5 Easy Steps to Make Your Home and Your Mind Clutter-Free | The Mel Robbins Podcast

foreign I gotta start with a confessional because I booked the expert that you're about to meet today because I need to talk to her I struggle with this profoundly I am talking about organization in your home you may be the person that is super slobby or you might be the one that is like almost OCD this is a conversation for all of us my guest today says you and I we got this topic of organizing completely wrong [Music] hey it's your friend Mel and today I'm coming clean on the Mel Robbins podcast today's episode is

one of those episodes where I gotta start with a confessional because I booked the expert that you're about to meet today because I need to talk to her this is an area where I need coaching I struggle with this profoundly what am I talking about I am talking about organization in your home yep I'm super successful but when it comes to my mud room my bathroom my kitchen just basically anything in my house I can't seem to keep it together I got piles all over the place I feel like I take hours to organize stuff

and then within a day it's a disaster again and you know if I'm really being honest with you 90 of the bickering that Chris and I do it's over the messes that I make the half drunk cups of coffee that I leave on the counter the kleenexes that I don't quite make to the the the the whatever it's called the trash bin like this is an area where I need help I feel like a failure and you may relate to me you may be the person uh that is super slobby or can't seem to stay

organized or you might be the one in your family or relationship that is like almost OCD you are like a walking Excel spreadsheet regardless of which one you are this is a conversation for all of us because if you're the kind of person like me whose bathroom counter is covered with stuff your closet is overflowing you haven't seen your kitchen counter in days I know it weighs on you I know that you don't want people to come over to your house until you've cleaned it up and it's not about how successful you are it's about

the fact that you just can't keep up with your living space and it makes you feel like there's something wrong with you and whether you're the neat Nick and you're just so frustrated with your roommates or family members or your spouse like Chris is with me because you're the one picking up with them and it's driving you crazy or you're the one that's driving yourself crazy my guest today says you and I we got this topic of organizing completely wrong her hit blog a slob comes clean isn't that a great name and her book how

to manage your home without losing your mind ah this is the expert for me I would like to know how to manage my stuff without losing my mind she's got hundreds of thousands of followers that hang on her every bit of advice you're gonna love her please help me welcome Dana White to the Mel Robbins podcast hey it's Mel and I wanted to jump into the middle of that podcast episode you were watching to make sure you knew about a free opportunity that I created for you it's a new three-part training called take control with

Mel Robbins it is packed with science it is packed with action it's exactly what you need right now I know that you are tired of feeling like you're in survival mode you're tired of merely coping and it is time to tap back into your excellence and power again let me coach you let me guide you on the steps that you need to take in order to level up and start executing it's going to feel so great to start winning again all you got to do is click on the link right there in the caption it's

melrobbins.com take control it is free it is for you and you need to be in it now let's go back to the podcast all right well welcome Dana White I'm so excited that you're here thanks for having me on this is fun really fun um although I did notice Dana that as I was putting on some lipstick to dress up for this sort of a metaphor for cleaning up your house before you have somebody over I looked down at my t-shirt and my cat my rescue cat Mr Noodle had been sitting on my lap I

am covered in cat hair right now and so I think that is a fitting way to open up a conversation about how you can manage your house without losing your mind and how you can actually take control of your life by taking control of clutter and what I wanted to do was start with how this all happened that you became a decluttering expert and an expert on helping people take control of this area of your life I never would have thought that this is the thing that I would talk about I would have laughed my

mother still laughs about it a lot I I wanted to be a writer I mean that's what it came down to I wanted to be a writer and I figured out what blogs were back in 2009 and uh didn't start one because my house was disaster so like I knew my personality I know that I throw myself into things I knew this would be something I would throw myself into and so I put off starting to write because my house was so bad thinking okay this is a new motivation I've been messing my entire life

but this is my new motivation and yet I still could not figure it out so I came up with a kind of a compromise I thought I was going to start a practice blog it was Anonymous in the beginning where I would use that to stay focused to figure out what's going on in my home and that uh you know then I would figure out my house get it perfect and then write about things I actually felt qualified to write about all the jokes on me because it's now what 2023 and I am still writing

about this but also I you know I I now teach it to other people but I teach it from the perspective of the person to whom this stuff does not come naturally so that's actually my my superpower in the end right is that I am speaking as someone who legitimately struggles with this and so I'm sharing what I figured out so that's how I've ended up in this space but it still surprises me when I really think about it I want to stop right there and unpack that because I think what you just said is

so game changing and excuse me I just got a cat here holy smokes and it went so far back in my throat that you know wouldn't like something hit your throat and you feel like you have to sneeze I have a German Shepherd I completely understand so yes I think what you just said is so profound and I relate to it and I bet you listening relate to this so I want to just slow it down real quick because here we are almost 20 years ago she has aspirations to be a writer and what kept

her from starting was the clutter in her house and how many projects have you put off or dreams have you put on the Shelf because you keep saying to yourself oh when I get around to like clearing out my workspace or clearing out the garage or clearing out the back bedroom or making uh my house look the right way or my room looked the right way then then I will be able to start this thing that I actually care about and so you're in the situation and I track down your very first blog post and

I would love for you to read to everybody the words that you wrote on August 24th 2009 as you were creating an anonymous blog as a way to hold yourself accountable for writing while you cleaned up your house so you could start writing I mean this is fabulous that this is how this started so read us a little bit of the parts that I you know pointed out to you I will and I just want to say I hadn't read this in a very long time so it was fun to read for me I would

be so afraid that if someone saw my house on the wrong day translated any day I'm not expecting company I would feel like a fraud my house is messy really messy and this is the area where I feel like a total failure I'm constantly frustrated with it and I know it affects all the other areas of my life and the lives of each person in my family even the things I'm pretty good at could be so much better if it weren't for this problem I wanted to finally get this thing conquered I'm not doing a

