459: How to Keep Your House Under Control During Out-of-Routine Times - podcasts Archives - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean

Summary5 min read

Podcast Episode Summary: "How to Keep Your House Under Control During Out-of-Routine Times"

Podcast Information:

Title: podcasts Archives - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean
Host/Author: Dana K. White
Description: Reality-Based Cleaning, Organizing, and Decluttering
Episode: 459: How to Keep Your House Under Control During Out-of-Routine Times
Release Date: May 22, 2025

Introduction and Context

In episode 459 of "A Slob Comes Clean," Dana K. White addresses a common challenge faced by many: maintaining household organization during periods when regular routines are disrupted. Whether it's the chaos of summer, shifting schedules, or unexpected life events, keeping a home under control can feel overwhelming. Dana shares her personal experiences and practical strategies to help listeners navigate these out-of-routine times effectively.

Understanding the Impact of Routine Disruption

Dana begins by highlighting how deviations from established routines—such as those experienced during summer months—can lead to increased stress and disorder in the home. She reflects on her own struggles during similar periods, emphasizing that the absence of a predictable schedule can derail even the most well-intentioned organizational systems.

Strategy 1: Narrow Down the Tasks

One of the cornerstone strategies Dana discusses is the importance of narrowing down the tasks instead of trying to adjust the timing of these tasks. She advises focusing on what needs to be done rather than when it should be done.

"Narrow down the tasks instead of narrowing down the time when you do those tasks."
(02:15) — Dana K. White

Dana shares a personal anecdote about her attempts to implement a nightly cleanup routine. Despite recognizing the need for a consistent pickup time, she found that assigning a specific time (like before bedtime) was ineffective because it never became a habitual part of the family’s routine. Instead, she realized that focusing on the task itself—picking up items whenever the thought occurs—was more sustainable.

Strategy 2: Focus on Essential Tasks

Dana emphasizes the importance of identifying and maintaining essential tasks that have the most significant impact on household order. She highlights doing the dishes daily as a fundamental task that can transform the household environment.

"If you can't do anything else, do the dishes. It is quite literally life-changing."
(15:35) — Dana K. White

By prioritizing dishes, Dana suggests that even in the absence of other organizational efforts, maintaining this one task can prevent the house from descending into chaos. She also introduces the concept of five-minute pickups, encouraging everyone in the household to spend a short, dedicated time tidying up, which cumulatively makes a substantial difference.

Strategy 3: Experiment with Simplicity

Another key strategy is to experiment with simplicity, especially during times when routines are disrupted. Dana shares practical experiments that can simplify household management:

Limiting Kitchenware: She describes her experiment with using only one mug during her stay at an Airbnb. This simple change drastically reduced the number of dishes needing attention, making maintenance effortless.

"By only using one mug and one spoon, I limited my dishwashing to just two items."
(25:10) — Dana K. White
Restricting Plate Usage: For families, Dana suggests limiting the number of plates to match the number of people, thereby reducing the potential for dish pile-ups.

"If you hide all the plates except for five, you'll never have more than five dirty plates accumulating."
(30:45) — Dana K. White

Practical Experiments and Real-Life Applications

Dana delves into specific experiments that listeners can implement to manage their homes more effectively:

Empty Sink Experiment: The goal is to keep the sink free of dishes at all times. This involves immediate cleanup after use, either by loading the dishwasher or hand-washing items as they are used.

"Nothing should ever be in the sink. If the dishwasher is full, just wash the single dish."
(35:20) — Dana K. White
Limited Cookware: By reducing the number of cookware items (e.g., using only two cookie sheets), the time spent on washing dishes decreases significantly, even when multiple people are preparing meals simultaneously.

Importance of Decluttering and the "No Mess Process"

Beyond daily tasks, Dana underscores the significance of decluttering through her "No Mess Process." She encourages listeners to adopt this method to ensure continuous progress, even when unexpected interruptions occur.

"The No Mess Process guarantees progress and only progress in any amount of time."
(45:00) — Dana K. White

Dana shares her transformative experience of reducing her family's wardrobe to eight outfits per child, which simplified laundry routines and minimized clutter. This experiment not only streamlined her household management but also changed her perspective on the necessity of excessive clothing.

