Starting with the most visible areas, White goes through a series of simple steps, room by room, to help you achieve this. And my jeans not fitting makes me feel frustrated, and frustrated makes me crave something that’s been chicken fried.

Released in February 2018, Decluttering at the Speed of Life spells out my decluttering strategies in thorough, step-by-step instructions to help you work through your clutter, no matter how overwhelmed you feel.Future potential" That is the key and she address the mindset as much as the steps to a less cluttered room. Another concept that I will be grateful for as I move forward is that of a shelf or a closet as a container. She also has you ask yourself a practical question: if I was looking for this, where would I look first? Now, a lot of that is about being stressed and feeling a time crunch but it also really hit at some very clear issues that the author mentions that I share and I related to so much of what she talks about as the whys. I just needed to a moment to remember why I’d considered it useful in the moment I brought it through my front (or side or back) door.

Dana explains how to use her step by step process to respectfully and kindly, help family and friends sort through their stuff.There were also a few more instances of helpful advice, like she says to always start decluttering in the most visible public areas because it inspires you to keep going, you see it all the time and see how much nicer things look, and makes it easier for you to move on to having people over while you're working on more private areas. Her Youtube channel has a video explaining it, but the TLDW is: your home, its rooms, and storage solutions are containers.

When she talks about having to give up on the dreams and the things that represent who you were or wish you were - that stuff really hits home for me right now. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning Method is also interesting for discussing how old people should handle their stuff near the end of life. I'm making slow progress, astonishing my husband by suggesting we get rid of things he thought I considered "sacred". Her “formula” for decluttering acknowledges that you don’t always have a lot of time, interruptions happen, and it can be really discouraging when things initially look worse as you try to declutter. I read an ARC of this book through Net Galley, and while I did like it a lot, there are two reasons I didn't give it higher marks.

Well, (pats self on the back) I was already doing most of that with out the snazzy labels and steps and it was working. This gets the motivation going, since you see your kitchen countertop more often than a closet or attic. Author, Dana K White is the founder of the site, A Slob Comes Clean, and is someone who knows what it is to struggle with an overwhelming mess in her own home. Even though the Konmari method has been very influential on my own decluttering journey, Decluttering At The Speed Of Life feels like its written by someone who actually has struggled with letting go of clutter. Between this book and a bit of journaling (which I’ve also had time for this week) I’ve come to realize how much progress I’ve made in the organizing of my household and I’m feeling quite optimistic about it.

The time between my mostly-final edits and my really-final edits was the craziest, so my overwhelmed brain had somehow blocked out all memory of what I’d written! Without giving away the spoilery stuff (the actual formula- Decluttering at the Speed of Life), I'll say that she approaches her house in a layer approach: Daily Stuff, Clutter, and Cleaning.

I was drawn to it during a difficult season in my life, health wise and relationally, when distracting myself with “stuff” was easier! In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, decluttering expert and author Dana White identifies the mind-sets and emotional challenges that make it difficult to declutter. My goal for 2023 is to avoid most self help and non-fiction so that I don’t end up with a year like 2022 where I could barely pick 10 favourite books out of the >100 that I read. My takeaway is a sense of renewed motivation and plans for working at my goal smarter and not harder. White also tells how to declutter during daily life without creating a bigger mess (often a huge stumbling block for those who are serious about decluttering).