30 day or even a 365 day plan to a cleaner house I need to change my routine my habits and finally be consistent in this my hope is that writing daily on this blog will make me keep my focus wow you know Dana I always say that you're one decision away from a different life and the decision to just start writing as a practice to keep your feet to the fire on trying to change your behavior around clutter that launched a whole business for you and an expertise for you and you've helped people around the

world conquer the same thing and I'm really glad that you're here because I profoundly struggle with clutter and I know it might surprise a lot of people that that is the case but I would love to just unpack for everybody listening how common is it for people to struggle in this area of their lives it's very common it's also very common for people to not know about it because what I have found is that many times the people who are struggling with clutter tend to be very successful in other areas of their life and so

you just assume they have it together they're organized honestly one of the most transformative things for me as I started writing believing like I completely believed I was the only person who struggled the way that I did I thought that if people started to read my blog they were going to say you're disgusting get off the internet you're a horrible mother I mean really like that's those are the thoughts that went through my mind as I thought about I'm showing pictures I wasn't showing my face I wasn't using a real name all that kind of

stuff but because I was Anonymous I was being very honest but as I shared things and people did start to read my words they would say these are my thoughts these are my struggles I see things exactly the same way that you do well this was back in 2009 right and back then everybody was on Blogger and you could like click on their name and go find their profile right when they left a comment and so I would see who these people were that were saying I relate to what you're saying here and I saw

that they were poets and artists and theater teachers I was a theater teacher there are lots of theater teachers who struggle with this kind of stuff like there is a direct link between creativity and struggling with clutter we see the world differently right like that's I love that about myself but as I started to realize there was this link I realized oh okay okay so the things that make me me also result in me struggling with clutter and that helped me accept that okay this is part of who I am this is how my brain

works and then I realized the reason I've always felt unsuccessful is that I have been trying to follow the advice of people who like talking about this stuff right like I've been following people who have been organized their whole life and think it's the most fun thing in the world to talk about my brain is very different from their brains and so I was lost on page three I would look at their before pictures and I would think that would be my dream after picture like I I didn't I I it wasn't Computing to me

yeah okay so accepting that this is part of me actually is what gave me the freedom to say okay that may not work for me but something is going to work for me I just have to figure out what does work for my personality in my home and then that's when I really started to make a change oh my God I'm so excited to talk to you because I feel like the odd person out when it comes to my husband who has a brain like an Excel spreadsheet the man can methodically just go through his

list he has so much discipline it looks effortless and I feel like the Tasmanian devil spinning around next to him leaving things in my wake and then we have a daughter who I think must be somewhere on the OCD spectrum because I have never met somebody whose brain is more structured or organized or who gets so like rattled when something's out of place and I feel somehow like I'm inept like I kept like is like because I would love for you to kind of help us understand when you're a creative person or you have skills

in areas of your life that don't have that sort of do organization Gene I resonated when you said I'm a failure I resonated when you said I don't want anybody to come to my house because they're going to see what it looks like here I feel shame like there's something wrong with me when my husband or our daughter will walk past my closet and be like oh my God you know my closet and I feel bad when they kind of jokingly tease me about oh she left that out oh did it this oh and so

what is it that you might feel or say to yourself if you're somebody that does struggle with clutter because nobody has ever taught you how to get a handle on this if you have a creative brain right and I just want to point out something really quickly look at what you've done I mean look at what you have built so there is such a disconnect there that you have created what you have created that has helped so many people and yet you feel like I'm inept I you know you you said the word failure like

this that is part of the disconnect right because I was like I am someone who when I see a problem I tackle it I figure it out and I could not do that with my house like I I just couldn't and so here here's the thing I viewed my house as a project because I am generally very successful with projects like that is something that I can do very well like you give me a large scale production you know I was a theater arts teacher I will have that thing so organized people will be amazed

right like I mean like you will know exactly when you're supposed to be at rehearsal exactly what we're going to be doing in that rehearsal I mean like everything is planned out ahead of time I love to do the planning phase I love the execution of my plan I love the Applause at the end of all of that like I love being done and yet I would try to treat my house that way right like I would say okay this is where I'm successful this is how I tackle things in life I'm going to apply

that to my house and so I am going to take an entire weekend or a week or all of summer vacation when I was teaching whatever and I'm gonna change this place and I am going to get it under control and then I would step back and go oh I'm done wow this is great and life would happen it would go right back to being what it was it's because I was treating it like a project well your house is not a project right like all of this isn't so it's like you're taking where you

Excel and having to say that doesn't work in this situation right so it is okay you have gifts you have talent the world needs People Like Us right like the the world needs creative people who are willing to throw themselves into a big project at the expense of their house you know I have a friend who is very meticulous her house is always great she's great at spreadsheets that kind of stuff and she will say like we'll be talking about some she's like oh I can't take that on because how would I get my dishes

done in my house keep my house under control if I did all that and I'm like literally that never crosses my mind when I get excited about a big project yes and so yeah like that that's that's it so so acknowledge you have so much to offer so let's find a way there is a way okay there is a way for you to make your house not hold you back right it's not that you want to turn into these other people right because you want to stay you that's a big part of it for me

I'm like I like me I like the stuff that I enjoy doing I don't want to spend all my time on my house so how can I do things in a way where I'm not just having to give all that up in instead I'm able to uh keep my house under control and that allows me to do even more and have more fun that sounds incredible and here's where my mind went okay when you said that a lot of the ways that people that love organization work don't work for a creative brain or a brain

that that has genius in other areas I took a giant exhale and because when I left the bathroom with cat hair all over my uh t-shirt I noticed that my husband's bathroom counter was completely clear nothing on it and I looked back at my counter on my bathroom side and it looked like somebody had taken a makeup bag and a dopped kit and shaken everything out upside down and it just splattered everywhere and I was like oh you like another one of those C I can't do this right yeah and so I just like okay

my brain doesn't work that way so the self-acceptance thing and the acknowledgment that you have different gifts is super important the second thing that happened for me though and I'm sure it happened for you know the person listening is that you know we live in the social media world where I personally love to follow home and organization sites I know that's really weird given that I don't really organize very well when it comes to my home but there's it's almost like pornography for me to look at a pantry that is color coded and you know

