Ep 71: Decluttering Made Simple - The No-Mess Method with Dana K. White

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Today on Learn to Thrive with ADHD, I'm bringing you a conversation that's going to revolutionize how you think about decluttering. I'm sitting down with Dana K. White, author and creator of "A Slob Comes Clean," who gets it – she really gets it. 

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by traditional organizing advice or found yourself with a bigger mess after trying to declutter, this episode is for you. Dana shares her ADHD-friendly "no-mess" method that actually works with our brains, not against them. We dive deep into why the usual decluttering advice fails us and explore practical strategies that you can start using today, even if you only have five minutes.

What You'll Learn:

• A decluttering method that won't leave you more overwhelmed than when you started
• Why "pull everything out" doesn't work for ADHD brains
• The Container Concept (this changed my perspective completely!)
• How to make decluttering decisions without emotional drainage
• Real talk about the "one-in-one-out" rule and why it might not click at first
• Practical solutions for handling donations (especially if you live in a small town)
• The truth about time management and daily tasks
• Managing idea clutter (fellow entrepreneurs, this one's for you!)

Find Dana:

• Website: aslobcomesclean.com
• YouTube: Dana K. White
• Podcast: A Slob Comes Clean

Dana's Books:

• "How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind"
• "Decluttering at the Speed of Life"
• "Organizing for the Rest of Us"

Game-Changing Takeaways:

1. Progress > Perfection: Every 5-minute decluttering session counts
2. The Container Concept: Let the space be the bad guy
3. Two crucial questions for decluttering: 
   • "Where would I look for this first?"
   • "Would it ever occur to me that I had this?"

Connect with Mande:

• Website: learntothrivewithadhd.com
• Instagram: @learntothrivewithadhd
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• Learn more about private coaching: https://learntothrivewithadhd.com/services/
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• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/learntothrivewithadhd/

Remember, thriving with ADHD is possible – sometimes we just need the right strategies and support. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review and share with someone who might need to hear this!

Next Steps: Need support implementing these strategies? I work with ADHD professionals and entrepreneurs to create systems that actually stick. Book a discovery call to learn more about how we can work together!

#ADHDcoach #ADHDcoaching #AdultADHD #ADHDhelp #SelfAcceptance #Community #RestAndRecovery #PersonalGrowth

Click here for full show notes.

CLICK HERE for more resources. We're on this journey together! 

Transcript

All right, guys. Welcome back. Today, we have Dana White and Dana, I found through one of my clients actually, she said, have you ever heard of a Slob Comes Clean the podcast? I said, no. And so I pulled it up and have been listening ever since. And Dana has just such like very good for the ADHD brain, like theories and suggestions and things like that about organizing decluttering.

And Dana is much more than that. Dana has books and and all kinds of things. So go ahead and tell us about yourself, Dana. Yeah. So I'm Dana K White. I put the K in there because otherwise people think they're going to be interviewing the the the guy who started the UFC Ultimate Fighting and that's not me. So, I mean, today I have I have disappointed a few men over the years who thought they were, you know, going to be talking to him now.

So I I'm a writer and I have a YouTube channel and podcasts and all those kinds of things that grew out of what I thought was a temporary practice blog that was going to take a couple of months back in 2009 that I was using as a way to focus on getting my house under control. I have always been messy my entire life.

That was my default. I was very surprised, though, once I got married that I was still messy because I thought that once I had my own home and it mattered to me that I wouldn't be messy anymore, that mattering would be all that it took. Right. And and then I had kids and just assumed that with nothing else to do, you know, as a stay at home mom, other than keep the house clean.

Right. That my house would be perfect all the time. And it turns out that even people who didn't struggle before tend to struggle after they have kids, and it becomes even harder. And so I it wasn't until then that I kind of had arrived at the point in my life where I just felt like, I've got to get this figured out and nothing is naturally making this issue go away.

That I started this blog and just thought I was going to stay focused and get to learn about writing while I was as I was doing that. And it is now 15 years later and I'm still writing about the same thing because what I thought was a problem that was only mine. I didn't think anyone else in the world struggled the way that I did.

