← podcasts Archives - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean
podcasts Archives - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean
439: So How Long Did It Take to Declutter My Whole House?
00:44:53
People often ask me how long it took me to “finish” decluttering. Spoiler: I’m not finished and I’ll never be finished and realizing that I’ll never be finished was incredibly helpful for me. But I am sharing my timeline of going from completely overwh...
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- [00:00]
Dana K. White
Hey, y'all. My newest book that I have been working on for the Last Five Years comes out on February 11th. In this book, I am finally sharing the spiritual side of my desalabification process. The title of the book is Jesus doesn't care about your messy house. At the end of this episode, I'll share more about it, but for now, I'll just say that you can claim pre order bonuses now at aslobchemsclean.com Jesus welcome to a Slob Comes Clean, the podcast. I am Dana K. White. I share my personal des lobbification process as I figure out ways to keep my own home under control. I share the truth about cleaning and organizing strategies that actually work in real life for real people. People who don't love cleaning and organizing. Thanks for joining me today. This is podcast number 439 and I think I'm going to call it so how long did it take to declutter my house? Here's the thing. I get asked this question a lot. I usually get asked this question by people who are somewhat new to my process. I think that there's some relief and excitement. I get it, right? Over finding someone who they're like, wait, were you in a situation like mine? You know, finding someone who actually dug their way out as opposed to, you know, a lot of times when people talk about this stuff, it's because they enjoy it and maybe it never got to the point that my house was at, right? So I do get asked this question by people who are new because they, I get it, right? Like, how long is this going to take? I want to be done. I would like to know that if I start doing this, I could have a different house in a week or a month or by Christmas next year or whatever. Like, I completely understand this desire to know. To know how it's going to work, right? Like, and this is the time of year that I'm getting more of these questions because this is the time of year where people are finding me for the first time. Because people are decluttering bananas right now, right? Like, they're not decluttering their bananas. There are bananas for decluttering, right? This is the new year. New you. Like, in the marketing world, when you're doing books and they're like, oh, we're going to do a new year. New you push. And I'm like, I'm a big fan of like, new year. Same you, let's embrace the way we are. But whatever, you know, I'm just saying this is the time of year where it is a natural thing to be thinking about this. And so it is a question that I received the desire is, can I put it on the calendar that my house will be done being decluttered by such and such point. Okay, I give you my timeline. That's what I'm going to do today. I'm kind of, Kind of, you know, I've written down, I've kind of thought back through how long it took me to get my house decluttered. Spoiler. My house is still not perfect, and it's never going to be. And that's actually a big part of it for me is accepting that. But anyway, we'll get into that more. But I, I recommend, if you're willing to hear it, I recommend that you take this idea of when am I going to be finished and what date can I put on my calendar of start having parties on this date because my house will be done that. You take that whole idea and that whole question and just say, that's an irrelevant question. That's not a helpful question to have answered. Partly because there is no answer because you're never going to be done decluttering, but also because everybody's situation is different. And the real reason is that when you put it on the calendar, it feels like a deadline. Right? Like, you're probably not thinking of it that way. When you ask the question of me, you know, how long did it take for your house to. To be decluttered? And I, I say it like that. And I know that's not how you're asking it, right? Like, because a lot of you have probably actually either asked me this question directly or wondered it out loud. Right. So I know you're not saying it like that, but I'm just saying, like, when you have that moment of like, okay, so how long is this going to take? How long did it take her? How long is it going to take? It feels like you're just asking that question, but what you're kind of doing is giving yourself a deadline. Like, okay, if she says it takes a year to go from I'm embarrassed to let people in my front door to my house being completely and totally decluttered, then I can say, all right, well, then In January of 2026, I will be a completely different person. Well, that works well for some people, and great, wonderful. But you're listening to me, which means you might relate to me in other ways. And I personally have found that while some deadlines are helpful, like for getting a project done. Yes. It's on the Calendar. That's helpful. Self improvement. Deadlines can backfire. Okay? So what I'm saying is we don't want it to backfire. And also, I don't know that it's necessary to know this, okay? Because when you have the deadline, then it feels like, okay, well then I'm, I'm gonna block out certain amounts of time and then, okay, if I, if she says a year from now, then that means every weekend for this whole entire 2025, I am going to declutter in my house. Okay. Like it's going to be completely different. Or some of you are like a year, what in the world? Some of a month, whatever, two months, Whatever you say. You say, I'm going to do this and then life happens and you declutter this weekend, but then the next weekend there's either something you have to do or something you want to do and you're like, oh my goodness, I didn't get to declutter or I didn't even think about decluttering or I, I didn't feel like decluttering after all the work that I did last week. And so now I've missed one of those weekends. Okay, okay, I'll get back to it next weekend. And then life happens again or whatever and you end up missing some and it feels like, oh, well, I'm never going to make that deadline now. And because you had turned it into a deadline in your mind, then it starts to feel like, what's the point, right? Like, like that. Those are a lot of the things that I talk about is how to prevent that very natural tendency I have toward getting myself into a well, what's the point situation. Cold, dry winter weather is no friend to my skin and can leave me with a dry, itchy scalp. I've learned it may not just be the cold weather making my skin dry. Unfiltered mineral filled water could be the reason why I didn't know that hard water is a leading cause of damaged hair and dry, irritated skin. About 85% of the United States uses hard water filled with with dissolved minerals and added chlorine. That's where Canopy's filtered shower heads come in. Canopy, known for their beauty hacks and reimagined humidifier, has an awesome filtered shower head, including a handheld version. Their unique three stage filtration system is recommended by dermatologists and it greatly reduces contaminants and odors in your shower water, leaving you with healthy