The Habit of Organizing with Dana White

Jessica Honegger [00:00:04] Hey, there. Welcome to Going Scared. I'm Jessica Honegger, founder of the world changing brand Noonday Collection, and I am so glad to have you here for today's conversation. Our Going Scared community gathers here every week for direct and honest conversations that help you to live a life of courage by leaving comfort and going scared. All right, today's episode is really about courage. We're going to talk about stuff. We're going to talk about the habit of organizing our stuff and how you feel about that might be a little bit triggering. You might think I'm not doing enough. Maybe you have a perfectly coifed home, and you never lose your keys, and you always know where your phone is. But you might be thinking about your shoes and how it's time for you to go through your shoes. Maybe you have dishes piled in the sink and you're this high achieving person outside your home, but you walk in the door, and you feel like I'm not enough. Wherever you are on the spectrum, today's episode with Dana White is for you. Dana is behind the wild, popular website "A Slob Becomes Clean". She has got a podcast, books, courses, a blog, videos, and she is the most approachable person to talk to you about the habit of home organization. This is not a Marie Kondo conversation. This truly is. Let's start with the very basics. Let's have a conversation that's filled with grace, and let's talk about the habit of our home keeping. I am a little nervous to talk to you because my mom's always called me a hamster. She goes, You're just a hamster. You leave little droppings everywhere you go.

Dana White [00:02:07] OK, so my story, though, is that this is me like, I am not the person who all this stuff comes easily to like my whole story is that I was like, what is wrong with me? Why can I not do this thing that other people seem to do without even having to think about it? And I wanted to be a writer, and my house was keeping me from doing that because my house? Yes.

Jessica Honegger [00:02:29] So I'm into this because that's the vibe that I got and why I wanted to have you on. Because you're no Marie Kondo.

Dana White [00:02:35] No, I'm not at all.

Jessica Honegger [00:02:37] And I mean, I don't need a Type-A person to tell me as a Type B in my home person how to make things work.

Dana White [00:02:45] No, I mean, that's exactly it. I had tried methods; I had tried things and I would fail every single time. I was not able to do this creative project, so I was a theater arts teacher. You know, like people who knew me as the person who directed plays were always like, Wait, your house is a disaster? because like you just said, I was very driven. I expected things to be done a certain way and I made sure they happened, you know, so like, that was my personality. But then I became a stay-at-home mom, and I had always assumed my entire life that once I was a stay-at-home mom and that was my focus. Like once that's something that I actually am putting effort into, well, then it won't be hard anymore, right? Even though I'd been messy from the time I was born, and then that didn't happen. In fact, it got worse. And I now know, OK, most people who even have been organized their whole life, once they have kids, then that makes it harder. But I was just like, at that point, it finally hit me. Oh, wait, there's something wrong with me. Like, like, this is not just a Oh, I mean, it was keeping me from doing what I wanted to do. It was keeping me from that. And so, when I realized what blogs were back in the olden days of 2008, you know, I knew that I wanted to start one because I had wanted to be a writer. But my house was such a disaster that I was like, no, I got to get that under control first. Even though I'd been trying my entire life, I couldn't do it. And now I had this other additional reason that I wanted to get this under control, you know, besides all the good reasons of doing it for my family and all that, you know that. But I couldn't get it under control and so ended up being my compromise where I said, OK, I am going to write about that. Meanwhile, I'll get to learn about blogging. But in the beginning, I mean, I didn't use my real name. I used a fake name. I made up a new email address. I didn't tell my husband what I was doing. I didn't tell anybody because I was so embarrassed, like, OK, yeah, this is my deep, dark secret. This is the thing I've always hidden from people. Never hid it from my husband because, you know, you can't really hide that from the people who live in your house. It's a little hard, right? So, I started this. And here we are in 2022. I'm not anonymous anymore, and I'm still writing about it. [00:04:54] I had thought I would write about it for a few months. Get my house under control, figure it all out. And then I would start writing about things that I actually felt competent to write about, you know? Well, it turned out that for the main thing was, I realized I was not the only person out there who felt that way, and I had always felt like I'm the only one. This is easy for everyone else. It's just me who can't seem to figure this thing out. That should be easy. But also, you know, like you just said you needed to hear it, or I don't know what your situation is, and I want to make assumptions, but there are a lot of people who struggle the way that I did, who need to hear it from someone who actually gets that this is a legitimate struggle, that this is not it's not a motivation issue. You know, it's I mean, the thing that would hurt my feelings more than anything is when people would say things like, I guess they just want to live that way. [52.8s] And I'm like, no, no, I don't want to not be able to find things. I don't want to want to cry when it's time to cook dinner because I never did the dishes from last night and now there's nothing for me to cook on, you know? I mean, like, I didn't want to live that way. And yeah, and I would feel like I was cleaning all the time and I just never made any impact. And so over time, I finally realized, oh, this was the thing that God had me to write about from the beginning. I just had to go through a lot before I actually was willing to accept that this was the thing that he had for me to write about, you know, because I would never have chosen to write about this. But there's so much joy because I get to just be completely honest. You know, I don't have to have it all together.