all the clear things and everything's perfect and I know intellectually Dana that that was styled by a production team that that looked like that for one second for a photo shoot and that it's not real life but I feel like I have this crazy expectation that I want my house to look like that why 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 yes are we ready for me to tell you what the difference is yes like here here's the reality

hit me that is organizing you need to declutter 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 besides organizing as a project surely I should be able to do that but the problem was as long as I was trying to organize first of all first thing I would do is sit down and make a list right of all the things that I

was gonna change and blah blah blah and figure out how the future was going to go you know and anyway and I would do that work on a space or buy a bunch of products bring them into my house be the organizing energy was gone by the time I got home and I just dropped him 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 I honestly thought I was giving up by saying I

don't even have it in me to get organized I am just gonna declutter I wow like like 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 is that there is literally nothing to do before you get started there is nothing I mean there is no planning there's nothing it's just starting to

get stuff out of your house now I have a process that I follow to kind of work me through that feeling of overwhelm when I'm looking at the mess but decluttering is everything because when I decluttered then I knew what I had which is what I had always wanted when I thought I needed to get organized right 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 open the cabinet I just saw what I needed and I

could get to it without moving 15 things right and so 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 wow okay so what is the difference between decluttering and organizing if you had to boil it down organizing is problem solving like organizing is let me think how this space is going to work tomorrow and in the future now an organized person might be like no no this is but I'm saying from my perspective when

I thought I needed to get organized I thought well you know how's how's this all gonna go how is this gonna function from now for the next 10 years and in my mind it was bins and boxes yes and uh systems and all these things that I would look at which is what you're talking about when you look at those images on Instagram of the color-coded things and all that yeah 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 but in reality I realized and I named it that I have a clutter threshold everyone has a clutter threshold what that means is it's the point at which you personally can keep the things in your home under control okay 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 and that was part of that self-acceptance right was realizing 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 like 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 a

it's not Aesthetics some people hear clutter threshold like oh yeah this drives me no 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 realize there's this point this level

of stuff that I can handle you are a genius I when I hear the word organization I think it looks pretty that's what I that and I and you're you're exactly right I'm like okay I get 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 [ __ ] that I have and I stack it all in there and then I make it look nice and if I spend six hours in one space and

I've bought all the crap and I actually have enough energy to focus and get it all looking pretty which in my mind is the baskets match and it looks like a photo shoot and everything's in its place you're right I'm managing [ __ ] 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 got no energy and it doesn't look like how it's supposed to look 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 so that like I am driving myself and my husband crazy and how do you know what your clutter threshold is like how what is the test I hate to tell you this but there is literally no way to know other than to declutter there's not a there's not a quiz that you can take 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 declutter the only way to find your clutter threshold is to declutter and then the maintenance for that is a five minute pickup okay so this also it does give you a gauge for AMI at my clutter threshold it doesn't mean that everything is always going to be in its place that is just not how I roll I do not realize when something's leaving my hand like it there's no awareness things just randomly end up on surfaces okay yes I could beat myself

up right like I could be like why why am I this way and it's not that I never still think those things right but that didn't help right me saying why do I do this I've got to change I've got to be a different person that never helped but what does help is for me to say okay I'm gonna take five minutes I'm gonna set a timer I'm gonna pick stuff up and put it away if five minutes gets my space or my home my goal is my whole home to be under control again from

picking stuff up and putting it away about once a day ish that I'm under my clutter threshold okay so it's not that it stays perfect it's that it stays manageable okay so can we get super tactical sure because the second you started to talk about clutter threshold and I started imagining my version of organization which for the past for my entire life has been make it look pretty take all the [ __ ] that I have everywhere and arrange it to look nice um it's more like staging I'm like staging [ __ ] right you

know everywhere I immediately thought of my kitchen counters which drive me [ __ ] crazy because stuff accumulates there and then I thought about the base of the stairs both the stairs upstairs where everyone dumps things that need to get taken upstairs and I thought about the stairs down to the garage which is where we put cardboard boxes like I just like have stacks of [ __ ] everywhere and it drives me crazy and so I bet as you're listening to Dana talk and you're nodding your head going oh my God this is me and

you can think about those places where that's a place where my clutter threshold is already through the roof walking into the mud room everything's everywhere kitchen counters everything's everywhere base of the stairs pile of stuff that somebody believes that there's like some magical fairy that lives in our house that picks it up and flies it up to the second floor and puts it in place where do you start like take us to one spot and can you walk us through the process of what decluttering actually means in that spot yeah and how you do it

before we do that let me just say the less stuff you have the less stuff that can pile right like that was anyway I'll move on so here where I would start I recommend what I call the visibility rule 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 okay and so when you start there 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 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 like oh okay well what is more defeating than that right like is 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 because you're like oh wow that looks good I may not have noticed when it was messy but I notice 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 do see I have to have like real steps because I have to remind myself still I still look at a space and go uh 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

of it can I just confess something yes I'm almost embarrassed to tell you this so Oakley who is super creative he's our 18 year old son his room is a profound disaster we got into I didn't get an argument with him because I don't live in this room so I don't really care and I don't clean his room like that's like you want to live like a stye that's fine I don't care that's your space but Chris was like what the hell dude like we built all these drawers for you to threaten they're even big

drawers you don't have to fold things everything's on the floor so Oakley cleaned his room Sunday okay and he put all kinds of clothes in a bag that no longer fit him so we could donate them this morning they were sitting in the mud room which has profoundly passed my clutter threshold in a clear whitish colored kitchen garbage bag in the middle I spotted a flannel shirt that I paid a lot of money for for Christmas that he has outgrown and I tore open the bag because I could see it and I pulled it out