Adaptability and Flexibility

A recurring theme throughout the episode is the necessity of adaptability. Dana emphasizes that plans and routines should serve the household's needs and not the other way around. By viewing organizational strategies as experiments rather than rigid commitments, families can more easily adjust to changing circumstances.

"There's something very freeing about viewing it as an experiment as opposed to a commitment."
(50:30) — Dana K. White

Conclusion and Encouragement

Dana concludes the episode by encouraging listeners to embrace out-of-routine times as opportunities to refine and adapt their household management strategies. She reassures that while these periods may slow progress, they do not have to reverse it.

"An out-of-routine time is going to come, and it doesn't have to undo your progress."
(58:15) — Dana K. White

Dana also reminds listeners to utilize her books and resources for more in-depth guidance on maintaining an organized home, reinforcing the idea that continuous, adaptable effort leads to lasting household harmony.

Key Takeaways:

Focus on Essential Tasks: Prioritize tasks that significantly impact household order, such as daily dishwashing.
Experiment with Simplicity: Implement simple changes to reduce the burden of household chores.
Adapt and Adjust: View organizational strategies as experiments to maintain flexibility during disruptions.
Consistent Decluttering: Use the "No Mess Process" to ensure ongoing progress, regardless of external changes.

Notable Quotes:

"Narrow down the tasks instead of narrowing down the time when you do those tasks." — Dana K. White (02:15)
"If you can't do anything else, do the dishes. It is quite literally life-changing." — Dana K. White (15:35)
"Nothing should ever be in the sink. If the dishwasher is full, just wash the single dish." — Dana K. White (35:20)
"There's something very freeing about viewing it as an experiment as opposed to a commitment." — Dana K. White (50:30)
"An out-of-routine time is going to come, and it doesn't have to undo your progress." — Dana K. White (58:15)

This comprehensive summary encapsulates the core strategies and insights shared by Dana K. White in managing household organization during periods when regular routines are disrupted. By focusing on essential tasks, simplifying operations, and maintaining adaptability, listeners can sustain household harmony even amidst the unpredictability of out-of-routine times.

