How To Declutter Your Home: 5 Tips That Actually Work

Mel Robbins (00:22:35):

It's so true. Well, no, what I'm realizing, my goal is that I just want shit to look pretty. I've never even thought about organization as a way to make my life easier. And it's a genius question because I've put things in cabinets and drawers because I didn't know where else to put it.

 

Dana K. White (00:22:53):

Yes, this is how you establish the home. You do not. What I used to do was think about where my grandma kept hers and think, okay, well her house was always great, so I should put mine in the place or call my best friend who's way more organized than me and say, Hey, where do you keep your, whatever it is, but how many people say as a joke or there's a Facebook meme or something that says, I got organized and now I can't find anything.

 

Mel Robbins (00:23:24):

Yes,

 

Dana K. White (00:23:26):

This doesn't allow for that to happen. I am putting it in the place, and it's hard in the beginning because you don't trust yourself. You're like, but what is the first place that pops in your mind where you would frantically look if you needed this item and had no idea where it was, whereas the first place where you would look, and this also is part of that accepting how I actually function as opposed to how organized people function. And I wish I was like them and

 

(00:23:56):

Instead saying, okay, fingernail clippers were the thing. When I came up with this question as I was like, everybody else in the whole wide world surely would put their fingernail clippers in the bathroom drawer because that's where they're supposed to go. But in my family, whenever somebody is looking for fingernail clippers, they look in this junk drawer that's on the edge of the kitchen. That is just our reality. And I said, you know what? I would rather have things be in the first place where we look than try to be other people and never be able to find anything in my house.

 

Mel Robbins (00:24:40):

That's amazing. That's amazing. See, I don't know where to put nail clippers. So I just look in Chris's top drawer of the bathroom because

 

Dana K. White (00:24:51):

That's, well, if that's where you look for it first, then that's great. That's great. If that's where you look first, that's where they should be. Got it. It really doesn't, there is not a perfect place for things. There's the place where you would look first in your house. That's what matters. But then there's the second part of the question, which is not actually a question, but is actually the key to my no mess progress and only progress decluttering process. Okay. And that is when you answer that question, where would I look for this first? Take it there. Now people get all worked up over this. They are like, no, but that can't be the most efficient way. And yet in the end it is. So here's the deal. I used to, because I'm kind of obsessed with efficiency, which would never show with the way my house used to look, but I would make all these piles. I would be like, okay, this is the stuff that goes to the kids' room. This goes to the garage, this goes to the bathroom, and when I'm done, I will go deliver all these things through the house. And that makes so much more sense than taking it there right now.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:04):

Yes.

 

Dana K. White (00:26:06):

But that's how things work. In an ideal world where I don't get distracted in the midst of a project, I don't stop halfway through. Nobody starts bleeding. I just, that's the ideal world. I don't live in an ideal world. So I decided I'm going to go ahead and take it there right now, no piles. Because before I would step away for an hour or three weeks or whatever, and those neat little piles where I had totally made all these decisions, those neat little piles now morph into one big pile outside the space that I was initially decluttering. So my house looks worse than it did before. That's the whole make a bigger mess whenever you try to declutter.

 

Mel Robbins (00:26:52):

Oh my gosh.

 

Dana K. White (00:26:53):

And so I said, I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to take it there right now, and then when I do that, I can stop. I'm accepting the fact that I will get distracted or life will happen. I can stop at some point and this space is only better. It is never worse. I have never created a bigger mess. I'm taking one item at a time, making a final decision on it, and I'm acting on that final decision. So it's either gone in the trash bag, it's gone to, its already established home, it has gone in the donate box, or I have established a home by asking myself, where would I look for this first? And then I take it there now. So that's the key to all of this, and people will resist it, and then I'll say, just try it. And then they will try it and then they will email me and say, I cannot believe the difference. I cannot believe I have actually made real progress decluttering for the first time in my life. It's working. It's changing my house because of that. Go ahead and take it there right now. But people don't like it, but it's still, it works. I

 

Mel Robbins (00:27:57):

Think it's genius because I completely related to moving and sorting and organizing things into piles and then running out of energy or time or getting distracted and not actually taking those piles anywhere.

 

Dana K. White (00:28:13):

And then you're right, and it makes it

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:15):

Worse.

 

Dana K. White (00:28:16):

Yes. You come back to the space and you have to make all those decisions again,

 

Mel Robbins (00:28:21):

Right? Oh my God, I feel like I do this every weekend. That every weekend it is me on that hamster wheel of making piles and running things around and pulling apart stuff and holy smokes, this is revolutionary. 

Dana K. White (00:29:12):

All of those questions that you have in your mind or that you just stated?

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:16):

Yeah,

 

Dana K. White (00:29:17):

Those are the natural questions that people think they need to ask when they're decluttering. I don't ask those questions. I stick to the facts. And so my process leads me through and helps me make those decisions, but without all of the emotions, because I brought all this stuff into my house because I saw the value in it. And so before, when I would declutter, I would make value decision after value decision, which is exhausting, right?

 

Mel Robbins (00:29:42):

Yes.

 

Dana K. White (00:29:43):

And then it's so emotionally exhausting, and I know it is that then I would put off decluttering because I was like, I don't have it in me to make those kind of decisions today. So instead I say, okay, if I needed this item, where would I look for it first? And then I take it there now, and then I look at that space, and sometimes this is a common question people have is like, what do I do when that space is its own big decluttered mess? All I'm going to do is I'm going to not leave that space any worse, and I'm going to say, what am I willing to get rid of from this messy space where I would look for this item first?