I'm an intelligent person and was very successful in other areas of life and could not figure out my home. And so it was embarrassing to me and there are a lot of people out there like me. And so for a long time I said, Don't, don't listen to me. Don't learn from me. I'm just figure it out for myself.

And then about 2 to 3 years in, I finally realized, actually there is information out there or there's that there's a gap in information out there. Most of the people who talk about getting your house under control or people who talk about organizing are talking about it because they're really good at it and they love it, right?

Like their brains work very differently from the way that my brain works. And so therefore there was this gap of where people were, you know, giving advice. They were talking about a starting point that I would have loved to have had as my end points. You know, I mean, I was so far back from what the starting point was that most people talked about that I realized, okay, I have learned things and I can share how to get from completely and totally overwhelmed in my home to, okay, yeah, I get it now and I can do this.

I'm never going to tell anybody how to have a perfect home. I am not the color coordinator type person at all, but I can tell you what to do to dig your way out of the mess. You're not having people do their pantry in like Rainbow order or anything. Like I'm not. I mean, if that's what you want to do, that's great.

And there are people out there to teach you how to do that. That's just not my role in the world. I will teach you how to go from a pantry that you open the door and everything falls out, or that you can't close the door anymore because you can't shove it that hard to. Okay, a pantry that's functional.

So that that's my niche or niche or whatever you want to call it. You know, I will say, like with your content, it very much feels like what I've experienced, which has been the podcast and a little bit of YouTube, it very much feels like you're at our side instead of like way in front of us, like this like thing that we're trying to get to.

It feels like you're just like coming along with us and that is how everything feels. And so it sounds like that's what you were going for because you were like learning as you were going and then gaining some experience. But one thing that we talked about before the call is decluttering. You have a no mess decluttering method. What is that?

Well, you know, the reality is that most of the time when you hear people talk about decluttering the assumed first step is to empty the space of all the stuff, right? And so, yeah. And so you just assume, okay, because it makes sense. It is logical to do that. And so I would do that because that's what the experts told me to do.

And I thought, Well, I'm not good at this. And they are, so they must know. And so I would pull everything out of the space and I would look at the empty space and go, that looks so nice, right? And I would think, this is great. And then I would turn around and I would see all the stuff that used to be in that space, which was a lot of stuff spread out all over the countertops or the floor or whatever.

And it would just immediately make me shut down feeling overwhelmed. Right. And or I would work on a space and I would create all these little piles where I had sorted things, you know, into like kinds of items. And it just that felt like the logical thing to do. But when I got distracted, not if I got distracted, but when I got distracted and had to stop, or when I just got overwhelmed and had to stop, then I would step away and the space was my house looked worse than it did before.

Right. And so it would make it feel like, what is the point of decluttering? Because I always end up with this worse mess. And then I would be overwhelmed and it might be a worse mess for a day, or it might be three months, you know, where all this stuff was now spread out. And so it felt like, what is the point?

Also, when I did have to shove everything back in there because someone was coming over, it was now I had no idea where anything was right, because I used to kind of sort of know that I made all these neat little piles and then I never actually finished that and I shoved them all back. And it's a huge jumble, right?

So that feeling like that would happen every time I did Cluttered made me put off decluttering because it made me always feel like I had to estimate how much time this was going to take and then set aside that amount of time. So last time I thought I could do this in 3 hours and that was a disaster.

So, okay, I need to set aside a whole day. All right? I'm going to set aside a whole day and when do I have a whole day? You know what? Okay. That. You know what? Actually, it's getting worse now because I've waited so long, I think I need to set aside a whole weekend. Okay? Actually, a whole week.

Okay. You know what? Christmas break. I am going to tackle this. Well, guess what I don't feel like doing over Christmas break, right? Is tackling this. And so I would just put it off and put it off and I would never get started. And I had to get started because it was so bad. And so I just through trial and error, figuring it out, realized that the key is to not pull everything out, to instead go item by item, final decision by final decision acting on that final decision, which, you know, the shortest the easiest thing to do is stick trash in the trash bag or the recycling bin.

Right. Like, that's a final decision. And I've acted on that all the way to deciding where something should go that I didn't know where it should go according to where what I look for this first and then I take it there right now instead of sitting in a pile to do later because the piles to do later is the bigger mess that I never end up getting to.

