← podcasts Archives - Dana K. White: A Slob Comes Clean
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Hi y'. All. Did you know that my first children's book is coming out this month? I am so ridiculously excited to share Winnie's pile of pillows with you. So Winnie is a walrus who finds out she loves pillows and keeps getting more until her room is so full of pillows she can't do the things she wants to do because there are pillows everywhere. It's for ages 4 to 8 and it's full of bright and fun illustrations. It will bridge the communication gap between you and your kids about clutter. If you pre order, you can get fun printables at a slob comes clean.com that's aslobcamsclean.com Winnie W I N N I E welcome to A Slob Comes Clean the Podcast. I am Dana K. White. I share my personal desalobification process as I figure out ways to keep my own home under control. I share the truth about cleaning and organizing and decluttering strategies that work for real people in real life, even people who don't love cleaning, organizing, or decluttering. Welcome. This is podcast number 496 and I think I'm going to call it Ricochet Decluttering. And the main reason that I want to call it Ricochet Decluttering is just how fun it is to say the word ricochet. It's just a really fun word. Anyway, it's something I've been thinking about lately. I've been and bear with me as I kind of explain why I've been thinking about this lately. It's a little bit weird, but you know me, I'm always thinking about decluttering and always thinking about home maintenance in a way of how to explain what works and what doesn't. Because that's what I do here for y'. All. So I have been playing a game on my phone. I generally don't play games on my phone, but I have recently removed social media from my phone in a in an effort to just have a little more control over how much time I'm on it and have it not quite be so accessible to me. So anyway, what do I do when I pick up my phone and there's no social media? Well, one of the things I do is I go to the one game that I have on my phone and I have this game because I like when I am traveling on an airplane, my favorite thing to do is listen to an audiobook and play this mindless game at the same time. Well, I've actually now taken this game off of my phone, but it at the Time when I was playing it and thinking about this, I had gotten to my highest score ever. Well, I was thinking about the strategy, like, the strategy of how you play this game and win at this game. And it was making me think about the same types of parallels or the. The parallels to the strategy for getting your house under control and how I finally won at my house. And the game is called Balls with a Z on the End. It's like the first game that my kids ever had. I can remember before my kids had phones and. But I had an old phone, and I put. They put this game on it, and my son took it to his swim meet when he had to sit there for hours and hours and hours between his races. Anyway, so it's just one that I still think is fun. Anyway, the winning happens when the ricochet happens. So I know this isn't okay. Just so y' all know. I'm sure that there's some of y' all who think that I just take every ad that comes along. And by the way, I don't have any control over ads that are not my voice. Right. But the ones that are me speaking, I actually say no to a lot of ads that come my way. And one of my automatic no's and is an ad about a game, like an online game, because I'm like, we struggle with distraction enough, so I don't need to be advertising something that's just mostly a distraction. Right. Because we can all find our own things there. So I'm not, like, saying, hey, go get this game. I'm just saying this is what it made me think about. So the way that you win. And this is something my kids explained to me. So what's happening is that these lines are coming down and they get a little bit lower, and they get a little bit lower with each, you know, time that you shoot this little ball to bounce around on things. It's kind of like a pinball machine. Although I never played pinball, so I don't really know. I mean, I maybe did once or twice, but I didn't know what I was doing when I did it. But so the. You shoot this little ball, and it goes in and among all these little squares, and each of the squares has a number on it. And every time that ball hits one of these squares, the number goes down by one. So in the beginning, you've got a line of five squares, and there are a couple openings in there so you can go get up above the square. Five squares, and they each have the number one, and Then you do it again, and they have the number two, and then they have three, and then you earn more of these little, you know, balls, so you have more things that you can shoot anyway. The point is that the way you actually win is not just dealing with the things that are coming at you that you can see immediately. That's how you lose if you don't pay attention to those things. But the only way to actually win is to ricochet. The