For quite some time two of the top 10 “addiction and recovery” Amazon bestselling self-help books have been Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die by Messie Condo and Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White.
I. Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff by Dana K. White (2018)
White, who hosts a podcast called A Slob Comes Clean, developed her No Mess Decluttering Method upon learning that she just couldn’t benefit from the advice of those who are organized by nature. Her own system, per her website, “prevents the declutterer from creating a bigger mess (the number one reason people overwhelmed by their homes put off decluttering). The process guarantees progress and only progress in any amount of time and helps build decluttering momentum.”
At the core of her tips are two Decluttering Questions:
- If I needed this item, where would I look for it first? Take it there now.
- If I needed this item, would it ever occur to me that I already had one?
Selected Quotes from Decluttering at the Speed of Life
Decluttering is stuff you don’t need leaving your house. And that’s really all it is. If five things leave or five hundred things leave, you’ve succeeded.
Decluttering isn’t organizing. When I realized decluttering and organizing were two different things and that it was okay to just declutter, I felt a weight lift off my soul. I no longer slumped my shoulders in defeat before I even started, knowing from experience that whatever “solution” I might create would surely fail like all the others had. Instead, I purged. I focused solely on getting things we didn’t need out of our house.
It’s a mind-set. And the mind-set is that life is better and easier with less. And it’s better to live without something you might use than to have something you don’t use. Start erring on the side of getting rid of things. Be willing to risk not having something that you truly might wish you had one day. Maybes are nos. What-ifs become let’s-assume-probably-nots. And wouldn’t-it-be-nice-to-haves turn into I’m-sure-I-could-get-replacements.
II. Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: The Art of Decluttering Before You Die by Messie Condo (2023)
If you are familiar with Marie Kondo‘s famous Tidying Up book you get the joke behind the author’s pseudonym. (Condo’s 2019 Tidy the F*ck Up was even more obvious.) And you’ll be right if you suspect that she enjoys swearing (though maybe you won’t yet know how much).
“(T)he biggest mistake that people make when they aspire to tidiness” is perfectionism, Condo stated in a 2019 interview with Elena Lacey, Wired. It amounts to self-sabotage, in other words.
About this more recent book: “Inspired by The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, Nobody Wants Your Sh*t will light a fire under your untidy ass with humor and helpful organizing tips that you’ll actually want to use” (publisher blurb).
The most salient quote from Nobody Wants Your Sh*t: “Keep what you need (actually need, not might need) and what you love, and let the rest go to good homes of your choosing. Then stop. Bringing. Shit. Home.”