And then I have to come back and I have to go back through the pile and remember what it was. I was thinking out, you know, all that. So even though it doesn't have the big shebang of the completely empty space, it actually gives me real, sustainable progress. And it lets me stop at any moment where it lets me be distracted because that's what happens to me.

And I'm only better off than I was before. And so this space becomes cluttered and I am only making progress, which means I don't have to estimate how much time I'm going to have if I think I have 3 hours and then I only have 5 minutes because I'm going single item by single item, final decision by final decision acting on those decisions.

Then the 5 minutes was worth it. Yeah. Or if I go 3 hours, it's worth it. But I can stop at any moment and it was worth it. I love that stopping. I was actually working. I mentioned that this episode would be perfect for a client that I have right now. And one thing that we're working on is there's a closet situation.

I assume this is like a walking closet. I didn't ask, but I assume and the whole closet needs to be reorganized. And what we were working on was like, Let's just work on like this one space. And then you walk away from it and it sounds like that's kind of what you're doing here is like learning, learning to walk away from it undone and be able to come back to it.

It's my understanding that correctly, it's it's not walking away from it and done. It's walking away from it better. Does that make sense? It's not walking away from it. Half done. So the bits that I do, I do completely so that nothing is halfway done and weighing over me. It's only the space is better than it was before, which allows me to work all the way through it.

If I have the time. If I don't, it's still worth it. And I've never put myself in a worse situation. I love that better than it was before. That's. That's lovely. So you said decision by decision. I deal with a lot of people that really struggle to make decisions. What advice do you have for them? Well, you know, my process doesn't use emotions, right?

Because if I'm using emotions, I'm going to keep it all because there was a reason why I brought out my house in the first place. Right now, it also doesn't use value decisions, right? So what the process is five steps. The first three steps are decision free. It's the trash and I mean actual trash, not stuff. I have to go.

Is this trash? My mom would say this is trash. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about obvious trash is get it out of there as a way to give myself a step, a thing to do, and to make an immediate, visible impact on the space with no decisions or emotional energy being used. Right. The second step is easy stuff, stuff that I already know what to do with.

I'm going to go ahead and do that thing. Okay. Step three is obvious donations. I'm going to get those out of here. Things. I don't have to debate whether or not I should get rid of it. I'm just going to get it out that just those three steps will make a space significantly less visually overwhelming. It also builds that momentum so that I have made a lot of progress without using any emotional energy, without making a single decision.

And then I'm ready for the next step, which is the stuff that I don't know what to do with it. There's a lot of angst and sometimes embarrassment, I think, for, you know, when you're like, I don't know what to do with this thing, other people would know what to do with this thing. I don't know where it goes.

It doesn't have a place in my home, you know, that kind of stuff. So my two decluttering questions help me without emotions and without analysis. Let's work through all of those things. So the first question is, if I needed this item, where would I look for it? First? It's not a question of where it should go because that's analysis, right?

It is literally where's the first place where I would look for it, even though I don't know where it is. That's why I'm asking this question. If I knew where it went, it was gone in step two. Right. But if I needed this, where would I look for it first? What's the instinct of the first drawer? I would open at the beginning of what I assume is going to be a three hour search for this item.

Right? And that's where I'm going to take it right now. As soon as I have an answer to that. If I can't answer it, then I ask myself the question, which is a yes no question. If I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I had one? Like would I? Because I didn't have a place where I would look for it, which means I wouldn't even go looking for it, which means I do without, which is fine.

Or I would go buy another one, which is just contributing to the clutter problem. Right? So those questions allow me without emotions and without spinning out on, Do I love this item? How do I feel about it? Why do I ever use it? It is literally where would I look for it first? Or would it ever occur to me that I had one?

And those questions are instincts and fact based as opposed to all of those value decisions that are so difficult when you're overwhelmed by your clutter. Yeah, And it's so interesting that you mentioned do I love this because when I help my kids, like declutter their rooms, which happens like once a year, it's always a question like, Do you love this item?

But I like your question of like, where would I look for this first, especially with my ADHD kid? That would be fantastic. And that one has more things that they're using in their room. And so that would be a way better question to ask. And what would it occurred to me that I had one. I love that. Those are excellent questions.