only way to actually win is to get past just the surface things that you see as the first, you know, line of stuff that's going to get you. And you get past that and you let the little ball that you're shooting and the, you know, gets to be 50 balls or 100 balls or whatever, and you get them to where they not only just hit one square one time, but they get into a corner and they ricochet. They bounce and they bounce, and they bounce. And that's how you get when you get like, I was doing really good. I got, like tonight, 900, and I would have these squares that had, like 1500 on them. And if you can get that ball to go in the right place and to ricochet just right, you can get that thing that seems like this incredibly daunting thing that in the beginning you would never, ever, you know, oh, how in the world would I ever deal with that? Well, I deal with it by getting past the front line and ricocheting. Letting the choices, the things, the direction that I'm taking not just affect one thing, but affect a lot of things. Okay, I. This might be too much of a stretch. And if you're anything like me and you've only ever played one game, or maybe you've never played any games, and you're like, I don't know what she's talking about. Let's get into the decluttering parallel here, okay? The front line matters. That is why I always often, whatever. Say, if you're going to start from the point where you are just completely and totally overwhelmed in your home, start with the dishes. Start with the daily maintenance stuff. The dishes, the five minute pickup, the laundry, which for me works better as a weekly chore as opposed to a daily one. But start with those things that if I don't deal with those, they will bury me. It will all be over. That's how the really bad stuff happens, is when I let those frontline things get away from me. And that, you know, that's how. That's how you lose at this game, is you're paying so much attention to everything else that somehow one of the front, like bottom row things that, you know, once it touches the bottom, you're out, you're dead. That, that one, I forget to pay attention to it. Okay, that's the thing that will get me. So the, the dishes, the laundry, those things, you have to pay attention to that. And I always say if you, if you're overwhelmed, start with those. Start with the maintenance tasks, start with the daily things. The dishes, the, the five minute pickup, those are the most important thing because they will get you every time, guaranteed. Losing the game happens when the daily stuff gets messed up, when the daily stuff doesn't happen. So that's the most important. But then equally important to the most important is decluttering. And I know that that doesn't, I know that it's like, no, you can't have the most important and equally important. But y', all, that's just how it is. Like, yes, absolutely, you have to do this. And if you try, if you do anything other than dealing with the daily stuff, you're only going to lose. Like you have. The daily stuff absolutely has to be done. That's why over the years I've called it all the different things, non negotiable tasks, pre made decisions, habits, daily tasks, all the things. Because that is the thing that will guarantee you to lose if you don't do it. But the way to win, the way to go beyond just survival, the way to go to the point where it's not so difficult to try to manage that front line of the dishes and the laundry and the five minute pickups and the, you know, all that, the daily stuff. The way to make that daily stuff not be so daunting and panicky and oh my goodness, I got to deal with all this stuff right here and how am I going to do this? And blah, blah, blah. And I think I'm just gonna. It's about to get me. It's about to get. The way to have that not be an issue is decluttering is to go and focus on what can I do to make a huge impact up there at the top of the game so that it never gets down here to the front line where if I make one mistake, the game is over. This episode is brought to you by Pura. The holidays are over. The kids have gone back to college. I'm settling into my routines. And while I miss them, it's a little bit nice that the only messes are the ones caused by me and my husband. 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If nothing else can happen, that's the thing that has to be done. But the way to win is the decluttering. It's to get rid of as much stuff as you possibly can. And the way to really do well is ricochet. Decluttering is letting the momentum build, letting one decision that you make make 10 more decisions. Be easy. Okay, so in my no mess decluttering process, if this is your first time here, I don't usually talk about games that I play on my phone and so I don't usually talk about things like this that I am not qualified to really talk about this. I'm qualified to talk about decluttering. But anyway. But I teach decluttering. I teach the no mess decluttering process. The first three steps. We talked about this in last week's podcast about are you step