Jessica Honegger [00:06:29] So, yeah, I mean, that's so refreshing. OK, so tell us the steps then that you took because this episode, the series is all about habits and habits are basically effortless. So, once you begin a few little tips and tricks and start incorporating those into your life, they become second hand, you know, putting my keys in the same place every day. I don't do that, but if I if that would be my one thing that I would start doing to be organized. Well, I would save so much time.

Dana White [00:07:00] OK, so here's where I always feel like I come at things from a way where people are like, oh, that's not the direction I was wanting to go. I'm just going to say that a big thing for me was to finally accept that some of these things are never going to be effortless for me.

Jessica Honegger [00:07:19] Like, OK, okay,

Dana White [00:07:21] because I assumed, like, like you, you know, are saying that there are so many habits in my life where I don't realize I'm doing it because I've been doing it this way for so long. [00:07:32] But some of these things, I had to look at it in a different way, and I call them pre-made decisions. I've made these decisions and I've made them because I have based it in fact of, I have experienced the power of doing this every single day, and I have experienced the really bad stuff that happens when I don't do it every single day. And so, I have made the decision now. I am going to do this thing every single day and taking away the decision of it is very impactful because I don't have to think. I don't have to; I don't get to have the conversation with myself where I try to justify putting it off to tomorrow. It's a pre-made decision. [42.1s] I've made that decision and yet I never wake up in the morning and go, I don't remember cleaning the kitchen last night. What happened last? But as long as I thought that I was going to get to that point, I would get really frustrated. And so,

Jessica Honegger [00:08:31] OK, I like this.

Dana White [00:08:33] Yeah, and so as far as what I did from the beginning, honestly, I started with the dishes because I knew that every time, I tried to clean my house, I would start in the kitchen, and I would be making up for having gotten so behind that it would take me a couple of hours to get my kitchen clean. And then I never got to the rest of the house, and so I never really made traction. So, I was like, if I could figure out how these other people in the world, like, never have a messy kitchen when I randomly knock on their door on a Tuesday afternoon, I'm like, I need to do this, OK?

Jessica Honegger [00:09:05] I don't know that many of those out there. Not on a Tuesday afternoon. Maybe on a Wednesday night when you said, hey, I'm going to stop by.

Dana White [00:09:14] So I was just like, it doesn't seem to be a struggle for them, and it is a struggle for me. So, I'm like, I'm just going to figure this out. I'm just going to I'm just going to do my dishes every day. And I thought that here's the thing I had always thought because I am good at projects like I, I like to write books. I like to direct plays. I like to do these big project things that have like a planning stage and an implementation and then an evaluation. And I especially like it when there's applause, you know? I mean, like, I love projects, I feel successful at those, and I had always looked at my house and said, OK, well, then I need to tackle my house the same way. And therefore, it had never made sense to me to do these, you know, maintenance tasks every day when my house was a total disaster. It's like, what? What difference is it going to make for me to do the dishes every day when the whole house is a complete, you know, disaster zone? [00:10:07] But because I was so desperate, I mean, I really was starting from such a point of like, I don't get this. I'm I don't know what to do. I'm just going to do the dishes. That's the last thing I could come up with that I was hoping maybe I could not fail at that, you know. Doing the dishes every day changed my house like completely changed. The maintenance was where it was at. That was the thing. That was the reason that all my big project cleans had never actually really had an impact because I would clean and clean and clean and clean exhaust myself, sit back and go, oh, I love it like this, not pay attention for a couple of days. And it was back to being a total disaster before [37.8s]

