Decluttering At The Speed Of Life by Dana K. White

Book Review Mar 21, 2023

My review

4/5 stars

I became familiar with Dana K. White about a year ago through her YouTube channel, but have found more and more of her content useful recently, so decided to investigate one of her many books. This one spoke to me because I'm currently trying to declutter my house around two small kids and part-time job, and not getting very far.

The main thing I love about this book is the fact that she gives you the basic theory and then walks you through how to apply it in each room of the house. The repetition of the technique really helps the message to sink in.

I also enjoyed how she summed up the Container Concept. It's a fairly straightforward methodology anyway, but it's so easily laid out here that it's hard to understand how anyone couldn't benefit from it somehow. It was particularly good to see how the Containter Concept could be used to help you get other family members on board with decluttering without becoming the bad guy.

There was a very friendly, warm tone to her writing, meaning that nothing ever felt condecending, or like a telling-off (always a hard balance to hit in a book like this, where a little tough love is required for it to be effective). Having watched some of her YouTube videos, there were even parts of the book where I could hear Dana reading to me in her voice.

The tips were useful, but ultimately the content was useful not because it was groundbreaking and new, but because of how it had been packaged together in the five-step process.

Book blurb

You don't have to live overwhelmed by stuff—you can get rid of clutter for good! Decluttering expert Dana White identifies the emotional challenges that make it difficult to declutter and provides workable solutions to break through and make progress.

While the world seems to be in love with the idea of tiny houses and minimalism, many of us simply can't purge it all and start from nothing. Yet a home with too much stuff is difficult to maintain, so where do we begin? Add in paralyzing emotional attachments and constant life challenges, and it can feel almost impossible to make real decluttering progress.

In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, decluttering expert and author Dana White identifies the mindsets and emotional challenges that make it difficult to declutter. In her signature humorous approach, she provides workable solutions to break through these struggles and get clutter out—for good!

Not only does Dana provide strategies, but she dives deep into how to implement them, no matter the reader's clutter level or emotional resistance to decluttering. She helps identify procrasticlutter—the stuff that will get done eventually so it doesn't seem urgent—as well as how to make progress when there's no time to declutter.

In Decluttering at the Speed of Life, Dana’s chapters cover:

Why You Need This Book (You Know Why)
Your Unique Home
Decluttering in the Midst of Real Life
Change Your Mind, Change Your Home
Breaking Through Your Decluttering Delusions
Working It Out Room by Room
Helping Others Declutter

As long as we're living and breathing, new clutter will appear. The good news is that by following Dana’s advice, decluttering will get easier, become more natural, and require significantly fewer hours, less emotional bandwidth, and little to no sweat to keep going.