Do you find it hard to stick to a cleaning regiment?
This book might be for you.
With all of the books, websites, morning shows, infomercials, and products out there, sometimes finding the right housecleaning strategies can be as exhausting as actually cleaning up your home.
But Dana K. White’s How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind breaks it down so well that you might never need to get another cleaning guide again.
Dana K. White is the successful blogger of A Slob Comes Clean. She admits on the first page that she’s a huge slob, and she never thought she’d ever become “expert” telling other people how to clean their homes.
What’s her secret? It’s simple, really. You, the cleaner of your house, don’t need to change, but you have to do the work. And you must do the work in a way that’s sustainable for you.
What’s Good About This Book
Reality Check
Now, I’m not saying this housecleaning self-help is the best out there. But what I really love about How to Manage Your Home is its attention to reality: we have families that won’t follow our well-intentioned cleaning rules, we have friends and relatives who dump stuff at our homes, we hate garage sales, and most of all, we have busy lives.
As White herself says, most organizational books are written by people hardwired to be organized. They’ve been prim and clean since they left the womb, unlike their audience (ahem, us).
Dana is the opposite of that. She began her blog to get her appallingly unclean house in check. For her, a slob is not just a person who’s messy, but systemically messy; as in, they clean up the living room, leave, and come back to see the living room’s somehow a disaster again.
Dana encourages you to do something not many cleaning self-helps do: to accept who you are and how you approach the world. The “Losing Your Mind” part of the title becomes a double entendre here, because you shouldn’t have to change or be ashamed of your identity to be happy with your cleaning abilities.
In this way, housecleaning is a lot like fitness: everyone has their own genetic makeup, which they can’t change, and so all you can do is play to your strengths. Following Dana’s example in HOW TO MANAGE YOUR HOME, if you love projects, create tasks that have a beginning, middle or end, and do them on one single day of the week. This way, you don’t worry about the chore’s endlessness for the entire week.
Simple, but it works.
She Gets Real About How Dirty We Get…And Isn’t Condescending
Some of the slob confessions White makes honestly shocked me. I’ve seen some pretty nasty-looking homes (and am guilty for contributing to some too), but an author admitting that she buys paper plates to make it through the week because all of her actual plates are piled in the sink? That’s a whole other sandwich right there. Her brave confessions make cleanliness seem possible for even the most hoarding, unkempt mama out there.
Another cherry on top is that White includes comments from her blog readers at the end of every chapter, sub-headed “Proof It’s Not Just Me.” They’ve tried out Dana’s tactics to great results, hence the subheading.
This awesome inclusivity contributes to the supportive and non-condescending tone Dana uses throughout the book. She makes her tips as self-aware as possible, knowing that she’s teaching you, but not commanding you, because hey, you’re busy, and if you don’t like someone’s attitude, you’re not going to implement their “holier than thou” ideas. She admits that she doesn’t have all the answers and that you’ll have to adjust her tips to your schedules. In general she speaks very inclusively for people with actual mental health issues surrounding chores and hoarding.
But Dana makes this a fun read, which, as someone who once didn’t clean their bathtub for an entire year, is miraculous. I actually wanted to clean my bathtub while reading this book.
She Champions Effectiveness Over Efficiency
One of the best pieces of advice I gleaned from this book was: you don’t have to do your chores efficiently. You just have to do them.
Sometimes waiting for an “efficient moment” stops you from ever doing it. Dana provides the example of folding laundry right from the washing machine and tucking that folded garment into its appropriate drawer then and there, instead of folding it all in one go and then making piles on your living room couch to disperse later. You know, we know, those piles will sit on your couch forever.
This is great advice for efficiency-seekers (basically everyone in modern society). Getting it done now is more time-effective than doing it in “Later Land” all at once. Because Later Land, my friend, doesn’t exist.
Our girl Dana is one smart cookie. She’s thought these cleaning processes through and through, and this makes her uniquely credible.
Extra Goodies
White is a blogger, and bloggers like giving guides.