skipping? Because those first three steps are so incredibly powerful because they let me get rid of a lot of stuff as quickly as I possibly can. That's ricochet, okay? And it builds the first this step one is trash. The easiest of the easy stuff. What I already know is trash, but for whatever reason it's here, I'm not going to analyze and try to think through like, oh, I should throw this away. That's not what I'm talking about. Okay, the easiest trash, get it out of there. It builds, it ricochets. Once I take a moment to look at a space and say, is there any trash here? And I have that moment where I realize, oh yes, this box that a package came in is actually trash or recycling. If you had it, have it. And the Minute that I make that decision now, there may be 10 other boxes that are. And it's not even a decision. It's just an identifying something as trash. Right? Like, I'm just saying, is there trash? Oh, yeah, this box is trash. The minute I realize that that box is trash, there's 10 more boxes that are like, oh, yeah, okay, now I know exactly what to do. And that's gone. That's the ricochet. Okay? And I think so many times when you're looking at a space and that first piece of trash that you pick up feels so hard because it. On that piece of trash, it feels like it. It's weighing on that this whole, like, am I going to be successful at decluttering? Is this method of this lady I found on the Internet, is it actually going to work? Is this really going to make an impact? But the first time that I make a small impact with that and I. I have that experience and I do the thing, then all of a sudden it ricochets, and there's a lot more that can happen. And the same thing with easy stuff. It is so often the case, like we talked about in last week's podcast. Podcast, like we talk about? Yeah. Oh, boy. Like we talked about in last week's podcast, it is so often the case that our brains just naturally go to, no, I've got to do the hard stuff first. I've got to really focus in on that. Well, like, in this game that I'm playing, life is coming at you. Life is happening. And I maybe don't have time to sit and stare and ponder and consider and ask myself a million questions that I saw somewhere on A list of 10 questions of things to ask yourself if you should get rid of something. Like, I don't have that time. I need to make progress. Easy stuff is stuff that needs to be done anyway. And for some reason, because we already know what needs to be done and how to do it, we skip over it. And thinking that I need to use my time and energy on the hard, hard, hard stuff. But that easy stuff being gone, that's ricochet. That is fast, immediate progress. So one of the examples that I've given, you know, I love. You know, my. My podcast is on YouTube now. I don't know if y' all knew that, but it's a separate channel, and there's no video or anything. It's just audio. But, you know, sometimes people will. A lot more people are now saying, hey, I'm going back to num. You know, episode number one and listening to it, because we put them all up there. And so one of the stories that I've told, like, from my very first speaking engagement, and then I use that in those very first podcasts, like, podcasts 1, 2, 3. Whatever. The easy stuff. The example that I give is, you know, you're looking at your laundry room. Your laundry room is completely overwhelming. And it's like, what is literally the easiest thing I can do that I know needs to be done? Well, there's dirty clothes all over the floor, and there's an empty laundry basket. The easiest thing to do is to put dirty clothes into the laundry basket. That's like a huge impact from that one thing. So I pick up one piece of clothing, although a handful, armload, whatever of clothing, put it in the laundry basket, and that builds the momentum of, oh, I see a whole chunk of floor empty now. Okay, now I am motivated to scoop up all the rest of that, put it in the laundry basket, get a load started. But that's like a ricochet. Like, that has a huge effect from that one decision, which is not a decision. Right. I always make it a big deal that those first three steps are not decisions from that one easy thing that I already know needs to be done identified. That one thing makes a huge impact. Okay? And that is the key. Like this, this. This feeling that I'm just barely making any progress. I'm just. I just feel like I'm going so slow. First of all, I want to say, if you're making any progress, if you're going super slow, be proud of yourself because you are making progress. And that is a big deal. But I know that when people tell me that it's because they want, they wish it was going faster. So start thinking about this ricochet effect. Like, how am I going to truly win? It's going to be by dealing with those squares in the game that are at 1500, so that by the time they get down to the point where they could actually, you know, end the game for me, then I have already dealt with them, and I have let that ball ricochet, and they are down to three. And then I can get those out, or