hair and glowing skin. I loved that my canopy filtered shower head was so easy to install. And its unique filter replacement feature makes it easy to change the filter too. I like easy go to get Canopy co to save $25 on your canopy filtered shower head purchase today with Canopy's hassle free filter subscription. Even better, my listeners can use Code Clean at checkout to save an additional 10% off your canopy purchase. Hurry. Your hair and skin will thank you. If you're new here, a little bit about me. I wrote the book Decluttering at the Speed of Life. I created the no Mess decluttering process. It's a five step process that applies to any situation, any level of clutter, and you can make real progress in any amount of time that you have available. So if you have a week, which we talked about last week, or if you have 3 minutes or 30 seconds or 4 hours or whatever amount of time that you have, if you follow the process, you're going to make real, actual sustainable decluttering progress. Okay, that's a very short version of what declaring the speed of life is 60,000 words about, right? And then I have lots and lots of words here on the podcasts and the videos and all that kind of stuff. But that's why I encourage you to just listen to what I say on like, how long did it take for me to declutter my house and go, okay? Some of you are going to be like, well, that's discouraging. And some of you are going to think, oh, that's really encouraging. But to know that it really doesn't even matter. I'm just kind of giving you my timeline. It's not a prescription in any way. The, the advice that I have is to while you're listening, if you're in your home and you're able grab a black trash bag and start throwing away trash while you listen. Because if you do that over the course of the next 30ish minutes or however long this podcast ends up being, because I never know then if you do that for those 30 minutes, your house will be better than it is right now. If you pick up that bag right now and you declutter for the rest of the time you listen, your house is going to be better. Even if you get tired of listening and turn it off after 30 seconds. If you throw away trash for 30 seconds, your house is going to be better than it was before you started this podcast. Because that's the reality. And that's also the big mindset shift, right? Is going from when am I going to be done? To how could I make this better? Changing your goal from done to better. That one shift is the thing that will change your house more than any big plan, more than any research that you do is just shifting from making your goal being to be done, decluttering to making your house better. Because anything you do, anything achieves the goal of better. That success of doing one thing and having achieved the goal of better will spur you on to keep working where, like I just talked about, if your goal is done and you have this date on the calendar and that date starts getting closer and you think there's no way, meanwhile, you haven't done anything because the goal of done was so completely daunting and overwhelming that you could never get started, then that never actually happens. But better is not a daunting goal. It's not. And there's so much value in it not being in your goal not being daunting. So let's talk about it. Let's. Let's talk first, too, about what do you mean when you maybe ask the question or wonder the question or other people, if you have never wondered that question, Most of you have, how long did it take you to declutter your house? What is it that you're picturing when you're asking that question? Because you know you're asking about it for yourself, right? Are you picturing a perfect home? Like, is that, is that the end goal? Is like, are you, Are you asking me, how long did it take for you to get your house perfect? If that's your question, welcome. You must be new here because my house is never perfect. Or are you asking, how long did it take you for your house to not be out of control, to not be overwhelming to you? How long did it take for your house to not be something that just weighed you down as a stress point? I have achieved the goal of my house not holding me back anymore. The state of my home is such. Because I have decluttered so much stuff. Literal truckloads. I've decluttered so much stuff and done some other things that we're going to talk about in this podcast today that my house doesn't hold me back anymore. If I want to offer my home to somebody who needs a place to sleep tonight, I can do that. And it doesn't stress me out. Every once in a while, I have residual physical feeling of, oh, you can. And I'm like, wait, no, I actually can do that. Even though it's been well over a decade since my house was so completely out of control that I could never even dream of offering my house to someone without weeks notice, right? My house doesn't hold me back from hosting things. It's not a huge stressor to host Thanksgiving or New Year's Eve or whatever. My house does not hold me back from feeling like I can go do things and commit to things because that was a big part of my problem. That's actually my story, right? Is that I. I mean, I say, right, Some of y'all may not know, but my story is that I wanted to be a writer and I found out what blogs were and I was like, that's what I want to do. I want to have a blog because I want to learn to be how to be a writer. And that sounds like something I should be doing. This was back in 2009, and I didn't start my blog for a year and a half because my house was holding me back. The guilt over my home, this need to. I have got to figure this out. It's always such a disaster. It's so frustrating to me. That was holding me back not just from doing things in my home, but just from doing other things in life. Right? So that's my definition. I have gotten rid of so much stuff that even when my house does get bananas because the holidays happen or big projects happen or whatever, it's like 30 minutes maybe to an hour to get everything back into place because things actually have places where they didn't have places before. So then things would explode and be everywhere. And it was just this overwhelming thing all the time. So what is it that you're asking? Okay, so I want to clarify. That is what I'm talking about on how long it took me to get to the point where my house didn't hold me back anymore. My house was easy for me to control. It didn't overwhelm me anymore, and it didn't keep me from doing the things that I wanted to do in life. Right? Which I now realize was my goal, even though I didn't know that was my goal. Of course I looked at other people's or Pinterest didn't exist when I started, but magazines, what used to say, but like, of course I looked at pictures of beautiful homes and thought, that's what I want my house to look like. Now I realize, okay, I love a picture of a beautiful home. I love it when my house looks pretty. But I also, like, that's not my driving factor, right? Like that it just isn't. And so for me, I realized, oh, okay. Over time, as I just decluttered, it just clarified my goal because I realized the more I decluttered, the more I was getting to do the things that make me me, as opposed to then making my house, this magazine worthy, Pinterest worthy, you know, setting or whatever. Because I just realized that that's not the thing that's most important to me. I like it. It's great. It's wonderful. It's important to you.
