Transcript
Sponsor/Advertiser (0:00)
Did y' all know that I train and certify decluttering coaches to guide you through my no Mess decluttering process? I am so excited to let you know that 18 of my certified speed of life decluttering coaches are teaching six week live decluttering workshops starting in February. The curriculum for this class is based on the strategies in my book Decluttering at the Speed of Life. And these classes are a fantastic opportunity to learn these strategies in a live space situation with class discussions and an instructor who can answer your questions. Go to decluttering coaches.com class to find a workshop at a time that works for you. That's decluttering coaches.com class.
Dana K. White (0:42)
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 495 and I think I'm going to call it Decluttering Difficulties or Step Skipping. So if you are new here, I am the author of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, a book with my no Mess decluttering process. So I lay out that process in the book. I talk through all of the mindset shifts around decluttering and I created a five step process that I based on the strategies that I had learned from decluttering my own home. So my perspective is that I struggle. This is my struggle. Decluttering clutter is my ongoing lifelong struggle. And I learned how to declutter by decluttering, by getting rid of my own stuff, by digging my own way out. And so when I put that those strategies that I had learned things like start with the easiest stuff first and the easiest of the easy stuff is trash. Things like my decluttering questions. If I needed this item, where would I look for it first as I learned those things and then I put it into a five step process. I didn't even understand at the time the power of it being put into a five step process. Like I knew that all of those things were helpful. I knew that I needed to start with the easiest stuff first. I knew that the easiest of the easiest stuff was trash. And so the first thing to do when I looked into a, you know, messy space was to give myself permission to just start with the trash, to just look for the trash, to just deal with the trash first. I knew all those things Were, were helpful to me. I didn't understand how until I put it into a process and until I started teaching and sharing that process and most importantly, using that process myself again and again and again, I didn't understand how much that was going to help me, how necessary it is to have a process and to use that process every single time. So I'm calling this one Decluttering difficulties or step skipping because this is something that I personally run into when I am in, you know, going to declutter and I find myself floundering. It is usually because I have skipped past the first three steps. I have thought this time is different. This time really is just stuff that I need to make decisions about. It's this time is, is not going to be trash. This time is not going to be obvious donations. This time there's not going to be easy stuff that I already know what to do with it. This time is different. And when I'm helping other people, that's what I see. So as y' all know, or maybe you don't, but I train decluttering coaches in my method. So if you go to declutteringcoaches.com that's my website, everybody there is listed, who is listed is trained and certified by me. Right. They're also offering a class which there was a little ad about at the beginning of this podcast, if you're listening to it in real time, where they're going to be teaching a six week curriculum that my team created based on the book Decluttering at the Speed of Life. But anyway, so I have these decluttering coaches and what I love about that is they are out there actually helping people in their unique situations. They're guiding people through my no mess process. And so we have a behind the scenes Facebook group where the coaches are able to support each other and ask questions of each other and get that, you know, feedback from other people who are out there doing the work in people's homes. And one of the conversations that came up recently I loved seeing because I didn't have to come in there and answer it, they were answering it to each other exactly how I would have answered. Which is exactly what I'm talking about today, which is so many times they will work with a client who says, I know Dana's methods, I know Dana's strategies. Here's where I'm getting stuck. I'm getting stuck at this point. And the coach's experiences are that so many times when they basically every time when they go into that situation where somebody says this the process is falling apart at this point or it's not working for me here. What they find is that the person who needs help has skipped past the first three steps. They have not done the first three three steps which are specifically decision free. They are skipping ahead to the decisions. And while the truth is you can pick up any item in your house and ask yourself where you would look for it first, answer that question on instinct. Go to the place where you would look for it first. See if there's any room for it there. And if there's not, get rid of something else in order to make the room. You can do that and it's going to be worth your time. You can go in with the container concept in mind and the reality of the finite nature of space and that you can look at a space and get rid of the least favorites until it fits. All of those things are valuable and helpful, but the reason the process often breaks down is because you haven't done those first three steps. Those first three steps are important and necessary every single time.