 

(00:30:22):

What am I willing to get rid of from here that will create the space that I need for this item that I answered? I would look for it first here. So it might be trash. Ideally it's going to be trash or D donations. Then my trash bag and my donate box are back at the space I was initially decluttering. That'll take me back there.

 

(00:30:42):

So I'm just going to say, what in here, trash, because it needs to be decluttered, right? I just said, it's a total mess. There's no room for this, so it's going to be decluttered, but I'm not doing that right now. I'm sticking with this initial space. And so I'm like, what in here am I willing to get rid of in order to make room for this? And so it helps me instead of saying, does this thing have value? I say, is there a space for it? Which is a very, what's the word? It's leaving my brain right now, but it's a very

 

Mel Robbins (00:31:10):

Space. I don't know. I'm hanging on every single word. Well, what do you do if you have a basement or garage? There's space in there. Can I just give you an example? Sure. I'm starting to realize how nuts I am about this stuff. You are not nuts. No, but I literally am realizing, and I don't know if you listening to us, are feeling the same sort of energy drain, but I'm realizing how much noise and just how much drama I add to the process of what I thought was organizing. And so I'll give you an example. So I've talked about how our son Oakley, who is very creative, who will love this process, who spent half of his Sunday organizing his room to make his dad happy, and then he did the big thing of clothes. I've admitted that I've ripped through it and pulled two things out.

 

(00:32:04):

I don't know where I'm going to put that stuff. I guess it would go in my, I don't even know why I kept it. I kept it because it was something that I bought him for Christmas that was rather expensive. And then there's a jacket that's like a fall jacket that, because I bought it for him when he was 15. He literally wore it for about a minute before he grew out of it, and it was expensive. And so I see this jacket, I grab it, I'm like, okay, we live in Vermont. People visit, should I hold onto this in case somebody visits and they didn't pack a jacket. Maybe this would fit me, it would fit this. And then I literally attach all this meaning, and I create these stories about why I need to keep the thing and the value of the thing. And if I ask myself if I needed this item, where would I look for it? I even stall because I go, well, I don't really need it in the mudroom. Maybe I should create a place in the basement for extra clothes for guests who forgot clothes that you need when you visit Vermont. What the fuck is going on? Donate, duh.

 

Dana K. White (00:33:13):

Well, okay, is this normal what you just described? Yes, what you just described is your brain spinning out, okay?

 

Mel Robbins (00:33:20):

Yes.

 

Dana K. White (00:33:21):

And a lot of people who are naturally organized and who see this and go, I mean, I'll just be honest. How many times in your life, how many times in my life have I had somebody go, why are you thinking that way? That is exactly how my brain worked, which is the reason I just had somebody recently say to me, I can follow your process because I know all of my reasons why I want to keep this and still have a process that works. When I'm talking to someone who's like, those are dumb reasons. Everything you said made sense to me. I get it. And yet when I thought that way my house was a disaster, and I was frustrated with it, and I had all those feelings of what is wrong with me? I hate to just be like, let's go back to the process. Except that, no,

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:20):

Let's go back to the process

 

Dana K. White (00:34:21):

Is what talks you through all of this.

 

Mel Robbins (00:34:24):

Okay,

Mel Robbins (00:36:41):

Wow. This is fascinating because it is a whole new way to think about this, because again, just to come back to this example, it wasn't even like I saw it in the mudroom. I came out of my bedroom, and I don't know if anybody else's family members do this, but somehow our staircase upstairs is the garbage and laundry ch, where people just chuck things over the banister and they land up at the bottom of the stairs. And so there was the donate like trash bag with the flannel shirts that I ripped out, and then laying a couple stairs above was this jacket that long, longer fits him. And you can do this process is what I'm realizing in that moment. Because I think that's also the reality of the decluttering process. If I'm tracking is not that you go, okay, this Sunday I'm doing this in the mudroom, it's that you walk out of your bedroom and you're like, what the fuck?

 

(00:37:36):

Okay. He's like throwing all this stuff down. It's seven 15 in the morning, there's now a giant mess in front of me at the base of the stairs, and you're saying, you can do this process right now. I see the jacket, it doesn't belong there. I have a choice in that moment to say, if I needed this item, where would I look for this first? And if it's not immediate, and if the answer is the mud room, I walk to the mud room and hang it up. If the answer is it doesn't fit 'em anymore, and do we even need to keep it? And I go to the second question, which is if, what was the second question?

 

Dana K. White (00:38:18):

If I needed this item, would it ever occur to be that I already had one?

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:22):

If I needed this item, would it occur to me that I already had one? And the answer is yes, I have the exact same size and a jacket for me. I buy the same company. So

 

Dana K. White (00:38:34):

Yes, I have one. Would it occur to you that you had the second one, that you had your son's jacket? Because if it would, then it's fine to go take it the place where you would look for it first, because we're also going to address the reality of that space as we get into the last step of the process. Got it. So

 

Mel Robbins (00:38:52):

Let's just say, let's indulge my psycho ness. Okay? I think we all have that. If you're a creative mind, you're also thinking, huh, someday 15 years from now, there might be a scenario where I wish I had this. So let's just say I go, okay, where am I going to look for this first? And I make a snap decision. This goes in my guest closet and I have a little rack in the basement.

 

Dana K. White (00:39:19):

No, you didn't make a decision. You asked yourself a question that revealed your instinct of where you would look for it first. Sorry, I just had

Dana K. White (00:39:57):

If that's the place where you would look for it first, then you put it there. But if there is no thing there, there's no place for it, but there's a pile of other stuff. Okay, I'm not going to leave that any worse. So what am I willing to get rid of in order to make room for this jacket, which means something is leaving your house, so you are decluttering. But often it will help you realize, oh, wait, there's not actually a good place for this here. Or, wait, I'm not willing to get rid of any of this stuff in order for this jacket to stay. And it will help you realize, oh, I can just donate this. I got to donate

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:35):

This thing. Yeah, that's what I'm getting through all of this. I'm realizing this process helps you deal with yourself.

