Eve Schaub

I kind of loved how the author realized where she was on the hoarder scale and the work she did to let go of things. I also appreciated how she knows she’ll never be a minimalist but did work toward small change; she was very funny in her self-awareness.

During my progress update, I wrote this book seems slightly 'cluttered', to use the author's words. However, having finished the whole thing, I feel that it has every right to be. A) it seems totally fitting to the author's character - any other thing would have felt just not right. Good thing too that the editors did not (as I initially hoped) de-clutter the story too much.

While this is not a self-help guidebook, the book offers several notes of advice on how to handle and reduce your show more clutter, just not as straight-forward, but to be found in between the lines (actually, there are even one or two lists that might come in handy for the reader).

As for the rest, the book really reads like a kind of memoir (I wondered why it was categorized there) and it got very personal in the process. There were many small anecdotes which at first I deemed 'clutter', but which make reading this book such a likable and honest thing. The author is not some self-proclaimed expert on organizing or cleaning up, but she is one of 'us' - a person that has experienced clutter herself and decided to do something about it, while at the same time admitting she will never be a neat-freak. It was consoling to see so much similarities in her way of thinking and behaving. While I do not have something as large as a complete Hell Room, there are several corners and boxes in my home that have mysterious clutter-magnetic powers. I could relate to the author's outbursts of clearing frenzy as well as her phases of depressed numbness very well. There are certain days where sorting is the easiest thing to do, while on others I can't seem to part with even the smallest thing while at the same time feeling overwhelmed by all the clutter in my life. So I decided long ago to just roll with the tide and do my clearances only when in the right mood - otherwise I will only end up shifting things from one place to another without actually achieving something. Usually spring is my perfect season to declutter, so it was a good thing I read the book now as a reminder and motivation to start another round of me vs. clutter.

While any actual practical advice taken from this book was not new to me, the author put in clear words how I feel about my clutter but which was always slightly fuzzy - one thing is the past of things, the memories and feelings they represent and which is hard to let go, even if it means only physically. The other is 'it may be useful to someone some day'. I absolutely share this reluctance to part with stuff that is not broken and still perfectly usable, even if keeping it or trying to find someone who has use for it takes up lots of space and time I could spend in better ways.

So while I often feel slightly intimidated by expert guidebooks and sometimes even wonder how they can give advice on something they haven't experienced personally (ha! it's easy for them to talk), this book meets you on 'eye-level', so to speak, and I'm more willing to take advice that has actually been put to the test. While it seems my review got a bit cluttered itself now, I only have good things to say about this book, so I guess that's OK ;)
Recommended! show less

This personal memoir was probably not for me: the meandering descriptions of horrible clutter were nauseating. The dithering was exasperating. After reading declutter-tidy up books (which Schaub claims to have done with reference to the likes of Marie Kondo), it is very strange she cannot discard anything. Keeping rubbish is obviously a part of her story, so maybe she wanted to connect with the people who are in an extreme mess. It's just a story I had no patience with reading so it hit the show more DNF graveyard. show less

Well written and easy to read, it was a good memoir of one family's year without sugar. As a nutritionist, I cringed at some of her choices, especially that she was skipping the fruit because of the fructose, adding dextrose as a sweetener, and calls balsamic vinegar "fruit juice" so not to be used. While I wouldn't mimic all of her nutritional choices, I did appreciate her experiment and dedication, and COMPLETELY agree that we are killing ourselves by adding sugar to E-V-E-R-Y-T-H-I-N-G.