5 Easy Steps to Make Your Home and Your Mind Clutter-Free

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Terms and conditions apply. Hey, it's your friend Mel.
And today I'm coming clean about something on the Mel Robbins podcast.

Let's go.

Okay, it's Mel.

And today's episode of the Mel Robbins podcast is dedicated to those of us who feel overwhelmed

by the process of trying to stay organized, organized at work, organized in your house, organized with all of the stuff that you need to do for everybody else. And according to our expert today, it is normal to feel paralyzed or like a failure or overwhelmed when you look at the piles of things that you can't seem to get to at work or at home.
Is your desk a nightmare? When somebody says, hey, can I ride with you? You're like, no, because it would take me an hour to clean out the front seat of my car. And God knows I don't want you to see what's in the backseat.
I beat myself up all the time because the wheels are off when it comes to my home. And just so you know that I'm not making this up, I decided to walk into my husband's office this morning and record his thoughts on what it's like to live with me for real.
Hey, Chris, I'm recording something. Could you describe for everybody what my bathroom sink looks like compared to yours? Are you kidding me? Yeah, like for real.
For as long as I've known you, your bathroom has just been an absolute shit show. I mean, like a bomb went off it, uh, all the time.
I mean, I, I, I, Describe what it looks like when you walk in there. Um, mayhem.
I don't even know how you do makeup without, with all, you have your whole life. It seems like sitting on top of the bathroom vanity.
Okay. I don't even want to begin with your closet.
Well, I didn't ask you about the closet. I don't know how somebody who's so, so organized and so successful in so many other areas of your life that there can be such a black and white sort of dichotomy between your work life and your bathroom life.
Do you think anything could help me change? God help us. But I mean, I'm at least content with my own cleanly bathroom vanity.
Your own is your own battle. All right.
Well, thank you, Chris. See, guys, I'm not lying.
You know, I'm laughing, but the truth is I need help with this. And maybe you do too.
So if you're embarrassed that you just can't keep up, I hear you. I am desperate to have a house that is pulled together.
At this point, there's no way it's going to look like it's on Pinterest. I just want to not feel overwhelmed.
There has got to be a better way. And according to our expert today, Dana White, she is saying it is normal to feel the way that we do overwhelmed by our stuff at work, at home, and it is fixable.
She has a hit blog, a slob comes clean. She has a five-step process to truly going from feeling like a failure to getting your life under control.
Her book is How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, and this goes way beyond your house. Dana White, I'm so excited you're here.
Thanks for having me on. Dana, when you've got a person like me who's literally a disaster in certain places in her home, just overwhelmed by everything, where do we even start? 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? Yes.
What is the difference between that perfection that I want and where I am right now? 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 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, you know, so it never made a real impact on my house.
I was at such a rock bottom point that 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. So are you saying, Dana, that as an organization expert,

that in order to have a home or a workspace or any area of your life feel manageable,

which would be the opposite of how I feel right now

when I look at my bathroom sink or my closet,

that you just got to forget about organizing

because you're not ready to organize, that you need to first declutter. Is that what you're saying? 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 all that.
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. I'm laughing because I thought the solution to my bathroom sink problem was to go to Walmart or Target and buy a bunch of bins to put all the stuff that's on my counter in.
Why doesn't it work for me to go buy a bunch of containers for this stuff? 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 friend can go shopping together by 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, it's not aesthetics.
Some people hear clutter threshold like, oh yeah, this drives me. 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.
You are a genius. When I hear the word organization, I think it looks pretty.

I just have to get the bins that line up and the labeler that has the nice font and the

little tags in my laundry room.

And then I take all the shit that I have and I stack it all in there and then I make it

look nice.

I spend six hours in one space and I bought all the crap.

The baskets match and it looks like a photo shoot and everything's in its place. You're right.
I'm managing shit that I can't manage because the second that our son walks in the laundry room and pulls out the thing and puts it in a different place, then everything's out of whack again. And I feel unorganized again and it all spills out from there

and then I go buy a different basket

because it needs to be a bigger basket.

I am driving myself and my husband crazy.

How do you know what your clutter threshold is?