- [15:57]
Unknown
But.
- [15:57]
Dana K. White
But I'm just saying, like, that's what I'm talking about. That's where I'm coming from. Okay. I do want to say, look, like here I am officially announcing that my new book comes out on February 11th. I know I've kind of been like vaguely mentioning it, but not really giving details. Yeah. I am releasing my newest book. This is the one that makes my heart palpitate the most for sure. So I feel like it's relevant to this subject matter of my story and my timeline. If you kind of like the behind the scenes, wait, let's get down to the nitty gritty. This is the book. If you like more to the story kind of stuff. You know, this book is the spiritual side of things. So it is called Jesus doesn't care about your messy House. So y'all, I mean, I don't talk a ton about my faith on here, but y'all know that I'm a Christian, right? So this is the side of that is this is the spiritual side of this desalabification process for me. So if you want to find out more, you can go to a slob comes clean.com Jesus finding an easy solution to a big problem makes me so happy. That's why I have really loved using Hungry Root. Their personalized meal plans make it easy to get delicious, healthy meals on the table, even during a busy, hectic week. Hungry Root takes the stress out of shopping, planning and cooking meals. You just tell them about your goals and preferences, then they fill your cart with personalized recommendations. It's like having your own personal shopper and nutritionist all wrapped into one. They'll handle the weekly shopping for you, tailoring the groceries and meals to your tastes, nutrition preferences and health goals. Getting my Hungry Root order was so much fun and it was such a relief. In this busy book launching season, they do the hard part, coming up with meals and snacks that fit my preferences. I loved having easy meals arrive at my doorstep, and as a picky eater, I really loved that I could edit out ingredients I know we won't use. You're going to love hungryroot as much as I do. Take advantage of this exclusive offer for a limited time get 40% off your first box plus get a free item in every box for Life. Go to hungryroot.com slob and use code slob that's hungryroot.com slob code slob to get 40% off your first box and a free item of your Choice for Life. Hungryroot.com Slob Code Slob this episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. We hear about those red flags for things we should avoid or relationships we should be cautious about. What if we focused more on recognizing the green flags in friends, choices and partners? If you're not sure what those green flags look like, therapy can help you identify them. A therapist can help you actively practice recognizing them in your relationship. My biggest green flag for my husband is that he is so incredibly honest sometimes to the point where I'm like, honey, you don't have to be quite that honest. But I'm truly so thankful for how he is. Whether you're building a friendship or dating, whether you're working on your marriage or just working on yourself, it's a good time to form relationships that love you back. Better Help is an affordable therapy option. It's completely online and convenient, serving millions worldwide. With Better Help, you'll be connected with a diverse network of credentialed therapists who have a wide range of specialties, and you can easily switch therapist anytime at no extra cost. Discover your relationship green flags with better help. Visit betterhelp.comclean to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp H-E-L-P.com clean.