 

Dana K. White (00:40:41):

Yes. But if you don't take it there, now you're living in this land of hypotheses.

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:48):

I'm still thinking about the damn jacket

 

Dana K. White (00:40:50):

Right now. Yeah. You're like, oh, oh, I'm going to put it down there. Yeah, I'll make a space down there.

 

Mel Robbins (00:40:54):

Yes,

 

Dana K. White (00:40:55):

Yes. But you're not dealing with the reality of that actual space. You're not dealing with the reality of, oh, wow, I cannot stand going in this basement. And I don't know. I live in Texas, we don't have basements. I'm very jealous of people with basements, but in my mind, I'm like, if I take it down to this spot and then I realize this spot is full of spiders and all this stuff, and I don't want to leave a jacket down here, but when I go there, it forces me into that reality. So much of what I do, probably a hundred percent honestly, of what I do is just a process that helps me accept reality. Reality about this reality, about my stuff, reality about my space, all that.

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:37):

I love this. What is the final step in this process?

 

Dana K. White (00:41:40):

Okay, so let's say, and this is going to apply to any space, all those spaces where you're taking things, but we're talking about the space that you are working on, okay?

 

Mel Robbins (00:41:49):

The mudroom

 

Dana K. White (00:41:49):

At this point, you have removed trash easy stuff, which belongs somewhere else. You've removed duh donations, and you are down because you've gone through the two decluttering questions. You are only down or you are down to things that you would look for in this space. That's the only stuff that's in here is stuff that you would look for. But if the drawer still won't close, that's not working. If it's still spilling outside of itself, then that's not going to work. So this last step is implementing what I call the container concept, which is something that when I had this realization about containers,

 

(00:42:36):

It was something that if I was not writing about it as I was doing it, I would have probably been embarrassed to share it with a random person. But because I was just like, I'm just writing about what I'm figuring out. I wasn't trying to teach anybody anything at that point, and everybody went, what? This changes everything. I was like, oh, okay. So it's not just me that this is valuable for it. Here's the container concept. I used to think that containers were for putting things in, right organized. People love containers. They buy containers. Their house looks great. I must need more containers. And so I would bring containers into my house. So here's my little scenario that I give. Let's say my friend whose kids were the same age as mine, her little craft area looked amazing. Mine was this huge pile of disaster spilling out of the cabinet. And I would look and say, oh, she has her crayons in a red bucket.

 

(00:43:34):

That's the difference between her and me. She has a red bucket. I don't have a red bucket. That's why my space is a disaster. So I would go and buy a red bucket, and I would dump crayons in there, and I would realize, oh, I still got 700 crayons left over. Why does this not work for me the way it works for her? So I would go out and buy two more red buckets, and then I would put the rest of my crayons in those red buckets. I'd go to put the red buckets on the shelf and my shelf wouldn't fit three red buckets. And I would think, are you kidding me? Why is this so hard for me? Why does this not work for me? And then eventually I would be like, well, obviously I need more shelves, so I'd buy more shelves. And then at some point I would think, well, I don't have any room for more shelves. Obviously I need a new house, and we can't afford a new house right now, so I am doomed to be disorganized. That is just how my brain worked. I just thought that if I ran out of space in a container, I bought another container. And in reality, her space, I mean her house was smaller than mine, but in my mind, my issue was that my house was too small, which doesn't make sense, but it made total sense to my brain before. Makes sense,

 

(00:44:44):

Right? So when I was working, I was talking to myself, that's what I do with how I've been able to build what I've built. But I was talking and I was saying container, and I went, container contain. The word contain is in there, serve as a limit, set a boundary. Like firefighters contain a fire, they create a boundary, and as long as the fire stays inside the boundary, they can keep it under control. But if it goes outside the boundary, bad things happen. So their whole goal is to keep it within this boundary. And I realized, oh, a container is not for putting things in a container is meant to serve as a limit, to serve as a boundary. And that changed everything for me because I was able to say, okay, here's the red bucket. It's not going to fit everything, but it's the boundary.

 

(00:45:45):

So I'm going to put my favorite crayons in first. And when it's full, something happens in my brain and I realize, oh, maybe I don't need a thousand crayons, and I haven't had to make value decisions. Remember we were talking about this thing, but what about when I might use it and what about, and it was expensive and blah, blah, blah. Before I would pick up every single crayon. I mean, this is all hypothetical, but not really. But I would pick up every crayon and be like, well, I mean, I know it's broken, but broken crayons still color, right?

 

Mel Robbins (00:46:21):

Oh, yes, that's

 

Dana K. White (00:46:21):

Right. Right? I mean, there's Facebook memes about that, right? Oh

 

Mel Robbins (00:46:25):

My God.

 

Dana K. White (00:46:26):

So I would make all these, and it took forever for me to analyze every single one. And instead it's just, I'm going to put my favorite ones in first and I'm going to let the container make the hard decision for me.

 

(00:46:38):

And then when I go to put the red bucket on the shelf, I have to acknowledge that the shelf is also a container. The shelf is a limit, and it determines how many red buckets I can have. My God. And the size of the room determines how many shelves I can have, and the size of my house is the size of my house. Remember? It's that reality acceptance. So I'm like, the size of my house is the size of my house. And if I'm going to put my favorite things in first, and I'm going to realize my house is a container, my house is a limit. What's my favorite thing in my house? It's the people who live in it. So we deserve space first, which means I can't just keep putting in more shelves that make it hard for me to move around and make it hard for me to get to where I need to get. And so that just shifted everything. And I said, does it have space in the container?