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

Thank you. 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. I think I'm starting to get what you're saying.
You're saying there is a critical difference between organizing your stuff versus decluttering. Organizing is just moving everything that you already have around to different places.
And the problem is that you are organizing because you feel overwhelmed by your stuff. So no amount of baskets or containers will take that overwhelm away because you have too much stuff.
Yeah. The root problem is you have too many things, too many things on your desk, too many things in your closet, too many things in your mudroom.
So you have to start with decluttering, which is a nice way to say it's time to get rid of a bunch of your stuff because it's all overwhelming you. Let me just say the less stuff you have, the less stuff that can pile.
Right. You are a genius.
The less stuff you have, the less stuff that you can pile and the less piles that you have, the less overwhelmed you're going to feel. Here's what I also am starting to find really fascinating about your approach is that it makes sense when you look at the research about how our brains work.
See, when there's too much input, too much going on in your family or too many things on your desk or in your mudroom, your brain gets overloaded. It can't process all that stuff.
And so what I'm realizing is the reason why we have this instinct to just organize it all and put it in baskets and make it look good and put colors and labels on it is because we're trying to make it less overwhelming to our brain. When actually what we need to do is hit delete and remove a lot of the stuff that is overwhelming to us.
But I'm still hung up on the containers. Maybe I've been brainwashed.
Maybe I've watched too much HDTV, but I feel like this process is missing containers. So how do you handle the desire to either put things in piles or put things in containers? 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. And so I would bring containers into my house.'s my little my little scenario that I give.
Let's say my friend whose kids were the same age as mine,

you know, 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. Yeah, 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.
Yes. That's the difference between her and me.
Yeah. 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 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. Okay.
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, container, contain, 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 bucket.

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 realized, oh, maybe I don't need a thousand 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, okay.
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. 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 going to 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. 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.
That's obvious. It makes so much sense.
And more importantly, I feel like I can do it. Don't you feel like you can do it?

Okay, now what I would love for you to do is,

can you walk us through your five-step process that we go through when we declutter?

And I wanna get really granular.

So let's take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsors.

And when we come back, let's go step-by-step

through the actual process you created. We'll be right back.
If you're like most of us, you start shopping for a dress at T minus the thing you need the dress for, and if that's a fail, stand back, sis, it's not pretty. Gratefully, there's EverEve.
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Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins, and I'm here with Dana White, who wrote the life-changing book, How to Manage Your House Without Losing Your Mind, the Supplies to Home, Work, Everywhere that You Feel Overwhelmed.
And she's about to walk us through her five-step process that she created for decluttering. All right, Dana, where do you start? Yeah, I recommend what I call the visibility role.
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. 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. 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.
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 is more defeating than that? Right? Like it's to feel like I have been organizing all day and I'm still embarrassed to open my front door. Yes.
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 I noticed now when it looks great. And then that inspires me to keep going.
Okay. Do you want me to talk about the actual process? Yes.
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. Can I just confess something? Yes.
I'm almost embarrassed to tell

