How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House's Dirty Little Secrets

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.How to Manage Your Home without Losing Your MindDealing with Your House's Dirty Little SecretsBy Dana K. White Thomas NelsonCopyright © 2016 Dana K. WhiteAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-7180-7995-6ContentsWho Needs This Book?, xiii,Part 1: Reality Check,Chapter 1 My First Step: Giving Up on the Fantasy, 3,Chapter 2 The Worst Thing About the Best Way, 7,Chapter 3 Bad News: Cleaning Your House Isn't a Project, 15,Part 2: Daily Stuff: The Down-and-Dirty Truth About a Clean House,Chapter 4 Where to Start, 23,Chapter 5 The Truth About Habits, 33,Chapter 6 Just Tell Me What to Do, 37,Chapter 7 Pre-made Decisions, 41,Chapter 8 Don't Judge a Habit on the First Day, 45,Chapter 9 How to Use Timers: Fighting TPAD (Time Passage Awareness Disorder), 51,Chapter 10 Putting an End to the Never-Ending: Weekly Cleaning Tasks, 57,Chapter 11 Laundry Conquered. Yes, Really., 63,Chapter 12 A Whole 'Nuther Chapter on Laundry (Answering Your Many Objections), 71,Chapter 13 Get Dinner on the Table, 79,Part 3: Decluttering: The Down-and-Dirty Truth About All Your Stuff,Chapter 14: How Decluttering and Routines Are Codependent, 89,Chapter 15: Don't Get Organized, 95,Chapter 16: Cure Decluttering Paralysis: Do the Easy Stuff First, 103,Chapter 17: Containers and Limits and How They'll Change Your Life, 107,Chapter 18: Find Your Clutter Threshold, 115,Chapter 19: How to Prioritize Decluttering Projects: The Visibility Rule, 125,Chapter 20: Two (and Only Two) Decluttering Questions, 129,Chapter 21: How to Declutter Without Making a Bigger Mess, 135,Chapter 22: Head Explosions, Regret, and Re-decluttering, 145,Chapter 23: Sentimental Clutter, 149,Chapter 24: Clutter Guilt, 153,Chapter 25: The Value Trap: Sell or Donate?, 161,Chapter 26: Decluttering Momentum, 169,Part 4: Change That Lasts,Chapter 27: Other People, 175,Chapter 28: Special Circumstances, 183,Chapter 29: But Will It Last?, 191,Appendix: 28 Days to Hope for Your Home, 199,Acknowledgments, 221,About the Author, 223,CHAPTER 1My First Step: Giving Up on the FantasyFantasy: I struggle to keep my home under control. I'm chronically disorganized or organizationally challenged.Reality: I'm a slob.In almost every fairy tale, someone cleans. Most of the princesses do housework during the story, but that's before they are (or know they are) princesses. They make cleaning look fun. They sing and dance, and the dust never sends them into sneezing fits or makes their eyes swell shut. But once the prince arrives, cleaning's over. Life is all about fancy dinners and sitting on thrones and smiling at peasants out of carriage windows and such.Basically, they clean before they arrive at their destinies. Once they're there, cleaning is irrelevant. Nobody talks about cleaning or worries about cleaning or even notices cleaning is happening. But everything stays clean.Even though I would have told you I knew life wasn't a fairy tale, when it came to cleaning, I embraced this delusion. I was confident that one day cleaning would be easy. My house would stay clean without me even realizing I was cleaning it.So what awakened me from this delusionary dream?My messy house.My grown-up, married-woman, I'm-the-mama house.I'd been messy since birth. I had a messy room as a child, a messy desk in elementary school, a messy locker in high school, and a messy dorm room in college.I had apartments with roommates and by myself. All of them were messy.In case you aren't convinced, I'm talking about more than folded laundry not being put away in a timely manner. Let me paint the (messy) picture.My living spaces were shockingly messy. People who assured me they wouldn't be shocked were so shocked they couldn't hide it. And all my college friends were actors.I'm talking about the kind of messy where you forget the color of the carpet. The kind of messy where you finally give up and eat off paper plates and drink fr