Jessica Honegger [00:10:45] you call that a cornerstone habit. And it's like the one habit that if you do that, it has this halo effect on other habits. So, for me, it's exercise. If I'm exercising, I'm going to drink more water and I'm going to be more conscious about what I'm eating. But if I'm not exercising, those other things tend to go out the door. So, for you, it's like, let's start with a kitchen, and that was like your place of refuge. And then after the kitchen? Well, tell me how the kitchen went. How did you conquer the kitchen?

Dana White [00:11:14] So I go even narrower than the kitchen. I say the dishes, meaning like, literally, I am going to run my dishwasher every single night, which for those who are freaking out, actually takes a whole lot less water than handwashing. But anyway, so if you run your dishwasher every single night, if I will do that, I can keep my kitchen from getting out of control and having this like what is the actual most basic thing that has to be done or everything else grinds to a halt? That's it. It's doing the dishes. Even if I don't get to the rest of the kitchen now, generally if I do the dishes, I get to the rest of the kitchen. But even if I don't, the dishes will keep it from getting out of control. And it gives me that thing because I tend to get off in a project. My brain starts going crazy and then I look around my house and I'm like, oh no, we're back to disaster and do the dishes, just do the dishes and having that thing to go back to.

Jessica Honegger [00:12:14] I love that. Well, and I love so you're saying you turn on your dishwasher every night, even if it's not full? Yes. OK, see, that's a cool, habitual thing, because then you're in this rhythm of doing the same thing every night and then you don't get stuck when you're like, kind of halfway there. And then some of the dishes, you're like stuffing things into the dishwasher because you should have turned it on the day before and exactly because.

Dana White [00:12:40] [00:12:40] OK, here I call it dishes math. All right. So, the one day's worth of dishes takes 15 to 20 minutes to do even handwashing. Like it's shocking, but really takes 15 20 minutes to do one day's worth of dishes, two days’ worth of dishes. It doesn't go by normal math. Like, I had always thought that it went by normal math. So, two days’ worth of dishes, though, is not 30 to 40 minutes, it's at least an hour because you can't fit it all in the dishwasher, you can't fit it all in one sink load and you're having to rearrange things and shift things around and do things. Three days’ worth of dishes is like the excavating the kitchen again, you know, so that's part of that pre-made decision is I know from experience, if I will do this, if I will run it every single night, I'm not going to get behind. [47.2s] I'm not going to. So that helps me go back to that pre-made decision. Does that make sense?

Jessica Honegger [00:13:34] Yep, yep. Yep, I how old are your kids now?

Dana White [00:13:37] They're old. My oldest is twenty.

Jessica Honegger [00:13:40] He just OK. OK, so they're all old.

Dana White [00:13:42] Well, so they were like four, three, five and seven when I started all this.

Jessica Honegger [00:13:46] OK, because my kids are doing the dishes now, everyone has a dish night. And that's been wonderful. It's the best. Oh, it's so great. And we don't do the laundry either. My kids do their own laundry and their own dishes, and they started that in the fifth grade. So, I have to tell you that's a game changer

Dana White [00:14:04] when they can do their own laundry. It's just like it kind of feels like going back to being newlyweds, you know where

Jessica Honegger [00:14:10] it's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, OK. So, we've conquered the kitchen, we conquered the dishes, we've at least conquered the dishes. What are some of these daily things? Because I know for me my I have just nice little neat piles everywhere. And so those piles can just add up. So, yeah, what's your strategy? And then like, I'm for sure, always looking for my car keys. For sure always looking for my phone. And I'm trying to think of other things that I'm looking for. But the list can go on and on.