you this. So Oakley, he's our 18 year old son, cleaned his room Sunday.
Okay. And he put all kinds of clothes in a bag that no longer fit him so we could donate him.
I spotted a flannel shirt that I paid a lot of money for and I tore open the bag and I pulled it out of the bag just this morning. It happens, right? Yes.
You know what I'm going to do with that? I'm going to hang it in my closet because I can wear it, but I don't even want it. What is wrong with me, Dana? Nothing's wrong with you.
This is normal. So is that why you have a black bag? So you can't see the stuff that you're throwing out? 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.
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. 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.
Okay. So we start with trash and a black bag and anything that is trash.
Are we just talking papers and crap people have not thrown out and that kind of thing? If you have to think about it, skip it and we'll get to it in the next step. I love that you're breaking it down because this is like a real thing that we struggle with.
Like I see a pile and you're right. I can become paralyzed because I think there might be something expensive or important in there.
And so I don't know if I'm ready to sort through all that stuff. I just don't want to see the pile because I want it to be pretty.
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 because 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. No, I think it's, I think it's perfect because I don't feel successful in this area.
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? Yep.
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 step.
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. I'm going to take those things to their already established homes immediately.
I can take as many as my hands will hold. But I can't take any more than that.
Like I'm not going to put them in a box. I'm not going to set them in, set them aside and do it later.
I'm going to go everything that comes into my hands that I pick up that I identified as easy, having an established home, no decision to make, no emotions to be felt. I am just going to go ahead and I'm going to take it there now.
Okay. So again, I am making the space better.
I can step away at any time because I'm making progress and only progress, right? Got it. Then the third step is the donations.
Okay. When you are someone who hasn't felt successful at decluttering before, it feels like all decluttering decisions are going to be difficult.
So we want to narrow down the ones that you really have to make decisions about and go ahead and just stick stuff in the donate box. The key with the donate box, like the black trash bag, is that the box itself needs to be donatable.
So don't stencil the word donate on the outside of a cute wooden box. Like that's not what we're doing, right? Because that's organization.
Right. And two, it just sets myself up to have to go back through that box again.
Right. So you're basically just saying, no, have a box that's already going to get donated to.
Right. The word donate so that you remember that was a donate box.
But don't decorate it. Don't make it something you're going to want to reuse.
Got it. Now, when you do this, do you recommend that you just take that box and just put it in

the back of your car?

Or do we leave it somewhere?

I always have a donate box or two or three in a spot in our garage that is ready to be

taken wherever it needs to go.

The decision making, though, is where the real power is. You just keep dropping grenades in

my head. This is so good.
I don't want to stop, but let's take a quick pause, listen to the sponsors,

and we'll be right back with more amazing advice from Dana White.

If you're like most of us, you start shopping for a dress at T minus the thing you need the dress for. And if that's a fail, Stand Back says it's not pretty.
Gratefully, there's EverEve. If you know, you know.
And if you don't, you're welcome. EverEve is the women's fashion retailer that understands your lifestyle and has the best brands and the latest trends you need to look great, which is why your favorite new dress is here.
New customers save 10% right now at evereve.com slash podcast. Hey friends, Ted Danson here, and I want to let you know about my new podcast.
It's called Where Everybody Knows Your Name with me, Ted Dansonon, and Woody Harrelson, sometimes. Doing this podcast is a chance for me and my good bud Woody to reconnect after Cheers wrapped 30 years ago.
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Welcome back. I'm Mel Robbins and I am here with author Dana White, how to manage your home without losing your mind.
And let's jump right back into it, Dana. What comes after donate? Okay.
So at this point, we have removed trash, easy stuff, and obvious donations, right? So we are down to things that at first glance, you're like, either yes, they go here, or I have no idea on this item what to do. Okay.
So this is where my two decluttering questions come in. When I started this, I had seen lists, beautifully written lists of all kinds of questions to ask yourself about items and whether you want to donate it or keep it.
I had too much stuff in my house to ask myself 10 questions about everything, you know, besides those questions generally let my brain spin out, Right? Like, like, do I love it? Well, yeah, I love all this stuff. You know, like, why would I have it in my house if I didn't love it? Right.
You know, so I couldn't ask myself those kinds of questions. So I came up with two questions.
And if I can answer the first one, I don't even have to ask the second one. So the first question is, if I needed this item, where would I look for it first? Okay.
It's really important that you ask exactly that question. Where would I look for it first? It is an instinct question.
Okay. The word would is the key word.

That means if I needed my headphones, where would I look for them first? It is literally the first drawer or cabinet that I would open. Even if I had no confidence, they would be there.
It is because something it needs a home, right? Like the whole place for everything and everything in its place that organized people say and think is so obvious. I was always like, what are y'all talking about? Like, I don't have places for things like what? Like, it just didn't make any sense in my brain.
And so I had to come up with where would I look for it first? Because here's the thing, the beauty of putting something in the place where you would look for it first is that when you look for it, you find it in the first place where you look for it. Isn't that the goal that you've had all along wanting to be organized? What I'm realizing my goal is that I just want shit to look pretty.
I've never even thought about organization as a way to make my life easier. And it's a genius question because I've put things in cabinets and drawers because I didn't know where else to put it.
Yes. What I used to do was think about where my grandma kept hers.
Yeah. And think, okay, well, she, her house was always great.
So I should put mine in the place. Yeah.
But how many people say as a joke, or there's a Facebook meme or something that says, I got organized and now I can't find anything. Yes.
Right. It's hard in the beginning because you don't trust yourself.
Right. And this also is part of that accepting how I actually function as opposed to how organized people function.
And I wish I was like them. Fingernail clippers were the thing when I came up with this question.
As I was like, everybody else in the whole wide world surely would put their fingernail clippers in the bathroom drawer because that's where they're supposed to go, right? But in my family, whenever somebody is looking for fingernail clippers, they look in this junk drawer that's on the edge of the kitchen. That is just our reality.
And I said, you know what? I would rather have things be in the first place where we look than try to be like other people and never be able to find anything in my house that's amazing see I don't know where to put uh nail clippers so I just look in Chris's top drawer of the bathroom because that's that's right that's If that's where you look first, that's where they should be. But then there's a second part of the question, which is not actually a question, but is actually the key to my no mess progress and only progress decluttering process.
Okay. And that is when you answer that question, where would I look for this first? Take it there now.
No piles. Because before I would step away for an hour or three weeks or whatever.
And those neat little piles where I had totally made all these decisions, those neat little piles now morph into one big pile outside the space that I was initially decluttering. So my house looks worse than it did before.
People get all worked up over this. They are like, no, but that can't be the most efficient way.
And yet in the end, it is. So here's the deal.
I used to make all these piles. I would be like, okay, this is the stuff that goes to the kids room.
This goes to the garage. This goes to the bathroom.
And when I'm done, I will go deliver all these things through the house. And that makes so much more sense than taking it there right now.
But that's how things work in an ideal world where I don't get distracted in the midst of a project. I don't stop halfway through.
Nobody starts bleeding. Right? Like I just...
That's the ideal world. I don't live in an ideal world.
Okay? So I decided I'm going to go ahead and take it there right now. No piles.
When I do that, I can stop. I'm accepting the fact that I will get distracted or life will happen.
I can stop at some point and this space is only better. It is never worse.
I have never created a bigger mess. I'm taking one item at a time, making a final decision on it, and I'm acting on that final decision.
So it's either gone in the trash bag. It's gone to its already established home.
It has gone in the donate box, or I have established a home by asking myself, where would I look for this first? And then I take it there now. Okay.
So that's the key to all of this and people will resist it. And then I'll say, just try it.
And then they will try it. And then they will email me and say, I cannot believe the difference.
I cannot believe I have actually made real progress decluttering for the first time in my life. It's working like it's changing my house because of that.
Go ahead and take it there right now. But people don't like it, but it's still.
I think it's genius because I completely related to moving and sorting and organizing things into piles and then running out of energy or time or getting distracted and not actually taking those piles anywhere.

And then you're right.

And it makes it worse.

Yes.

