Transcript
Dana K. White (0:00)
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.