of the bag just this morning it happens right yes I understand 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 the [ __ ] 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 okay okay 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 okay like when I when I start with trash 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 right 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 okay but also helps my brain start to adjust to what's actually there because when I look at it as a big pile it's like it's a 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 okay so we start with trash and a black bag yes and anything that is trash now I know this is a technical question but I am mentally in a mud room okay if you see a a mitten and that doesn't have a pair is that considered trash as part of this process are we just talking papers and crap people have not thrown out and that kind of thing it if you have to think about it yes skip it and we'll get to

it in the next step I love you okay and I love that you're breaking it down because I think this is a 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 but you're saying trash black bag go what's the next thing and the mindset

there too that 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 one piece 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 your your point

about us attacking this like a project that then spills out of control is part of the problem yes and really leaning into this concept of decluttering as an ongoing way of life and removing things that you have to manage is genius 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 better my goal is to have less in this space if you have less in the space than you did when you started you have successfully decluttered you're not done but you have

successfully decluttered it's just stuff leaving your house 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 or the recycling bin if you have one available and accessible and established bring it with you along with that trash bag okay okay but the second step is the easy step easy step 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 mud room it's just oh this goes into its already established home 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 gonna go everything that comes into my hand 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 gonna take it there now okay so again I am making this 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 duh donations okay this can happen at any point in the process it just gives me an excuse to stick stuff in my donate box immediately without asking any decluttering questions because there are things that obviously need to be put in there but when you are someone who

feels uh 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 okay 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 organization right and two it just sets myself up to have to

go back through that box again right like and then I'm going to second guess myself and if I know that I'm going to go through it again then I might put things in there that I haven't actually made a real decision about right because I'm like future me is going to have it all together you know that's what I always thought someday I'm going to be organized how could I not be right so I'm going to put this in this box because I'll know what to do with it later and instead I'm just putting off

decisions and then I know that that box actually has decisions to be made so then I put off dealing with that and that's you know that's what people on I'm not on Tick Tock but I hear from a lot of people who call them Doom boxes and they're like oh doomboxes your process works for doomboxes and I'm like I don't I think it's didn't organize only moved is what it stands for but just the word doom I was like oh I know what that is yeah I've had a lot of those over the years well

I'm glad that you got very granular because the second you set a donate box I immediately imagined a plastic or cardboard box and I immediately imagined me taking a Sharpie and writing the word donate on a piece of paper and taping it to the side and then I would fill it up and then like have more questions about what's in that box so you're basically just saying now have a box that's already going to get donated to some bin that you can also drop off or basket or Amazon boxes whatever Amazon boxes do not write

the word donate just know that this is going do write the word donate so that you remember that was a donate box okay so write the word donate right but don't decorate it don't make it something you're going to want to reuse got it yeah now when you do this do you recommend that you just take that box in this session and just put it in the back of your car because you're done with this decluttering moment or do we leave it somewhere you know it's really up to you it depends on how full it

is uh the the decision making is over once the thing is in the Box the action of taking it somewhere to be donated or making the phone call to have a pickup scheduled or whatever that is a valid use of your decluttering time but I don't want you to not declutter because you're not going to be able to go drop it off today okay so like okay I will often have some donate my husband would hear this and go you always have you know 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 the decision making though is where the real power is and those things are just ready to know that oh we're going to such and such place there's a donation drop off near there let's load them up and take them great got it 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 and I had seen 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 and yes 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 so I 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 does not allow for analysis it is an instinct question okay the word would is the key word that means

because this item was not easy it doesn't have an established home in my house okay but I pick it up and I say okay I've got these other I'm going to have a prop here I decided not to wear these you know anyway but 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 a 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 a place for things and this is how I do that 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 would

look for it and 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 it's so true and well no the go what I'm realizing my goal is that I just want [ __ ] to look pretty I've never even thought about like 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 this is how you establish the home you do

not 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 or call my best friend who's way more organized than me and say hey where do you keep your whatever it is yeah and 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 like this doesn't allow for that to happen I am putting it in the play

and it's it's hard in the beginning because you don't trust yourself right you're like but what is the first place that pops in your mind where you would frantically look if you needed this item and had no idea where it was where's the first place where you would look okay 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 and instead saying okay you know fingernail clippers were the thing when I came up with this question is I was like

everybody else in the whole wide world Shirley 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 like 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 then try to be like other people and never be able to find anything in my house that's amazing so 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 if that's where first that's where they should be it got it it really doesn't there is not a perfect place for things there's the place where you would look first in your house that's what matters but then there's the 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 okay and that is when you answer that question where would I look for this

first take it there now people get all worked up over this like they are like no but that's can't be the most efficient way and yet in the end it is so here's the deal I used to because I'm kind of obsessed with efficiency which would never show with the way my house used to look right but I would make all these piles I would be like okay this is the stuff that goes to the kids room this goes to the garage yeah this this goes to the bathroom yes and when I'm done yes I

will go deliver all these things through the house and that makes so much more sense than taking it there right now yes but that's how things work at 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 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 yes that's the whole make a bigger mess whenever you try to declutter oh my gosh and so I said I'm gonna go ahead I'm gonna take it there right now and then 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 it works I think it's genius because you know I I 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 well 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 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 what do you do about finding things that like how do you determine if you're keeping it because I feel like 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 what or I might need it some point 10 years from now at what point do you actually take it to the junkyard like not like 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 or that you just stated yeah uh 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 yes and then 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 kind 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 gonna 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 that I answered I would look for it first here okay so it might be trash ideally it's going to be trash or dead donations because then my trash bag and my donate box are back at the space I was initially decluttering that'll take me back there right right but so I'm just gonna say what in here trash because it needs to be decluttered right like I just said it's a total mess there's no room for this so it's going to be declutter but I'm not doing that right now I'm sticking with this

initial space and so I'm like what in here am I willing to get rid of in order to make room for this and so it helps me instead of saying does this thing have value I say is there a space for it which is a very um what's the word it's it's leaving my brain right now but I don't know I'm hanging on every single word well what do you do if you have like a basement or garage there's like space in there can can I just give you an example sure I'm starting to realize