they're not even able to get down there because I've already dealt with them. Right? Like, the way to win is big decluttering. And the decluttering is the stuff that maybe doesn't have to be dealt with today. And that's the reason why it's turned into an overwhelming mess. Because I'm going to set these things in this pile over here. I'M going to set these things on this counter over here and I will deal with that later because I can still cook and I can still do the dishes and I can still, you know, get dressed in the morning or whatever, but all these things are there and I could technically put them off and still survive right now, but they're going to come at some point and oh my goodness, we have guests coming over or the washing machine breaks and I need to have someone come into the house and I'm embarrassed to do that. And so I, or I physically can't, or I worry what they're going to say or report me or whatever. Like, I'm concerned about that. And so then, you know, life happens. And all of a sudden the things that I've been putting off and thinking, oh, I'll deal with that later, because technically it's not the thing that's about to get me and end my game right now. There comes a point where that stuff becomes part of the front line, and that's where the game ends. I'm not a gamer and some of y' all are, and you're really good at this and you could probably explain it so much better, but that's the decluttering. The decluttering is how you actually win. Before I knew this, before I, before my kids had explained, mom, you have to get up in there to the top and get it to bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce, bounce to ricochet. Once it does that, then you're dealing with all the big and daunting stuff and it never gets down to where it's actually going to end your game. Before I knew that and I, I would think, how do you do this? How do you do this? I mean, because I, I get my first, you know, the first couple lines that are like one or two, you know, things. Okay, I can get those. I can bounce the. Okay, yeah. And then they just start coming faster. And they start coming faster and they start coming faster and it's bigger things and I don't know what to do. And it's because I haven't dealt with the stuff before it got to that point. That's decluttering. This episode is sponsored by Gab. The youth mental health crisis is often in the news and we know that social media is a big part of that. Teens spend an average of 9 hours a day on screens outside of school. That's like a full time job. Here's some good news. A company called Gab, that's G, A B B, has solved the problem by doing something no one else is doing. Their approach is Tech Insight Steps. Tech in Steps works by providing kids safe phones and watches that are tailored to every age and offer just the right device at the right time. You'll have peace of mind with GPS tracking for young kids with the ability to increase features as they get older, parents can enable apps on the phone so you can update them on their device as your child grows. Bottom line, you can give your kid a device that was made for a kid. Helps you help your kids be connected safely. I don't claim to be an expert, but I know that when my kids hit the age when they had to have a phone to communicate with, to pick them up, or for their activities and responsibilities, I wished for a phone exactly like Gab. A phone that only had the basics until they were ready for a little more. Use my code to get the best deal on something that will make parenting easier and give you peace of mind. Visit gab.comslob and use code slob for a special offer. That's gab g a b b that's gab.comslob and Use Code Slob this episode of A Slob Comes Clean is brought to you by Wild Grain Fresh baked bread on a cold day is the best. So during our recent ice storm, vegetable soup with freshly baked ciabatta bread made it totally worth being stuck at home. And I didn't have to make it from scratch. It was a loaf from Wild Grain that I stuck straight into the oven from the freezer. We are loving Wild Grain. Wild Grain is a bake from frozen subscription box for sourdough breads, artisanal pastries and fresh pastas. They use simple ingredients I can pronounce slow fermentation process for better gut health, no preservatives, no shortcuts and all Items bake in 25 minutes or less. When I opened my box of frozen wild grain breads, I was so happy to see the sourdough loaf, of course, but there were croissants too. Since it's just my husband and me at home these days, we can pop a couple of those in the oven for weekend brunch. Customize your box with Wild grain or order their variety box. They also have a gluten free, a vegan and a new protein box option. There's nothing like having an artisan bakery in your freezer to chase away the winter chill. Now is the best time to stay in and enjoy comforting homemade meals with Wild grain. I highly recommend giving Wild Grain a try right now. Wild Grain is offering our listeners $30 off your first box, plus free Croissants for Life when you go to wildgrain.comclean to start your subscription today. That's $30 off your first box and free Croissants for Life when YOU visit wildgrain.comclean or you can use promo code Clean at checkout. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. So in February, there's a lot of talk about flowers, candy, stuffed animals and relationships. It can feel like everyone else has it all together, but the truth is, most of us are figuring things out. Wherever you are in your journey, therapy can help. Therapy can help you determine what you want, what feels heavy, and how you can take some pressure off of yourself. It can help you identify what's weighing you down. BetterHelp is one of the world's largest online therapy platforms, having served over 5 million people worldwide. They have an average rating of 4.9 out of 5 for a live session based on over 1.7 million client reviews. They will match you with an experienced therapist. All you have to do is answer a short questionnaire to help identify your needs and preferences. If you aren't happy with your match, you can switch at any time. I have done this with my own BetterHelp therapist, not because there was anything wrong with the relationship. Our times when we were available weren't matching up. So I started working with a different therapist who matched my schedule. Sign up and get 10% off@betterhelp.com clean. That's better. H E L P.com clean dishes are the first thing. If you don't know what to do, do the dishes. You have to do the dishes every day. Whatever that means for you. If that means using paper plates and throwing them in the trash, okay, if that means like I do when I, you know, go away to an Airbnb to write. If that means you drink out of one coffee cup and eat your soup out of that same cup and only use one cup and one spoon, great. Like whatever it is that you do. But if you minimize dishes, that task of doing the dishes gets easier. And I know that that is so hard to imagine when you are so behind on dishes. Okay, when you can't remember the last time all the dishes were done, but doing the dishes is the first thing it has to be done. But for me, what happened was as I started consistently doing the dishes, I learned to trust myself that I would actually have clean dishes and I figured out which dishes were my favorite and that I was consistently using the same dishes over and over and over because they were clean. And so I was actually picking the same favorite dishes every single time I got dishes out. And that let me get rid of things. It let me declutter my dishes because I realized, oh, I don't need dishes upon dishes upon dishes upon dishes. And the vicious cycle of clutter is that the more dishes I had, the longer I could go without doing dishes. The longer I went without doing dishes, the more overwhelming it was to me to do dishes because they were covering the entire sink and the counters and everything. The more. The longer I went, and it was overwhelming. Then I would run out of dishes because I would put off doing the dishes because it was so overwhelming, because there was so many. And then I would feel like I didn't have enough dishes, and I would buy more dishes at garage sales, and then I would have more, and it would extend that and it would make it worse. Okay? But once I decluttered dishes significantly, strangely, weirdly, you're gonna have to experience it for yourself, because I know you don't believe me if you're not there. But it made doing the dishes so much easier. The fewer dishes that we had, then I had to do dishes sooner because we ran out. But also when we ran out, the amount of dishes that were dirty were not overwhelming because we didn't have that many dishes. And I know, I know, I know. If this is brand new to you, you're like, mm, that makes no sense. But I'm telling you what I hear from people all the time who tell me, I cannot believe the impact of doing the dishes. I didn't believe you. I tried it and it works. Try the non committal experimentation. Just give it a shot. Even if it's to prove that it doesn't work. I know, I know that it does work. Okay? So minimize the dishes, which is decluttering, okay? Which is how you win the big daunting. You know, things that are coming at you that are huge. That's how you do that. And that makes the front line easier. You're not going to have as many things that can get out of control because there's just fewer things. Minimize clothing and the front line gets easier. I know this. It's the same thing. It's the exact same scenario that I talked about with the dishes just now. I was always behind on laundry, therefore, we were always running out of socks and undies and basics, and therefore, I always felt like we needed more clothing. I didn't buy underwear at garage sales. I'm just saying. But I Was always buying more clothing, or I was basically doing emergency loads of underwear and socks. And then everything else I would get at garage sales, which strangely, I would come straight home from the garage sale and wash the clothes. But I did. I