Dana K. White

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88 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Nov 2024 last heard Nov 2024

Dana K. White’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Mel Robbins Podcast · How To Declutter Your Home: 5 Tips That Actually Work · 23 Nov 2024 podcast

I mean, it's you're where you are. You have the makeup products all over the counter and you think that that's what I want. Those images on Instagram and it looks like a magazine. Yes. Are we ready for me to tell you what the difference is?

Here's the reality. Organizing and decluttering are separate things. They are not the same thing, but I always thought they were the same thing. I would look around at my mess and I would think I have got to get organized. Yes. Because that logically makes sense, right? Yes. But the problem was I would buy a bunch of products, bring them into my house.

The organizing energy was gone by the time I got home and I just dropped them by the back door and they turned into more clutter. So it never made a real impact on my house. I was at such a rock bottom point I honestly thought I was giving up by saying, I don't even have it in me to get organized. I am just going to declutter. Wow. In my mind, I thought, that's how bad I am.

I've just got to declutter. I can't even think about organizing yet. Decluttering changed everything in my home. So the beauty of realizing that organizing and decluttering are not the same thing and that you can just declutter and that just decluttering will change everything, it's just starting to get stuff out of your house.

Yes. You need to declutter. Decluttering is everything. When I decluttered, then I knew what I had. I knew where it was. I could get to it easily. I could access it easily because I'd gotten rid of all that extra stuff so that when I opened the cabinet, I just saw what I needed and I could get to it without moving 15 things.

decluttering made my house look better function better feel better it was the thing i had been needing that i didn't know i needed i thought i needed to get organized so what is the difference between decluttering and organizing In my mind, organizing was bins and boxes and systems and all these things that I would look at those images on Instagram of the color coded things.

And you look at that and you think, that's it. I need the colors. And so you bring the colors in and then you're trying to fit all the stuff in there.

Everyone has a clutter threshold. It's the amount of stuff that you personally can keep under control. It's the reason why you and your friends can go shopping together, buy the exact same things. She puts it in her house. It looks like a magazine. You put it in your house. It looks like a thrift store, right? Like that, that difference between like, she can handle this stuff.

I brought all this stuff into my house because I wanted it. I saw potential in it. I'm a lovely person who sees value in things that no one else sees value in, right? Like that's a great quality, except that I was bringing it into my house and I couldn't handle it. it was not possible for me to keep my house under control with the amount of stuff that I had in my house. So it's not aesthetics.

Some people hear clutter threshold and they're like, oh yeah, this drives me. No, I'm talking about what can you handle? What's easy for you to keep under control? So if a space is continually getting out of control, get rid of more stuff. Oh, it's still getting out of control? Get rid of more stuff.

Get rid of, until you realize at some point, this is what happened to me as I was like, wait a minute, I can do this. Like I can keep this under control. And that's where I realized there's this point, this level of stuff that I can handle.

I hate to tell you this, but there is literally no way to know other than to declutter. You can just know if my house feels overwhelming, I'm over my clutter threshold. If my house is consistently getting out of control and I feel bewildered by that, then I'm over my clutter threshold. So the only way to find your clutter threshold is to declutter.

Let me just say... The less stuff you have, the less stuff that can pile.

I used to think that containers were for putting things in, right? Organized people love containers. They buy containers. Their house looks great. I must need more containers. So I would bring containers into my house. So here's my little scenario that I give. Let's say my friend whose kids were the same age as mine, her little craft area looked amazing.

Mine was this huge pile disaster spilling out of the cabinet, okay? And I would look and say, oh, she has her crayons and a red bucket. Yes. That's the difference between her and me, right? Like she has a red bucket. I don't have a red bucket. That's why my space is a disaster.

So I would go and buy a red bucket and I would dump crayons in there and I would realize, oh, I still got 700 crayons left over. why does this not work for me the way it works for her? So I would go out and buy two more red buckets. And then I would put the rest of my crayons in those red buckets. I go to put the red buckets on the shelf and my shelf wouldn't fit three red buckets.

And I would think, are you kidding me? Why is this so hard for me? Like, why does this not work for me? And then eventually I would be like, well, obviously I need more shelves. So I'd buy more shelves. And then at some point I would think, well, I don't have any room for more shelves. Obviously I need a new house and we can't afford a new house right now. So I am doomed to be disorganized.

That is just how my brain worked. I just thought that if I, you know, ran out of space in a container, I bought another container. And in reality, her house was smaller than mine. But in my mind, my issue was that my house was too small, right? Like, which doesn't make sense, but it made total sense to my brain before. So when I was working, I was talking to myself and I was saying container.

And I went, container, contain container. Like the word contain is in there. Serve as a limit, set a boundary. You know, like firefighters contain a fire, they create a boundary. And as long as the fire stays inside the boundary, they can keep it under control. Their whole goal is to keep it within this boundary. And I realized, oh, a container is not for putting things in.

A container is meant to serve as a limit, to serve as a boundary. And that changed everything for me because I was able to say, okay, here's the red Beckett. It's not going to fit everything, but it's the boundary. So I'm going to put my favorite crayons in first. And when it's full, something happens in my brain and I realize, oh, maybe I don't need a thousand crayons. Oh, OK.

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