Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff

by Dana K. White

I definitely didn’t make up the word clutter, but I did make up a definition for it that helped me get it out of my house. I define clutter as anything I can’t keep under control. If a space in my home consistently gets out of control, I have too much stuff in that space. I have clutter.

Living for now became my new goal: living in the house we have, in the city where we are, and in the moment when we’re alive.

This doesn’t mean forgetting the future exists. Living now means giving now preferential treatment over the future or even the past.

Living now means my kids can easily get dressed for school because the only things in their drawers and closets are clothes that fit. Not clothes they outgrew two years ago or clothes they’ll grow into someday.

Accept the limitations of the space you have, and declutter enough that your stuff fits comfortably in that space.

If a closet needs to hold all your clothing, the size of that closet determines how many clothes you can have. It’s a limit. And if you have more clothing than will fit in the closet, you have clothing outside that closet. Clothing with no home because its home is already full. And that’s how the Out-of-Control Home Thing happens.

I didn’t decide anything. I didn’t figure out anything. I just accepted that limits were limits. And accepting limits was strangely freeing.

used to have a dream (an actual, when-you’re-asleep dream). Maybe you’ve had it too. In this dream I find rooms in my home that I hadn’t known existed. I’m so, so excited they’re there, and I’m relieved to learn my house is bigger than I thought it was. I’m sure there’s a clutter-related psychological reason for that dream, because when I shared it on my website, others who struggle with clutter said they’ve had the same dream.

As I got rid of obviously worthless stuff, I started realizing I loved something else. I loved space.

Declutter that most visible area first, every time. The Visibility Rule serves as both a short-term strategy and a long-term strategy. As a short-term strategy, it helps me focus and prioritize. I have a place to start when I’m overwhelmed by the overall mess. Visibility! Visibility! Visibility! is a chant I can say in my head to stay on track.

Keep Boxes let me justify waiting to put things away. They’re neat little procrastination holders. I’m still working through Keep Boxes that have been in my garage since we moved twelve years ago. If I put things away immediately, I’m done. If I stick things in a Keep Box, I have “empty that Keep Box” on my mental to-do list indefinitely.

Trash is gone, things that don’t belong in this space are in the places where they do belong, and stuff you wouldn’t look for at all is in the Donate Box. But the room still feels cluttered.

clear floor makes a room not look wackadoodle. That spurs me to keep going.

Decluttering Question #1: If I Needed This Item, Where Would I Look for It First? No analysis, no angst, no deep thinking allowed. Just follow your instinct and take it there. If you don’t have an instinctive answer to give, ask question #2.

Decluttering Question #2: If I Needed This Item, Would It Ever Occur to Me That I Already Had One? If not, it goes in the Donate Box.

Ask these questions until the pile is gone. Move to the next visible pile and continue working your way through t...

But when I just declutter, things are gone from the space. So when life happens and everything is everywhere, there’s still significantly less mess than before. Recovering is simply a matter of putting things away, because I have only things that will fit in the container. Really, this makes life so much simpler.

Earn credibility by decluttering your own space first. Make visible progress. Gain momentum. Change your own attachment issues.

You were in a certain mental state when you started this book that made you ready to hear what I had to say. You were ready for change, or at least ready to start considering change. This is totally different than if someone walked up to you on the street and started yelling about Clutter Thresholds and drawers as containers.

love telling people what to do. I enjoy it so much I often have to physically clench my mouth shut to avoid alienating people in my life. I’m sure they wish I was more successful at this.

You may have been invited to help. You may have been begged to help. But today is not the day that you get to fix this person you’ve always wanted to fix. It’s the day to just declutter.

once heard that for people to be willing to change, they first need to feel accepted as they already are.

I needed to feel accepted by the person who was trying to help me. Feeling judged made me want to defend myself, and this meant defending the way I’d been doing things, even when that way was so clearly disastrous. Asking the two decluttering questions and accepting your friend’s answers lets you show that you accept how she does things in her home.

Do your best to not let stuff get in the way of your relationship with this person.

Do you know what questions aren’t the least bit helpful (like, at all)? “Why do you have this?” or “What were you thinking when you stuck this in here?”

Asking where they’d look first is giving respect to how they do things in their home, even things that don’t make sense to you.

IMPERFECT DECLUTTERING IS BETTER THAN NOT DECLUTTERING

Declutter your own stuff. Declutter stuff that’s neutral, such as towels or plastic cups. If one of the things I just named is the one thing your spouse refuses to declutter, then choose something else that’s neutral.

Do what you can, whenever you can, as often as you can.

The pain she feels as she realizes she will not have more children is grief. Grief and regret are different things. Big dreams that require decluttering usually also require grief. Require it. Grief is a thing. It happens whether you’re planning for it or not. Some people manage to go their entire lives without bringing home a minivan full of things they don’t actually need, but no one avoids the pain of life not going exactly as he or she planned. But sometimes you don’t realize that what you’re going through is grief.

Grieving is the process of emotionally navigating a loss. Navigating the loss of a dream is where grief can come as a surprise.