mean, like, I. I was obsessive about the minute I got home, those clothes went in the washing machine. Some reason, whatever. Anyway, a lot of things don't make sense, but they probably do once you think about it. Anyway, so I was always behind on laundry, only ever doing emergency loads to. To do that survival. Right? That front line of things that are going to get you if you wake up one morning and there are no clean underwear in the house of yours because you should wear your own. But anyway, and then always thinking I needed more clothes, buying more clothes, washing those immediately if they came home from a garage sale and wearing those clothes, and then those going into the dirty clothes piles, which made the dirty clothes piles bigger, which made the dirty clothes more overwhelming, which meant that I've put off laundry longer, which meant that we ran out of clothes sooner, which meant that I thought I needed more clothes. That is the vicious cycle. Once I got my laundry under control. And then that naturally led into decluttering. Doing the decluttering, which I was able to do because I trusted that we had. We're going to have clean clothes all the time. And I knew which ones were our favorites because I knew which ones we were wearing all the time because we were able to wear them all the time because we. They were clean all the time. Or every week, once a week. Then that freed me to get rid of more and more clothes. And getting rid of more and more clothes meant that laundry was so much easier and less overwhelming, which meant that laundry was not the thing that got to the bottom and ended up ending my game. Okay, the front line gets easier when you minimize clothing. But then even think about the. The ricochet of it. Okay, and we kind of talked about this a little bit in the beginning, but one hard decision, even, you know, ricochet as hard as you can with the trash, the easy stuff, and the obvious donations. Great. But even when you get to the fourth step, the two decluttering questions, and yes, the question is, if I needed this item, where would I look for it first? And you take it to that place and then you have to determine, is there any room for it here? And if there's not, I have to determine, is it worth it? Is it worth the space enough for me to get rid of something else? And sometimes that's. That's difficult. Right. Like, okay, yes, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna. You go through that process because it's gonna work. It's not emotional, but it allows me to feel the emotions around the thing. But I'm not using those emotions to just arbitrarily say yes or no. It stays in my house. If it stays in my house, it's because I would go looking for it and then I take it to that spot and it actually earns its place in this space by being more important or better or just more sentimentally, you know, attached for me than another item that is going to have to leave. Okay. Like that's how you move the whole house forward slowly. But you can ricochet that you can absolutely speed up decluttering and make huge amounts of progress when you realize that once you go through that one time, it may have felt difficult. Yes, you were using instinct, yes, you were using non emotional steps, but it still feels difficult when you have that moment to, you know, I'm going to go put this coffee cup in the coffee cup shelf and I'm going to, you know, say, well, there's no room here, so I have to get rid of a coffee cup. And then I say, well, this one right here, this one is chipped right in the place where my mouth goes. And so it feels kind of ugh. And also it's probably not safe. And so I, yeah, that's the one, that's the one that deserves space less. And something happens often where once you go through that, now you see a chipped coffee cup and you go, oh, yeah, that one's chipped too. It can go, oh, that one's chipped too. That one can go. Or you go through all of that and you say, okay, this one that's just a little too big. Like something about it, it's, it's, you know, for me, I have one cup a day and there's like a very specific size cup that I can have. Any cup bigger than that just makes me mad because I can't fill it the whole way because then I'll get jittery because I've had too much coffee and my husband makes very strong coffee. So that same process of, okay, well, because the space I have is the space that I have and the size of this shelf is the size of the shelf and things have to deserve the space over other things. And something's going to have to go to make space for this item that I really, really love so much. Okay, then this one, you know, this one's A little too big. This one's a little too. And all of a sudden I'm like, oh, well, this one's too big, and that one's too big, and that one's too big. And so it was more than just one decision. That one decision that I used the process for that helped me come to that decision suddenly makes a bunch of things easy. Remember we talked just a minute ago about how much progress you can make just on easy