how nuts I am about this stuff you are not nuts no but I but I literally am realizing I I and I don't know if you listening to us are feeling the same sort of energy drain but I'm realizing how much noise and and and just how much drama I add to the process of what I thought was organizing and so I'll give you an example so I've talked about how our son Oakley who is very creative who will love this process who spent half of his Sunday organizing his room to make his dad happy

and then he did the big thing of clothes I've admitted that I ripped through it and pulled two things out I don't know where I'm gonna put that stuff because I guess it would go my I don't even know why I kept it I kept it because it's it was something that I bought him for Christmas it was rather expensive and then there's a jacket that's like a fall jacket that because I bought it for him when he was 15 he 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 like I literally 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 mud room 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 the [ __ ] is going on like I donate duh well okay is this what you just described yes what you just described is your brain spinning out okay yes and a lot of people who are naturally organized and who see this and go I mean I'll just be honest how many times in your life how many times in my life have I had somebody

go why would you like why are you thinking that way that is exactly how my brain worked which is the reason I'm I just had somebody recently say to me I can follow your process because I know you know all of my reasons why I want to keep this like and still have a process that works like when I'm talking to someone who's like those are dumb reasons like 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 okay so so I mean I I hate to just be like let's go back to the process except that no let's go back to the process is what is what talks you through all of this 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 uh 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 I can think about this being in your scenario that you were talking about with the what but 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 and then how many of us are like well I just decluttered something and then I ended up needing it but 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 gonna 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 you

know 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 but those are both valid options but the thing is if I didn't get rid of this item and I wouldn't have looked for it if I needed it it's just sitting in my house and I'm adding more to it as I go and grab what I need because it doesn't occur to me that I already have one yeah okay so so that right there is is me saying

this is my reality check I'm going to stick in the Donate box if I insist that I would know that I had it then I have to go back to that first question and say where would I actually look for this first not that I think it's going to be there but literally if I know for sure that I have this then there has to be a first place where I would look right and I need to be honest with myself about that too wow you know this is fascinating because it is a whole new

way to think about this because again just to come back to this example it wasn't even like I saw in the mud room I came out of my bedroom and I don't know if anybody else's family members do this but somehow our staircase upstairs is the garbage and laundry chute where people just Chuck things over the banister and they land up like at the bottom of the stairs and so there was the Donate like trash bag with the flannel shirts that I ripped out and then laying a couple stairs above was this jacket that long

longer fits him and you can do this process is what I'm realizing in that moment because I think that's also the reality the reality of the decluttering process if I'm tracking is not that you go okay this Sunday I'm doing this in the mud room it's that you walk out of your bedroom you're like what the [ __ ] okay he's like throwing all this stuff down 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 it's not immediate and if I the answer is the mud room I walk to the mud room 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 which is if what was the second question if I needed this item would it ever occur to be 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 and a jacket for me are by the same company so yes would you would it occur to you that you had the second one that you had your son's jacket because if it would then it's it's fine to go take it with a place where you would look for it first because we're also going to address the reality of that space as we get into the last step of

the process but got it so let's just say let's indulge my psychoness 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 didn't make a decision you asked yourself a question that revealed Your

Instinct of where you would look for it first sorry I just no no 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 sh 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 gonna 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 dig out of this thing 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 you know like thinking about the damn jacket yeah right you're not like oh oh I'm gonna put it down there yeah I'll make a space down there yes yeah you're not dealing with the reality of that actual space you're not

dealing with the reality of oh wow I cannot stand going in this basement and think and I don't know I live in Texas we don't have basements I'm very jealous of people with basements but I'm like in my mind I'm like if I take it down to this spot and then I realize this spot is full of spiders and all this stuff and I don't want to leave a jacket down here yeah 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 if 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 what is the final step in this process okay so let's say and this is going to apply to any space all those spaces where you're taking things but we're talking about the space that you are working on okay okay this point you have removed trash easy stuff which belongs somewhere else you've removed the donations and you are down because you've gone through the two decluttering questions you

are only down to or you are down to things that you would look for in this space right okay that's the only stuff that's in here is Stephanie would look here look for but if the drawer still won't close that's not working right okay like if it's still spilling outside of itself then that's not going to work so this last step is implementing what I call the container concept which is something that when I when I had this realization about containers okay it was something that if I was not writing about it as I was

doing it I would have probably been embarrassed to share it with a random person but because I was just like I'm just writing about what I'm figuring out I wasn't trying to teach anybody anything at that point and everybody went what like this changes everything I was like oh okay so it's not just me that this is valuable for it so here's here's the container concept 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 so here'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 right like she has a red Becket I don't have a red Beckett that's why Myspace 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've 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'd 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 Side by more shelves and then at some point I would think well I don't have any 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 space I mean her house was smaller than mine but in my mind my issue was that

my house was too small right like which doesn't make sense but it made total sense to my brain before yep right so when I was working I was talking to myself because that's what I do it's how I've been able to build what I've built you know um but I was talking and I was saying container and I went 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 but if it goes outside the boundary bad things happen right so like 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 Beckett 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 realize oh maybe I don't need a thousand crayons oh okay and I haven't had to make value decisions remember we were talking about this thing but what about when I might use it and what about you know and it was expensive and blah blah before I would pick up every single crayon I mean this is all hypothetical right but not really but I would pick up every crayon and be like whoa I mean I know it's broken but broken crayons still color right oh yes that's right right I mean there's Facebook memes about

that right so oh my God so I would make all these and it took forever for me to analyze every single one and instead it's just I'm gonna put my favorite ones in first and I'm gonna let the container make the hard decision for me wow and then when I go to put the uh the red Becket 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 remember it's that reality acceptance right so I'm like the size of my house is the size of my house and if I'm gonna put my favorite things in first and I'm gonna 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 which means I can't just keep putting in more shelves that make it hard for me to move around and make

