed it. And the reality is, even though my kids are in school and so they're not here for lunch with five people, we always have enough dishes to run the dishwasher every night. And now I'm usually able to put some of my dishwasher safe skillets or pots and pans in there, things that I never would have been able to fit in there before because I waited until my counters were overflowing with dishes. Now I can stick those things in there, and it makes my whole life a lot easier. So I am focusing on getting the kitchen back under control. That's what this week is all about for me. Let's see. This week is back to habits. Okay, so I'm just going to tell you a little funny story, but this week I started doing bathroom day again. Bathroom cleaning day is Tuesdays for me now. I'll just kind of give a little disclaimer and say, if you're just starting out and you're totally overwhelmed, stick with the daily habits first. And then, you know, a couple months down the line, then start worrying about getting a routine down for your big, huge tasks like cleaning bathrooms. But because I'm getting back on track and because, you know, I'm so much farther than I was when I first started, I went back to having my bathroom cleaning day. Well, as I was doing that, I finally refilled my soap dispenser that has been empty for a really long time, at least a month, at least. And I refilled mine at my sink because that just seemed like part of the bathroom cleaning. And after I refilled it, then all of a sudden, I realized every time I go to the bathroom that I was still not going to my sink. Instead, I was walking all the way over to my husband's sink, all the way on the other side of the bathroom, much farther than mine to use his soap dispenser. And doing that had become a habit over the month that mine wasn't refilled, even though the thing to refill it with was right under the sink. Even still, I was going to his instead. And now that mine is full, I still go to his because that has become my habit. I'm telling you, bad habits are so easy to create. But the irony is now his soap is out and I haven't refilled it. So I walk all the way to his. His is empty. And then I remember and go back to mine. Oh, my goodness. Anyway, okay, the next thing I'm going to talk about. Oh, I was going to give you a decluttering tip. I'm going to give you one decluttering tip that has changed my perspective on decluttering. And I will tell you, I decluttered a lot before I ever figured this out. So there is no wrong way to declutter if you're getting stuff out of your house, you're doing it right. But this is just one of the things that has helped me a lot as I've made this rule for myself, and that is the visibility rule. I stick with this rule because it is my natural inclination when I get that itch to declutter, which I have right now because the house is messy. And I just think, oh my goodness, I got to throw everything away. I'm so tired of this. When I get that itch and I've got to declutter something, my tendency is to go open up a junk drawer or a linen closet or something with a door that shuts and nobody sees. And I'm not quite sure why that is, except that when you declutter a junk drawer, first of all, it's usually fairly easy to do because there's a lot of junk in it. But after you're done decluttering it, you shut the drawer. And because it's not something we use all the time, hopefully, maybe no one will open it and it will actually stay clean and decluttered for a while. And maybe that's the motivation for going to those hidden spots and decluttering those first. But I have realized because I tend to just create clutter wherever I am, I have to follow the visibility rule. And that means if I have the itch to declutter, I need to declutter my visible spaces first. Not the places that nobody sees unless they happen to open that drawer, but the visible places. What is seen first? What's clutter that has escaped my vision because it's been there for so long. I call it slob vision. I don't see incremental mess. I see perfectly clean. I see crazy messy, but I don't see what happens in between. So what is it that I'm not seeing anymore, but it's a huge big pile? Well, that's the visibility rule. I focus on those areas first. For example, I have a lunch making station in my kitchen. It's a little spot on the cabinet where it's a little corner. And I keep the chip bags there and the snacks and, you know, just lunch bags, all those kinds of things. That's all in that corner. Well, it gets messy because I use it every day. And my tendency is to get out the little snack bag thing and then not put it back underneath the cabinet or wherever it goes. And so it just becomes a constant mess. It's something that's continually cluttered. Well, I guess the reason that I don't want to clean it sometimes is that I think that's just going to go right back to being cluttered. But the truth is, if I will clean that area, the visible space that I walk by every day, it's going to help me in the long run so much. Because what it does, if I will clean that spot, number one, it helps my family function better. And so it's an immediate blessing to me and to my family and to have that lunch making spot cleared off. Because lunch making is a whole lot easier when that space is cleared off. Who would have thought, right? In addition to that, it's a space that I see all the time. And while I might not have registered that space in my brain while it was cluttered, I do see it when it's clear. And when I walk by that space and I see emptiness and I see neatness, my soul just kind of does a little. That looks so good. And then I'm encouraged to keep working and keep decluttering in the rest of my house. And that is what ultimately helps me gain traction, which is the thing that I never ever had when I was doing my crisis cleaning back before I started the blog. So those are my tips for today, is to do your dishes every day, which, if you've ever read my blog, you know, that's my big thing. But it is, it truly is life changing. If you can get your kitchen under control, your whole entire house will benefit. And you know, as far as decluttering, if you don't know where to start, look around. What's the first clutter that you see? And declutter that and that will truly help you be inspired to keep going and doing more. Okay, we are almost to the end here. I did want to remind you just one more time about the Google Hangout. That will be Thursday, September 5th, and each Thursday in September at 10:00am Central Time. In those, you can ask questions. If you'd like to ask questions ahead of time, just email me at aslobcomesclean.com I'm sorry, aslobcomescleanmail.com and ask me your questions. If there's something that you don't quite get about the whole running your dishwasher every night, let me know what your questions are so that I can answer those in that hangout. And that hangout will then be put on YouTube after it's over so you can go back and watch it or just come to the hangout and see how you can participate. I'm really excited about this interaction. My hope is to encourage other people as they start their own deslobbification process, or keep going or get back on track. Because as much as I was able to function in a messy home, which I honestly believe is one of the things that makes me messy, is that I can function in a home like this. I function better when it's under control, when I can find things, when things are not a constant disaster. That's just weighing on my mind. So thank you very much. I'm not going to keep rambling. I'm going to finish here at about 25 minutes, and I hope that you'll join me. Make sure that you go to aslabcomesclean.com podcasts with an S and find out links to the information that's on here. Again, this is podcast number one. I thank you for joining me. Bye.