Dana White [00:14:43] Well, there's two things with that. First of all, there's the daily habit of a five-minute pick up, meaning an actual five minutes. I'm not trying to trick myself into actually doing everything or actually doing 30 minutes’ worth. I'm saying I'm going to set the timer. I'm going to start in the most visible spaces of my home, and I'm going to pick things up and put them away for five minutes, especially when you involve your family in on that, then you know, if you have a family of five.

Jessica Honegger [00:15:11] That is amazing. Yeah.

Dana White [00:15:12] Yeah, it's 25 minutes’ worth of picking up going on in the house, done in five minutes. Now, it's not fun in the beginning, of course, because they're going to pretend like they don't know where anything is and somebody always has to poop, you know? But it's like, this is how we can maintain anything we've done. But the other part of that is decluttering. So, five minutes, the five-minute pickup start it today. Like, it's a great thing to start today. There's nothing to do first before you do that, but at the same time, it's made better and easier the more I've decluttered my home because then things actually have a place to go. They're not just kind of floating in these piles, they have a place to go. I have a place to put it away, and there's just simply less stuff in my house to get out of place.

Jessica Honegger [00:15:58] So, OK, jewelry and I, I get this question a lot. Well, let's face it, I have a lot of accessories. I have a lot of bags. And even today I actually did, I had a moment of inspiration. We just launched a new collection. And so, I'm always, you know, bringing in the new, bringing out the old, but I don't know what to do with the old. So, I have this Ziploc bag sitting on my desk right now filled with really beautiful pieces of jewelry. Noonday collection. But I don't wear them anymore, and I'm wearing the new stuff and so I don't know what to do. Like this Ziploc bag is going to weigh on me for months. What do I do?

Dana White [00:16:40] So what have you done with them in the past?

Jessica Honegger [00:16:42] OK, well, this is what I've done in the past. We bring it to the office, and everyone goes crazy and like at like everyone takes my clothes and my jewelry, but everyone's working remote still doggone it. Yeah. So, I think that is my obstacle. But I think what I can do is leave a note because different people come into the office at various times, but I think I can just put them in a basket and say, Free, grab it. Yeah, see, I mean, I just came up with a solution.

Dana White [00:17:11] Yeah. I mean, like sending an email today and saying, there's going to be a basket there. It's going to stay free. I really do mean it. You can take those things whenever you happen to come in. But let's talk about, I mean, you're doing the right thing because you're doing the one in one out, right? Like as new stuff comes in, old stuff has to go out. So, I have this thing I call the container concept, which is a way for me to make these otherwise difficult decisions that make my brain spin out, you know, because I mean, you have a unique situation in that you have a line of jewelry like jewelry is really important to you. And it's always going to be coming in and that is that deserves space in your home.

Jessica Honegger [00:17:55] It does.

Dana White [00:17:55] Yeah, more than other things. So, like for someone else, it might be different, but we all have a clutter threshold and that means there is an amount of stuff that you personally can keep under control easily. And I had to realize that I have a very low clutter threshold. It doesn't mean that I don't like a lot of stuff. It means I can't handle a lot of stuff.

Jessica Honegger [00:18:16] It gets over, it feels overwhelming.

Dana White [00:18:19] Exactly. So, my mom, you know, grew up on a farm 30 minutes from town, and she always had this mentality that you should go ahead and get anything you might need because you never know when you're going to need it. You won't want to run the town and all that, even though we lived in town, you know, and I inherited this belief that I needed to have everything I could ever need for the future. But I don't have the ability to keep all that under control the way that she has the ability to keep it under control. And so, as I decluttered, I realized, OK, this is the amount of stuff I can handle like I can. I can do this. But if I if my house starts to feel out of control and just kind of overwhelming to me, I'm like, oh, wait, I have brought more stuff into my house, and I haven't gotten things out.

Jessica Honegger [00:19:02] It's like you. It's like a signal. It's like I need some decluttering time. And by the way, I think I can sometimes think, oh, decluttering, that's for we do a big family declutter in December before Christmas because we know we're going to be getting new things. And so, and my kids have, you know, they get off school and they know like, this is your this is your day and it's happening, and you don't get to do anything until you done this. But of course, the clutter adds up even throughout the year. And so, I think it's been helpful for me to just also the same approach with like a five-minute pick up every day to do a 20-minute weekend declutter, you know, like not saving it for when you're literally going to have to spend eight hours and need a truck, you know for that after the fact.