What are other for? Like, I work with professionals and entrepreneurs with ADHD. And so a lot of times the problem is office clutter. Do you have any specific suggestions for that? Yeah. So I applied the same process to every space, right? With the understanding that organizing and decluttering are not the same thing. So a lot of times when you look at your space, especially your office, you know your business, you want to keep it organized, right?

The thought is I need to get organized, I need to organize my desk. I need to organize my, you know, supplies. And in reality, most of the time, what you actually need to do is declutter, okay, to get things down to a point where you can easily handle those things. Now, this decluttering process that where what I look for at first, putting things in the place where you would look for it first is actually kind of the definition of organizing, right?

Is being able to know what you have, know where it is, be able to access it, all that kind of stuff. Right? So I think the first thing I would say is to acknowledge that there's a difference between organizing and decluttering, and that decluttering has to happen first and in a lot of cases is actually the thing that you need instead of organizing, right?

Like for me, what I found was decluttering achieved the purposes that I thought I needed to organize for. Right? Like I always looked around, I thought, I need to get organized because I can't find anything. I don't know, worth it. Decluttering solved all of those problems right? So focusing in on decluttering is the key. And then with your business, the function of the space is everything right?

So I talk about the container concept, which is the basically the boiled down version is space is finite. And if I do try, if I try to keep more stuff than I can fit in my space, there is no possible hope for it ever being under control. Right. But when you're talking about a workspace, acknowledging that open, empty space for me to do the work is the top priority in your workspace, right?

Like so it is not just a matter of okay, these are the things I use or need, so I just stick them in here. They can't take up any space that is needed to actually do the thing right. So the collecting of supplies versus the actual doing of the thing, which one's more important, what's the actual doing of the thing?

And that determines how many supplies I can have for future projects. I can't gather in those supplies if it's at the expense of being able to actually do the thing. Yeah. So I was I was listening to actually an organizing book. Our topic today is decluttering, but an organizing book that talks about when we're purchasing things, one thing in one thing out is that any part of like what you talk about, it absolutely is.

I will tell you that is like a one of those, you know, things that a lot of people just understand when they hear it. So my story on that is that I remember hearing a whole management. Speaker one time at a mom's group that I was in when my kids were little and somebody asked her the question, But what do we do when we, like get a new pair of socks?

And she was like, the one in, one out rule. And everybody was like, okay, yeah. And I was like, okay, yeah. And I had no idea what she was talking about. Like, it did not make any sense to me because I was picturing my sock drawer. My sock drawer wouldn't even close because there were so many socks.

They were piled up on the open drawer and there was no closing it. And so in my mind I was thinking one in, one out. Like, what good would that do? Because if I get rid of one pair of socks, my sock drawer won't close anyway. So that doesn't make any difference. So it just didn't compute in my brain.

It was not until I understood what I call the container concept that one in, one out finally made sense. So just saying one in, one out, for a lot of people, that is all they need to hear. I'm here for the people who are like me, and we're like, Wait, what? What is that? Even that doesn't make any sense.

So the reality is this the sock drawer or the pencil drawer or the whatever is the size that it is and it determines how many socks I can keep and my home stay under control. So what that means is I get rid of my least favorites until the sock drawer closes. Right. And that it's not a matter of math of me going how many times to where we're socks, how many days is it in the winter before I do laundry?

And I need wool socks this morning and I, you know, like, all those things make my brains spin out, but they're very logical and so they're kind of enticing to me, right? Like, I want to do the math and figure this out when in reality I'm like, Well, the sector is this big. Some of my favorite ones in there first.

And when it's full, then the ones that weren't favorite get, you know, tossed. But then if I bring in a new pair of socks or if I my actual favorite pair of socks I just wore and so they were in the, you know, clean laundry and I come in here, I'm like, okay, it's it's at its limit. This container is a limit.

It determines how much stuff I can keep. So I'm going to put another pair socks in there. I have to make space for it. So which one is my least favorite that I'm willing to get rid of in order to make the space for this one that I do want to keep. And that's where the one in went out.