Mel Robbins (00:48:08):

Use this mantra. You talk about it a lot. I'm allowed to be human.

 

KC Davis (00:48:11):

I am allowed to be human. I'm allowed to be human. And we talk a lot about nobody has to be perfect, but in our head we still have categories of acceptable imperfection and unacceptable imperfection.

 

Mel Robbins (00:48:23):

What are some of the big categories that you see in your work that people say are unacceptable categories? We covered not brushing your teeth, but what are unacceptable categories

 

KC Davis (00:48:34):

Like being mean to somebody?

 

Mel Robbins (00:48:36):

What do you mean?

 

KC Davis (00:48:37):

If you were rude or you were mean to someone, or if you blew a huge deadline, if you didn't show up to something that was really important, and now you look absolutely ridiculous in front of your whole profession, things where you've upset someone or someone's angry with you or you've let someone down. And we're not saying that that was, let's repeat it because it's not functional. We're not saying that people don't get to have their feelings about whatever you did or said or however you showed up. It's just that I can make a genuine bonafide mistake and it can be very wrong of me to have done, and I still get to be human. Humans do very wrong things. Sometimes I want to respond to it by going, okay, I don't like that. I don't want to do that again. How can I grow and heal so that I can move away from that?

 

(00:49:36):

I think that that's kind of what it comes down to. If you're someone who finds yourself in this state chronically, that's when we want to start thinking about accessibility. How can I make my home more accessible? How can I make these tasks more accessible? Because there's a difference between, I'm nine months pregnant for only three months and it's hard for me to bend over, and so things just kind of pile up and I just let it because I have the right priorities and it'll get, but if you're someone with chronic back pain, that's not really something you can just go, well, it'll just pile up and I'll get to it when I feel better. That's when we need to think a little long-term, which is like, well, maybe you need a grabber.

 

Mel Robbins (00:50:12):

What's a grabber?

 

KC Davis (00:50:13):

Like a grabber.

 

Mel Robbins (00:50:15):

I don't know what a grabber is.

 

KC Davis (00:50:16):

If you've ever had surgery and you can't reach up or reach down, you pull the handle and it's a long stick and there's a little tongs at the end that pick things up for you.

 

Mel Robbins (00:50:26):

Wow,

 

KC Davis (00:50:28):

Maybe you need a stool

 

Mel Robbins (00:50:29):

With some wheels. What I'm getting from you, KC, is that when you get caught in this loop where everything's a moral obligation and everything that you're not doing is evidence that you're a loser and that you can't get yourself together, you get so stuck in making it a problem that you don't see the obvious solutions that are right in front of your face. If you were to simply just give yourself a fricking break,

 

KC Davis (00:50:54):

Yes, because if what's wrong with you is that you're failing, the only solution is try harder. But if the issue isn't some moral failure, then you trying harder on the same kind of broken wheels isn't going to produce anything else. But if you go, this is a morally neutral problem, but I deserve to function. How can I get creative? How can I fix this? All of a sudden the world opens up and there's all of these creative possibilities. Can I stop folding my clothes? Can I use paper plates for a bit? Can I get a wheelie stool? Can I get a grabber?

 

(00:51:29):

Can I do a toy library for my kids where two thirds of their toys stay in this closet and they only have some of their toys out and they can check them in and out as much as they a want? But then all a sudden you have so many ideas. What if I had a 32 gallon trash can on wheels in my kitchen instead of these tiny little trash cans? Because my kids, I seem to fill up trash cans twice a day and I don't seem to take out trash enough to keep up with it. And so most of us think, well, the answer is make yourself take the trash out. Make yourself more motivated. 

Mel Robbins (00:52:06):

It's so great. I was recently thinking about how much we aim criticism at who you are. I got to be more motivated. There's something wrong with me. Instead of looking at, well, what are you doing? And what could I change about what I'm doing? Putting a bigger trash can on wheels in the space, instead of making 55 trips every day and where things are, what is it about the environment? What is it about the way that you're thinking about things? I want to give you a couple of our listeners sort of challenges and role play a little bit with you about what hacks or mindset flips or what you would want them to do as a first step.

 

KC Davis (00:52:50):

Yeah, let's

 

Mel Robbins (00:52:50):

Do it. One listener writes, in the midst of my son's autism diagnosis, every single task felt like it would kill me. I had to talk myself through everything step by step to avoid the anxiety for months when somebody's in that kind of a state. I said this about 18 months ago out loud, I can't handle one more thing. If one more thing breaks down in my life, if one more bad thing happens, you're going to have to check me in to an inpatient facility. I can't handle one more thing. She was herself through coaching step by step by step. What's another strategy somebody could use?

 

KC Davis (00:53:31):

So we want to start with the perspective, which is I would say to this person, we often picture a highway as life and these sort of side roads as not life, and we're off on the side road with a broken car kind of going, well, I'm pushing the car, I'm pushing the car, and I just want to get back to life. This isn't how it's supposed to. And I think it's more helpful to envision that there's not this mystical place of life where everybody's running on, firing on all cylinders. Life is in fact getting an autism diagnosis for your child and needing to process through that and just figuring out how we move forward. There's nothing that this person is doing wrong. They're using so much cognitive emotional energy to process this diagnosis. I would also just say from a personal perspective that your son's going to be okay.