You come back to the space and you have to make all those decisions again. Oh my God.
I feel like I do this every weekend. Yeah.
That every weekend it is me on that hamster wheel of making piles and running things around and pulling apart stuff. And holy smokes, this is revolutionary.
I get very paralyzed when I have an item and I've spent a lot of money for it or somebody's given it to me or I might need it some point 10 years from now. What's the difference between I'm throwing this out versus I'm donating? So all of those questions that you have in your mind, those are the natural questions that people think they need to ask when they're decluttering.
I don't ask those questions. I stick to the facts.
Okay. And so my process leads me through and helps me make those decisions, but without all of the emotions, because I brought all this stuff into my house because I saw the value in it.
Right. And so before, when I would declutter, I would make value decision after value decision, which is exhausting.
Right. It's so emotionally exhausting.
And I know it is that then I would put off decluttering because I was like, I don't have it in me to make those kinds of decisions today. Right.
Like, so instead I say, okay, if I needed this item, where would I look for it first? And then I take it there now. And then I look at that space.
And sometimes this is a common question people have is like, what do I do when that space is its own big decluttered mess? All I'm going to do is I'm going to not leave that space any worse. And I'm going to say, what am I willing to get rid of from this messy space where I would look for this item first? What am I willing to get rid of from here that will create the space that I need for this item? And so it helps me instead of saying, does this thing have value? I say, is there a space for it? Can I just give you an example? I'm starting to realize how nuts I am about this stuff.
You are not nuts. I'm realizing how much noise and just how much drama I add to the process of organizing.
And so I'll give you an example. I see this jacket and because I bought it for him when he was 15, Oakley literally wore it for about a minute before he grew out of it and it was expensive.
And so I see this jacket, I grab it. I'm like, okay, we live in Vermont, people visit.
Should I hold on to this in case somebody visits and they didn't pack a jacket? Maybe this would fit me and it would fit this. And then I attach all this meaning and I create these stories about why I need to keep the thing and the value of the thing.
And if I ask myself, if I needed this item, where would I look for it? I'm even stalled because I go, well, I don't really need it in the mudroom. Maybe I should create a place in the basement for extra clothes for guests who forgot clothes that you need when you visit Vermont.
What is going on? Well, okay. Is this normal? Yes.
What you just described is your brain spinning out. Yes.
That is exactly how my brain worked. Everything you said made sense to me.
I get it, right? And yet, when I thought that way, my house was a disaster. And I was frustrated with it.
And I had all those feelings of what is wrong with me? Yeah. Okay.
So, I mean, I hate to just be like, let's go back to the process, except that... No, let's go back to the process.
The process is what talks you through all of this.

Okay.

Okay.

So the second decluttering question that I only ask myself,

if my first response to where would I look for this first,

whether it's about the jacket, whether it's about a stapler, whatever.

If I look at the item and I'm like, where would I look for this first?

And my answer is...

You know, like, okay. Then I ask myself the question, if I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I already had one? Okay.
We're not going to bring the scenario into it. We're just going to ask the fact based question.
If I needed this jacket, would it occur to me that we already had one? And it's tough because you're holding it in your hand, right? Like it's there. It's in front of you.
I had to make progress in my home. I had to get stuff out of my house.

Right.

So I had to make these hard calls and say, I'm going to be honest.

If I needed this, would it occur to me that I already had one? Because I didn't have a place where I would look for it first, which means I would not

have even gone looking for it.

Instead, I would have done without.

