Joined in 2023 
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Used properly, containers are limits. They keep clutter from spreading. They keep stuff under proper control by preventing and limiting the expansion of that stuff. But how? And then I became a stay-at-home mom. As we adjusted to living on a single income, I discovered garage sales and fell head over heels in love with them. I’d been to garage sales before, but I became obsessed. I loved having a way to go shopping for pennies, since pennies were all we could afford to spend on nonnecessities.
And I’m realizing I have lots and lots of things to pass on to my children. However, they’re all boys, not sentimental in the least, and they don’t care about any of it… absolutely none of it! None of my mother's keepsakes, none of their baby books, none of the scrapbooks, none of the pictures of people they never saw before, nor ever will meet because they’re all passed from this world. She explains the container concept, for instance, with an overflowing container of scarves. White has you fill the container with your favorite scarves first. Those that don't fit are put in your donation pile. I tried this on my overflowing coffee mug shelf and managed to get rid of only two mugs, but it's a start!
Decluttering the Kitchen
When I did that, a weight lifted off my home as well. As things left, life was easier, and my home functioned better than it had after any of my attempts at organizing, just because there was less. Eventually, I understood that is what decluttering actually is: achieving less. The main thing I like about this book is that White doesn't make me feel guilty about how little I achieve. She is very encouraging about any effort. "Decluttering is stuff you don't need leaving your house. . . . If five things leave or five hundred things leave, You've succeeded." And I think for me, her method makes a lot of sense. Fill the container. Start with the easy and visible stuff. Every object doesn’t need to be defended to stay, it just has to fit the container without taking away from the space needed, either for activities or other stuff.
Juggling a full-time job, a household and this blog, I’ve definitely found Dana’s ‘little bit at a time’ approach to work better for me. So How Do You Declutter at the Speed of Life?Living now means my kids can easily get dressed for school because the only things in their drawers and closets are clothes that fit. Not clothes they outgrew two years ago or clothes they’ll grow into someday.
Are you completely overwhelmed in your home? Have you tried again and again (and again) to understand why keeping it under control is so ridiculously hard for you? So you watch your friends and wonder how in the world they're NOT stressed out and confused like you are? If y’all have been around here a while, you know that my not-what-the-pros-do strategies are all based on making progress. Progress in the face of distractions. Progress I can see. Progress that makes me feel like my effort was worth my time. Progress that inspires me to keep working. Progress that doesn’t leave any loose ends or bigger messes to deal with later. For the last few years, I've been on a mission that I call 'Simplify'. This generic term covers all aspects of my life, but one of the primary ways has been a decluttering of my living space. I came across this title in my Prime Free reading options this month and I thought I'd see if there was more I could be doing or do it more efficiently in my ongoing pursuit of simplication through decluttering.Step 5: Make it Fit (Realize that your house is a container and your dressers, storage, closet, bookshelf, etc. are all containers too. You can only keep what fits in the container and anything extra needs to go. So put your favorite books on the bookshelf first and any extras go, for instance.)
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