Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White

Thanks to Netflix, it seems like right now in January 2019, every woman and many men in America are “tidying up.” I read Marie Kondo’s book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up when it first came out.  I thought that it was interesting read and that she had some good ideas, but since she’s Japanese, it felt very Japanese and honestly, I had a hard time relating to all of her suggestions because I simply don’t have the time to dump all of the clothes that belong to me in a pile and sort through them, plus my one and two year old would “help” by moving my piles around.  

Now I’ve read a TON of cleaning and organizational books since I became a wife and mother.  I kept hoping that some book would have the magic sauce that would allow me to spend minimal time on cleaning my house and doing things more enjoyable like giving the cat a bath.  So, when I say that I found THE book for me that helped me approach my house in a completely different way, I know of which I speak. 

Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White is fantastic. I summed up my impression of the book on Instagram a couple of months ago like this; “I just finished this book. It’s one of the best books on home management I’ve read in a while.  @aslobcomesclean is super funny.  She’s been there, done that, had three shirts and learned how to get rid of two of them. I highly recommend it!”.   I’m not kidding when I say that Decluttering at the Speed of Lifeis one of the best books I’ve read on home management.  She comes from the American way of thinking that we need more, more, more so she knows all about the guilt about letting things go.  Kondo tries to address this by having people say thank you to items as you let them go, but White gets to the underlying psychological issues that Americans have towards keeping everything.  

Americans are drowning in stuff, I was drowning in stuff and I didn’t really realize it, I really thought I could organize my overwhelming amounts of random stuff, but she makes it clear you can’t.   White talks about the idea of containers and this was paradigm altering for me. Containers are only meant to hold so many things and a house is a type of container.  We can’t get mad at the container when it won’t shut because there’s too much stuff, and we can’t be upset when our house is messy all the time because there are too many items in it.  We can’t organize our way out of too much stuff, we can only start to get rid of it. White is gentle, but firm that we need to start getting rid of stuff and she gives you a plan that doesn’t seem so overwhelming like putting all your clothes in a pile and getting decision fatigue. 

I’ve given away at least three, maybe four copies of Decluttering at the Speed of Life and I can’t say enough good things about it. If you’ve been inspired to declutter and tidy up, I HIGHLY recommend Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana K. White. 

5 out of 5 stars