Loading summary

Transcript1 lines

[00:00]
Dana K. White
Hey y' all. I wanted to be sure you know that my fourth book is now available wherever books are sold. This is the book where I tackle the spiritual side of my desalabification process. My first three books don't have any spiritual content. They're full of the strategies that will take you from overwhelmed in your home to knowing exactly what to do to get your house under control. But this new book, Jesus Doesn't Care about yout Messy House, deals with the shame that so many of us feel over our messiness. My goal is to help you find freedom from that shame so you can move forward. Go to aslabcomes clean.com book book to find links to all my books in all of their formats. Welcome to A Slob Comes Clean, the Podcast. I am Dana K. White. I share my personal desalabification process as I figure out ways to keep my own home under control. I share the truth about organizing strategies that actually work in real life for real people. People who don't love cleaning and organizing. I feel like I left out one of those cleanings there. But you know what? That was. For those of you who take tell me that you can recite my little intro along with me and just to prove that I really do say it every single time instead of it just being a recording. Thanks for joining me today. This is podcast number 459 and I think I'm going to call it how to keep your house under control during out of the routine time. So just a little housekeeping issue here. Haha. That's funny, right? For those of you have been listening to the podcast for years and years and years, we're going on. I think we're. This is the end of our 11th year of the podcast. What in the world? But I take summers off, okay? So I don't produce new content during the summer. And normally that means that for those last month worth of podcasts before my summer break, I warn you to make sure that you're subscribed, which I'm warning you that now make sure you're subscribed so you notice when I come back. Because you're not going to be seeing my podcast in your feed. Except that this year it's going to be a little bit different. We're trying to something. Okay, here's what we're trying. If you are one of my people who follows me in every single place, all over the Internet, and every single thing that I do, then you already know that I generally do a live q A on YouTube on Tuesdays @ Noon. Okay. And I answer questions there live. I'll take some of the questions that people ask ataskdanny ky.com Anyway, not to get too deep into that, but what we are going to do is over the summer here on the podcast, we will be putting out those Tuesday Q and A's or some of those Tuesday Q and A's that I recorded over the school year. Okay. Meaning, you know, September through May, I will be putting some of those out. So if you are somebody who watches and listens to me every single place where I exist on the Internet, you will have heard those before. If you just listen to the podcast here, you won't have heard those before. So that's what we're going to do. Just so that you will have podcasts to listen to over the summer, which, you know, I hear from so many of you that that's how you get your work done, is you turn on the podcast and you work on your house. And it's always, I always feel sad to not be around over the summer, but this is a way for me to still be able to focus on my family and not have the ongoing, oh, my goodness, I have to have another podcast out every single week. So I still am not creating new content for the podcast in the summer this year. But you will be having podcasts in your feed. I'm also going to just let you know that, you know, a live podcast, I mean, a live YouTube video has a different energy than a podcast. So they will kind of feel different just because the energy will be different. But I hope that y' all enjoy having that this summer. Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger, wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. We'll even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign. Get started today at LinkedIn.com results, terms and conditions apply. It's almost summer. This is my last regular podcast that I'm putting out before those, you know, special summer episodes start going. You might be listening to this In January of 2037, I have no idea. But what we're basically talking about is how to keep your house under control during out of the routine times. I've talked about this before. This is one of the things that I'll often give you kind of a sending off before summer before I would, you know, stop recording for the summer. But I just think it's always good to have These reminders of how do we keep the progress going or how do we keep working on our house or just survive a period of time where any semblance of a routine that we had going before is now not actually happening. Right? Because it's not just summer when this happens. It happens over any kind of time period where life goes on, but in a way that's different from our normal way that we've kind of figured out how to make things work. Right. We've kind of gotten to this point where, okay, so all during the school year with the kids, maybe the routine was we had dinner and then we cleaned up and then we did this. And then all of a sudden you're in summer and you've got baseball and you have all these things, and we're barely trying to get, you know, things done at all versus it's definitely not what our routine used to be. Right? So how do you keep the house under control during out of routine times? All right, so number one, narrow down the tasks instead of narrowing down the time when you do those tasks. Okay, so really boil down the tasks that need to be done. That needs to be the focus. The focus needs to be on what do I need to do or keep doing or keep done versus what is the best time to do those tasks. Now, if you know me, you know this is actually what I teach. Always, right? I know that for people like me, at one point, if you're new here, welcome. But at one point I was so completely overwhelmed in my home, and I thought that the answer was finding the very best time to do certain things. So even as I figured out what moved the needle, which tasks had an impact, it was very tempting, and it still is tempting to identify the perfect