Jessica Honegger [00:19:49] Well, and that that is my that's what I had to do because I had so much clutter in my house that I, I had to be able to tackle it in a way that wasn't going to require an entire day or an entire weekend because nobody wants to spend their day or their weekend actually doing this when the day or the weekend comes. And so, then I would put it off longer. It would get worse. I would think, Oh, well, then I'd even more time. [00:20:13] So what I do in my declutter, the very simple version of it is I pull one item out at a time, and I make a final decision about that item, and I act on that decision. So, it either goes in the trash or at the recycling bin or the donate box, or it goes to its actual home, which I determine through my five-step decluttering process. But pulling out one item at a time, making a decision on it and acting on that decision means that I can make a space better. I can declutter in five minutes. It's not going to be done, but it's going to be better than it was before. And having that shift in my goal, I'm making this space better actually freed me to make real true decluttering progress in my house where I had never made it before. When I had, you know, looked for this magical time when I was going to really get in there and get it all done. [50.8s]

Jessica Honegger [00:21:04] [00:21:04] Right like that perfectionist [0.5s] mentally right.

Dana White [00:21:07] Because I would pull everything out and then I would get overwhelmed, and I would shut down.

Jessica Honegger [00:21:11] And then it's all out there.

Dana White [00:21:12] Yes, terrible. And so, it's like, I don't want to do that again.

Jessica Honegger [00:21:15] Yeah. Yes. OK, give us your five steps. And in particular, can we just give a shout out that cleaning out kid’s clothes that are growing, which basically is until they go off to college, it feels like a full-time job to me. Yes. Especially boys. Amelie, my daughter, she's actually. That's been nice. She's pretty much where she's going to be. So, I'm like, oh yes, I will spend more money on those jeans for you because you're going to have them two years from now. Whereas my boys are still just, oh, who knows where they're going to end up? I mean, at this rate, they're going to just be giants. I don't know how they're going to. They share a room and they each have a twin bed. I don't know how they're going to stay on it, but I just feel like it's just jaw dropping to me when I'm like, wait a minute, I just got you that like four months ago.

Dana White [00:22:03] And it seems to happen overnight, like it literally seems to be like, wait a minute, your pants are too short today. And they were fine yesterday were fine yesterday.

Jessica Honegger [00:22:12] So tell us about your how can you apply your five-step decluttering process to children's clothes? Because that is a headache.