So so that's that's what I do basically is I just get down to the nitty gritty of how this actually works. For those of us who just think differently about things, Yeah, I'm kind of inspired by this right now because I'm realizing in my office space I'm holding on to highlighters that I decided no longer work, but I just kept them just because I didn't even think about it.

I bought the ones that actually work and didn't get rid of the others. But speaking of getting rid of things, that can be a challenge all on its own because there is like, do I throw it away or do I give it away? Do I sell it? And now we've sometimes created a job for ourselves in just getting rid of something.

In my little tiny town, I think this problem has been solved. I'm not sure. I think we have a couple of donation centers now, but there was a period of time we had no donation centers and I live in the middle of nowhere. And so when I would do my annual de-cluttering, which I am going to take your advice and not just make this like a once a year big job, but actually do it progressively through the year.

But I would fill up my entryway with all the stuff that we didn't want but was good enough not to be thrown away and that was a job all in its own. Do you have any recommendations for like getting rid of things? Yeah. So I also live in a very small town and I often feel like even though it's irritating that I don't have the options that other people have, I feel like for the job that I do, it's really important because I know that it can be very hard.

Like there are some people who don't understand. They're like, just call someone. So I'm like, Well, you may have that where you live, but not everyone does. So my I had to come to the point I used to be the type to put things in all these ideal piles of, I'm going to take this to so-and-so because her kid is blah, blah, blah XYZ, whatever.

I'm going to take this. You know who would appreciate this, blah, blah, blah. In the meantime, like you said, you're giving yourself a huge task to do and that was overwhelming. And so I never got it done. And where and I also used to be an eBay seller years ago. Okay? And that kind of got me to rock bottom with all my clutter issues.

Right? So I, I also saw the dollar signs on everything. And it was very hard for me to just give things away. But when I got to the point where I realized I have got to, you know, I just have to do this. But when I started the, you know, my do slap ification process is what I call it.

I saw the value in getting things out as quickly as possible. And the way to do that is to default, to donating to the place that will take everything. So it may not be the place I would my heart really, really wants to donate to. But if this place over here will take a box that includes electronics and clothing and shoes and hairbrushes.

And I don't know about hairbrushes, but you know what I mean? Like all the different things combined. And then this one over here is like, you have to separate it out into this. And we don't take this category of item or whatever that I'm going to choose the one that takes that. And if you're in a small town like me, I always tell people it is a valid use of your de-cluttering time and energy to say, I want to declutter today.

What I'm going to do is load up my car and drive the 45 minutes to the closest donation place and get rid of that stuff. That's such a valid use of your time, but it can feel like that's wasting time when I could be decluttering, but that is decluttering. So I think it's I think it's that going with the the quickest way to get things out.

And I know selling can be a real issue, right? Like when you know something is worth something. And I would say as long as you are actually doing it, that's fine. But if you're piling things up, thinking I should sell that one day, I should sell that one day, that's where the problem is, right? And so my advice is to pick the thing that you're most confident is worth money and go through the process of selling it, do the research, take the pictures listed online, go through that, and you'll either realize, now I know how to do that.

I can actually get these things out of my house. Or what more often happens is you realize, well, that was a lot of work for not as much money as I thought. And I ended up basically making $4 an hour and I could better spend that. You know, you're talking to entrepreneurs. I could better spend that time doing something else, and then you're willing to actually donate it.

But until you do that, it can be very difficult. And I never try to just say, do this. I'm like, hey, do whatever it takes to actually move forward. Yeah, Very, very, very good. What I ended up doing with the entryway stuff is my husband was going out of town, which is an hour and a half drive, no matter which direction you go to get to a major city.

And we donated it to a donation center that yeah, we'll take everything. And that that was wonderful. We filled up his whole truck bed with with all the stuff that we don't want. What could happen a lot of times when people are de-cluttering is they get kind of emotional about the fact that they shouldn't have bought these things in the first place or they didn't get their use out of these things.

And what do you say to that? Like what can they be thinking instead? Yeah, so so this is where I've mentioned it a couple of times. But the container concept is the key for all of these kinds of things because it allows me to blame the space instead of myself. Right? Like I'm acknowledging that I love this thing.