time to do something. Yet that never worked for me. So the example I always give is always new, that we needed to have a regular pickup time in our house and we didn't have a regular pickup time. And the reason why I had never been able to successfully implement a regular ongoing pick things up and put it away time in our house was that I was trying to assign a time to it. It made sense to me to have my kids pick up their toys or have me pick up my own stuff right before going to bed. Like that felt like it was supposed to be part of our evening routine, because in my friends houses, it was part of their evening routine. And I would see that if we were ever at someone's house, even before I had kids or when I had kids, we're at someone's House. And the parents would say, okay, time to get everything cleaned up because we got to get ready for bed. And I would be like, yes, of course. Course we need to be doing that, right? And so I would come home and I would be like, okay, this is what we're going to do. We're going to pick up before we go to bed. But the whole reason why we hadn't been doing that before was that it never crossed my mind to do that before. Right? Like in the midst of it, like in looking at my house and going, what do I need to do differently? That's when I would think, of course we need to pick up our house before we go to bed, duh. But in the actual moment of living, when it was time to go to bed, never crossed my mind to do a pickup. So I would tell myself, we're going to start doing that. And then we would spend one night, you know, doing a pickup before bed, which was always very stressful because we were so far behind that there was just junk and stuff everywhere, right? And so even that was very stressful. But then I would be like, okay, we just have to do this every single night before bed, Every single night before bed. Even when I had my 5 minute pickup as the thing I was aiming for. And then I would do it one night, the next night, it would never cross my mind. Nobody in my family was going to remind me to do it because they didn't want to do it. And if they remembered it, it sure wasn't fun last night. So they're not going to remind me again this tonight. And it would not cross my mind. And then another night would come along and it would not cross my mind. And another night would come along and it would not cross my mind. And then at 2 o' clock in the afternoon, on four days, five days after that first time, when we, you know, said, we're going to start doing this every single night, then I would notice and remember, oh my goodness, that's right. I was going to do pickups before bed and be like, okay, tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight's going to be different. We've got to do it tonight. Well, it would not cross my mind. And I'd be like, okay, tonight. No, no, really, like tonight, tonight we're going to start doing this. And then it wouldn't cross my mind. And in the meantime, our house was just staying a disaster, getting worse and worse, right? What I realized was in the moment when I remember to do that, I need to be doing pickups. That's the moment to do it. This becomes even more important during naturally routine free times or times where there's upheaval in the routine. Because here's the thing about summer, right? Your weeks don't all look alike. You may have vacation Bible school at your church one week you might have a full day camp that your kids go to. Another week, you might have a half day camp that your kids go to another week, you might have swimming lessons. Even if you have kids in the home. My routine, you know, my kids are old and not gone gone, but you know, I'm only going to have one at home all summer this summer and she's got a job, you know, so it's like even with that though, my normal routine of Wednesdays coming around every week and me going and doing my grocery shopping and you know, my errands and things on that day and that kind of anchoring my week, that is gone because that Bible study that I go to, that takes me to the place that's next to the grocery stores and that's my routine. It's gone because they don't meet in the summer, right? Like so even if it's not just, you know, even if you don't have kids in all these activities, if you do have kids in all the activities or even not in the activities or just out of school or out of the routine, it just means that any semblance where you kind of had a routine, it may be out the window for this time period, right? So focusing in on the tasks, narrowing down the tasks instead of narrowing down the time. Summer is just around the corner and people are talking about getting in shape. The folks at Mint Mobile want to help you get your wireless bills and wallets in shape too. With premium wireless plans for just 15 bucks a month, you can have both without breaking a sweat or the bank, y' all. 15 bucks a month is significantly cheaper than other wireless services. All plans come with high speed data, unlimited talk and text. Using the nation's largest 5G network, you can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan. Keep your phone number and all your existing contacts this year. Skip breaking a sweat and breaking the bank. Get your summer savings and shop premium wireless plans@mint mobile.com slob that's mint mobile.com slob Upfront payment of $45 for 3 month 5 gigabyte plan required equivalent to $15 per month. New customer offer first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees, extra Cement Mobile for details. Our summer season can be a little chaotic. I'VE got college kids coming home, getting jobs, traveling again. With everyone coming and going. I'm thankful hungryroot can help me get healthy home cooked meals on the table in about 15 minutes. It's like having a personal shopper and nutritionist all wrapped into one with hungryroot Shopping planning and cooking. Food really is simple and stress free. So I tell them about my preferences, they fill my cart, start with personalized recommendations. They take care of the weekly grocery shopping, recommending healthy options tailored to my family's tastes, nutrition preferences and health goals. So y' all I can tell them I don't like onions and they will leave out the onions. Hungry root ships 15,000 recipes every week including