 

(00:54:24):

Your autistic child can have a very happy full life, so you're going to be okay. You're not doing anything wrong. You are not supposed to be able to do more than what you're capable of doing now. And you're right. What can we do to keep things survival level functional while you get through this? And that's when I would say, if this person, first off, I want this person to start using paper plates immediately. I want paper plates. I want paper napkins. I want you to be able to throw everything away right after a meal. I want you to, as much as your budget allows outsource anything you can, whether that's cleaning or laundry or grocery delivery, I want you to pick one tiny corner of your house that you can make beautiful, and you can get it beautiful and under five minutes. And that's where you get to go and sit when you just can't look at anything else.

 

(00:55:17):

I want you to make a hygiene kit for yourself with baby wipes and dry shampoo and something that smells nice. And I want you to go on Amazon and I want you to buy those toothbrushes that are single use toothbrushes that are pre pasted in individual packages. And I want you to put little hygiene kits all around your house because you're just going to be in the middle of it and smell yourself and go, whoa, gosh. And then you'll never be more than a few steps away from ability to take care of yourself when you can't leave your child alone in the room. I want you to put a laundry basket and a trash can in every room of your house so that anytime you create laundry or trash, you're only a few steps away from being able to be done with it in one step, not 3, 4, 5 steps. And I want you to rest.

 

Mel Robbins (00:56:02):

I feel like that's what your best friend would do for you. What you just did was beautiful. And I think it's also an extraordinarily tactical example of your space should serve you. And so is the visual of the highway. So I'm thinking about one of our daughters who is just processing, breakup, and she sounded so good today. This is like 24 hours. And she's like, yeah, but I'll be crying probably in an hour because that's my process.

 

(00:56:44):

So I'm going to take myself on a walk and I'm not going to force myself to do anything today. And as I was listening to her, I'm like, wow, that's exactly right. You don't have to motor through it. You don't have to get on a revenge diet. You don't have to gossip about it all day. You can just take a step back and allow yourself to be human. I have another listener that says personal care. I get completely overwhelmed by taking care of myself. I hate how I look and I hate how I feel because nothing ever changes.

 

KC Davis (00:57:25):

So I'm going to assume that this person maybe is talking about, I hate how I look physically, so I have a lot of body consciousness, things like that. So the first thing I would say there is that if that is somehow related to difficulty in showering and doing things like that, that happens. I don't want to see myself naked in the shower. We're just going to cover the mirrors. You don't need to look in the mirror to shower. I want you to get a smaller pocket mirror so that when you want to put your makeup on, when you want to check a zi, when you want to look at your hair, you can do that in pieces though as you need to, but you don't have to look at yourself all day long. And I'm not saying, oh, that's going to cure the way you feel about yourself, but I am saying that's going to give you some relief today.

 

(00:58:05):

You should be able to have a place in your life where you get to exist without constantly pondering how you look, where you can have a first person experience of life, not a third person experience, where you're always sort of going, what do I look like when I do this? What do I look like when I do that? Then, depending on what this is, but this is a good one. One thing, and again, I'd have to know more about this person, but this is just sort of a tangential thing, is that go into your closet and get rid of the things that you bought because you don't think that your body deserves clean, cute clothes, the things you bought just because it covers you, the matronly shit that you bought because you don't think that you deserve to wear X, Y, Z. Now get rid of the things that are three sizes too small that you'll never fit into again. But you're going, oh, one day, let's address your closet. Because what I found is a lot of times when I was disliking my body, it was not information I was getting from my body. It was information that I was getting from my clothes. It didn't look right on me, it didn't fit right on me. Well, they're clothes. Your body is not made to fit. Clothes, clothes are made to fit your body.

 

Mel Robbins (00:59:15):

Hallelujah. KC Davis, dropping the knowledge again. Say it again.

 

KC Davis (00:59:22):

Your body is not meant to fit into clothes. Clothes are meant to fit your body.

 

Mel Robbins (00:59:31):

I can even, I'm going through menopause and I know a lot of you see me and you are like, you're really skinny, but my body has fricking changed and the things that fit me two years ago don't fit. I was wearing a pair of jeans yesterday that I absolutely love. They got cute little cargo things on the side, legs, the waist is so damn tight. And I thought to myself, why am I holding onto these? 

KC Davis (01:01:01):

And I would also tell that person that you don't have to care about yourself in order to begin caring for yourself.

 

Mel Robbins (01:01:09):

Oh, say that again.

 

KC Davis (01:01:11):

You do not have to care about yourself in order to begin how to learn to tenderly care for yourself. So many times we feel as though we don't deserve to be clean or we don't deserve cute clothes. We don't deserve that shower. We don't deserve to get up and do these things. And I think that when we look at that belief system of I have to wait to like myself before I start treating myself a certain way, it actually happens backwards. We begin with self-compassion and tenderness to care for ourselves. And slowly but surely, it helps us to begin to care about ourselves. And I kind of liken this to, if you go to the pound right now and pick up a dog, you could pick up the Ratt dog. There is no dog that's like, oh, this dog deserves X, y, Z. No, you can go pick up the most behavior prone, yappy, dirty, flea infested dog, and you bring it home. And why do you care for that dog? Because you just decided to literally just decided that that dog, you're going to care for that dog. You just decided it was worthy. The dog didn't have to do anything.

 

Mel Robbins (01:02:24):

Can we break this into just a simple series of actions because so many people around the world look in the mirror and see a person that they do not. In fact, in the research that we did for the high five habit, 50% of men and women don't even look at themselves in the mirror. 