I'm acknowledging that I wanted to use it. I'm acknowledging that I, I have feelings or I have attachment or whatever, and that it has value. It's a valuable thing, but there's no space for it. There is no room for it. So it's it's it's this what's container worthy is basically I don't know if you're a Seinfeld person, but that's, you know, like the container.

That's what I think of things. You know, it's like, is this container worthy? So if I have. Okay. So here on my desk, I've got two different water bottles from the last two days, but I've got two water bottles. Right. And I have a space. And I asked myself, where would I look for this? You know, cup or whatever first.

And I go to that space where I would look for it first and it's full, right? And I think, okay, that space is full. I'm like, Well, this I love this thing. Right? Okay. Well, all I have to do is say, okay, what am I willing to get rid of in order to keep this thing and so then I might see this one, which is a lot smaller.

Well, this is like this is my this is my literary agency. Like, they sent this to me for Christmas, and I'm like, But this has a lot of feelings, right? But I go, You know what? There's only space for one. This is meaningful. This meant a lot when they sent it to me. It has value. It's a great thing.

And yet, if the decision is between the two of these, this is never enough. And this one is, you know, like this one holds the amount of water. And so it allows me to let things go. I did a video with my husband. He loves mugs, right? Buys them at every place that we go. And we were doing one.

And I said, you know, let's talk about the container concept. I was like, you know, it's full. So we just have to choose our least favorites. And he said, Thank you for saying it that way, because letting me say that it's a favorite is the thing that lets me let it go because I can blame the space and I don't have to feel like getting rid of something is rejecting it or admitting some admitting that I'm never going to do this thing or whatever.

It's literally just I absolutely love this item. I would love in the future to be able to paint or whatever. And yet the space that I have is the space that I have and my painting supplies don't deserve to take up the space that my kids baby bottles or whatever, you know, like need like the sippy cups need like if I, if it's a choice between painting and I don't actually have the time and the, you know, bandwidth to paint right now and the sippy cups that my kids actually used to kids, you still use sippy cups because I don't know.

Mine are adults. Yeah, but you know what I mean? But that reality of like, I am not saying I'm never going to be a painter. I'm saying the space that I have right now and the life stage that I'm in right now, this is the thing that deserves space over this and that being able to see it that way, like fact based, instead of feeling like the answer is to reject this item, or the answer is to admit that I failed and I never did get to paint while I had the chance.

And now I'm saying that I'm I'm not saying that. I'm just saying the space is the space. That's what I got. Yeah, that was scrapbooking supplies for me. I was big into scrapbooking and that took up a ton of space. There were so many supplies and you felt like you had to have. And for those that don't know, like, especially in a digital world today, like we have Canva now, but scrapbooking, you would actually like have different colors of cardstock and stickers and and things like that to organize your photographs.

And I had so much of it, and I had three kids and I was just busy and didn't really have time to scrapbook, but had all this stuff and had spent a lot of significant time at one point. And I remember just getting rid of all of it, even with like undone scrapbooks. And that was actually such a relief to get rid of all that stuff and to go, okay, you're not going to do this anytime soon.

Let it go. If you want to do it again, you can do it again. And but I also recognize, like we were moving into a digital world at that time and this was probably a thing of the past. Yeah, well, and also knowing that it it doesn't have to be all or nothing. It can be. You know what?

I have a tiny bit of space that I could devote to my scrapbook stuff, right. So I'm going to pick my favorite of the scrapbook stuff and put that in that tiny space so that I'm not completely giving it up, but I'm also not letting it take up cabinets and cabinets that I need for other things, you know?

So it's just that letting the space be the bad guy so that I don't have to be the bad guy. Yeah, it's really powerful. I love that decluttering as far as one thing that I come up against with my clients a lot is they have a lot of great ideas. And as an author, I'm sure you do to write ideas for books, ideas for videos, ideas for podcasts.

And that becomes clutter on its own, like writing on a scrap of paper or like, do you recommend like a container? Or for all those ideas I noticed what I end up doing is I will write things down, like on a post-it or a little notebook or something like that, and then I will pull it all together in one space.