- [19:34]
Unknown
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Dana K. White
So let's go back and let's go through the timeline. I do want to be clear here. Y'all know that. I mean, you may not realize this, but sometimes y'all will email me or we'll be talking in whatever situation. You're like, you know how you said such and such on podcast number 30? And I'm like, yeah, I have no Idea. Like, I literally have no idea. I've been doing these podcasts for 11 and a half years now, I think. So it's funny because you may have just heard me say something. Maybe you've listened to old podcasts. Maybe you read a book of mine, whatever. And I mean, I've put a lot of words out there into the world. And so if you just read me say something that gives a different timeline on this, know that it's. It's my mistake. Sometimes details get fuzzy. I'm gonna do my best. Okay? So I don't want you to be like, wait a minute, she just said 2002. And in such and such. See, she said that happened in 2001 or three or whatever. It's. It's my fault. Okay, so 2002, I know we're talking about over 20 years ago. I had babies, had little kids. I was in a different house in a different area of Texas. And I remember. Well, I don't remember. I mean, yes, it was a big moment. I started selling on ebay. I started selling on ebay because I had been married probably three, four years, four years maybe, at that point. And I was overwhelmed by all my stuff. And I started to notice. It just hit me things that I had gotten as wedding presents that were still in the box that I had never used, right? And so I thought, I need to get rid of some. Get rid of some of this stuff. I had a friend that I had made in a mom's group who sold on ebay. And she was. It was one of those things was like, oh, that's neat. You sell on ebay. No, I mean, she really sold on ebay. She was one of those people who would, like, get a wholesale deal with so and so and self. I mean, like, so she was. She ended up having. She has an amazing, huge business now, right? But this was back in the days where I was like, oh, that's neat what you do. And I. And. But she had told me about it. She's like, danny, you should really, you know, you should sell some things on ebay. It's really fun. It's a way to make money. And so I thought, well, I'm just going to sell some of these things that I have in my house. So that was a goal of decluttering. So I knew I had a problem, right? Like, I knew I had clutter, and I knew I needed to get some out, and so I started selling on ebay for that. Well, my story of ebay was that I had been selling the things I already had, I think I sold an iced tea maker, a juicer, a milkshake maker. I mean, I just sold several small appliances that I'd never taken out of the box. And I went to a garage sale. And at this garage sale, I saw this really cute bedazzler. But it wasn't called a bedazzler. It was something like real vintage. And it was metal, you know, so it wasn't anything plastic on it. It was like a old, old fashioned thing. Had some of the actual little diamonds with it. So it's really cool looking. And it was 10 cents, 10 cents in the box and everything. And I had been selling some things on ebay and I thought, I wonder if that would sell on ebay. This is before phones. You know, before we had phones, but we didn't like carry a cell phone, especially not a smartphone. I don't think they were invented yet around with this. And so I just thought, I'm gonna see what I can do. I sold it for 17.49 and I paid 10 cents for it. And I went, well, that was fun. And I started buying things at garage sales to sell on ebay. So what I started doing ebay for was to declutter. But then I got the bug not knowing. I mean, I was just starting to realize I think I actually like business stuff, right? So I was selling things on ebay and it ended up ultimately sending me to rock bottom on my clutter problems. Right? Now, I had had clutter before this. The milkshake maker was not my clutter. My clutter. You know, if you've read Decluttering at the Speed of Life, you've read the story of the apartment that was basically two bedroom with one whole bedroom completely full. Because I wanted to wait until I was in my real house, you know. So, I mean, all of this, I had had clutter my entire life, right? But the decluttering journey is what we're talking about here. So that was an attempt to declutter that ended up backfiring, right? So that goes on while my kids were little. I am in no way saying, oh, no one should sell on ebay, because I needed it. I mean, that was our only extra money that we had when my kids were little. So I totally understand. A lot of you are ebay sellers. Like, a lot of you. That's what you do. And so I get it. I would make 40 bucks a week, and that would be the money that we would eat out with, you know, and so I know, because we were Things were cheaper and we didn't have kids who ate more than just off of our plate. Right. So that time period, probably for about six or six years or so, there we had moved. In 2008, I started getting into coupons. Couponing was my new obsession in 2008. And at that point, I stopped with the ebay because I was saving enough money that I didn't need to make the money on ebay. Okay. And I was completely overwhelmed by all of this stuff and what it had done to my house. I had an entire, very large game room that was my ebay room. Okay. I've told the story before. We had a half bath in there. It was at the back of the room. We didn't use it for the first several years that we lived in that house because we couldn't get to it because that was my ebay room and it was blocked by all of the stuff that I had in there. Right? So I was tired of being completely overwhelmed by that totally messy room. And when I stopped selling on ebay because I was saving enough money to make up for what I had made on ebay, through couponing, then that's when I decided I need to get this room cleaned out. And so I had several garage sales, big time garage sales. I knew garage sales well and I knew how well they did when you just priced everything at 25 and 50 cents. So, I mean, I sold things cheap, got it out of there, got things out of my house, and so I cleaned out that big room before I started the blog. Right. So I do want to say real quick, one of the best tips I ever heard, and it's from the nester, Michael and Smith. She's been on the podcast a couple times when different books of hers have come out, but she's a decorator. She's amazing