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A review by ally_camel
Year of No Clutter by Eve O. Schaub
4.0
Memoirs about life experiments are my weakness. Give me an A.J. Jacobs book and I’ll be gushing about it for weeks and referring to it for months or years after. My whole family knows the miracle of different genes affecting different people’s experiences and enjoyment of life. I delight in knowing that I have the gene that lets me smell the same… whatever… in pee as in sweat. Which is probably why I hate sweat.
Eve Schaub is a fluffier version of Jacobs. She doesn’t do as much research or share as many facts about hoarding, clutter, etc., and she only sometimes references what facts she does share. I really regret she doesn’t give a source for her garbage facts because I was all set to see what else they had to say. I also totally put the book down for a week after she gave a terrible, self-justified explanation of clutter versus mess. No, Schaub isn’t writing this to build our knowledge. She’s writing to tell us about this thing she did one time and how she succeeded. She writes in a breezy, chatty tone – a friendly monologue on paper. I can just imagine having coffee with her while she slips easily from one subject to the next and back again while I nod and sip, occasionally prompting her to say more.
The Year of No Clutter is delightful and absolutely timely for me. I just bought Marie Kondo’s book to try and declutter my own things. I too have yet to read it. I love hearing how other people deal with similar problems and applying their experience to my own life, so Schaub’s meandering story about her year (and all the memories that came with it) really resonated with me. “You mean it’s weird to keep your old report cards?” I wondered, “and I’m not rejecting my mom by throwing out birthday cards from 15 years ago? Oh wow!” Or when she says, “When I let go [of something], I regret the loss of each and every memory, no matter how insignificant or unpleasant, because it is still some little bit of my past… When I let go of my past, some little part of me ceases to exist; some memory retreats to the deep, dark recesses of my brain, never to be retrieved, ever again,” I totally get it! Now that I’ve read it, though, I can think on the idea. Just because I might never consciously remember that moment again, it’s still in there and has still had a part in making me who I am… so I can let go a little easier now.
For anyone needing a starting point, Year of No Clutter is forgiving. Encouraging. Schaub’s been there. She started as a borderline hoarder. By the end, she’s found a way to let things going more easily. There’s no judgement and she certainly doesn’t pretend it’s easy. Step by sometimes painful step she sorted her clutter. And if she can, maybe we can too.
A copy of this book was provided by Netgalley for an honest review.
Eve Schaub is a fluffier version of Jacobs. She doesn’t do as much research or share as many facts about hoarding, clutter, etc., and she only sometimes references what facts she does share. I really regret she doesn’t give a source for her garbage facts because I was all set to see what else they had to say. I also totally put the book down for a week after she gave a terrible, self-justified explanation of clutter versus mess. No, Schaub isn’t writing this to build our knowledge. She’s writing to tell us about this thing she did one time and how she succeeded. She writes in a breezy, chatty tone – a friendly monologue on paper. I can just imagine having coffee with her while she slips easily from one subject to the next and back again while I nod and sip, occasionally prompting her to say more.
The Year of No Clutter is delightful and absolutely timely for me. I just bought Marie Kondo’s book to try and declutter my own things. I too have yet to read it. I love hearing how other people deal with similar problems and applying their experience to my own life, so Schaub’s meandering story about her year (and all the memories that came with it) really resonated with me. “You mean it’s weird to keep your old report cards?” I wondered, “and I’m not rejecting my mom by throwing out birthday cards from 15 years ago? Oh wow!” Or when she says, “When I let go [of something], I regret the loss of each and every memory, no matter how insignificant or unpleasant, because it is still some little bit of my past… When I let go of my past, some little part of me ceases to exist; some memory retreats to the deep, dark recesses of my brain, never to be retrieved, ever again,” I totally get it! Now that I’ve read it, though, I can think on the idea. Just because I might never consciously remember that moment again, it’s still in there and has still had a part in making me who I am… so I can let go a little easier now.
For anyone needing a starting point, Year of No Clutter is forgiving. Encouraging. Schaub’s been there. She started as a borderline hoarder. By the end, she’s found a way to let things going more easily. There’s no judgement and she certainly doesn’t pretend it’s easy. Step by sometimes painful step she sorted her clutter. And if she can, maybe we can too.
A copy of this book was provided by Netgalley for an honest review.