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nosoulisan_island's review
adventurous
funny
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
relaxing
medium-paced
5.0
sarahfett's review
3.0
I'm not sure why I requested this book from NetGalley several months ago as I generally keep the clutter in our house to a minimum. I do like a good memoir, and the author's writing style in humorous and engaging. The book is popular in my library system right now, but it doesn't speak to me personally.
I received an ARC from NetGalley.
I received an ARC from NetGalley.
jljaina's review
2.0
I wanted to like this. To get something from it. Or even be able to relate to it better. Not to say it was unrelatable, entirely but her mental process was different. I tried to let it be more inciteful when working with and helping others de-clutter, but her story also jumped all over the place. More like a random memoir with no purpose or direction half the time. I wanted to see progress as I read along, not get 40 side-stories and unrelated conversations. The narrator did not help. She added a level or boring to it that made this even harder. Would likely have been 3 stars otherwise. I wish that, for personal stories like this, the authors would read them themselves. Alas, no in this case.
etkahler's review
1.0
It was not what I was expecting and I scanned the last half just to get through it.
exurbanis's review
4.0
I found this book difficult to read. Not because it was poorly written but because Schaub's musings on hoarding, "stuff", life, and the end of life to hit too close to home many times. Many times, I stepped away and had to steel myself to return to it.
However, despite her insights and efforts, Schaub didn't really accomplish what she set out to do at the beginning of the year, but ended up clearing out a different, smaller room. I found THAT a little discouraging.
However, despite her insights and efforts, Schaub didn't really accomplish what she set out to do at the beginning of the year, but ended up clearing out a different, smaller room. I found THAT a little discouraging.
fireside_reads's review against another edition
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
3.25
Content Warnings
Minor: Death and Mental illness
leisurelyreading's review
2.0
Might drop this to a one star in the future. To be decided, for now:
If this didn’t have such a lively fun writing tone I probably would have dnf’d this one. First, I think this inadvertently comes off as a self-help style book when you first come across it. The word ‘clutter’ in the title is a little misleading. While she does tackle clutter, she’s mainly tackling a hoarding room she has. I also found it a little odd that while she does in fact own to being a hoarder, it gets walked back and waffled on a lot. And that’s completely fine. That’s life, but it didn’t make for a great reading experience in my opinion. Maybe I wanted something more confident or the story to be told from a better more clear future perspective and not from someone who is still pretty much in the midst of it all at the end. She’s not removed enough from the initial starting point to fulfill that tone and wish for me. Which leads into my second issue, that she kind of shoe horned the book into this ‘year of’ format that she did for her last book. It just felt very unnecessary to me.
Someone else’s reviewed mentioned Coming Clean as an alternative read (and while it’s been a bit) I think I too would agree.
If this didn’t have such a lively fun writing tone I probably would have dnf’d this one. First, I think this inadvertently comes off as a self-help style book when you first come across it. The word ‘clutter’ in the title is a little misleading. While she does tackle clutter, she’s mainly tackling a hoarding room she has. I also found it a little odd that while she does in fact own to being a hoarder, it gets walked back and waffled on a lot. And that’s completely fine. That’s life, but it didn’t make for a great reading experience in my opinion. Maybe I wanted something more confident or the story to be told from a better more clear future perspective and not from someone who is still pretty much in the midst of it all at the end. She’s not removed enough from the initial starting point to fulfill that tone and wish for me. Which leads into my second issue, that she kind of shoe horned the book into this ‘year of’ format that she did for her last book. It just felt very unnecessary to me.
Someone else’s reviewed mentioned Coming Clean as an alternative read (and while it’s been a bit) I think I too would agree.
toofondofbooks's review
This review was originally posted on my blog: https://rathertoofondofbooks.com/
I requested this book from NetGalley because I can’t resist books about clutter, which is kind of ironic given that my natural tendency is to hoard stuff!
I have to be honest and say that the first couple of chapters of this book didn’t pull me in, reading about someone’s room full of clutter that they know has a dead mouse in, and also that a cat has peed all over made me feel a bit squeamish. This isn’t the kind of clutter situation that I can identify with. I do tend to want to keep things but I’m also quite obsessive about cleaning.
I’m so glad that I decided to give the book another go through because from the point when Eve starts to explore what makes a hoarder, and what makes her the way she is I was fascinated and I could really identify with some of the things she discovered about herself.
There is a point where she writes that as a child she believed she had to keep everything so that she’d have enough stuff to fill her own home when she was grown up, and that is just how I was too. I kept all my childhood ornaments for years because I believed that shelves had to be filled with stuff. The idea that some people had empty surfaces in their home was alien to me. Eve’s father had a problem with clutter so she sees that her issues partly came from seeing what his house was like. My mum was very sentimental and could never get rid of things that people had given her, so I can see how Eve, and I, ended up being clutter bugs.
The part that really got to me was when Eve talks about her belief that if she lets go of things that she is sentimental about then she risks losing the memory of that particular point in time: that by holding on to the object, she has a trigger to bring back the memories instantly. I struggle with this too. It’s really hard when you get to an age where you’ve lost people who meant the world to you, how do you let go of the things they gave you? I felt Eve’s pain as she tried to work out which things to keep, and which to let go of.