and she's hilarious. But one of the things I heard her say was when people would say, hey, I want to. You know, this is back in the blogging days, you know, when blogging was the big thing, Right. I want to start a blog so I can make some money. She's like, that's great. You know, and I never want to discourage anybody from that, but she's like, the best guaranteed way to, quote, unquote, make money is to save money. Like, to get into the money saving game. Anyway, I know coupons are different now than they were when I did them because of the whole digital everything, but I just thought that was really wise advice for on her part. But, okay, so I cleaned out that Room. But I was still completely overwhelmed with my house. Right? In 2008, through my couponing, I discovered what blogs were. The minute I knew what they were, I was like, this is it. I've got to have one. Didn't start it for a year and a half, then started it. A lot of that story y'all have heard before, but I really go into the spiritual side of that in, you know, the new book Jesus Doesn't Care about yout Messy house, coming out February 11th. But also that time period, I was trying really hard to get my house under control. Okay? But I wasn't thinking of myself as decluttering. I didn't know yet the power of decluttering to get my house under control. Okay? I was just trying to work on my house. I was trying to get organized, and nothing was working. Nothing had any kind of lasting effect to the point where for a year and a half I didn't start this thing that I was desperate to do because my house continued to stay so completely overwhelming to me. And I felt like such a failure at it that I was like, I can't take on something new. I've got to figure this out. So in 2009, I started a Slob Comes Clean as a practice blog. It was not supposed to be the thing I was going to write about. I made up a fake name because I thought, I'm just going to do this for a couple months, get my house under control. Haha, here we are 15 years later, right? Almost 16 years later. Anyway, this was the reality. I didn't know how to change my home. I had not been able to figure out how to change my home. I was glad that I had decluttered that ebay room, that that room was now usable. But I didn't understand how to make my house a different house. So when I started A Slob Comes Clean as my experimental temporary practice anonymous blog, I started by focusing on doing the dishes. And I know your question, if you had the question was, how long did it take you to declutter your house? And I'm talking about doing the dishes. I always tell people you have to declutter and you have to do basic daily stuff. If there has to be a choice between the two, go with the basic daily stuff. The basic daily stuff is where actually changing your house is going to happen. I'm so sorry. I know it's terrible news. I don't like it either. But it legitimately is not possible to change your home without getting the basic daily stuff down. And the most Basic of the basic daily stuff is doing the dishes. If you can't do anything else, do the dishes. If you are like, what's my goal for this year? I'm completely overwhelmed. I don't know where to start. Your goal is to do the dishes today. That's what it is. Or do as many dishes you can do today and then do them again tomorrow before there's actually enough to be worth your time. Right. And then do them again the next day. Because doing the dishes is the thing that changed my home. And I know we're talking about decluttering, but the second part of my process is the easy stuff is the procrast declutter. Procrast declutter is the stuff that you're like, well, yeah, of course that has to be done. And so it feels like, no, no, I'm going to declutter. I'm going to do, like, the big stuff. I'm going to really declutter. And so it's easy to skip the procrastic clutter because you're like, no, no, no, I'll do dishes later. But if the kitchen counters are covered with every dish that you own because they're all dirty and they're piled up and you can't work in your kitchen if your kitchen is like that. I know from experience, no matter what I would do in my house, my house never felt like I'd done anything. I mean, my house never improved as long as the dishes were out of control. So start with the dishes. Because here's the other thing. When I started, I. I literally said, what is the smallest thing I can do? Because I was so completely confident that I was going to fail again. Because I had always failed every time I had tried to change my home. And I said, what is it that I can do in my home that won't be overwhelming? And I just said, I. I have no idea how to do the dishes. I don't know how people. I mean, I know how to do the dishes, right? But I don't know how people don't constantly have dirty dishes sitting in their sink. I literally didn't know how they did. Felt like they must spend every moment of every day doing dishes. But I also knew that they weren't doing that because they were having a lot of fun in life. And I could go over there and they weren't stressed out and blah, blah, blah, because the dishes had already been done without even knowing I was coming over, Right? Anyway, do the dishes. That's what I did. That's what Changed my home. I started by focusing on the daily stuff. And yes, I was decluttering at the same time, but the more I focused on the daily stuff, the more I freed up time to declutter. That's the problem, right? Is you think I don't have time to do the dishes because I really need to declutter right now. But then this other weird thing happens in your brain where you're like, there's so many things to, to do in my house and you feel that way because everything's out of control because the daily stuff hasn't been done. And it's like, no, no, I, I need to declutter. I need to declutter. But I just keep saying that because it's like, but there's just so much and it's so overwhelming and it just feels like everywhere I look is worse than the other place. And it just, it's. How do I make any traction? I make traction by doing the dishes and doing the dishes. Focusing on daily small tasks freed up so much time to declutter. I hear this from people all the time. I know that you don't believe me. If you're in the situation where you're completely overwhelmed, try it. Because dishes, math is real. If your dishes have been out of control consistently, you don't know how long it takes to do the dishes every day because you've only