it hard for me to get to where I need to get and so that just shifted everything and I said does it have space in the container it actually doesn't matter how valuable something is how much sentimental you know 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 I see the value it's the container I don't have the space for it and that is very freeing Jesse could you go grab me those two mason jars in the back with the pencils on them on our little caddy full of [ __ ] in the office I hope not [Laughter] oh it's this one it's this one okay so this one's good because we use I'm I've got mason jars that have Sharpies which we use right but you know I've got to point out here that this right here are watercolor

pencils that Chris's mother gave to one of our kids probably 10 Christmases ago and I've never used them I don't want them I uh tried to organize them by putting them in this jar and then I thought okay I'll just put them in the office in case we ever decide we'd like to watercolor someday as an art project they were probably 20 bucks but I remember my mother-in-law saying to one of her kids when she gave them to them when they were like in fourth grade now you better take care of these these are real

art supplies these are watercolor pencils these are really good so here I am literally organizing them in a [ __ ] jar and then finding a space in my office where they do not belong these have never been used by me and I have carted them from our old house to our new house and spent time organizing these [ __ ] to look good yeah I blame the container you can blame the reality of the space but here's the other thing too though they need to go in the trash maybe honestly probably they do yeah

um oh my God here's the thing sometimes people are like and this is where I you know I always get the questions as soon as I'm done talking I'm speaking about decluttering is people will be like maybe it's for them they used to be an artist they used to have the time the bandwidth whatever and now either because of physical limitations or time limitations they can't anymore so for me maybe maybe for them the watercolor pens or pencils I'm not artistic enough to know which one they are but anyway uh for them they're like but

that's so sentimental I can't here's the beauty you can keep it if you have the space but you can't keep it and everything else so it's like what am I willing to let go of so I give the space to this item that is important to me but it also lets me go you know what we need the pens that we actually use in here yes and so this allows me to get rid of these ones and identify it as wait a minute we never use that I kept it for all these years because I

thought oh it has value oh whatever you know and instead I'm just gonna I'm just gonna let that go so it so the the step in the process is to the first step that you do to be ready to um uh you know embrace the realities of your space is to consolidate things meaning put like things together put your pins together put your um you know books if it's all books put your you know your dictionaries together or your uh whatever you know all the different types of books together because that will often help you

realize oh yeah I actually don't need seven Skillets you know but as long as they're kind of all put in different places you're like okay but if you put them together that's the first step of this fifth process I mean this fifth step in the process and then you're naturally going oh yeah oh wait I don't use these four but as long as they're spread out you're not going to see that so you consolidate and then once you have done that you say I am going to purge my least favorites until everything fits usably and

get to ably in this space so it's not how much can I shove in there it's how much can I have in here and be able to see and access with my clutter threshold you know how much stuff can I do so for me I have a very low clutter threshold so I purge until everything has its own space on the actual counter and instead of worrying about finding some way to keep more I just say you know what I want to be able to open this cabinet reach in grab my Skillet and not have

to move three things because if I have to move three things we all know I'm not putting them back neatly right so it's better for me to just have one and be able to access that easily so it's purging down to the realities of this space until it all fits get to ably and usably which ultimately means it's organized even though I haven't bought any organizing project products holy [ __ ] I feel like you've been here in my house because when you said the thing about the Skillets I imagine myself pulling open the drawer

next to the stove where there are stacks of skanky old Skillets mismatched like on top like it just is holy cow I'm so excited to go implement this so we have a listener that has a question and this is um something that I think a lot of us struggle with where you've got one person that's really good at organizing and then you have somebody in the relationship like you and me who's creative and that has clutter yeah and so let's play this question because I'd love to hear your advice on how you deal with that

kind of relationship conflict 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 right

and I think that's where I come in into this scenario is I always say just so you know I'm speaking from the perspective of her husband I am not there is not a way to change other people right like it's and nobody likes to be changed yeah especially in a relationship you know I mean it just right like it often makes you hold on tighter to your stuff when you're like you're just criticizing or whatever so I'm not saying that that's what she's doing at all but here are the things to remember that we've talked

about clutter threshold okay your husband has a different clutter threshold than you do in common spaces declutter down to the lowest common clutter threshold now I am not a math person but I do sort of remember what lowest common denominators were right you know and so it's like you go you just go down more and more and more until you hit that lowest common clutter threshold in shared spaces that doesn't mean you can't have elaborate systems in your spaces that are like yours to be in charge ever you know we all have different spaces within

our home but in those common spaces it is likely never going to be satisfactory for you if you just create an elaborate system that would work for you and then try to push him into that system instead remember the value of decluttering if something does not exist in your home it cannot end up all over the place right okay now along with that I'm not saying get rid of his stuff so that it can't get out of control that's not what I'm saying at all all right but when we go back to the container concept

as far as like things that are his give him a space okay and I don't mean like this is your space but I mean honor the fact that he has things that he's into that are different from yours you have things that you're into as well and say okay I am going to clear out this closet or this shelf or whatever space we have available I'm going to clear this out and say hey this is for you this is what I did for my husband who also I mean I'm very thankful that he's not super

neat because he's but he's way neater than me you know so he's always been very very patient with all of my issues you know uh but what I did was I I cleaned out something where I had thought I needed to have a place for I think it's where I kept my kids out of season clothes and I said no I'm going to clear that out I'm gonna empty it out and I'm gonna say hey this is your space for all of your 1980s memorabilia Collectibles that you have you know collected over the years because

he loves that kind of stuff but he didn't really do anything with it and so it's just kind of there and it would just get shifted all around so I'm like this is the space for this uh and he was like oh oh wow okay you know I mean because I was saying it's not I'm not going to have this argument over why do you have that stuff like that the word why will shut people down immediately right right so instead say okay this is the place that I have created for you um so yeah

put your favorite things in there first and then you know I mean whatever doesn't fit you know we'll get rid of that but that worked so well and it's so funny because um my husband has come on my podcast like whenever I hit 100 episodes and so on the 100th episode is his first time on there and somebody had asked a question for him and uh you know how does Dana help you declutter and he was like well you know she gave me she cleared out this this thing that and then she told me hey