We would have said, hey, here's six sweatshirts, kid who forgot your coat, right? Or, hey, let's run by the store and grab one, you know, or whatever. Those are both valid options.
That right there is me saying, this is my reality check. I'm going to stick in the donate box.
Wow. You know, this is fascinating because it is a whole new way to think about this.
The reality of the decluttering process, if I'm tracking, is not that you go, okay, this Sunday, I'm doing this in the mudroom. It's that you walk out of your bedroom, you're like, it's 7.15 in the morning.
There's now a giant mess in front of me at the base of the stairs. And you're saying you can do this process right now.
I see the jacket. It doesn't belong there.
I have a choice in that moment to say, if I needed this item, where would I look for this first? And if the answer is the mudroom, I walk to the mudroom and hang it up. If the answer is, it doesn't fit them anymore.
Do we even need to keep it? And I go to the second question. What was the second question? If I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I already had one? If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already had one? And the answer is yes, because I have the exact same size in a jacket for me.
So yes, I have one. So let's just say, let's indulge my psychoness, okay? Okay.
Because I think we all have that. If you're a creative mind, you're also thinking, huh, someday, 15 years from now, there might be a scenario where I wish I had this, right? So let's just say I go, okay, I, um, where am I going to look for this first? And I make a snap decision.
This goes in my guest closet, right? And I have a little rack in the basement. You, you didn't make a decision.
You asked yourself a question that revealed your instinct of where you would look for it first. Sorry.
No, no, no. Great, great, great.
If I needed this item, where would I look for it first? And my instinct would be, it would be in the basement, in a little area I've created for extra stuff in case somebody needs to borrow something. Okay.
I don't know why I need this, but I had it. So I would then go downstairs to the basement to this place that has not been created yet.
And I would put the jacket there. Yeah.
If that's the place where you would look for it first, then you put it there. But if there is no thing there, like there's no place for it, but there's a pile of other stuff.
Okay. I'm not going to leave that any worse.
So what am I willing to get rid of in order to make room for this jacket? Which often, which means something is leaving your house, right? So you are decluttering, but often it will help you realize, oh, wait, there's not actually a good place for this here. Or wait, I'm not willing to get rid of any of this stuff in order for this jacket to stay.
And it will help you realize, oh, I can just donate this item. Yeah.
That's what I'm getting through all of this. Like I'm realizing this process helps you deal with yourself.
Yes. But if you don't take it there now, you're living in this land of hypotheses.
I'm still thinking about the damn jacket right now. You're like, oh, oh, I'm going to put it down there.
Yeah. I'll make a space down there.
Yes. But you're not dealing with the reality of the actual space.
You're not dealing with the reality of if I take it down to this spot and then I realized this spot is full of spiders and all this stuff. And I don't want to leave a jacket down here.
You know what I mean? Like, but when I go there, it forces me into that reality. So much of what I do, probably a hundred percent, honestly, of what I do is just a process that helps me accept reality.
Reality about myself, reality about my stuff, reality about my space, all that. I love this.
Before we get into the final step, I just want to point something out to you listening. If you're starting to kind of roll your eyes at me about like this stupid jacket and the details that I'm going through and all this stuff I'm confessing, I want you to know I'm doing it on purpose because I want to make a very important point.
Everything that I'm telling you, I am thinking. This is going on in my brain, but it's happening in nanoseconds and in my subconscious, but it weighs on me emotionally.
That's what she's talking about when she talks about these like value decisions. And you do the same thing, whether it's the report that you keep shoving to the pile on the left because you don't want to deal with it and you're overwhelmed with everything else and all this stuff is sitting on your desk, or it's a spare change that is piling up in the cup holder of your car.
And now there's like dirty gum wrappers and stuff in there too. And you keep thinking, oh, I should clean it out.
But then this or the receipts, how about those receipts that are choking your wallet, but you're not dealing with it because you're afraid you might lose something if you pull it out. We all do this.
And I'm trying to make a point that not dealing with something doesn't mean it goes away. In fact, there is this subconscious cognitive load that you're carrying as you are subconsciously processing all the emotions related to just starting the process.

and this is important to talk about because we're not really talking about organization here and we're not really even talking about decluttering we're talking about how you can take proactive

steps to feel calmer, to feel more in control, to feel more at peace, and to help your brain not be so overwhelmed. It doesn't need to be processing all your concerns about the coat or the change or the report.
And so when Dana talks about clutter, don't stay on the surface because this goes way beyond stuff. I'm not crazy and neither are you.
But when your brain is overwhelmed, what I'm learning is you and I need to start the decluttering process in order to help it full stop. Yeah.
In fact, now that I'm becoming very clear

about your process and the connection to the cognitive load, I'm starting to see things in

the space right now here in our office that are pure clutter that have emotional weight to them

and they need to leave. And I'm going to explain one of them right now and it's going to sound

