How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

by Dana K. White

have Slob Vision. I don’t see a few dishes. I don’t see incremental mess. I see beautifully clean and overwhelmingly messy, but the in-between doesn’t register in my brain.

This helps me understand other people.

Most things that look easy are skills. Skills can be learned.

Once you have a well-practiced skill, it looks easy, but making something look easy takes a lot of hard work.

Fantasy: I have an analytical mind. I enjoy thinking through problems and creating solutions that will last. Reality: Sometimes, I turn things into problems that aren’t really problems just because I love thinking so much.

This is me 100% 😆

The solution for my clutter problem is not to find another container, add a new shelving unit, build a new room, or buy a new home. The solution to my clutter problem is letting my house be my container. I can’t fit more into it than will fit in the space it provides.

Use your understanding of the true definition of clutter (anything you can’t easily keep under control) and ask yourself, “Can I handle this?” instead of “Should I keep this?”

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Once you’ve decluttered to the point where you have only what you can handle, disaster recovery is about putting things away. That’s it.

No possibly-useful-but-not-actually-useful item is worth my head exploding. It’s just not. I choose the possibility of regret over dealing with the aftermath of an exploded head.

Remember, people whose homes are always clutter-free prefer living with regret over living with clutter.

I refuse to put off having a comfortable home until my kids are gone and I “have time.” I won’t have time. I’ve shattered that delusion about whatever phase is coming next, time and time again. I consciously choose to solve the unique problems in my unique home in this unique phase of life, whatever that means. As long as we can do what we need to do and enjoy one another, I’m succeeding.

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