How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind by Dana K. White

Bring your home out of the mess it’s in and learn how to keep it under control.

“The dirty little secret about most organizing advice is that it’s written by organized people,” says blogger, speaker, and decluttering expert Dana K. White. “But that’s not how my brain works. I’m lost on page three.” Dana blogs at A Slob Comes Clean, chronicling her successes and failures with her self-described “deslobification process.” In the beginning she used the name “Nony” (short for aNONYmous), because she was sharing her deep, dark, slob secret. Now she has truly come clean—with not only her real name but the strategies she has developed, tested, and proved in her own home. She has learned what it takes to bring a home out of Disaster Status, which habits make the biggest and most lasting impact, and how to keep clutter under control.

In How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, Dana explains that cleaning your house is not a onetime project but a series of ongoing premade decisions. Her reality-based cleaning and organizing techniques debunk the biggest housekeeping fantasies and help readers learn what really works

I've always been messy.

My issue has always been putting things away - mainly clothes. I've gotten better than I have in the past but not by much. This is actually the second book about cleaning I've listened to by this author. What I remember from that one is the container method. Your stuff should be in a designated container and shouldn't overflow that container. For example: books. Your bookshelf is your container. If you are double stacking then it's not fitting the container. This thought actually helped me cut down on some books I never was going to read.

How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind did mention the container method but it had some other tips that are so simple that I can easily incorporate them into my routine. I am also at a moment in my life that I am more willing to accept the information and take actionable steps to make my home less messy. I live in my brother's home and I don't like that I don't do enough chore wise. My main concerns are still putting things away (again mainly clothes) and the dishes. There are other things but as I learned in White's book you've got to focus on the daily tasks first. If you do that then you are in a better position to know where to start when your home inevitably gets messy. Because chores are neverending. It's not a project to tackle. It's a task you need to be consistent with.

My biggest problem area (putting away clothes) can easily be solved by folding the clothes right after they come out of the laundry, having a designated laundry day, and simply putting my clothes away right after I fold them. It was particularly helpful to hear how little time it actually takes to do simple things. It was pretty encouraging that as long as I get to these simple tasks I'll have a reasonable amount of clutter. I can get back to the basics whenever my house gets out of control. When I do the simple tasks I can tackle other related tasks and even projects which will make my home less messy. I tackled putting away decorations and cleaning the floor of my room while listening to this book so it might just be working. I'd recommend this for messy people like me.

What is your most troublesome chore to tackle?