stuff? One decision turns into a category decision collectibles. You can have angst and angling over. Which of these teacher gifts am I going to keep? Which ones? Oh, my goodness. You know, I've only got this much space for the gifts that I got when I was a teacher. I only have this. Or maybe you're currently a teacher. This is the amount of space that I have that I can devote to displaying gifts that I received as a teacher because it was an important part of your life, and it's something that you want to honor and you want to remember. But you also can't keep every teacher gift, especially if you taught the little ones. And you got tons of teacher gifts, right? Like, you can't have your whole entire house be filled with teacher gifts and not have room for your pots and pans and your underwear. Right? So you determine where would I look first for teacher gifts? Okay. This is the size of that space that's going to determine how many teacher gifts I am going to keep. So you're. You're unpacking that box that you brought home from the classroom of gifts, or five boxes, and you're picking your favorite ones to go up there, and you come across one, and you realize, you know, this one's not his favorite. I mean, I'm sure it was great, but I don't remember. I don't remember which kid gave me this. Or it's not personalized or whatever. I mean, and they don't have to be personalized, but you know what I'm saying, right? Like, for whatever reason it is that you decide this one is less favorite, that is going to turn into a ricochet effect, because all of a sudden it's like, okay, I made a decision because I don't remember the child who gave me this one. I remember the child. Of course I remember the child. I'm just saying I don't remember to match up which child gave me this. I don't remember specifically which child gave me this one then. Now every time I go see any of those things, if I don't specifically remember the child giving it to me, then it's not going to go. It becomes a ricochet to decision that makes things easier and easier and easier. Hi, this is Hannah Burner from Giggly Squad. This episode is brought to you by Peloton. I've been trying to stay consistent with moving my body in ways that actually fit into my real life, and Peloton makes that so much easier. The new cross training series balances your workouts with 15 plus workout types for endless movements on and off your equipment. I stay motivated with weekly personalized plans that guide you from beginner to experienced. Push past your goals with routines tailored for you. It feels really approachable, even if you're just getting back into a routine, which a lot of us are this January. It's nice not having to think about what to do. It's already mapped out for you. Get the new Peloton Cross training series terms apply. Could AI help you do more of what you love? Workday is the next gen ERP powered by AI that actually knows your business. We help you handle the have to dos so you can focus on the can't wait to do's. It's a new work day. Maybe it's something that's broken. And how many of us, I mean, we are the people who see the value in broken things. And so you, you, him, and you, Han, you're like, oh, but the spaces that I have is the space that I have. And of. You know what? I just. I'm a broken thing doesn't deserve space. Well, now all the other broken things are like, oh, broken, right. Like it's a ricochet thing. It might be something like putting your Christmas decorations up and realizing, you know, I really went through a phase where I loved red and gold, but I've actually kind of changed from that. And I'm not doing gold anymore. I've kind of done more. I don't know. But y' all know I'm not a decorator, but I've decided to go more with silver or whatever. Then all of a sudden, once you go through that, then every gold thing is easy. And an obvious donation it might be. I know, for me. Do y' all remember, I think it was in the late 90s, maybe the early 2000s, when Chenille was the thing. Do you remember that? It was those blankets and sweaters, and they are incredibly soft. And we all were just like, oh, my word, this. This is the best thing ever. But the reality was, excuse me. It's not you, it's me. I promise. But the Reality was that I wore a chenille sweater and whatever it was, I was somehow allergic to it. Like it would fluff off this bits of fabric dust that I would breathe in. So then I don't care how beautiful it is, it doesn't matter who gave it to me. I can't do chenille. And so if something is chenille and I could be calling it the wrong thing, it has to go. Everybody talks about how difficult photos are. Photos are difficult. And to a lot of people, impossible, right? Impossible. It feels like, oh, I just couldn't possibly do that. Well, what's my advice? My advice is to first of all look through it non committally. Just look, look through and see if there are any trash photos. And you're like, there can't be trash photos. Yes, there are. There's going to be a bunch of things. Especially if these are from the days