smoothies, kids snacks, sweets, ready to eat meals, salad kits. There's something for everyone. I love Hungry Root. Take advantage of this exclusive offer for a limited time. Get 40% off your first box plus 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 when we moved to our house out in the country, one of the things that made it start feeling like home was adding a few pieces that I got from Quint's. The new bedding I got made our home feel cozy and luxurious. Home goods from Quince give that elevated look while so still being affordable. So I've told y' all before how much I love our down alternative comforters from Quint. But recently I ordered an organic airy gauze blanket from Quint and it is quite literally the perfect summer blanket. So soft, but it's also so light. I love it. If your home needs an upgrade, Quince has everything you need from ultra plush duvets to stainless steel cookware, linen curtains and more. And it makes me happy to know their clothing and homegoods are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quince part with top artisans by cutting out the cost of the middleman and passing the savings onto us while working with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. Refresh your space with elevated home essentials from quint. Go to quint.com slob for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U I N C E.com slob to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slob so what are the basic tasks you all know what I'm going to say, right? Number one is do the dishes. If you can't do anything else, do the dishes. If you are new to me and you were completely overwhelmed in your house, or if you've been listening for years and you're like, I haven't made a dent, do the dishes. Focus in on doing the dishes. It is quite literally life changing. It just is. If you are sitting here thinking people don't do the dishes every day. Welcome. We're glad you're here. But I'm going to say the vast majority of you are like, oh, yeah, no, you know, this has been an issue for me, right? Focus on doing the dishes every day at some point as opposed to finding the best way. Because you may never, over the course of the next couple of months of routine free or out of your normal routine or whatever, you may never find a consistent time. And that's fine. Because if your goal is I have to do the dishes at some point today, you're going to be so much better off than if you just are mad that the normal time that works for you to do the dishes doesn't somehow exist during this out of routine time, right? So focus on doing the dishes. That is the number one thing. If you can't do anything else, do the dishes. If you can do something else, do a five minute pickup. Involve everybody who is in the house at the moment. When you think of doing a five minute pickup, okay? Whoever is there, whoever exists in the home. And here's, here's the thing, when it's not fun in the beginning, they're going to resist you, right? If this is something new. But however many people do a five minute pickup, you get to multiply five by that number. If there are three of you in the house and you do a five minute pickup, that's 15 minutes worth of picking up. That's happening. Also, it is not a whole family pickup. It is a whoever's in the house pickup, okay? Because here's, here's one of the realities. When you have multiple kids and one kid has gone for camp this week and another kid has gone for camp another week is, oh, no, no, no. But, but you know, they're supposed to be here to help me. This is just how kids brains work, right? They're supposed, this is our job. We normally work on the living room and the office space together. And so she's not here, so I shouldn't have to do it by myself right? Now instead we just say whoever is here, that's how much worth of five minute pickup, we get done like it's with whoever's in the house. So. And when we don't assign it to a day, especially during this time, it's the beauty. I still say don't assign it to a day on other times of the year. Right. But when you do have a routine going, things tend to happen at the same time most days just because of the natural triggers that happen. But when those, as far as like, oh, we finished dinner at this time and then we do the five minute pickup, or we get home from school and we do the five minute pickup or whatever. But when those times don't exist, list those things still need to be done. Right. If a house is going to stand or control. So that would be the goal. Narrow down the tasks instead of narrowing down the time. If you want to really get a hold of a grasp around how to get your house under control because it's just overwhelming to you, I recommend that you listen to how to manage your home without losing your mind or read it. Read the physical book. But if you've got people in your house and you're running them from place to place, I don't cuss in that book. I don't cuss on any of my books. But I'm just saying it's safe for kids. So you could listen to it in the car as you drive them to the places where you need to go and just let everybody kind of get a little bit in their brain about what it is that we're trying to do here to get the house under control. Right. Okay. So other things. Experiment with simplicity. Experiment with simplicity. So I've shared, I think I've shared here on the podcast, but I am currently working on my next book. Good news. I just got my deadline extended, so I'm not quite as freaked out as I've been the last two weeks. But I go away and work on my book for, you know, a couple days at a time at this Airbnb that's about an hour from my house. And my goal while I'm there is to use one coffee cup for everything. Drink my coffee, wash it, eat some cereal, wash it. Or oatmeal. Right. I might use it for lunch, for soup or maybe for some other things. Oh, like I've done tuna salad in it, egg salad in it. I mean, obviously I wash it between every time and then my dinner, you know, same type of thing. And then, you know, eat some ice cream in it before I go to bed. And then, you know, my Whole goal is to only use the one thing. Because as long as I'm only using that one mug, dishes can't get out of control. The only thing I ever have to wash is the one mug and the one spoon. Okay, maybe a fork. But like, that is an experiment