KC Davis (01:03:21):

Sure. So I think one of the things to remember is that self-esteem is really overrated and it's actually not connected to better outcomes. And how you feel that that is connected to better outcomes in your life. And that's great because self-compassion doesn't require that you like yourself because we can show compassion to people we don't like. I do it all the time. I would also say that if you were looking for an action to do

 

(01:03:51):

Some of the things that we've talked about, I think would work like the hygiene kits and just making things easier for yourself is in itself an act of compassion. It's saying, I deserve to access this task, but I also want that person to pick one thing, one little weird bugaboo about their mourning. And I want it to be inconsequential. I don't want it to be big. I want it to be something like, I don't like the way that my feet are cold when I walk from my bed to my bathroom, or I don't like when I wake up and I have to be chilly when I take the dog out first thing in the morning. I don't like that. I have to sit there and make something really simple

 

Mel Robbins (01:04:33):

And

 

KC Davis (01:04:33):

I want you to pick that one thing, and I want you to start doing it for yourself at night.

 

Mel Robbins (01:04:38):

Meaning what? So give me an example.

 

KC Davis (01:04:40):

So I want you to go, before you go to bed, I want you to move a pair of slippers in front of your bed, or I want you to move a robe by the back door, or I want you to set your coffee to automatically make coffee. And I don't want it to be dishes. I don't want it to be cleaning. I don't want it to be laundry. I want it to be something specifically that has no reflection on, oh, you're doing good, right? So, oh, I cleaned my kitchen, I deserve it. No, no. Something that literally you experience an immediate, oh, that does feel good. Just that one thing.

 

Mel Robbins (01:05:13):

I love that. I absolutely love that. Let's talk a little bit about thinking about rest because we are in this culture or we're in this cultural moment where women are feeling all this pressure to be everything. What got modeled for us in our households growing up was mom did everything. And at the same time, there's also this incredible grind and hustle culture at work. And hybrid work has made it worse. And I have never experienced in the 10 years that I have been coaching people, the amount of burnout, the amount of people who can never catch a break from work or family or chores or this, the pace that kids are being pushed on travel teams and everybody's just running this race to nowhere and we've forgotten how important rest is. And so how should we think about rest so that we don't feel guilty,

 

KC Davis (01:06:33):

We should think of rest as a right and not a reward.

 

Mel Robbins (01:06:38):

Oh, can you unpack that for us? Sure. A right, not a reward.

 

KC Davis (01:06:46):

We often get the message from childhood that rest and recreation is a reward for productivity. You do well, you get something extra, so you have to do your chores, then you can go play, do your homework, then you can go play video games. If you don't work hard in class, can't go to recess. There's all these, and there's nothing wrong with that necessarily. People want to teach children responsibility and priorities and all of that. But sometimes the unintended message is, I can't go do the fun thing. I can't go do the rest thing until the productive thing is done. And that's fine when you're a kid and your list of things that must be done is finite. If you're 12, unpack your backpack. Yeah, unpack your backpack, take out the trash and do the dishes and great, then go run off and do whatever. And then you become a 30 5-year-old woman and you're like, wait. But the things that have to be done is unpack the backpacks, then do the dishes, then take the trash out, then feed the cats, then vacuum in the floors, and then scrub the baseboards and then call the doctor. And it's like we think we have to get the whole list done before we can rest and relax

 

(01:07:54):

So we never relax. And when we finally burn out or we get overwhelmed and we collapse and we're frozen, and we think to ourselves, I'm resting now, but you're not because people who rest in shame work in shame. People who work in shame, rest in shame. When you think that all of those tasks are moral obligations and you're not going to be good enough if you can't stay on top of it, then if you do go and sit down, all you're thinking about are the things you should be doing and you don't actually rest. And so you get up now, you're behind and you're tired and you think, I can't do this. And then for a lot of people, they get so overwhelmed and burnt out that they kind of go frozen and can't do anything. And then they go, well, I must be lazy. I must try harder. I got to do more. When it's like, whoa, maybe you need to do less.

 

Mel Robbins (01:08:44):

How do you put that into action? Because as you were talking, I'm like, that's me, because I don't know anybody at least know women that are able to truly take a break rest and not feel guilty about it.

 

KC Davis (01:09:04):

So I think that there's been a lot of talk about taking breaks and how important that is. And I want to go in a slightly different direction. One, because a lot of people can't, they physically can't. Things will fall apart, things will not be functional. I think that if you are someone privileged enough to have the time, money, energy to be able to take breaks, you then you've heard that advice, you can just go do that

 

(01:09:30):

Instead of thinking about, well, how am I going to get a break? How am I going to get a break? How am I going to break? And yes, we need breaks. However, let's think instead about how we can get rest by just making things easier for ourselves. So the example that I use a lot is let's say you have a mom and she's overwhelmed. Maybe she's a single mom, she's overwhelmed. And so the traditional sense of a break would be like, well, can you get someone to babysit the kids so that you can take a few hours a week? Great, that's fine. That's nice, but

 

Mel Robbins (01:09:57):

What if they can? But you know what? That doesn't happen because then you think it's going to take me time to find somebody and then I'm going to have to coordinate it, and then I'm going to owe them the two hours. And so that's a wonderful thing for researchers to recommend. But in a normal person's life, it doesn't fucking

 

KC Davis (01:10:12):

Happen. So instead, let's go, how can we make something easier? So what if Friday nights at this woman's house are rest nights and instead of cooking, she orders a pizza or instead of cooking, she makes a giant grazing plate for her kids and she puts it out and goes, eat what you want. Or if they're older, what if she goes, it's make your own dinner night. And I don't care what you make at the ice cream out of the freezer, I don't care. So you find a way to give yourself a big break on how you're feeding. And then you say, Friday nights are also movie nights.

