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

by Dana K. White

we usually end up with two loads of darks, one load of lights, one load of whites, and one load of jeans and dark towels. And usually one more load that alternates

between sheets or other randomness.

The first Laundry Day is no indication of how Laundry Day will work in your house.

If you are behind on laundry, you won’t wash one week’s worth of clothes. You will wash all the clothes you never washed when you were only doing emergency loads of socks and undies and clothes people needed for school and work.

The first Laundry Day will include the extra clothes you bought because you didn’t think you had enough, because you were al...

Who has time to wash things to donate when you’re behind on the clothes your family needs right now?

Worst of all, if you’re behind, the first Laundry Day won’t take one day. It might take all week.

But here is the key to stopping the endless cycle: Once all the laundry in the house has been sorted into piles, any new dirty laundry goes in the hamper ...

Do not add newly dirtied clothes to the sorted piles. The newly dirtied clothes ...

Don’t worry about next week’s laundry. Your only concern is this week’s laundry, and this week’s laundry is already in piles, waitin...

But (and this is important) even if you finish Laundry Day Number One on Saturday at midnight after starting it the previous Monday, the next Monday (the one that’s less than 48 hours away) is

your next Laundry Day. Even though you don’t want to look at another dirty sock ever again.

Start over. Sort every piece of dirty laundry in the house...

These places were halfway points, and halfway points are Procrastination Stations.

Once laundry is truly under control (by the third or fourth Laundry Day), it’s not even that difficult to adjust.

To get laundry under control, you need a routine.

As the queen of what-if scenarios, I can come up with a logical reason to keep almost any item I pull out of a pile.

If you’re overwhelmed, hear this: decluttering your clothing will be easy when Laundry Day becomes a routine.

Focus on one thing. One thing that has a home somewhere other than in that pile.

Stop thinking about the big, huge, overwhelming mess, and take that one thing where it goes.

I suddenly realized what organizers meant when they casually mentioned an item deserving shelf space. The shelf was a limit.

The size of the shelf determined how many cookbooks I could keep.

when something new comes in, something old has to leave to make room.

Soon after this space-in-my-home-doesn’t-expand-to-fit-all-the-stuff-I-want realization, I grasped that the root word of container is contain. Like that shelf, containers are limits.

Containers contain. They limit. They hold the stuff in and keep it from spreading.

When a container is full, I know how much I can keep. If I try to shove more into the container than will fit (like I used to do), the stuff spills out and turns into clutter.

The container made the decision. I don’t have to answer “Will I ever need this?” I just have to determine if it fits. Whether it fits isn’t personal—it’s fact.

The size of my drawers and closets determines how many clothes I can have.

The Container Concept also helps me avoid impulse buys when I ask myself, ‘What container will this item go into? Is there room for it right now?’ ”

If you have too much stuff (like I did), there isn’t a place for everything.

A place for everything will happen, but it will happen gradually, eventually, as you declutter.

If you’re a stuff shifter, you’re living above your Clutter Threshold. The only solution is less.

If I truly need and use something on a regular basis, that thing deserves space in my home more than random things I almost never use.

The Visibility Rule: When I feel the urge to declutter, I start with visible clutter.

Decluttering Question #1: If I Were Looking for This Item, Where Would I Look for It First?

“Where would I look?” is an easier question.

There’s a second part of this question; it isn’t a question, but it’s very important. “Take it there right now.”

Once you’ve answered “Where would I look for it?” with your first instinct, take it to that place now. Right now.

Decluttering Question #2: If I Needed This Item, Would It Ever Occur to Me That I Already Had One?

If the answer to question number two is “no,” I need to stick it in the Donate Box.

I’ve made a rule. If I feel like my head is going to explode while deciding whether something is worth keeping, I don’t keep it. I call it the Head Explosion Rule. No possibly-useful-but-not-actually-useful item is worth my head exploding.

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

This excitement brings to mind the decluttering decision that stresses you most. This decision, when you finally make it, will be emotional and difficult. When you purge that particular pile, you’ll declare the end of an era in your life.

Once I personally understood the Container Concept and saw it significantly reduce my own angst when making decluttering decisions, I shared the concept with my family.

The Container Concept is simple, and it works.

the container is a tangible, visible boundary that determines how much they can keep.

The container imposes limits so I don’t have to. The container shows them it makes no sense to keep a waterlogged magazine if keeping that magazine means giving up a treasured book with pages that don’t stick together.

Always make it clear to the people you love that even though messiness irritates you, you love them more.

Basically, the daily stuff is the daily stuff whether you hire cleaning help or not.

Today’s new task? Sweep the kitchen.