And it's a digital space, but you have other ideas around that. Yeah, I mean, I personally use my notes app all the time. I mean, I have all the different my whole next book is like a big, huge file in there of ideas. But, but yeah, what you're saying pulling it all together and doing that according to when I'm looking for the ideas that I've written down, where do I look for them first?

Right. You know, if I look for the question, yeah. If I look for them on my, you know, desk in my office, then that's where it needs to be. And then having a container that is in that space where you would look for them any way to make it neater, but also to kind of give you that limit that it then helps you understand, okay, I have, you know, a little basket or something that I've been putting these, you know, Post-it notes on because whatever you do is what you should keep doing, right like that.

But let's do it in a way where it actually works for you and keeps your space under control. So I'm putting these Post-it notes into this basket. Well, that basket is a visual reminder that, okay, that basket is now, you know, balanced three inches above with a stack of Post-it notes that keeps falling over. Okay, I need to go back through these ideas and see which ones are no longer relevant and, you know, purge those.

See which ones? I actually already did that thing or whatever. And it is a natural reminder that it's time to go through these things and and purge it and, you know, narrow it down, clarify the ones that are actually still meaningful to me because I have that visual of the container as opposed to just a big old pile on my desk.

Yeah, I love that. So I didn't realize how many books you had written. Can you kind of go through the titles for us? Sure. So the first one that I wrote in 2016 is called How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind. And that one is the basics. Like, I. I was just completely overwhelmed in my home.

I started out my process by focusing on maintenance tasks, which I didn't know the power of that. Like I'd always said, I needed to get my house under control and then it makes sense to maintain. And instead I started working on, okay, I'm should do the dishes every day. All right, I'm gonna start doing that, you know? So it's basically going from everything.

It just is a disaster. I don't know why this is so hard to. this is how people do it, right? You know, And all the mindset shifts that I had to make and the the reasons that I didn't want to do it that way and all that. So that's in that book. And the second book is Decluttering at the Speed of Life.

That one is my five step, no messy decluttering process, along with the mindset shifts that I had to make about how I saw my space and my home and my staff. And then it's applying that process to different rooms in your home and also the different relationships as you work with people in your life, your parents, your children, your spouse working through that, that process, because it works really well with other people, because there's no emotions, which takes the power dynamic out of it, right?

So there's that and then organizing for the rest of us is what they call a gift book, which I wouldn't have known what that meant. I don't know if you do, but basically it's a book with pictures in it. I'm like, So who's giving books about decluttering to other people? It's kind of like saying, Look, you're really messy here.

I know, right? But it it's it's it's the picture book version of my other books. And things are put into, like, really bite sized little tips. That's the one that people tell me that they leave in the bathroom so that the people in their family slip through it because it's very flip through dribble. And you're like, and this woman told me, she said, My husband came out of the bathroom and he was like, Hey, have you ever heard of the container concept?

We should declutter? And she was like, So I was like, Leave. That is a great idea. Yeah. So yeah, those are my three. And then my next one, like I said, is the spiritual side of things because, you know, for me that was a huge part of it, you know, just releasing that shame and, and that was what allowed me to finally move forward.

I love that. I love the work that you're doing as a mom of three. When my kids were all home, I just remember so many times, like sitting at the table with my husband and saying like, Can you just tell me how to do this? Can you? Like, I would look at all like the cleaning there was I don't know if you remember fly Lady Holly's still around, but, you know, there was all these concepts and all these fly lady was actually the most helpful.

But I was always looking at, like, cleaning lists and, you know, looking at how should I clean my house and how do I do this, like, really resonated with me when you mentioned, like doing the dishes every day because everybody thinks like not everybody, but a lot of people will think, Well, of course you do the dishes every day.

I wasn't doing the dishes every day and I still sometimes don't like the dishes don't get done on a Saturday. That just doesn't happen. You know, I talk about dishes, math. Like what I mean by dishes math is that I always assumed that because I would wait until all my dishes were dirty. Before I did my dishes, I assumed that, it takes me 5 hours to clean my kitchen.

So that must mean that if I did them every day, it would take me an hour a day. And I don't want to spend an hour a day doing dishes. And that was my reason why I kept putting it off right when I started getting my house under control, I was like, I don't know how other people do it, but their kitchens are never a disaster.