where we didn't know what the pictures were before we printed them, then there's going to be a lot of stuff to get rid of, okay? Like shoes and a tree that you have no idea. But once you go through that in the first time you look through can be like, oh my goodness, this is going to be hard. It's going to be hard. But when you get to the point where you say, this is the space I have for photos, things have to earn their, their spot in this space, have to earn the physical space to be in here. Then it naturally sorts out well, obviously the ones of my grandparents and the ones of my mother and the ones of my kids and the ones of my very best friend. But then you run across one and you're like, who is? You know, and then you turn it over and it was your, it was some, you know, a class photo that we used to exchange in the olden days, but it was one that was exchanged by your brother and you don't know who this person is. And all of a sudden you go, oh, okay, I can get rid of this because I don't know who this person is. And now every time you run across one and you don't know who the person is, all of a sudden it's an easy decision. That's a ricochet maybe you go through. And I know, I hear this from a lot of us because we are the idea collectors, right? And we've been around a while. So maybe you run across a bunch of magazine articles that you've cut out. And it may be really hard in the beginning when you are saying, this is where I have actual space to devote to magazine articles. So I'm going to put my favorite ones in there first. And as you go through that, you determine that this category of recipe that maybe is something that you have realized upset your stomach or you're allergic to or whatever. And so, oh yeah, those are. That, that needs to go now. Every time you come across a recipe or you come across an idea with whatever criteria made you go, oh, yeah, this, this doesn't deserve space. Now that's easy. Now that's obvious. And it's, you know, decision free. So. So the, the decluttering decisions, look for ways to make them ricochet. The, the more you take it there now, the easier it gets to make decisions, the easier and harder it gets to actually take it there now. You know the effort, you know the distance, you know how far you're going to have to walk, you know what the space is going to look like, the value. One of the biggest values of taking something there now, which is the key to the no mess decluttering process, don't put it in a pile. Instead, when you determine where you would look for it first, you immediately take it to that space. When you get to that space, a big part of that is, what does the space look like? Is there any room for it here? What am I going to get rid of in order to make the room? If there's not room for it here, you know what you're dealing with. So now when you run across another thing that needs to go to the same place, you already know that you've got four of those. You already know that that space is full. And you know what? Now it's easier because I can stick it straight in the donate box because I already know that I'm. It's not worth replacing something that's there because I know what's in there. So that builds on itself. The other thing too, is that the game can always start over. I mean, y', all, when I got to like 900 or so, I was so proud of myself and I was like, you know what? I kind of think, I kind of think I'm gonna go forever on this. Like, I guess there's just no way for me to lose now. And then something got away from me on the front line. Dishes, laundry. It was just one of the little play things on the game. But it's okay because the game can always start over. Like, the game starts over and I use the things that I know, I use the things that I learned last time to be able to really zero in on the things that are going to matter. Okay, I hope that was helpful at all. If y' all stayed with me past the point where I was explaining a phone game app. Again, I'm not saying to get the app. I'm just saying to look for opportunities to ricochet your decluttering, to let one decision have a huge bigger impact. And I think the main thing is when you know that that's going to be possible, it makes going through the process slowly even more worth it. Because you know that what I am dealing with right now, even though it feels like, ugh, it's going to have a positive, bigger, faster, easier effect down the road, because it will help me, it will change how I look at other things that come across my path. All right, I think that's it. Make sure you go get your copy of Winnie's Pile of Pillows. That is my children's book for ages 4 to 8. The illustrations are adorable. I did not draw them. Some people have asked that. No. I have an illustrator. Her name is Sarah Jennings. She is in the uk and she did a fantastic job. I was looking for somebody who could draw animals with expressive faces. And I was so excited when my publisher was like, oh, she's available. And I'm like, what? This is great. So, anyway, I will talk to you all next week. Okay, bye.