Dana White [00:22:19] [00:22:19] So the five steps are first of all, the first step is trash meaning like, that's the thing I do. I look for trash because there's no emotions involved. There are no decisions to make, and it gets me going, and it makes an immediate, visible impact on the space. [13.6s] With clothing what is trash? Trash is torn stuff, stained things, you know, things that are like, why did we just go ahead and set this, you know, put this back in the drawer instead of actually throwing it in the trash? I don't know, probably because they put it on, realized it was damaged and threw it on the floor and then, you know, sent it through the laundry again or whatever. You know, it's that let's get that stuff out of there. So now the overall volume of stuff is reduced. You know, so it's a little bit less overwhelming, and I am working on this this process. [00:23:07] So the second one is easy stuff. So, like anything that which in clothing, that's a little different, you know, but that's my I apply this to everything that I do. Anything that has an established home somewhere else that isn't there for whatever ever reason. [12.1s] Well, it might be that, oh, we have a separate space where we keep our winter coats or we have, you know, a tub where we keep our out-of-season clothes. And for some reason, these things are mixed into this space right now. OK, so I'm going to go ahead and take those things out so that I am reducing the overall volume because I'm going to have to make some tough decisions at some point. But at this point, I have made this space better without making any decisions whatsoever, you know? And so therefore, it's less overwhelming the smaller it gets, the amount of stuff. [00:23:49] So then I go with anything that's just a donation, meaning I don't need to ask myself questions. I don't need to analyze anything. I'm just going to give myself permission to pull out anything that I'm like, I don't like this. [11.9s] OK? And then we work on through, you know, the five-step process is a little bit difficult with clothes because that to decluttering questions deal with, you know, if I needed this, where would I look for it first? Well, usually that's going to be in the closet, you know, that kind of thing. [00:24:16] But the fifth step, the final step is the one that is really powerful with clothing and that is embracing the reality of the space that you have. And that's the container concept. So, containers are not for putting things in. They're to serve as limits like they, which I did not know that, but they are meant to be a boundary. OK. And so, if I have more than will fit in this boundary, it's never going to be under control because it's just it just isn't going to fit. [27.4s] So every space in your home, every closet, every drawer is a container. And so, you know, when it comes to socks, we say, OK, this is the space that we have for socks. We have sock drawer. And if there's more socks, then we'll fit in here. Then they're going to be spilling out into other drawers. They're going to be on the floor, they're going to be around whatever. So, I am going to purge down and take out my least favorites until the sock drawer closes. And when you look at it that way, you don't have to evaluate each item for, oh, maybe if I was desperate or, well, what's the weather going to be like on this? Or what if I went on a trip, but I wasn't going to be able to do laundry? And what if I did need to have this many? And then you start doing all this math on how, you know, laundry day vs. blah blah, whatever. And instead, just saying, what's the size of the space that I have? I'm going to remove anything that's my least favorite until it fits. And then at that point that determines, you know, it needs to fit in a way where I can actually get to it right? So, it's not shoved in there. But that helps me, and it frees me from all of those value decisions because that can be a real issue with clothing, right? It's like, oh, I paid money for this, whatever. But if you embrace this space that you have and your favorite ones are in there first, it just naturally sorts out what's not as favorite, what's not as important.

Jessica Honegger [00:26:05] That's good. I like this. Well, Dana, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Where can we find you to get more tips and tricks?

Dana White [00:26:15] So the name of my website that I named back when it was all secret is A Slob Comes Clean, aslobcomesclean.com has links to my podcasts and my YouTube channel and all the places my books places where I am online. All of that.

Jessica Honegger [00:26:29] I mean, at least you came up with a really great name back in the day. I mean, that's just a proud thing. You just got to forever be proud about that.

Dana White [00:26:37] I mean, honestly, it is pretty catchy, right?

Jessica Honegger [00:26:39] It's so catchy. It's the best. Well, I love it, and I think we're all going to commit to doing our dishes. Maybe people are probably even listening to this while doing their dishes. It's not my dish tonight. Thank you very much. If you have kids that are old enough to wipe their own butts, then get them to start cleaning the dishes, people. OK, let me tell you another.

Dana White [00:27:03] I will tell you if you're like, oh, well, I already have the dishes down. [00:27:07] Basically, what I did was I said, what drives me craziest? I'm going to solve that problem today, and then I'm going to solve it again tomorrow before it turns into a problem again. And then I'm going to solve it again the next day and the next day. And after seven days, you generally figure out what works like, what works for you and your family to make it actually into a routine for your home. [20.0s]

Jessica Honegger [00:27:28] Hmm. So good. And I just love the five minute declutter I'm going to. It's going to come with a lot of attitude in my house. But oh good lord. But you know what? It's worth it. Oh my gosh, especially the shoes, the shoes and the backpacks and the piles that happen. I'm just like, Get out of my way. We're going to come check you out. Habit of dish washing. We're committing to it. Thank you so much.

Dana White [00:27:51] Thanks for having me on.

Jessica Honegger [00:28:01] For you, maybe you regularly do your dishes, and your dishes are not a problem, but maybe your area around your sink is always a hot mess. Maybe start there. Maybe your area around your sink is always perfectly organized and looks incredible, but your car could use a clean out, whatever it is. Let's be inspired by today's episode and just take that one thing. It's that cornerstone habit that will help you feel empowered will help you feel like I am an organized person. I can do this and go and do it. Today's music is by Ellie Holcomb, and I'm Jessica Honegger. Until next time, let's take each other by the hand and keep going scared.