The 28 Days to Hope for Your Home guide at the back of the book is really helpful – she talks to you like a personal trainer, coaching you daily on how to flex your mental clean-habits muscle. White is a proponent of habitual daily tasks – small ones, but absolutely nonnegotiable, like doing the dishes and a five-minute clean up, every single day.
And of course, she’s got a blog (and a podcast!) on all this shizz, so if you crave for more, lucky for you, because she’s got endless content.
More I’d Like from This Book
I love this book. Despite that, I’m frustrated that White dances around the concept of minimalism. She discusses clutter a lot, and how having “Slob Vision” erases clutter from our sight, until we trip over the clutter. Dana pricks here at a rising issue of the Western lifestyle, which demands us to find comfort in owning copious amounts of stuff.
As a daughter rebelling against a maximalist South Asian family, I’ve always been drawn to the minimalist idea. But I wasn’t sure if I could ever be a minimalist because of the habits ingrained in me by my family. But if this book taught me anything, it’s that habits don’t define you. You can grow out of them, change them, and adjust them to be healthier. Just because I grew up in a household that had too much stuff (including two dining tables), doesn’t mean my house has to be like that.
While this book doesn’t define clutter as a consequence of a consumer culture (but if you do, check out Minimalism: A Documentary About The Important Things, it’s great!) White does make the argument to own less, even if it seems inefficient.
Humans need space. We like having room to breathe. If you’ve ever heard of the vegan Instagram celebrity Tess Begg, she epitomizes this sort of living. Her apartment is furnished with minimal utensils, toiletries, and a mattress. No living room furniture. No chairs. Definitely no two dining tables. And I highly admire this, almost to the point that I’d love to have an apartment like that (although I do like sitting on chairs).
This is an extreme example of minimalism, but the point is: you can learn to be comfortable without having everything you might possibly ever need. HOW TO MANAGE YOUR HOME goes into some easy-to-remember tips on how to train your mind to be okay with being unprepared.
I just wished White mentioned the word “minimalism.” That’s all.
In summary: You don’t have to turn into a robot to become organized. This book has so many great tips, actual mind-altering ideas, and simple support to get your started on taking control of your surroundings… even though it’s a simple little book from a housekeeping blogger.
If you like big personality voices that have something refreshing and resonant and encouraging to say, go for this book. It just might be your one-stop self-help book on housecleaning.
My Experience: When Do I Houseclean?
I live alone currently, but I know from previous experience and my boyfriend’s mom, that the chores are endless in a family home. When I lived at home as a teen, and going through my creative slump/depression thing, I feared doing chores. I think a lot of people do. But now I live on my own and I have higher standards for myself, having decided last year that I am a human being worthy of a happy life.
I’ve always been great at doing dishes, and I compulsively put everything back after I’ve finished cooking. But those big tasks (the bathtub, the toilet, the floors) are daunting. I don’t know if HOW TO MANAGE YOUR HOME really influenced me, but I think that I picked it up at the right time: now I see slightly dirty or messy things, and I clean it up immediately, instead of waiting until it gets really messy. Effectiveness over efficiency, am I right?
This immediacy also comes from being accountable: having a very neat and organized boyfriend, and very nice roommates, I strive to be cleaner overall. I am a people-pleaser, so I use that personality trait to my advantage. I consider, “What would my darling Morgan say about leaving this sauce stain on the stove?” and so I’d guilt-trip myself into cleaning it.
I definitely would say that White’s tips resonated with me: I think about her advice while eating, reading, or doing yoga, and then I’d stop to start cleaning my room. I may not have a strict regiment, but my fears of housekeeping have receded from my mind, because I have White’s loud and affable voice cheering me on. And really, that encouragement is all anyone needs.
Sincerely, Shalini-Approved: Yes! I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun while reading about washing dishes. And I actually like washing dishes.
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Let me know in the comments how you struggle with housecleaning, and whether or not I should review more (hopefully as awesome as this one!).
Also let me know if you have other self-help books suggestions for me to review. I’d love to hear from you!
Until then, look forward to my next review on FOOD FORENSICS, on how to avoid the hushed, dangerous presence of heavy metals in our everyday foods.
Sincerely,
Shalini ❤
Assignment 2e
Sincerely, Shalini 