Eve has an issue with making decisions, she really fears making a wrong choice and believes this feeds into her obsession with keeping things. This was eye-opening for me. I’ve always been indecisive but have never connected that to the way I keep things, but it makes total sense that if you really dread making a bad decision that you would find it hard to be confident in the things you get rid of. Eve gradually learns that it’s not the end of the world if you get rid of something and later wish you hadn’t, and that’s something I’ve learnt during my regular de-cluttering sessions. To be honest, I’ve agonised over some of the things I’ve being considering getting rid of but once they’re out of my house I’ve never regretted any of it. Objects might hold memories but they can’t bring a person back, it’s how you feel in your heart that matters.
One of the things Eve struggled with most was dealing with her paperwork. She couldn’t get rid of any of it without reading it first and then had to deal with whatever memory was attached before she could move on to the next lot of papers. It really struck a chord with me when Eve said: ‘… I keep souvenirs even of negative occurrences in my life, for fear that without them I would forget that event and even any lesson learnt from that event’. It sounds utterly ridiculous to keep paperwork from the worst moments of your life, but I used to be exactly the same. My mum kept some papers that were so painful to her but she felt she couldn’t ever shred them. When she died I took the papers for safe-keeping, and added some of my own from the year my mum was dying. I kept all of her hospital letters because I didn’t want to forget, and yet I was trying to hard not to drown in all the trauma that happened in that year. I moved in with my then new boyfriend (now my husband) the year my mum died and I took all the paperwork with me because I just couldn’t leave it behind – it felt like it was haunting me. Then one day I decided enough was enough. I burnt the lot and it was so therapeutic to let it go for both me, and my mum’s memory. I try to always remember now that the things we keep will one day be someone else’s problem to deal with and it helps me get rid of stuff that’s not really important in the grand scheme of things. Eve learns the same lesson in a different way. We can’t keep everything, we don’t have the room. So if you can only keep a fraction of the stuff, pick the good stuff, the happy stuff.
This isn’t a how-to book, it’s not about helping you clear your clutter. It is one woman’s open and honest journey through her own battle with clutter but in the process of reading you will probably recognise yourself in Eve, as I did, and it will spur you on to deal with your own clutter.
I requested this book from NetGalley because I can’t resist books about clutter, which is kind of ironic given that my natural tendency is to hoard stuff!
I have to be honest and say that the first couple of chapters of this book didn’t pull me in, reading about someone’s room full of clutter that they know has a dead mouse in, and also that a cat has peed all over made me feel a bit squeamish. This isn’t the kind of clutter situation that I can identify with. I do tend to want to keep things but I’m also quite obsessive about cleaning.
I’m so glad that I decided to give the book another go through because from the point when Eve starts to explore what makes a hoarder, and what makes her the way she is I was fascinated and I could really identify with some of the things she discovered about herself.
There is a point where she writes that as a child she believed she had to keep everything so that she’d have enough stuff to fill her own home when she was grown up, and that is just how I was too. I kept all my childhood ornaments for years because I believed that shelves had to be filled with stuff. The idea that some people had empty surfaces in their home was alien to me. Eve’s father had a problem with clutter so she sees that her issues partly came from seeing what his house was like. My mum was very sentimental and could never get rid of things that people had given her, so I can see how Eve, and I, ended up being clutter bugs.
The part that really got to me was when Eve talks about her belief that if she lets go of things that she is sentimental about then she risks losing the memory of that particular point in time: that by holding on to the object, she has a trigger to bring back the memories instantly. I struggle with this too. It’s really hard when you get to an age where you’ve lost people who meant the world to you, how do you let go of the things they gave you? I felt Eve’s pain as she tried to work out which things to keep, and which to let go of.
Eve has an issue with making decisions, she really fears making a wrong choice and believes this feeds into her obsession with keeping things. This was eye-opening for me. I’ve always been indecisive but have never connected that to the way I keep things, but it makes total sense that if you really dread making a bad decision that you would find it hard to be confident in the things you get rid of. Eve gradually learns that it’s not the end of the world if you get rid of something and later wish you hadn’t, and that’s something I’ve learnt during my regular de-cluttering sessions. To be honest, I’ve agonised over some of the things I’ve being considering getting rid of but once they’re out of my house I’ve never regretted any of it. Objects might hold memories but they can’t bring a person back, it’s how you feel in your heart that matters.
One of the things Eve struggled with most was dealing with her paperwork. She couldn’t get rid of any of it without reading it first and then had to deal with whatever memory was attached before she could move on to the next lot of papers. It really struck a chord with me when Eve said: ‘… I keep souvenirs even of negative occurrences in my life, for fear that without them I would forget that event and even any lesson learnt from that event’. It sounds utterly ridiculous to keep paperwork from the worst moments of your life, but I used to be exactly the same. My mum kept some papers that were so painful to her but she felt she couldn’t ever shred them. When she died I took the papers for safe-keeping, and added some of my own from the year my mum was dying. I kept all of her hospital letters because I didn’t want to forget, and yet I was trying to hard not to drown in all the trauma that happened in that year. I moved in with my then new boyfriend (now my husband) the year my mum died and I took all the paperwork with me because I just couldn’t leave it behind – it felt like it was haunting me. Then one day I decided enough was enough. I burnt the lot and it was so therapeutic to let it go for both me, and my mum’s memory. I try to always remember now that the things we keep will one day be someone else’s problem to deal with and it helps me get rid of stuff that’s not really important in the grand scheme of things. Eve learns the same lesson in a different way. We can’t keep everything, we don’t have the room. So if you can only keep a fraction of the stuff, pick the good stuff, the happy stuff.
This isn’t a how-to book, it’s not about helping you clear your clutter. It is one woman’s open and honest journey through her own battle with clutter but in the process of reading you will probably recognise yourself in Eve, as I did, and it will spur you on to deal with your own clutter.