ridiculous. But as I explain this example, I want you to look around where you are.
And I want you to let your mind spot something that you know, needs to go. It's like stupid, you put it in something, you made it look nice, but you haven't touched it in a decade.
I'll tell you what mine is. Hey, Jesse, could you grab me that mason jar over there on our caddy? The one with the colored pencils in it? Great.
Thank you. So I'm holding a mason jar right here.
And in this mason jar are watercolor pencils that Chris's mother gave to one of our kids 10 years ago for Christmas. I've never used them once, but here they are sitting in a beautiful mason jar because I've freaking organized them.
I've put them in a container to make them look pretty. I don't know why.
Figured might as well keep them in the office in case we have spare time and the team would like to do a little arts and crafts project. I actually moved these from our house outside of Boston and brought them here.
This is crazy. But you know what my brain is saying? But when JJ gave them to the kids, she said, now kids, these are real art supplies.
They're expensive. Make sure you take care of them.
Did they take care of them? No. But now here I am organizing them in a jar.
We need to get rid of them. There is something in your space right now that I want you to do the threshold test.
Look around. Something that maybe you've organized or a pile that you keep ignoring.
And you're going to notice your brain is now going to start to spin. That's that cognitive load I'm talking about.
And what Dana's teaching all of us is that every single day throughout the day, when you notice this kind of stuff, you can empower yourself to make the space better, to remove things that you don't need, to declutter so that you create space for peace, for focus, so that you also create space so that the things you actually love and use have space. This is honestly so simple, but it's really life-changing the way that you've explained this today, Dana.
Wow. How do you stop bringing new stuff into your home? So you know how when you get sick from some kind of a food and then you never want to eat that food again? It's because you had a negative experience with it.
That's the beauty of decluttering. There's a big difference in what you see at the store or the garage sale.
You'll start to see it as future clutter. And it will naturally keep you from bringing things into your house because of the pain and just the physical effort that you've put out decluttering.
I'd love to just go to a question from a listener. And we got this question from a ton of people.
Hi, Mel. It's Therese.
What do you do if your spouse is a sloppy person, but you're not? I feel like I am constantly trying to organize our house and keep it clean, but my husband has such a difficult time keeping it that way. I am constantly picking up after him.
Anyone that comes over knows my side of the room versus his side. We are childless by choice, but sometimes I feel like I have a house full of them.
Help. Thank you.
Dana. Yes.
Please help us because I am her husband. Chris's clutter threshold is higher than mine.
He is always picking up after me. And it's frustrating for him because he has often said, it makes me feel like you think I'm your maid.
How do you handle this conflict between an organized person and somebody who has a lower threshold?

The first thing I would do is tell a little story about my husband.

He was very nice and sweet about it.

But he just said, he said, I hope you don't take this the wrong way. But I've realized that there, it's like there actually is something wrong with you.
And I was so happy that he said that to me. Because what he was saying was, because he went on to say, I've realized you don't do this on purpose.
This is not you are not refusing to close the cabinet doors. You just literally don't notice whether they're open or closed.
You are not putting something down thinking, oh, he will get rid of that later. You don't realize it.
I've realized this is how your brain works. And I was like, thank you.
Exactly. It comes down to that clutter threshold.
And remember, you're probably not going to help the other person do better in these types of things by organizing. You're going to help them by decluttering even some of your own like stuff in that common area.
So do you recommend that a couple do that together to start in the common space so that you both learn the process? Not to start. I recommend that whoever is listening to me, you're the one who cares enough to be, you know, listening to this podcast right now.

And so you go ahead and deal with your own stuff. Like don't start with the other person's stuff.
That is a recipe for disaster. And yet their stuff is more obviously clutter, right? But start with your own stuff first and neutral stuff, invisible spaces.
as you do that, and your family starts to see, it's so much easier to live in our house with less stuff, then other people start to get on board, their view of stuff and clutter starts to change. For anybody listening, can you just let them know a little bit about the emotional aspect of trying to let go of stuff and going through the process of decluttering? Yeah.
So my five-step process specifically, purposefully does not use emotions to declutter because I was so emotionally attached to my stuff, either because it represented who I thought I was going to be someday or who I had been in the past or, you know, just sentimental things that people had given me. As you start with these things and you make visible progress before you've ever even dealt with anything that has emotion attached to it, is you see the progress that you're making.
And you realize, oh, wow, open space, less stuff changes my house. By the time you get to more emotional stuff, it looks different to you, right? Oh, that's great.
Well, you've changed my life. Dana, we have loved having you on the podcast.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
I can't wait to hear how you put everything you just learned into use to create a better life. And in case nobody else tells you, I'm going to tell you, I love you, especially you slobs out there.

You people who can't get your shit together like me, you bathroom counter clutterers.

I see you.

You're my people.

And for you, if you're the OCD neat, Nick, I love you too.

Please use today's episode to be kinder to yourself, to declutter and to go create a better life.

Alrighty.

I'll see you in a few days. Oh, one more thing.
It's the legal language. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes.
It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Stitcher.
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