done Catching up one day's worth of dishes takes 10, 15 minutes. I would have argued you and I would have probably thought that I won, even though I would have been wrong, that that was not the case for me. No, no, no, that's not true. No, no, it does not take me 10 to 15 minutes. But I didn't know because I'd never done one day's worth of dishes consistently. Right? I had only ever done catch up sessions. And so I was doing math and saying, well, if it takes me five hours to do the dishes after doing the dishes, that means it's an hour every day. I don't want to spend an hour every day doing the dishes. I need to declutter. But then I also wouldn't declutter because I felt like, oh, no, I got to go do the dishes. Well, that's going to take me five hours and then I'm never going to see the decluttering and then blah, blah. And it's just this big, bad, vicious cycle, right? So focusing in on those daily habits will free up time and then use that time to declutter. That's. That's what I did. Without knowing that that's what I was doing, I focused on the dishes. I would add a task every week because I found not. Not from planning it out ahead of time, but I found that. Okay. After doing the dishes every day for seven days, I was like, oh, I get it now. Like, I get. I didn't call it dishes math yet. I didn't know that. But I got how to keep the dishes done by doing them every day for seven days. And that wasn't overwhelming anymore. So I would add a new habit each week. You can go back and read if you go to a Slob Comes Clean dot com. I think it's get started or new here or something like that. And it will tell you how to go back to the very beginning of the blog because a lot of people find that very encouraging to see. This is what she did on day one. This is what she did on day two. This is where she messed up on day three. I don't know which day it was, but there's lots of messing up. This is, you know, because I would write about what I was doing. I would write about, why do I resist this? What is wrong? You know, why am I not wanting to do this? Or, oh, my goodness, I did this. I didn't think it was making any impact at all. And it had a huge impact and blah, blah, blah, you know, so, like, you learn the whole real time, actual me figuring this stuff out by reading the blog from the beginning. But I knew I needed to be decluttering, but instead I focused on the daily habits and it freed up so much time for decluttering. So the more I could declutter, the better. The other thing, too, was that I came to this point where I realized I thought I was giving up by saying, I'm going to give up on getting organized for right now. I'll do that later. For now, I'm just going to declutter. I'm just going to get stuff out. That's what changed my home during these cold months. We spend a lot of time indoors and the house stays closed up. Cat owners know how a litter box can get smelly quickly. My friend Jackie has indoor cats and knows the importance of a fresh, clean litter box. So she was so excited to be trying out Pretty Litter so she could tell me how she loves it. She loved that it showed up at her door. She loved that there was a toy included in the box, a toy with a bell that was perfect for her rescue cat, Daisy, who's blind. Pretty Litter has a non clumping formula that traps odor and moisture. It's low dust ultra absorbent formula is also lightweight. It ships free right to your doorstep so you never run out and you don't have to store those big tubs. Jackie loves knowing that Pretty Litter changes color to indicate early signs of potential illnesses in your cat, like urinary tract infections, kidney issues, and more. If Daisy ever has an issue like that, Jackie's glad she has a way to know indoor cats and indoor humans agree. Pretty Litter helps a house smell fresh and clean. Go to pretty litter.com slob to save 20% on your first order and get a free cat toy. 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- [38:29]
Unknown
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- [39:02]
Dana K. White
So we went back to, you know, we talked about the question how long did it take to declutter my house? Are you asking how long it took to declutter my house? Or are you asking how long did it take to get organized? Because I tried for years to get organized. All kinds of systems and all kinds of solutions and all kinds of baskets and buckets and bins. But my house never got better as long as I was organizing. It only got better when I decluttered. So really zero in on that. Really zero in on the decluttering and make that the goal. So. So it was, let's see, August of 2009 started by focusing on dishes that freed up so much time as I got daily stuff done. And that ended up freeing up so much time and I decluttered more. And then I realized that I hit my clutter threshold. My. I'm just gonna guess here. I remember starting in 2009 in August, and then over Christmas, I was like, oh my goodness, I'm getting a lot of traffic on my my new little blog. I mean, it wasn't a lot of traffic, but at the time it felt like a Ton of traffic. I was like, oh, my goodness, I'm getting a lot more traffic. I didn't know that the week between Christmas and New Year is the time when people go bananas for decluttering. Like, I didn't know that. I was just like, oh, I'm getting some traffic here. So I was experiencing that. And I remember at that time thinking, okay, I've been adding a task a week from August, probably the end of August to the end of December. So that's what, about four months? And I went, I think I don't, I think I don't have to just keep adding tasks for the sake of adding tasks. Basically, I was like, no, this, this is what matters. You know, I have the four tasks that I recommend. If all of this is like, tasks, do the dishes, what you need, how to manage your home without losing your mind. That's another one of my books. You can go to a slobcomesclean.com book for all of my books. Just know that, yes, they're available wherever books are sold, but they're also available at most libraries. So if finances are an issue, check with your local library. If they don't have it, request it. Usually they'll let the person who requests it be that one of the first people to check it out. But how to manage your home without losing your mind is the one that talks you through all of this. Like, wait, what? But I decided, I think I, I don't want to just arbitrarily add more tasks. I think I have it figured out. The four tasks