The Decluttering Method That Doesn’t Take Time

If you have a minute or two here and there, you can still get your house in order. Learn the technique of Decluttering at the Speed of Life.

We’ve recommended lots of non-fiction books over the years. The best books on dealing with grief, approachable mussar books/seforim, and the ever popular The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up! 

Every summer, I read a lot of books. This summer, I decided to include books that would work as research projects for betweencarpools.com. 

Since I love the feeling of an organized and decluttered space, I did some research and ordered a few organizing books for myself. For some people decluttering comes naturally. Others grapple with throwing out things (“What if I need it? I like it, I enjoy it…). Still, I think it’s a topic everyone is interested in. Whether it’s easy for us or not, we all love the feel of having decluttered, organizing spaces.  

For the sake of all of you, I read some pretty boring books. One book which shall not be named was about decluttering when downsizing and I literally had to keep my eyes open to read it (I know I’m not in the stage of downsizing, but that book was soooo boring I can’t imagine it enticing anyone who is in that stage to actually read it). 

The next book I read on decluttering, thought, made up for it!  This one was called Decluttering at the Speed of Life by Dana K. White and boy, what a game-changer! A fun entertaining book plus it’s super practical! 

What made this book different? It wasn’t about organizing and looking pretty. Rather, it was really about “how to declutter,” and unless you live by yourself, new clutter will always show up! 

Reading her story, you will either pat yourself on the back because you’re such a balabusta (you’ll still learn some tips) or you’ll feel that she really understands you and that your mess isn’t as bad as her mess was! 

Scroll down to the end to read why I think this book is more effective than Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but for now, I don’t want us to get distracted from the focus on Decluttering at the Speed of Light.

Let’s get right into it. What’s the book about?

1. Even if you have five minutes, you can declutter.
2. The overall concept is that you can have stuff as long as it “fits in the drawer” / container. If you have one drawer / container for your tichels / snoods, you can have as many as you want as long as it fits nicely in that space. Otherwise, if you get a new one, you have to get rid of one. You don’t need to think about whether an item sparks joy or whether you might need it some day. If it fits in the container / where it belongs, you can keep it. It’s an easier method of getting rid of things!  
3. Our homes have a finite amount of space. Getting another container doesn’t create more space. A container here doesn’t mean a literal container (although it can). It’s any “space” in your home that is designated for something. A drawer, a shelf, etc. 
4. Start from the front of your house every day (the most visible places in the entrance). That’s where people see the mess.

Now, for the method:

1. Prepare two boxes: garbage and donate.
2. Throw away any obvious garbage.
3. You’re not emptying out closets now. Look around to see what is out of place. 
4. When you find an item that doesn’t belong in that area, ask yourself two  questions. 

• The first question: “Where would I look for this item if I needed it?” (NOT: “Where can I store this?”) Go put it there. Now. Even if you need to walk across the house. Do a quick scan to see if anything else belongs there as well to save yourself the trip. If you get to that closet / drawer and it’s already full, get rid of something to make room for it! 
• The second question to ask yourself is, “If I needed this item, would I even remember that I already had it?” If not, toss or donate it (remember those 2 boxes?) For example, if you find a roll of ribbon and you know you have a place for wrapping paraphernalia, then you would remember where to look when you need ribbon. But, don’t find new places to keep things only to forget you had them. 

5.  It doesn’t have a place, it goes into the donate or garbage box. There’s no “keep” boxes to sort through later (those boxes just create more clutter). It’s either in its place or it’s out. 

The nice part of this is that even if you get interrupted in the middle, if someone stops by or you need to move onto a different task, you didn’t leave yourself in the “middle of decluttering” with the contents of a closet all over the floor. 

You’re making progress, just by a minute here and there. Once you go through all visible areas, then you can move onto focus on specific closets / areas / bedrooms. 

You continue the method again and again, every time you pick up something that’s in the wrong place. 

If it’s not garbage / donate, ask the above 2 questions and keep going…

Decluttering @ The Speed of Light vs. Marie Kondo 

We still love Marie Kondo. And there’s a space for it. It’s a short read, it’s very entertaining, and there’s also great tips on how to get rid of items. But while that might work for small households or semi-organized ones, if someone is overwhelmed and has a lot of stuff, Marie’s method feels extreme (gather all the shoes to organize the shoes…) 

But for busy households, where there is constantly decluttering needed and constant things being added, her method doesn’t work day to day when you only have an extra 5 -15 minutes at a time!