put your favorite you know memorabilia stuff in there first and then I was and then she was like whatever doesn't fit get rid of that he was like and that just made it really easy for me to you know determine what I loved and what I didn't love as much and I said oh yeah the container concept and he was like what you know like you don't have to explain the container concept to them give them a space and say hey this is your space and then the key there is to not judge what they

put in it like let them just put their favorite things in first and there is no criticism over that you're gonna I mean like and this happens a lot with kids right like is you say okay this is put your favorite stuffed animals in here first and then they don't keep the one that you spent a lot of money on and that you know you thought was going to highly sentimental instead they keep the one that the neighbor gave them that they won at Six Flags and you know it's leaking little white you know Pebbles

or whatever I mean like they get to put in their container whatever because you can keep anything but you can't keep everything and then you let the container be the bad guy so it's like you know so that's just so I'm clear so because I really relate to this question and the reason why I relate to this question is Chris's clutter threshold is way lower than mine yeah and the truth is he is always picking up after me my coat is always on the back of the chair and can I clarify something yes clutter threshold

is the amount of stuff that you can handle so he can handle his clutter threshold is higher than yours oh that's what I meant higher yes lower meaning he's got to have less stuff around so his clutter threshold is higher than mine and if he sees something out of place he is immediately drawn to go put it in its place and like you I'm the kind of person that I blow my nose with the kleenex I'm on my way to the trash can something distracts me I put the Kleenex on the counter yeah and we

have endless not fights but it's frustrating for him because he is often sad it makes me feel like you think I'm your maid and I'm like no I just don't care about hanging my coat up right now yeah and I'll get to it later how do you handle this conflict between an organized person and somebody who has a lower threshold I do want to be clear that I'm not a mental health professional I always say Okay clear right okay so it's not easy and this is literally the number one question okay but I am going

to talk to you as the person asking me this question all right because you are the only person that you can control right so we can't control him in this situation but you are asking because it does you know it's a frustration in this um what I'll say on that is the five minute pickup is the answer to your tendency to randomly put things down okay what is the five minute pickup so the five minute pickup is a daily or mostly daily habit routine whatever you want to call it that gets the reason I don't

call it habits necessarily is that I thought habits were going to be magical and that if I could just get this down someday I would be like doing my dishes and picking things up and I didn't even realize I did my dishes you know like that that's not how it works I still have to talk myself through it but it's a it's a routine and so it's I'm going to set the timer for five actual minutes not trying to trick myself into working for longer but I'm going to set the timer for five minutes at

whatever point in the day where it crosses my mind that oh wait there's stuff all over I'm going to set the five the timer for five minutes I'm gonna pick stuff up and put it all the way away for five minutes and that is the thing that will help me to deal with the kleenexes that are there deal with the coat that is here those things get put away so it's like how I combat my natural tendency and keep my house under control but the other thing that happens is the more often that I do

that the more likely it is it's never guaranteed and it depends on how much I have going on in my brain at the time but the more often I do that the more likely I am to start to put something down and then realize oh every single day I have to come and pick up this thing from this spot and so I'm much more likely to put it to put it away okay so that's my answer to you in this scenario my answer to him if he was asking me this question yes the first thing

I would do is tell a little story about uh my husband and uh we do this thing where like on our anniversary we'll kind of like you know write in a journal and in the beginning it was like all these things we've learned about each other and it was so easy and now we're like trying to come up with stuff you know it's been 23 years but uh one of the things he said probably two to three years into this deslobification process you know that I was going through is he was like he goes I

hope you don't take this the wrong way but I've realized that their 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 yes this is not you are not refusing to close the cabinet doors yes 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 and he and so

he he was very nice and sweet about it but he just said he said I've realized this is how your brain works and I was like thank you exactly and I'm was and he realized that as I was working on ways to combat how my brain works naturally right so it wasn't just a every time I say accept how I am I am not saying so oh well my house is a disaster instead it's accept how I am so that I can actually do things in a way that worked for me so that my house

is manageable it's still not perfect never going to be color coded but it's manageable all right like I can handle it and uh so anyway that that's the thing I would say there but also to realize that 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 where we both use this space it's better for us to have less stuff in here

so that there's less stuff to get out of control so do you recommend that a couple do that together to start in the common space so that you both learn to start I recommend that whoever is listening to me I always say I'm like you're the one listening to this lady on the internet who has referred to herself as a slob I mean I'm like you know you're the one who cares enough to be you know listening to this podcast right now or whatever 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 in visible spaces and I can't guarantee it except that it happened to me and it happens to so many people who contact me as you do that and your family starts to see oh okay you're getting rid of stuff that I never thought you would get rid of or oh it's so much easier to live in our house with less staff than other people start

to get on board their view of stuff and clutter starts to change so the the first thing to do is for you to worry about your own stuff before you try to get anyone else on board uh for anybody listening that's going to go straight to a visible space yeah and start this process 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 but it's 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 that they gave me because they were like oh Dana will treasure this and I'm like oh do I have to change who I am so the process doesn't use any of that but it allows for it okay so I am not going to ask you to be heartless I'm not going to ask you to change how you feel

about things but start with the trash okay because the beauty of that is 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 it changes how this space looks and then by the time you get to more emotional stuff it looks different to you right or you have created the space to be able to keep that item where when we're like that's gonna

be emotional and so I'm not gonna do anything because I can't deal with those emotions then that stuff just sits there and it's sitting with all this other stuff that isn't emotional and that makes it um you know never make any progress and so know that you can make a ton of progress before you ever have to deal with emotional stuff the other thing too is this is something you can step away from so start on those first three steps that have zero emotions and then if you get to emotional stuff either skip that item

and say I'm not dealing with that today I'm going to move to the next thing just don't let it stop the process because as you continue to improve your home you will either create the room for it or you'll be ready to deal with it phenomenal I have three final questions to ask you you've been Sensational by the way just Sensational um you distinguish between routines and to-do lists can you explain that sure so I as a project person I would look around my house and think oh I'm changing today today's the day this is