that I recommend you focus on. First, do the dishes, sweep the kitchen, check the bathrooms for clutter, and do a five minute pickup. Okay, so those things had really changed my home. I had worked on laundry because I know some people like. But you have to do a load of laundry every day. I'm not going to go into that today. But it was by doing these weekly tasks and week after week after week, trying to make laundry every day my focus and failing at that, that I finally went, I'm just going to try laundry day. And that was what worked. Okay, spoiler. So that's why laundry is not one of my personal daily tasks. But it might be one of yours, right? Whatever works for you is what you should be doing. But once I had those down to where they didn't feel unnatural to where I. They're still not automatic 15 years later. But I was like, no, I know what to do. I know to do the dishes. I know to do five minute pickup. I know to Focus on these things that keeps my, that got my house under control and kept my house under control. And then I went really hard into the decluttering. Okay, so in that second half of that year and just decluttered and decluttered and decluttered and decluttered and kept decluttering. Right. I believe I couldn't find it when I, you know, I now I call it my clutter threshold. The point at which I only have in my house what I can easily keep under control. Which means if my house is feeling hard for me to control, I need to get rid of stuff. Right. I have too much stuff if I'm over my clutter threshold, if it's hard for me to keep under control. So I don't remember exactly when I realized, oh, my house is actually doable for me. I believe it was around a year ish. Okay. I did look up when I put out 28 days to hope for your home, which is now part of how to manage your home without losing your mind. But that was my first 28 day guide to, you know, going from completely overwhelmed to knowing what to do to get your house under control. And I released that at the end of January in 2012. So I would say probably November of 2011. So around 2ish years to where I felt like, okay, my home is not overwhelming to me anymore. And the reason I say that, I point that out is that I never wanted to share anything. I never wanted to teach anybody anything about the house because I was like, no, no, this is hard for me. I'm not saying it wasn't hard for me anymore. I'm saying I knew what to do and I could keep my house under control. Okay? And I felt confident in that after about two and a half years. So I would say, how long did it take me to declutter my house? I would say about two years, but I'm not done. And it's 15 years later. Because there's always, always going to be things that need to leave as long as you're living, which is a great thing. Right. And we want to be thankful for that. Grateful for that. As long as you're living, there will always be things that need to leave the house. There will always be stuff to be decluttered. Realizing that was huge for me in actually changing my home, realizing I didn't have an end date to look forward to, gave me permission to just constantly be decluttering. Because here's the problem. Before, if I had to, if I got rid of something and I realized Oh, I should have gotten rid of this a long time ago. It made me feel like, well, see, I'm terrible at this. See, I, I'm a failure. I can't declutter. I'm not good at this. That's why this thing was still in my house and I should have gotten rid of it three years ago. I'm like, no, no, there's always stuff to get rid of. So I can just get rid of it and I can remove that shame aspect. It removes so much of the shame when you just go, this is going to be something I'm doing forever. And taking away the shame is often the thing that allows me to actually get started. So that has been one of the most helpful things to me in actually changing my home was realizing there's not an end date. And also to know I was able to handle my home long before my home was completely decluttered, which is, it's never going to be right. But long before it was perfect because it's never going to be. My house was handleable and not overwhelming to me anymore. And so think about that. Say, even if you look at your house and you go, yeah, yeah, yeah, all the stuff she said, this is still going to take me seven years. Huh? If that's true, awesome. You're going to be so much better off for starting today. Even if it really does take the seven years, we're rarely, those of us who struggle with clutter are rarely good at assessing how long this kind of stuff will take. We want to be really good at it. So we spend a lot of time working on assessing it. But the, the reality is, even if you're right, and it does take a full seven years, if you declutter in a visible space today, throwing away trash, your house is going to be easier to manage tonight. Tomorrow it's going to be easier to walk around in. It's going to be less overwhelming. It may still be overwhelming, but it's going to be handleable to you long before you ever get to that perfect place and you might be like me and realize, you know what? Actually my goal was this not the perfect place, picture worthy home that I hope encourages you. I hear from a lot of you that you do find it very encouraging to have that same realization that I had of, oh, wait, it's never going to end. Oh, okay. Which means if, if ending on the decluttering is never a thing, then that means I didn't fail because I declared, did some great decluttering and then, oh, no, clutter came Back into. No, it's just life. It's just life. Just keep on decluttering. Okay, if you want to speed it up, throw away more trash. Throw away more trash. Donate more obvious donations. More duh donations. Go harder on those non thinking things just to get stuff out of the house. I just want to be clear like this. It isn't the people, I feel like I've said this, but the people who are asking me this question. Asking me this question, right? As someone who truly has come from a house that was completely out of control and had truckloads of extra stuff in it, the people asking me this question are rarely the people who can do a, oh, well, I, you know, go through my house on one weekend and I've got it completely decluttered. People like that exist, right? But those are not usually the ones asking me this question. A lot of y'all asking me this question are people like me who it is going to take you longer, okay? So I want to encourage you that