with simplicity. I had a podcast earlier this year where I said, if you're overwhelmed, pick a skillet. Same thing. Like, this is the time. These out of routine times are great opportunities to experiment with simplicity. Pick a skillet. For me, it's picking two cookie sheets. Because the people in my house, when there's a bunch of people here and they're all making their own lunches, because that's just how I raised them, is I don't cook lunch. You know, after they were preschoolers, I didn't. Everybody's just kind of in charge of figuring out their own lunch. Well, a lot of times people heat up leftovers on a cookie sheet or, you know, whatever it is. So putting away all but two means that I'm never going to end up with all the ones that we own in the sink at the same time, which is what would happen otherwise. Right, the empty sink experiment. So I did this last summer. I had a big old long instruction sheet that was there forever until it got so water splashed that I finally took it down. But I think I probably need to rewrite it again and put it back up. But it's the empty sink experiment, meaning nothing should ever be in the sink. Now, this is a beautiful goal for all the time. This is a wonderful goal for truly changing how your kitchen functions. But there's something about taking this. We're out of the routine anyway, and saying, this is going to be the narrowed in focus for right now to say for this time period so that people aren't. Because a lot of times when you say, this is how we're going to start doing things from now until forever, even though we've never done it this way before, that's where you can run into a lot of resistance with your family members and the people who live in your home. Right. So instead of that viewing it as an experiment and say, this is what we're going to try, this is the thing that we're going to try. I need everybody to be aware that the goal is to keep the sink completely empty at all times. What does that mean? Well, that means if you use a dish, the options are for it to go into the dishwasher or for you to hand wash it. Now, all the reasons why that's not Possible come up, Right? Oh, but. Well, the dishwasher is clean right now. Okay, well, then you have two options. You can empty the dishwasher so that you can put your dirty dish in there, or you can wash the single dish. Well, but what about the dishwasher is running right now, Right? Like, and I'm saying all this because I've heard all these things, right? Like, the dishwasher is running right now. I couldn't. I couldn't put it in the dishwasher. Okay, well, then just wash the single dish. Well, but the experiment is the sink not having any dishes in it at any time. Okay. And then that then kind of rounds out or fleshes out how to make that happen. Right? It's this. Wash a single dish. Other experiments could be the five plates for five people experiment, maybe hide all the plates except for the number of people who live in the house, because that, like the coffee cup that I use when I'm at the Airbnb by myself, that limits the number of possible dirty dishes. That means that if every single plate is dirty, there's only five dirty plates. Okay. It also means that, you know, I mean, you can go so far if you have them as everybody gets assigned a color. Like, there's something about taking this time and experimenting with these things that maybe have run through your head at other times. Okay. These are not like the world's. I'm not, like, coming up with, wow ideas no one's ever heard. Right. Maybe these thoughts have run through your mind and you're like, oh, okay, that's a big. And. But what about this and what about that? You say, you know what? For this time period, I'm going to experiment with this. When my kids were little and it was the first summer after I had started a Slob Comes Clean dot com. Okay? Like, it was. I'd started the blog. I was really zeroed in focusing on getting my house under control. I had made huge progress over the course of the school year. I started on the day read my son, who's 21, he's my middle child, the day that he started kindergarten. That's when I started the blog. Right? And so I had gone all the way from his first day of kindergarten to his last day of kindergarten, and I was so scared that I was going to undo all the progress that I'd made that the things that I had finally figured out, it was just all going to go bananas because that's what had always happened during the summer. It had always stopped all momentum for me. Right. Well, at that point, I had figured out that laundry day was the answer for me for laundry. And I decided to experiment with only having eight outfits per child. So I packed away everything except for eight outfits so that I could do laundry once a week and everybody would have clean clothes every single day and then one extra for just in case. But I did that. And y' all, it changed my whole perspective on clothing and how many clothing. How much clothes we need. How many clothes we need, whatever. How many clothes we need. It changed how I thought about laundry and clothing, and it gave me such an insight into how much easier life is with less stuff. The. The just simply not having enough clothes for them to become huge piles was life changing for me. Right? And it also took away that whole idea that I used to have. I used to. You know, my laundry story is that I would be so far behind on laundry that I would constantly feel like they needed more clothes. And because I shopped at garage sales, I could get clothes for. For a dime or a quarter per piece. Right? And so I would bring all these clothes into my house, feeling like I didn't have enough clothing. And I would wash the clothes that came home from garage sales because. Right. You have to. But I was so behind on laundry that I had no concept of how much. How many clothes we had or how many clothes we needed. But really, just experimenting with the summer clothing, eight piece, eight outfits per person, changed so much of my thinking around what we needed and all that kind of stuff and how much easier it was to live with less stuff. So what kind of an experiment can you try this summer? There's something that is very freeing about viewing it as an experiment as opposed to viewing it as a commitment. It's also easier to get people on board when you frame it as an experiment versus framing it as a commitment. When we moved to our house out in the country, one of the things that made it start feeling like home was adding a few pieces that I got from Quints. The new bedding I got made our home feel cozy and luxurious. Home goods from Quince give that elevated look while still being affordable. So I've told y' all before how much I love our down alternative comforters from Quince. But recently I ordered an organic, airy gauze blanket from Quince, and it is quite, quite literally, the perfect summer blanket. So soft, but it's also so light. I love it. If your home needs an upgrade, Quint has everything you need, from ultra plush duvets to stainless steel cookware, linen curtains, and more. And it makes me happy to know their clothing and homegoods are priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands. Quint partners with top artisans by cutting out the cost of the middleman and passing the savings onto us while working with factories that use safe, ethical and responsible manufacturing practices. Refresh your space with elevated home essentials from quince. Go to quince.com slob for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q U I N C E.com slob to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slobber when you're a forward thinker, the only thing you're afraid of is business as usual. Workday is the AI platform that transforms the way you manage your people and money today so you can transform tomorrow. Workday, moving business forever forward. So we had our two our two things to really zero in on our dishes and five minute pickups, conduct experiments, experiment with the empty sink. I think that would really that that will go really, really far. Other thing too is declutter using the My no Mess process. So decluttering at the speed of life. Again, you can listen to that. I don't cuss in that one either. Right? Like you can listen to that book. You can read that book, play it for your family, you know, whatever, as you're on a trip, I promise it's more interesting than it sounds like it would be. Like, my goal was for it to be the least boring book about decluttering that you'll ever read. Right? So I that if I do say so myself. But anyway, I'm sure there's people who think it's boring, but a lot of y' all really like it, right? So listen to that book to really grasp the no Mess process. If you've done it in the past and you realize, oh, I think I've kind of been not doing it all the way in the last couple really commit to following the no Mess process because summer is unpredictable. You are heading into an unpredictable season. That means even more than ever you need to follow the no Mess process. Because the no Mess process guarantees progress and only progress in any amount of time. Which means no matter what happens, as long as you've been following the no Mess decluttering process, I'm gonna link in the show notes. You can go listen to the podcast where I lay out the five step process. But it is designed so that when interruptions happen, when you get distracted, when you forget or you thought this was gonna, you know, I assume this project Would take me all week. And then it ended up, you know, if I did it the way I used to do it, which is pull everything out, it would take me three weeks or something. You know, like whatever unpredictable time that you have because you are making progress and only progress, you're fine, and you're only better off for having decluttered. But as you work on this, really zero in on the visibility rule. Focus on visibility what people are going to see if they enter your house. Because summer is a time where your kids may have friends over there because things are out of routine. You might need to have people in your home in a way that, that you could kind of predict wouldn't happen at other times of the year. Focus on the places that need to function for summer. So don't get caught up in making this the summer that you clean out the. That back shelf in the garage. Okay. Like this is that. That's not. That shouldn't be the focus. The focus needs to be on what spaces do we use real hard during summer. Okay. Do we tend to watch late night movies? You know, is that something we do as a family? We stay up late watching movies? Is there a place where, you know, the kids play in a different way, a different format in the summer where they either play outside, although in Texas it's too hot for that. But you know, like summer stuff, whatever, Whatever space you use more in this season, really zero in on decluttering in that space. Really zero in on using the no mess process and identify the function of that space and use that function that you want from that space. I want my kids to be able to drag their blankets in and cozy up on the floor to watch a movie at night and me not think, oh my goodness, these blankets are going to come in here and then they're going to blend in with everything and I'll never even notice. And then it's just more stuff being added to this room. Right. Instead, focus on. I want the floor to be completely and totally clear so they can come in and they can plop down and they can do the thing that we want to do as a family in the summer for this out of routine time so that we can enjoy it and be thankful for it as opposed to being overwhelmed by it. Right. Okay. I hope you'll have a lovely out of routine time. Whatever. Out of routine time, you're listening to this or whatever regular time, you're listening to this, knowing that at some point an out of routine time is going to come and it doesn't have to undo your progress, it might slow it down. And that's fine. Right. Because living is the whole reason that we're doing this anyway. So you don't want to, you know, let go and not have the opportunity to do your living while you are stressed about this. So. All right. Again, starting next week, through probably mid August, there will be there will be Q&As that were previously published on YouTube, but they've never been published here on the podcast. So you will have that content coming through your feed. And then I will be back with regular podcasts starting around mid mid August. Okay, I will talk to y' all later. I was going to say next week, but I'll talk to you later. Okay, bye.