Dana K. White

speaker

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

Before I would pick up every single crayon and be like, well, I mean, I know it's broken. But broken crayons still color, right? Oh, yes, that's right. So I would make all these and it took forever for me to analyze every single one. And instead, it's just I'm going to put my favorite ones in first and I'm going to let the container make the hard decision for me. Wow. Yeah.

And then when I go to put the red bucket on the shelf, I have to acknowledge that the shelf is also a container. The shelf is a limit and it determines how many red buckets I can have. And the size of the room determines how many shelves I can have. And the size of my house is the size of my house. So I'm like, the size of my house is the size of my house. And if I'm gonna put my favorite things

in first, and I'm going to realize my house is a container. My house is a limit. What's my favorite thing in my house? It's the people who live in it, right? So like we deserve space first. And so that just shifted everything. It actually doesn't matter how valuable something is, how much sentimental feelings I have toward it. It doesn't have space.

I can keep anything, but I can't keep everything and my house ever have a chance of being under control. Okay. Wow. Yeah. So that's the container concept, which changes how you look at your house and how you look at your stuff and lets me let go of things because I'm like, it's not me. It's the container. I don't have the space for it. And that is very freeing. Wow.

I recommend that you go to the place that visitors to your home will see when they either come inside or are standing at the door and you're trying to keep them from coming inside, right? Because it's a mess, whatever. That is the place to start. And we're going to go through the decluttering process there. I'll explain that.

But the reason why you want to start in a visible space is that you will see the progress that you're making. You will see your house getting better. The people who live with you will start to see your house getting better. You'll experience that it is easier to live in a space with less stuff. Okay. Okay. Because here's the thing.

So many times when we get that desire to declutter, we go to the pantry, we go to the linen closet, we go to the top shelf of the master bedroom closet. Yes. We do those spaces because we think, okay, if I will work really hard on this, we really don't use this space that much. And so maybe it'll actually stay that way, right? Yes. When in reality, you can work really hard on that.

You talked about like, you know, all the color coding and blah, blah, blah in this random closet. Yes. and then at the end of the day your husband you know is like so what'd you do today and you're like oh i have been organizing all day and i don't know about you i'm not going to project this on you but in my experience i've had that exact scenario happen and my husband would be like really Okay.

Well, what is more defeating than that? Right. Like is to feel like I have been organizing all day and I'm still embarrassed to open my front door.

But if you work on visible spaces first, then you see the progress that you're making and you inspire yourself to keep going. Cause you're like, Oh wow, that looks good. I may not have noticed when it was messy, but But I notice now when it looks great and then that inspires me to keep going. Okay. Do you want me to talk about the actual process?

Okay. I know. See, I have to have like real steps because I have to remind myself still. I still look at a space and go, and I'm like, nope, I have steps. Okay. All right. So the first step is trash. Grab a black trash bag or whatever you have available. Ideally, it's black just because then you can't see what you just put inside of it. Your family can't see what you're putting inside.

Yes, that's exactly why. Now, with that, if you're like, I don't have black trash bags, start with whatever. Start with a... Paper sack. It doesn't matter. But if you have a black trash bag, use that for exactly the reason that you're talking about. But I'm talking about trash, not necessarily donations at this point. The reason I start with trash is it is literally the easiest of the easy stuff.

I am not talking about deciding whether this item is trash. I'm talking about just saying that's trash. Put it in the bag. That's trash. Put it in the bag. It starts the movement. Okay. Like there are literally no decisions to be made, no emotions to be felt. It is just the action. And that immediately makes the space less overwhelming because there's less stuff in it than there was before. Okay.

But it also... helps my brain start to adjust to what's actually there. Because when I look at it as a big pile, the pile is overwhelming. There's important stuff in there, I'm sure. And so it feels like the whole pile is full of important decisions, difficult decisions to make.

But as I'm looking for trash, I'm seeing what's actually there, which then helps me be ready to move into the next steps of the process.

If you have to think about it, skip it and we'll get to it in the next step.

You're saying is I just want it to be pretty. Change your mindset to I'm going to make this space better. That means I can literally throw away two pieces of trash, get distracted, step away, step away. Cause I'm just don't want to do this right now. And I've still made it better, which means I have been successful. Like if I do anything, I have achieved better. Okay. So, all right. Sorry.

That was a little preachy break there.

But you are successful with every piece of trash. It is better because my goal is to have less in this space. If you have less in this space than you did when you started, you have successfully decluttered. You're not done, but you have successfully decluttered, right? Yeah. Okay. So let's move to step two. Step two is the easy stuff.

So trash was the easiest of the easy stuff because it's just going straight into the trash bag. Yep. But the second step is the easy stuff. Easy stuff I define as anything that already has an established home. It's just not there for whatever reason. Like I'm not going to agonize over why is this in the bedroom? It's just, oh, this goes in the kitchen or whatever.

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