it's worth it. If your goal is better and you do anything, your house is going to achieve that goal of better by doing anything. And with every little bit better that it is, it just gets better. Like it just gets better, right? And it's easier to maintain. And then you will hit, you'll hit your clutter threshold by decluttering. You can't predict what your clutter threshold is. There's not a quiz to take. You just know that if my house is still overwhelming to me, I'm not under my clutter threshold and I need to keep decluttering. And I just want to leave you with one last thing. Remember that people who have homes that are clutter free don't stress as much about doing the perfect thing with their stuff. How they get rid of things, making sure you know that they do the most noble ecological blah, blah, blah. The people who don't have clutter in their homes don't stress as much about doing over the perfect thing as those of us who tend to have more stuff, right? So defaulting to I'm just going to get it out, that's the best way. And also remember that people who have homes that are clutter free prefer to live with regret than with clutter. They choose the possibility of regretting, getting rid of something over the guaranteed fact of it. Sitting in their house as clutter, not having a home, being in the way, making life harder to live, they choose regret over that. I hope that was helpful. I hope you're having a wonderful beginning of the year. Here. Cannot believe it's already 2025. It's not actually when I'm recording it, but you know what I mean. When you're listening, don't forget that take your house back is on sale right now and go grab it so you can join in with the all day declutter because those are days of the year when you can make leaps and bounds of progress. That's the course I do with Cass from Clutterbag and dawn from Minimal Mom. Go to a slob comes clean.com take to grab that and also go check out my new book that comes out in February. All right, all that will be in the show notes. All right, I will talk to y'all later. Bye. Okay, y'all, I'm back to talk about my new book that comes out February 11th of 2025. If you've ever wondered how I put these current things in with old podcasts, that's one of the features that my ad network allows me to do. And I'm very thankful for that because I know a lot of y'all listen to old podcasts and I don't want you to miss exciting things that are coming out like the new book. This book is called Jesus doesn't care about your messy house, he cares about your heart. And this is a departure for me for sure. So my first three books did not contain spiritual content and that was on purpose. And this book talks about why. Ultimately this is a book about God's grace, what it means and how it plays out in life. And I'm using this example that feels both too unimportant and too daunting from my own life to explore what grace is. My hope is that exploring this topic, finding out what the Bible really says and how Jesus really views you will remove the shame around this issue so that you can move forward. I also want to make sure you know that if you pre order there are pre order bonuses. So I'm going to talk real quickly about what those are. You can pre order from anywhere. You can even request it from your library and send us an email and let us know that pre order it from anywhere and then go to aslobcmsclean.com Jesus and there's actually links there of places to pre order if you haven't yet, but you'll go to the form there and fill out your information with your pre order number and information from your receipt. Okay, so just so you know, we don't have any way of knowing that you pre ordered. Okay. We don't get any information about you from the place where you bought the book. They don't send us any information about you. So the only way for us to know that you have pre ordered is for you to come and fill out this form. And they are all digital and they're downloadable, meaning you're going to get them immediately. Now, they don't come with your book and again, we only can give them to you if you tell us that you've pre ordered and give us your information. But what are the bonuses? Well, the bonuses include a preview of the book, it's the first two chapters, and then also a five day Bible study based around the theme of the book. And then the last thing is not downloadable because it'll be an invitation that you'll receive to a live Q and A exclusively for those who have pre ordered. So here's how this is going to work. I am going to do three categories of Q and A's and for each category I'm going to do two sessions. Okay? So there will be a daytime and an evening for each of these sessions to hopefully allow you to make it to one of them. But the three categories are divided out to hopefully meet everybody where they are. Because I know that people are at very different places on this side of this journey. Okay, so the three categories are I'm all in. Like you get it, you hear the title, you read the book and you're like, yep, I'm all in. I want to talk more about this. That's the first category. The second category is I've got questions. Like, I think I know what you're saying, but I've got some questions about this. We'll have two sessions for the people who are in that place in that category. And then the last category is no, nope, I'm out. But we're friends. And so you read the book and so you pre ordered so you can be invited to that one. Because I know that, like I said, we're all at different places and we want to be able to really have those conversations. Those will not be recorded because I want to honor the privacy of those who are participating. So it will be something where, that's why we're doing each of them twice so that hopefully you can make one. We'll send out the invitations to those sessions probably about a week after the book releases to give people time to get into it and start, start reading. So that when we have those discussions we're, you know, talking about the same thing. So I would love for you to pre order if this is a book that you would be interested in or somebody you know would be interested in. Pre orders are so helpful for authors, so I greatly appreciate you doing that, but ultimately I just want it to be a book that is helpful for you. You can go to a slob comes clean.com Jesus both for information on how to pre order and or to fill out the form and claim your pre order bonuses. All right, I will talk to you later. Bye.