 

(01:10:52):

And that means we all make a palette in the floor. We turn on the tv, and I don't care what time you go to bed. And in those few hours, maybe she doesn't get to go anywhere. Maybe she can step away and do a fun project, but at the least she gets to sit there and do nothing. And things are just easier. There are no dishes to clean up. She uses paper plates. She doesn't have do the bedtime rigmarole of who I don't want to sleep and read me another story. No, we're just going to sit here and watch tv. Or that's the night we all sleep in mom's bed. Or that's the night. Let's find a way to make Fridays or Sunday afternoons or Saturday mornings easier for a period of time where you just kind of go hands off. Needs are met. Your kids are going to think it's fun. You're going to give yourself a break. I think that's why.

 

Mel Robbins (01:11:40):

That's how my shoulders just dropped. It's now going to be movie night and fend for yourself on Friday nights. You have a saying about paper plates that I would love for you. You have this mantra about paper plates hit us.

 

KC Davis (01:11:54):

Yeah. So my mantra about paper plates is you can't save the rainforest if you're depressed. And this came about because I was making a video trying to help somebody in a deep depression about how do they do their dishes. And I brought out, everyone's going to have that Tupperware molding in the back of the refrigerator, and that's keeping you from doing anything around your kitchen. And what I want to say to you is just throw the Tupperware away. Just throw it away. You can save the rainforest if you're depressed. Better that we take some shortcuts now to get you back to being a functional human being where you can actually have the energy and the capacity to contribute to environmental causes in a way that matters, right? We know that there's a way to contribute that makes a big impact, and that is through your politics, through perhaps your donations, perhaps your volunteering. But we're not going to save the earth just by convincing depressed people to hang on to their moldy Tupperware and their cardboard boxes.

 

Mel Robbins (01:12:55):

You're fucking awesome. I wish you lived next door to

 

KC Davis (01:12:58):

Me. And by the way, I've never seen an environmentalist shame a diabetic for using single use plastic syringes. And yet, I have seen so many people in the name of environmentalism shame, a new mother or a person in grief, or a person with really bad A DHD or autism for using a single use toothbrush or a paper plate.

 

Mel Robbins (01:13:19):

You have a concept called fair rest. And for those of you that are living with family or a roommate and you feel like you're the one that does everything, what is the concept of fair rest? And how can you use it so that the kind of division of labor, so to speak, which almost never really works in people's households and in the apartments that you share with roommates, how do you use this concept of fair rest?

 

KC Davis (01:13:56):

So this is a different way of looking at division of labor because the traditional way of looking at it is equal labor. So the work should be equal. But when you talk about the work should be equal, let's just say we're talking about a marriage, what that sets you up is comparison, competition, and every man for himself, because then it's me having to prove the labor that I'm doing and how worthy it is. And then my husband has to prove how valuable his labor is and who's doing more. And unless you have the exact same job and even it's like who's going to compare a corporate attorney to an author or a stay-at-home mom, a coal miner to a teacher, to a psychotherapist, to a doctor? There's all sorts of different ways why people's jobs are difficult or any of those things. So it I have to look out for me. I have to prove the value of my labor and then fight for only getting what's going to be fair. No, no, no. Back it up. It doesn't actually matter whether the work is equal. It matters whether the rest is fair and to make the rest fair. It might be that one person's going to be working more or harder than the other in different seasons.

 

(01:15:14):

So an example of this might be, let's say that an easy example. Let's say let's take that corporate attorney and that stay-at-home mom. And they're going and he's going, I work so many hours, and she's going, I work nonstop too. And we look at how can we work together to make sure each of us is getting fair rest?

 

(01:15:38):

And you can look and go, okay, well, what if that corporate attorney, even though he works all the time, he's still off the clock sometimes and he still gets that lunch break. He still has what we call time autonomy to decide what and when to do things. And you have this stay-at-home parent who has a more flexible schedule. Maybe she does get to have that rest in the middle of the day or something, but she's also doing care tasks, which are cyclical in nature. They never stop. They never stop. She's always on call. She's always on call.

 

(01:16:12):

And so it might be that they need to have a conversation about, on Saturdays, you be the default parent.

 

(01:16:22):

You be the one that changes the diapers and makes the dinners and listens for the fights and does those things. And on Sundays, I'll be the default parent. And when you're not the default parent, you get to just exist in your home. You get to go read a book, you get to do this, you get to do that. Now, that's not a prescription, that's not going to work for everybody. But if you have a dentist and a teacher, let's talk about fair rest. Let's talk about both of us deserve at certain point at night to clock out. I love that we both deserve a functional house, but everyone deserves to clock out of home labor and out of house labor. It shouldn't be the case that one person spends most of their time facilitating the life of the other.

 

Mel Robbins (01:17:12):

Whoa.

 

(01:17:13):

And what I liked best about what you said, because you once again flipped the paradigm, is that for most of us that are struggling with division of labor in our relationships and households, we're in a deadlock and a fight about the importance of the work that you're doing, justifying that you need time off. And interestingly, when I started my career, this part of my career and my speaking business really took off. It was at a moment in time where Chris had left the restaurant business, and he was what we started calling the first call parent, which meant he was the first person on the list at school that got called when there was something going on. And he was a stay-at-home dad. And what I noticed was very interesting, and that is that as I took on the role of primary and solo breadwinner, I also took on the gender kind of stereotype of feeling like my work was more important.

 

(01:18:25):

And here I had been the first call parent for over a decade. And yet now that I'm making the money and I'm doing all the things and I'm out and I'm traveling and I'm working and I'm bringing home the, and I'm doing all this stuff, I as a woman valued my contribution as much more than what my husband was doing by taking care of the kids. And we would have all of these battles about, I need time, but you've been out and I haven't had a break, but we were in the non stereotypical gender roles in our marriage, and I found it extremely enlightening how work out of the house or the type of work that you do makes you think you deserve more and by making the conversation about rest, because we all believe that and can see that we deserve rest. And in talking about the fact that when you're the first call parents, you're in a never ending cycle. There is no lunch break, there is no time off while somebody's taking a nap. You're probably trying to fold laundry, you'd need rest. And so by talking about it in this way, it actually brings compassion instead of competition into it. I love that. I love that. I love that.

