If you’ve been around for a while, you’ve heard me talk about “conscious competence” — the thing that happens when you have to work to learn something, so you know how you did it.  Dana White is not one of those Born Organized folks.  In fact, she has really struggled with clutter in the past, which is why she’s able to be so incredibly helpful to the rest of us who struggle.

In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, Dana tackles the idea of decluttering in general, but also specifically from the perspective of having to fit it in to our lives and our days.

Have you ever pulled everything out of a closet to clean, declutter, and reoorganize, only to run out of time and have to Stuff it all back in — a more jumbled mess than when you started?  Or sorted a roomful of stuff into piles, only to have a child fall off the swingset and need to be taken to the emergency room, so you come home to a disaster?

If you’re anything like me, you’ve had project after project turn out unfinished, at best, or even a worse mess than what you started with, ruining your motivation to try again the next time.

Dana’s simple method for tackling things without creating that big mess is so simple it should, perhaps, be obvious, but it wasn’t, at least to me.  In fact, it’s counter to virtually everything I’ve ever been taught.  But it makes perfect sense to my easily-overwhelmed, easily-distractible self.

Decluttering vs. Cleaning or Organizing

One key point to note is that decluttering is not the same thing as cleaning or organizing.  These things are related, but they’re distinct.  Decluttering at the Speed of Life does not address these latter two things; only decluttering.  There are a couple areas where this causes a slight difficulty for me.

For instance, when Dana talks about containers setting limits on things…I understand the underlying point, but if the area isn’t organized already; I don’t know how to determine what size containers are appropriate for what.  This isn’t Dana’s fault, obviously, but it is an example of the book’s limitations.

Overall, though, I found this to be very refreshing.  It was encouraging and without condemnation.  Like Hello Mornings, the refrain is to simply get started, and move toward better, not to worry about the past or perfection.  Full of grace, but without much room for excuses.

Decluttering is, like mornings, something that has been difficult for me due to health, but this has given me hope, where other resources have been discouraging or overwhelming.  (I run out of the physical stamina to do simple things like carrying things back to where they go, so burning out was inevitable with “big projects.”)  Not only is her method small-but-scalable — something I desperately need in this season; the section near the end about helping people declutter gave me some very specific insights into concrete ways others can help.  (This is also something I’ve been dragging my feet on, because I didn’t know how to incorporate help with this particular task.)

I actually was reading this book while monitoring a sick baby, and got so inspired I emptied almost an entire shelf of stuff to get rid of, within 15 minutes of reading the book.  I obviously wasn’t in a position for a whole “project” at that point, but was still able to make visible progress.  That’s the point.

If you’re struggling with clutter, I’d encourage you to read this book.  Much of Dana’s method sounds counter-intuitive at first, but makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about it.  It will shift your thinking about clutter and help you believe there’s light at the end of the tunnel.  Decluttering at the Speed of Life comes out on February 27, but you can pre-order it now.

Decluttering at the Speed of Life {review} is a post from: Titus 2 Homemaker

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