it right and so I would make a list of all the things I needed to do well just looking at that list of all the things I needed to do was completely exhausting right so the way I actually started to change my home was by just focusing on what I had always thought of as maintenance tasks and it didn't make sense for me to do maintenance things when my house was a disaster I was like no I need to get my house perfect then it will make sense to maintain but instead I was like well

that's not working but I do know that other people don't have to spend hours in their kitchen get in the kitchen clean when it's time to clean the house and I do and so I'm gonna just so I started on these very basic things and so I started with doing the dishes I was like I don't know how other people don't seem to have dirty dishes piled on their counter at all times but they don't and so I am going to focus on this and so I started working on the dishes I started working on

uh you know just anyway just focused in on that and would take about seven days is what I found to be like okay now I get it now it's starting to feel natural and then I would move on to another thing and so I was adding daily habits and that is what changed my house that plus decluttering not organizing not decorating not anything but daily Stuff Plus decluttering made gave me the house that I'd always wanted so I boiled it down to um two very basic habits okay really there are four that I talk about

and how to manage your home without losing your mind but if you can't do those you just do these two and if you can't do both you just do one and the first one is do the dishes so it's like even when I start to feel completely overwhelmed and I'm like do the dishes like I care for people all the time like I hear your voice all the time saying just do the dishes that gives me something to do to get started then the next thing is the five minute pick up okay if I will

do that even if my house is a disaster right now I'm not going to get it perfect first and then start doing five minute pickups I'm just gonna do a five minute pick up every day at the least right and then declutter with any time that I have right the other third routine yes at checking the bathrooms for clutter yep here's another one I'm not even talking about like cleaning it I'm not talking about cleaning it I'm just talking about checking it for clutter make sure that you know when it's time to clean it all

I have to do is clean it it's not like covered you know like you were talking about your bathroom counter or stuff like that and then uh the other one is sweep the kitchen floor it's not so much about the crumbs it's more about an action that helps me see what has been scattered on the floor like the groceries where I took the Frozen stuff and the refrigerated stuff out and then I left the other stuff on the floor and it's been there for a couple days you know or whatever so that type it's a

routine that helps me keep my house under if I will do those four things my house looks fine it's not perfect but it looks fine if I will do those and so what I found was I wanted to boil it down so far that I didn't need a list so I don't have to say oh wow my house is overwhelming I need to make a new plan instead I just say my house is overwhelming I'm gonna do the dishes doing the dishes significantly improves my home okay I love this I love this because I can

do this this is awesome and how here's a big one now that we're getting into the routine of these four things and we have five minute pickups that help us with our relationship because we're kind of on a daily basis decluttering and we have the five-step decluttering process that has become part of the way that we live and we're seeing progress 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 like okay

it's because you had a negative experience with it that's the beauty of decluttering so all this angst that you're going to feel even in my non-emotional process you're still going to have times where you're like I cannot believe I am sticking this in my donate box when I was so excited and spent 75 dollars on it and blah blah blah and then I never did it you know like that those feelings are going to serve you well in the future because the more you declutter the there's a big difference in what you see at the

store or the garage sale which was my problem you know like that stuff is going to look different to you because you will have decluttered something very similar to it and you'll start to see it as future clutter so that the way to stop shopping is to take that same energy that you used to spend shopping and put it into decluttering and then it's going to change how everything looks 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 through all

of that time that you've spent decluttering and all the money that you see that you wasted Yeah by buying stuff that you now don't need that you've now donated that you didn't use where net where before you saw the five dollar price tag and you thought that's a bargain and now you've decluttered four things just like that item or just similar enough to it that you see the five dollars and you're like that's five dollars wasted it just shifts things in your brain oh I can't wait Dana White you are incredible thank you so much

for being here on the Mel Robbins podcast I can't wait to have you back I'll come back anytime is there anything else that you that we didn't get to that you just wanted to share yeah I did want to be clear with the five-step process the the the progress and only progress part of it that means you do not have to set aside a specific amount of time to declutter because for the person who's overwhelmed I would look at my space and assess how much time it was probably going to take and because I had

always done the pull everything out and make all these piles and then it never worked out well I would think oh I'm gonna need a whole day so I can't do anything until I have a whole day or I can't do anything until Christmas break or whatever but when you're following the progress and only progress I'm going to make this space better with every single thing that leaves it and then I make a final decision about and then I act on that final decision then that means I can literally work for any amount of time

so if I have an awkward pause in my day of seven minutes I can throw away trash and I've made this space better that mindset shift changed my home well you've changed my life and you're gonna be changing my home and I can see that because I'm like I'm beginning the decluttering process right now by taking this jar of ten-year-old mismatched watercolor pencils and I am putting them in the trash and that feels liberating Dana thank you so much we have loved having you on the podcast we will absolutely have you back I cannot wait

to to talk to you we'll have to do cleaning next let's do it done all right thank you you're the best you're the best fun you're so good hey it's Mel and I wanted to jump in to the middle of that podcast episode you were watching to make sure you knew about a free opportunity that I created for you it's a new three-part training called take control with Mel Robbins it is packed with science it is packed with action it's exactly what you need right now I know that you are tired of feeling like you're

in survival mode you're tired of merely coping and it is time to tap back into your excellence and power again let me coach you let me guide you on the steps that you need to take in order to level up and start executing it's gonna feel so great to start winning again all you got to do is click on the link right there in the caption it's melrobbins.com take control it is free it is for you and you need to be in it now let's go back to the podcast oh I don't know about you

but I feel like I just need to Sprint down the stairs and go to my mud room with a black trash bag I feel so empowered but the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to run and go find my husband Chris because he needs to listen to this because I think it will change our Dynamic I am so excited I cannot 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 [ __ ] together like me you bathroom counter clutterers I see you you're my people and for you if you're the OCD neat Nick that's a walking Excel spreadsheet 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 professionals foreign [Music] foreign thank you