 

KC Davis (01:19:46):

And I was thinking about this the other day. There's been a lot of talk on my TikTok channel about division of labor and especially this idea of, well, if I bring home the bills that they should be taking care of everything else. And I think then you have, well, this is actually being at Holmes' heart. Well actually, and then we get in the competition. But think of it this way, there's a big difference between a couple saying, Hey, this is how much I work and here are the things that need to get done, and if you were to do X, Y, Z, then how can we divide these so that you and I have the maximum amount of free time? It's not about what do I deserve? I shouldn't have to take out the trash because I did X, Y, Z. If I take out the trash right now while he's doing bedtime, then we'll both get to hang out afterwards.

 

Mel Robbins (01:20:41):

It's not a tit for tat.

 

KC Davis (01:20:43):

Yeah, it's not. It's okay. We decided that I'm going to stay home and you're going to do this, and because of the amount you work, I'll do most of this stuff, not because, oh, I have to pull my weight or you don't have to do this, but because it just makes the most sense because then we can both have time. But the other half of that is having an explicit conversation about what is sort of the minimum standard of functionality everybody deserves to function and letting go of perfectionism. One of the reasons why I think we miss this conversation is that it's not just about who's taking out the trash. It's also about when one of you comes home and the trash isn't taken out, how do we respond to that? Do we go right to accusatory? Do we go right to you? Should have done it. Do we go right to, or do we go to Grace? Do we go, wow, I wonder if they had a hard day today?

 

Mel Robbins (01:21:43):

I am guilty of all of this. Chris and I have had all of these issues in our marriage. The one thing that's very triggering for Chris is when I stack the cardboard boxes by the garage door and I don't flatten them. And when he sees the tower of cardboard boxes, he says, look, I feel like you think I'm the maid here. And so we've had that conversation. I got a lot out of this concept of fair rest and maximizing the amount of free time, and I'm going to bring that into my conversations with Chris because we haven't talked about it that way. What flipped it for me, KC, is that I started to see how gross it was that I was adopting this very masculine traditional value work hire. Even though I'm like, didn't feel that way at all. It's almost as if society itself had me absorb those messages.

 

(01:22:41):

So insidious the way it can impact you, I started to realize I can't do what I do and have the family life that I want without him here full time. There's not another person I can pay even that. Well, what would I pay somebody to clean the house? And it's not the same because that's their dad. And so it's priceless. And so when I finally absorbed that and I believed it and felt it, we became equal in terms of the contribution. But I have never had the conversation about what rest you need. How do we maximize our time together? How can we be in better partnership? And I think that's a game changer,

 

KC Davis (01:23:23):

Complete game changer, especially a game changer when you have that first call parent. Because unless the person who's not that default parent, they have to be proactive about inserting themselves into situations in order for that first call parent to rest, even if they're still at the house. Because you'll often have a dynamic where, okay, partner A is the default most of the time. And so when someone cries, do I wait to see if they're going to do it? And if they don't, okay, I'll do it. If they're busy, I'll do it. I help. Okay. But it's not just if they're busy, you do it. Sometimes you have to get up and do it so they don't have to be busy. That's not the only justification for being able to just sit on your couch for more than five minutes at a time.

 

Mel Robbins (01:24:13):

It's a right to rest. Yes, not a reward.

 

(01:24:19):

I remember when I was struggling profoundly with postpartum, and I know you had a very significant struggle too. I was so sick and so weak and so depressed that I was in bed severely medicated for 12 weeks. And it was a really awful moment in my life, and it was severe enough that they didn't want me to be alone with the baby with Sawyer. And I remember during that time that our cousins, Lisa and Steve paid to have their cleaning person come to our house once a week. And it was one of the greatest gifts somebody could have ever given me. And I also had my parents who could stay, but just for, they stayed for a couple of weeks, and then Chris's parents came, and then I had a very dear friend, Joanie sit with me while Chris could go off to work because I couldn't take a shower. I couldn't brush my teeth, I couldn't get out of bed, and I needed to be recovering. And I'll never forget that. And I wondered what thoughts you had about what the person listening can do to help someone that they love through a really tough time, like postpartum or depression or the loss of a loved one, or just those moments where something happens or you find yourself in a stretch of the highway called life where laundry is overwhelming. Brushing your teeth is like scaling Mount Everest, what someone do to help.

 

KC Davis (01:26:05):

So taking into consideration that you have to kind of look at who that person is to you, right? The way you would show up at someone's front door of your best friend, maybe wouldn't want to show up at the front door of someone who you work with. But that being said, one of the things that I have found that almost works for everyone, and I know that sounds like I'm just like the paper plate queen, but if you take someone in a hard time, a giant stack of paper, plates, paper, all paper stuff, it's magical because here's what happens. It's already there. They may not ever go out to do that because they care about the environment because they don't think it's that bad. But if you already put it there, they're not making any environmental impact by just using it.

 

Mel Robbins (01:26:54):

That's true.

 

KC Davis (01:26:55):

That's my favorite gift because I don't need to know their dietary restrictions. I don't need to go into their house if they're not comfortable with that. Everyone can get a break from doing dishes, and you take all the guilt away by just being like, I'm leaving it on your front porch.

 

Mel Robbins (01:27:13):

I love that. KC Davis, you are a treasure. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, bye. God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.