So I'm just going to do my dishes and I don't know how the best way to do it is. I'm just going to try to keep them done. And that was when I how one day's worth of dishes takes ten or 15 minutes. Yes. I didn't know that because I never did one day's worth of dishes. Right. And so I caught up and then I started doing I was like, if I will keep the dishes, then that's like a huge head start on the rest of my house.

Because always before I'd be like, I need to clean my house. And I would start in the kitchen and use up all my energy and all my time right now. But when the dishes are done or in ten or 15 minutes, then I actually finally made it to the rest of my house. And it's so interesting because I in my work, I do you know, not only are you building up executive function skills, but we're doing that work as well.

And I thoughts about the dishes were they take forever. And one day it was before I even got into coaching. But one day I thought, how long is forever really? If I if I'm doing like one day's worth of dishes, how long does that really take? And it was you're right, it was like 10 minutes. Yeah. And I'm going, but when I let the sink fill up and it spill out onto the counters, it's taking me an hour to do the dishes.

And so, of course, it takes forever when you're only doing the dishes like every four days or something like that, like you said, because you're out of cups. And I had the same thoughts about the laundry. That takes forever. How long does it really take? well, if I'm just throwing in a load and building a load, like sometimes it can take as little as 6 minutes.

And instead of the piles that I used to do while watching Oprah and and folding wrinkled laundry. But yeah, like, if we just do these things little by little and I hear that that's a lot of your work is like little by little, like, let's take bite sized pieces of things. I really like that. And knowing what knowing what truly moves the needle, I think that's the thing is like I always felt like I was piddling, doing a little here, a little there, a little here, a little there did make progress.

But really boiling down and identifying, okay, what can I do that is guaranteed to produce actual real progress? And then I do that little by little, and it has huge results in my home. So it's when you say little by little, what I used to think was, yeah, I've tried that and that never works, but it's like when you know what to do, then every little thing has an actual real impact.

Yeah. And I think of right now just implementing this into my life, like I, if I walk into my dining room area, there's a little table with a popcorn machine where everything lands. And that is problematic right now because I see all that and it's messy. And so like that would make the biggest difference in that space. So I'm noticing some real world application right here.

So this has been a great conversation. De-cluttering I think is so important for the ADHD brain because less managing things is is just so freeing and it lets your brain be busy with things are way more important than managing your things. And so that's it's always an ongoing process for me, letting letting things go from a space, but it's not natural for everybody.

And when I'm working with clients, I like to when they're going to go and like tackle a room, for example, I like to set limits on them because we can tend to exhaust ourselves and just keep working until until the next time we want to do that, our brains like, ah, last time you made me work for like 6 hours and we were sweaty.

So I like, I like your theory of like focusing on a space at a time and, really taking, taking it like, like you said, little by little about what's going to make the most progress. Yeah. So with that too, I always recommend that you start in a very visible space because the work that you do, you'll see the power of it and you'll experience the benefits of, it's easier to move in this space all the time, where if we start in the top shelf of the closet that I never actually go there, then it's like I work and work and work and then my house and look any better.

And that's defeating, right? And it's discouraging to do it again. But if you're working in a space that you do see all the time, then your brain sees it and notices. Even though we didn't notice the pile before, we notice the absence of the pile now. Right. And we walk by and it's like, that looks so good.

And I'm inspiring myself to keep decluttering because of that. And I don't know about other people, but for myself, like once I get a space, like, really organized, I will go back and keep looking at it. yeah, absolutely. Over and over again and I'll show other people, Yeah, I'm home. And I'm like, Come look what I did.

Yeah, exactly. That's very rewarding. But yeah, where can people find you? You can find me. You can just Google Dana K white, put the K in there, or you won't find me. And I mean, I'm all over YouTube, podcasts, all that you can go to, aslobcomesclean.com and that has links to everywhere that I am and that yeah, you can get a copy of my five step process if you want to sign up for my newsletter.

You got aslobcomesclean.com such five and get a copy that That's a great way to do that. I love that you you have a link directly to your newsletter. That's wonderful. So thank you so much for this conversation today. I know it's going to be so helpful to people and I appreciate your time. Thank you.

Thank you.