I tried the 'All Day Declutter'!
First impressions of the 'Take Back Your House' Course
The past few years I have been a fan of Dawn Madsen at the Minimal Mom, Dana White (A Slob Comes Clean), and Cas Aarssen (Clutterbug). Individually, each of these ladies provide a wealth of useful decluttering content and thoughtful resources through their YouTube channels. But when the three of them get together on a mission to help you have an uncluttered, easy to manage home? Absolute dynamite! Together Dana, Dawn and Cas have developed the “Take Your House Back” course, a collaboration that provides a wealth of content to help support people on their decluttering journey. One key feature of the TYHB course is the '“All Day Declutter”. A three times a year event, the ADD is anticipated by many as a great chance to really dig deep in terms of decluttering. Important note: It is leading up to these three ADD events that the course is heavily discounted, and therefore the best (and from my perspective, the only) time to purchase the TYHB course.
As you can imagine, I have been wanting to take this course for a while. This January, I finally took the plunge, purchased the course at the discounted price, and completed my first ADD. Although I would have liked to include my experience of the ADD and the TYHB course content together, there is a LOT to cover. So, for now I am focusing on my energies on the ADD.
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A few days before the ADD, I told my husband that I would need all of Saturday to complete the challenge. Since it is January, the weather is still a little iffy, but he said he would try to keep our daughter distracted and take her to the playground for a while so I could work. I got my black garbage bags and donate-able boxes ready and waited for the all-day challenge to begin!
At least initially, the ADD fell seriously short of my expectations
The day of: Despite the All Day Declutter having three points of focus (storage spaces, kitchen, and living areas) it soon became clear that I would spend most of the day in the garage. To call our two-car garage a garage is *mostly* accurate, and I am glad that one of our two vehicles occupies half of it. But the other half? The ‘storage space’? Complete disaster. Bikes, boxes, bins (some full, some empty), donations (sounds great, but not when they’re so random that you forget about them), all joined by the broken dishwasher that our landlord recently replaced.
I excitedly thought that I would be able to move from space to space, effortlessly clearing mountains of clutter.
I worked and worked, and after the 4th hour of the ADD, our garage was as ‘done’ as it could be. I had ‘found’ all the donations I had been piling here and there, boxed and re-boxed them, moved all the bins to the side, moved items from a clunky set of plastic organizer drawers into suitable plastic bins, and broke down countless cardboard boxes. I filled two boxes with electronics recycling, two trash bags with textile recycling, and one bag of trash. Finally, and very gratifyingly, I moved our three bikes and their standing rack to the center of the space I had cleared, an island in the middle of a sea of newfound floorspace. Then I took a lunch break!
For the remainder of the 8 hours, I tackled several boxes donate-able clothes that had been hanging out in our bedroom closet. I also went through the two shelves worth of kiddo activity books and divided them into trash, recycle, donate, and keep.
In biological terms, you could say that I traded a cortisol spike for a sweet hit of dopamine.
So how did I feel after all this? Well, considering the progress, you’d have thought that I felt great. But, at least initially, the ADD fell seriously short of my expectations. Leading up to the day, I excitedly thought that I would be able to move from space to space, effortlessly clearing mountains of clutter. I imagined (at least some) clutter disappearing from every room. The hard truth was that I spent almost a whole day in the garage, leaving many spaces untouched.
But … was that such a bad thing? After all, I had just completed a task that loomed heavily every time I drove in or out of the garage - basically every day. Now, even though there is still a small area left to clear, instead of feeling stressed, I feel relief every time that garage door goes up. In biological terms, you could say that I traded a cortisol spike for a sweet hit of dopamine. Biology nerd or not, this is a win :)
Yes, this is the nature of the ‘messy middle’, and yes, it can be frustrating.
Small aside; if you have been reading this blog you may remember that I had already cleared out the garage last spring. The caption for the ‘before’ picture before last week’s ADD could definitely be titled ‘classic backslide’. Because that is exactly what it was. I cleared stuff from the garage that we truly didn’t need- and filled it up again with the same type of stuff, this time from even greater depths of our home. This is the nature of the ‘messy middle’, and yes, it can be frustrating.
Therefore I think it’s important for me to remember that all of this is a process, and that it takes time. This is exactly what I needed to remind myself when I felt like the ADD fell short (or perhaps more accurately, that I fell short). I know that happened because my expectations were simply just way too high. My current clutter situation has been building for over 20 years, so how could it all be gone in a day? Once I reel in my expectations and reactivate my logic button, it all makes sense- and I actually feel really good my triumphant day of decluttering. Completing the ADD is a day-long sprint that has given me the momentum and confidence to focus on other, less ‘scary’, parts of the house as I make slow and steady progress in this decluttering journey.
And that, my friends, is yet another ADD win.
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Have you purchased the TYHB course and/or done an ADD challenge? Share your thoughts below!
