How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind Quotes

“I can pick up a bad habit in three days flat and struggle for years to break it. A good habit, however, causes emotional angst and physical pain to create, but I can break it in less than twenty-four hours.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Reality: Sometimes, I turn things into problems that aren’t really problems just because I love thinking so much.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“My attention span and my available time and my caring-whatsoever-about-this-mess are not guaranteed to exist in Later Land, so I can’t go there.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Because of my love of excessive efficiency, my former decluttering efforts went something like this: Oh, this goes in the master bathroom. I’ll make a master bathroom pile here. That goes in the playroom, so I’ll make a playroom pile. These nails should be in the garage, so here’s a garage pile. Six piles later, life happened. I left the decluttering project to go take care of life with every intention of coming back as soon as I could. But I didn’t. Either more life happened, or I forgot. When I finally returned to the project a few hours (or a few days or a few months) later, those totally logical little piles had morphed into one big pile that was no longer the least bit sorted. The clutter that once drove me crazy while it sat behind the cabinet door or inside the drawer? Now it was out in the open, outside the area I was decluttering. I’d created a bigger mess.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Ideas weren’t making a difference. The only thing that made a difference was actually doing something”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Feeling happy is better than feeling overwhelmed.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“A decision that’s waiting to be made is stressful, even if I don’t realize it’s stressing me.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“I don’t know about your family’s quirks, but mine has this weird obsession with wearing clothes. Like, every single day.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“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.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“I gave myself the same pep talk I’d given my drama students and my own kids over the years: Most things that look easy are skills. Skills can be learned.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Sometimes, Worrying About the Very Best Way Keeps Me from Doing Anything”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Fantasy: If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right. Reality: While I’m busy searching for the best way to do something, I’m not getting anything done. Meanwhile, the problem gets worse and is much harder to solve when I finally get around to solving it.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“I could get my home under control for a week, sometimes two, occasionally three weeks at a time. Life would happen, and the house went back to being a disaster.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“But because it’s exactly the type of advice someone would give who has never struggled with irrational feelings of attachment to a plastic giraffe, I’ll share some additional thoughts.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Methods don’t clean your house. You have to clean your house.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Here’s what I had to accept: Cleaning my house is not a project. It’s a series of boring, mundane, repetitive tasks.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Go. Experience. Wash dishes. Declutter. Your Slob Vision will clear with each routine you establish. Your home will improve with each step you take.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Nodding your head in agreement or shaking it in disgust as you read a book or browse the Internet does nothing to improve your home. You are the only one who can improve your home, and you can’t know what works until you experience what works.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Ideas weren’t making a difference. The only thing that made a difference was actually doing something. Cleaning with whatever I had on hand, whether it was the perfect thing or not.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“This strategy worked well, but I stopped doing it. Why do I stop doing something that is working? I have two theories. First, life happened, and this routine fizzled. I probably missed every Tuesday for a month because other things kept coming up. Second, I was used to all my methods fizzling. I expected them to fizzle. I waited for the fizzle. I didn’t fight for this one to not fizzle.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Doing the dishes is the first step of this whole change-your-house process. Doing them again tomorrow is where the magic will happen.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“Here’s what I had to accept: Cleaning my house is not a project. It’s a series of boring, mundane, repetitive tasks. The people whose homes are clean all the time do these boring, mundane, repetitive tasks.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“I once thought of habits as things I do without thinking. Like stealing candy out of my kid’s Halloween bucket on November 1. A minute ago, I was at my computer, and now I’m standing in a different room stuffing my face with Skittles. I don’t even know how I got here. Bad habits. I have lots of those. I assumed when people talked about cleaning habits they would work the same way, but they don’t. They so don’t. I have never once found myself dusting and thought, “How in the world did I get here? I don’t even remember grabbing the duster!”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

“The first time you do anything feels awkward. Feel awkward, but don’t assume you know what you’re dealing with until you’ve done it again and again and again.”
― Dana K. White, How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets