Welcome to empowering seniors.

I'm your host, Katherine Ambrose.

Today we're going to talk about one of the most popular subjects ever for this particular program.

And that's decluttering.

We have really a celebrity author with us today, Dana K white, who wrote decluttering at the Speed of Life.

It's a Wall Street bestseller, and she's just about ready to hit 500,000 copies.

Welcome, Dana.

Thanks for having me on.

This is really fun.

Thank you for coming to Kansas to be on our show and talk to our viewers.

We are so thrilled to have you.

I've had your book forever, so don't get away without autographing.

I will definitely do that.

Okay.

Yeah.

So let's find out a little bit about what puts you on this journey.

How many books have you written?

So I've written four books.

I actually am on this particular journey because I wanted to be a writer.

That was my life goal.

I had young kids, and I thought, that is a creative outlet.

That's something I want to do.

But I didn't know how to make it happen.

And then in 2008, I learned about blogs and I wanted to have one.

But I did not start a blog because my house was a complete disaster.

It had always been a disaster, but I thought, you know what, I need to get this figured out before I start writing.

And then I had the idea to start a temporary practice anonymous blog about getting my house under control, and I thought, well, that'll be a way for me to learn about blogging.

I'll get my house perfect, right?

I'll take a couple months and then I will start writing about other things.

And instead it is now, what, 16 years later since I started in 2009 and this is the thing that I write books about.

Yeah.

That's incredible.

So I do lots of topics that seniors are interested in, and top topics are always decluttering, scams, dementia.

decluttering is huge because everyone has guilt and shame, whether they have clutter or not.

Everybody thinks they do, right?

Everybody thinks they have too much stuff hidden somewhere.

And then you have people that are have just complete disorganization and beyond.

Right.

So where I was that is incredible that you just came accidentally right into success.

And well, I mean, it took a long time.

And in the beginning when I was writing on the blog, I was not teaching anyone anything.

I was just figuring it out and writing about what I was doing in my home and trying to understand what it was that I'd been doing wrong in the past and what I needed to do differently.

And so as I started writing and people were reading it, even though I was not using my real name at the time, they would say, teach us what you're doing.

And I would say, why would you want to learn from me?

Right?

Like, this doesn't make any sense.

Why would I teach this when this is my struggle?

And after about two and a half years of figuring it out and getting to a place where I was like, okay, I understand this now.

I finally gave in and said, yes, I will teach it.

And I realized there was value in me teaching decluttering from the perspective of someone to whom this does not come naturally, because the the dirty little secret about most organizing advice is that it's written by organized people, right?

And their brains worked very differently from my brain.

As someone who held onto all of my stuff, who saw value in everything.

So someone would say, well, that's not valuable.

And I could give you all the reasons why it was valuable, why I might use it one day.

And so I couldn't use those methods that other people would teach, like ask yourself if you'll ever use it.

Ask yourself how you feel about it.

Well, I'm like, I can come up with a way to use anything.

And I love it.

That's why I brought it into my house.

And yet my house is out of control.

And so I came up with ways for myself to declutter that are non-emotional step by step.

I needed the how not just the telling me to declutter.

I knew I needed to declutter right?

I needed to know how to declutter.

And so that's what I'm able to teach.

And much to my surprise.

My process works for everyone.

I mean, like it because it's a real process, right?

Like it's step by step go through these things and you will change your space so you have a real how process.

But I'm guessing you have a real why process.

Why am I like this?

And how can I change my thinking right?

My behavior.

So like we talked about the book, right?

I think I'm supposed to pick it up right and show it, but it the book is my entire process as far as the mindset shifts that I had to make, which I learned the hard way, which my goal is to help other people learn it more quickly than I learned it.

So, for example, I always thought I needed to get organized because that was the natural solution, right?

When I would look at my house, I would think if I was just organized, it wouldn't be like that.

This is what I need to be doing.

Well, I.

Didn't need to get organized.

And that's actually one of the things that I teach is take that out of the equation and just declutter.

Like, get organizing a way from your goal.

Because when you have the goal to get organized, that is problem solving, right?

It's thinking through how is this going to work from now?

And so forever in my home.

And, you know, at some point I'm going to be in a different situation.

Is that going to still work?

And so our minds start to stand out on that, when in reality, what I needed to do first was just get stuff out that didn't need to be there.

And so that mindset shift is just one example of the way I change my thinking now I do, I know that that this idea of why like, why am I this way feels like the solution.

And yet in reality, you can do a lot of decluttering before you ever have to ask yourself that question.

And by doing the decluttering, it will actually help you understand why this has been a struggle, right?

Like the decluttering itself will teach you that.

That's amazing.

I think that's profound, actually, And it's counterintuitive to.

Yes.

Don't you think that most things are counterintuitive?

Yes.

So like the first step of my process is to look for the trash.

Right.

And so many people will say, I don't have any trash.

I would have said I didn't have any trash.

Right.

But even if you don't have trash, which spoiler you do, you have trash.

Everybody has trash, right?

Like there always is trash.

But even if you are the one who doesn't have trash, looking for the trash as a first step does more than just help you get rid of the trash, right?

Like it helps you to.

First of all, you have something to do, right?

Like you have a very specific thing to do.

Look for the trash.

And when I say trash, I mean non-emotional obvious to you.

You don't have to debate whether it's trash.

It's just I'm looking to see if there's any trash in the space, because before you look for trash, it is a mass of stuff.

Yeah.

And you know that there are emotional things in there.

You know that there are things that are, related to a past phase of your life or a hard decision that you're going to have to make or something.

And so it feels like everything in that pile or that cabinet or that closet or that room is emotional, when in reality it's not all emotional, right?

Like there have been things that have collected there in addition to the emotional things.

And so by saying, I'm just going to look for the non-emotional obvious trash, then you start to look at individual items where before you're just thinking, oh my goodness, it's a lot of stuff and I'm scared to look.

Now I'm just looking for the trash.

But my brain is starting to adjust to what is in this space, which then helps me get ready to move on through the process and any trash that I throw away makes this space better than it was when I started.

And all I had to do was just throw it in the trash or the recycling.

And how does that make you feel when you're just getting started in that process?

When you start putting some things in the garbage, the visual progress is key, right?

Like if you have the ability, if you have a smartphone and you can snap a picture, start throwing away trash and then take a picture, at any point you will see that the space is better.

And being able to flip back and forth between those two pictures is incredibly powerful.

To help you feel like, oh, I can actually do this.

Like it was worth the five minutes I just spent throwing away trash, or the two minutes I spent throwing away trash.

And when you start to see that visual progress, it builds that momentum that we're all craving, right?

For for decluttering.

Yeah, that's so cool.

I think that's such a great idea.

Take a picture of, let's say, the mess, because sometimes I've noticed that people can see it better in a photo than they can see it in real life.

Then and then I'm sure, you know, as a realtor that we see different things than we thought our house looked like.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, yes, I've done that in my own home.

Taken a picture after and thought, oh, look what I did.

Maybe even send it to a friend.

Look.

That's right, that's right.

Well, and I always say, okay, take your goal from me, I'm going to get this space decluttered to I'm going to make this space better.

Right.

If I make my goal better there is literally no way to fail.

Love that.

If I do even one thing and once your space starts feeling better, what does that do for your mind?

Well, I think it takes some time, right?

Because you have to adjust to it.

So one of the key strategies for myself that I teach other people is to start invisible spaces, right?

Like don't start in the obscure back closet in the guest room that nobody ever goes in.

Right?

Like our tendency is to think that's where I should start decluttering.

That's where all the really tough stuff has been shoved for years.

Instead, start in your entryway.

Start in your kitchen.

Start in your living space.

Because what happens is you experience the power of having decluttered.

You experience that it's easier to cook in a kitchen that's been decluttered because you don't have to move things.

You don't have to shift around in the cabinet in order to get to what you need.

Instead, you can just find what you need and do the thing you can move around in your living space easier.

You can open the front door without being embarrassed, right?

Like those visible spaces.

Living there is what's going to change you as you start to see it's easier to live in my house with less stuff in it, and I was just about ready to ask you that.

Could it be that most of us just have way more stuff than what we even realize?

It's a stuff problem.

We just have too much.

Yes, it absolutely is.

And you kind of alluded that everything you bring in is attached to an idea or a dream that you had, and that's why it's hard to let go.

Right.

And what I had to realize was that I have a clutter threshold, right?

My mother lived on a farm in Oklahoma, and growing up, and she lived 30 minutes from town.

And so her mentality was that you can't run out and get what you need, and so you need to already have it.

Right.

Like that was her mindset, which is completely valid for the way that she grew up.

And it's valid for her clutter threshold, meaning she can have a lot of stuff and keep it under control.

I inherited this mindset that you need to have everything you could ever need for any situation.

So I would bring things into my house, especially if they were on sale.

Especially if somebody was giving it away, right?

Like I would bring it into my home.

And yet I couldn't handle the amount of stuff that she could handle.

So your clutter threshold is not what you prefer.

It's literally what can you personally keep under control?

Easily.

Right.

And so as I started to declutter my home, I had always been frustrated that my house was constantly getting out of control.

Right?

And the more I decluttered, I looked around one day and thought, oh, I can keep my house under control now.

Like it's not a huge struggle the way that it had always been for me.

And so realizing you have a clutter threshold is realizing that if your house feels difficult for you to keep under control, it.

I hate to say it, but it's because you have too much stuff.

Sure.

Right.

And so if you will have less stuff, you'll get closer and closer to your clutter threshold.

And the the benefits of hitting your clutter threshold, of letting go of things just for the sake of knowing that it's going to be easier to keep my house under control, then builds upon itself and lets you let go of things that otherwise you would have kept.

I'm like, I would keep this thing if I was just keeping it because I liked it.

But when I'm looking at my house is too hard for me to keep under control, then I say I'm willing to let go of it for the sake of it being easier to live here.

Maybe for the sake of peace, the sake of ease, sake, sake of just feeling better.

So think of it.

Maybe less of letting go, but what you're really doing is you're creating space in your life, right?

So what are some of your best tips for letting go?

Well, so you were talking about this space.

I am a really big fan of defining the room.

Right.

Like give it a name and a purpose and think through what is it that I do in this space, right.

So the best example would be your living room is for living, right?

Like you're going to be there with your family.

You're going to sit down with guests, you're going to relax after Thanksgiving dinner, whatever you are in this space.

And its purpose is living and thinking of it that way, then changes what can be in that space.

So I can only have in this living space something that is contributing to living in this space.

Okay, here's what I mean.

It can't be a storage space, right?

And so many times that the thought of I don't have enough space for things.

And so I'm, I've got an empty corner over here, I'm going to stack some containers over here.

And yet in reality, that makes it harder for me to live in this space, because if I'm going to invite someone over, I'm going to have to move those containers.

Well, then knowing I'm going to have to move those containers means I don't have the energy to do that.

And so I'm just not going to invite them over.

Well, then it's defeating the purpose of this space right?

If I'm using my couch as storage, then I can't actually relax at the end of the day to watch the show.

Right?

You know?

Right.

I mean, I can't I can't watch my show and relax and enjoy myself because there's stuff taking up the space that I need to actually do, the thing that I need to do.

And you mentioned the very beginning organization is different than decluttering.

And so let's talk about containers and let's talk about like, oh, I don't know, cardboard boxes, full spiders okay.

If you're saving cardboard boxes yuck.

Yeah.

It's they're full of spiders and bugs.

Yeah.

Well let's talk about the container concept.

So this is I would say, well, many people would say this is the concept that I teach.

That is the communication problem between naturally organized people and people like me who are the opposite of naturally organized.

Right.

That would be me too.

Right?

Okay.

It generally goes for your creative type personalities, right?

Is we don't see limits.

Well, I was working at my house one day and I was talking to myself, which has paid off because I have a podcast and all that.

Right?

So I was talking out loud as I was working, and I was saying the word container, and I said container, and I was like, the word container is within the word container.

And it hit me that I had been thinking of containers incorrectly.

I had been using containers incorrectly.

Okay.

Meaning I thought containers were for putting things in, right?

I knew organized people loved containers.

They would go to the Container Store.

They would go to the Dollar Tree, they would go wherever, and they'd buy all these plastic things, bring them home.

And their space looked great.

And my space, no matter how many containers I bought, it did not ever look the way that I wanted it to look at.

So I didn't understand the difference.

And when I realized that a containers purpose is not for putting things in, it is actually meant to serve as a limit.

The way that firefighters work to contain a fire, right?

Like they create a boundary.

And as long as they can keep the fire inside that boundary, they can keep it under control.

If it goes outside the boundary, that's when the bad things happen.

Right?

And so I realized a container containers purpose is not to hold things.

It's to serve as a limit, as a boundary.

And so then I started seeing every space in my home as a limit.

And that sounds like it could be confining.

But instead it was very freeing because I said, I love all my cookbooks, but this shelf that I'm putting them on is the boundary.

It's a natural boundary.

It doesn't change because I want to keep more cookbooks.

So I don't have to say, do I love this cookbook?

Will I ever cook something from this cookbook?

I can spin out on that, right?

And it takes forever.

I'll be thinking about it forever, and I'll keep everything if I'm asking those questions.

But if I say I'm going to put my favorite cookbooks on the shelf first, and then when it's full, that's all the cookbooks I can keep something happens in my brain to help me be willing to let go of the ones that don't fit.

Because I'm not saying it's not a good cookbook.

I'm saying the facts are the facts, and the size of my cookbook shel and it doesn't fit.

I would keep it.

I see its value, but the facts are that it doesn't fit.

And so when you think of containers as limit, and when you realize that every space your sock drawer is a container, your closet rod is a container that determine how many of something you can keep and your house stay under control.

It really changes everything about how you see your home and your stuff.

And so if you are in your 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, you've had the opportunity to collect for many, many decades.

So how do you see empowering seniors to let things go?

And what are their kids thinking when they keep too much stuff?

Yeah, well, as far as for seniors, we talked about clutter threshold, your clutter threshold does change with different phases of life, right?

With one of the things I see a lot when I'm working with, people in that age range is the things that they were once able to handle as far as I could climb up on this ladder and put this thing in this obscure place, I could go all the way down to the basement six times a day.

That is not necessarily the case anymore.

And so part of accepting your clutter clutter threshold is accepting their reality of, I'm not going to go to the basement six times a day.

I may not want to go ever.

You know what I mean.

Like this is my reality.

And so that means that the things I'm going to use, I deserve a real space in the places that I can easily access.

Well when I go to put them there, if there's something else there, I have to decide, does this thing deserve space more than the thing that's in this area?

And if it does, then that thing that doesn't deserve space as much needs to go.

And so we start to really think through think through that.

And I think that is the key is to kind of rethink your own space first.

And it will start to change your idea of what deserves space in your home.

And the more you can do that for yourself, first, then that's going to help in those relationships with your kids, right?

Like, I am not one to say nobody's going to want your stuff.

I, I find that hurtful, right?

And I also know that that's not necessarily the case right now.

My daughter is 19, and we went to a garage sale last weekend, and she got so excited about a crocheted Afghan.

Right.

Well, there was a time where people weren't excited, but they're excited again.

So we're not going to say there's this definite rule of get rid of your stuff.

Nobody cares what people do, right?

But the best way to get rid of your stuff is the way that you can actually do right.

Like it's the way if you have access to, a service that will pick it up.

Then that's the best way.

Ask your kids what they want, take some pictures, ask them what they want, and if they say they don't want it, believe them right?

Like and find that friends.

Find somebody who does release it out to the universe, to somebody like your daughter that would appreciate it.

And my I'm really passionate that the best way to connect things with people who really will appreciate it is by donating, right?

Like you finding a way to connect with the very perfect person.

Is not realistic.

True.

Right.

Like even for me, the things that I think are really cool, it's kind of obscure to find the people who would also appreciate them in the way that I do.

But if I donate it, then somebody is going to come across it and buy a thrift store.

And that's really what I meant, because you are so right, because people can have kind of a stalling technique of saying, yes, this is something that somebody will want, and trying to find that person on your own is nearly impossible.

And you're never going to be, sorry with what you get for something if you donate it.

Exactly.

So.

Well, and I'm really big too, on whatever it takes for you to get it out of your house.

Because another thing, too, is, is people wanting to sell things right.

And yet a lot of times it's, oh, this thing that my grandmother told me was going to be valuable one day and I, I don't, so I just don't feel like I can donate it because I need to sell it, but I have no idea how to sell it.

Right.

And therefore it just sits in the house.

So I say, okay, then pick one thing and go through the process of learning how to sell it.

You'll either figure out that you know, you know how to do it, and you can go ahead and sell these things that you want to sell or what usually ends up happening is you go through that process and you realize, I didn't get as much money as I thought I would for it, and it was a lot of work.

Yeah.

And so the money that I did get, let's say it was $60, which is a good price for, you know, some random thing if I got $60 for it, but I spent 15 hours working on it, then I now I have an actual realistic understanding and I'm willing to get rid of things.

The only thing that's not an option is for things to just sit in the house while I stress over them.

I don't even want this thing.

I don't like this thing.

I know it needs to be gone.

And yet I don't know what to do.

Right?

All right.

I know that's going to be really helpful.

So I just want to kind of wrap up with what is this?

Been this journey been like for you writing this book?

The other books that you've written, what have you gotten out of all of this?

Well, you know, I when I started, I thought I wanted my house to look like the houses in magazines.

That's what I thought was my goal.

Right?

Was I don't like my house being every surface covered in things.

Instead, I want, you know, the beautiful home.

And instead, what I realized was just getting the access out.

I had the things that I liked.

I had the couch I liked, I just couldn't really see it with all the clutter everywhere.

Right?

I had the coffee table I liked, I just couldn't use it well.

And what I have realized is that I just wanted my stuff to not hold me back anymore.

And writing books is the thing that I am able to do because my house doesn't hold me back anymore, right?

Like, it's not that I wanted to everybody to be jealous of my home.

I just didn't want my house to make me feel like I couldn't tackle creative projects and go do the things that I was really, really wanting in my heart to do.

And now my house doesn't hold me back anymore.

That's incredible, because I think that people's homes hold them back so often, and then what's the good of having all this stuff and hanging on to the house, hanging on to all the stuff?

If it's preventing you from having a life that makes you happy?

So, Dana, what is the one place where someone should start that will have the biggest impact starting their journey?

Well, I talked before about visible spaces.

I call this the visibility rule.

Go to your front door or wherever guests would enter your home and stand at the front door as if you are a guest and see what you see and start decluttering.

There.

Because what's going to happen is if you will declutter in that space every time you walk by it.

Right now, you might not really notice or register the mess that might be seen from your front door, but once it's gone, you will notice every time you walk by that it looks better and you're going to go, that looks okay, and it will increase and perpetuate your decluttering energy instead of decluttering somewhere else and then still being embarrassed to open the front door.

And then, feeling of what was the point of me decluttering, right?

So doing that is going to have the impact that will help perpetuate that decluttering energy and keep you going and build the momentum we all want.

That is fantastic.

David, thank you so much for coming here and sharing your wisdom.

We so appreciate it.

Thank you.

This has been so fun and thank you for watching.

We hope you enjoyed this episode.

If you have questions about this or any of the topics that we cover, please reach out at Empowering Seniors at K Georgie or give us a call at 316686 4500.

I'm KathrineAmbrose and I'll see you on the next Empowering Seniors.