Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff


Book Description

America’s top cleaning expert and star of the hit series Legacy List with Matt Paxton distills his fail-proof approach to decluttering and downsizing. Your boxes of photos, family’s china, and even the kids' height charts aren’t just stuff; they’re attached to a lifetime of memories--and letting them go can be scary. With empathy, expertise, and humor, Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff, written in collaboration with AARP, helps you sift through years of clutter, let go of what no longer serves you, and identify the items worth keeping so that you can focus on living in the present. For over 20 years, Matt Paxton has helped people from all walks of life who want to live more simply declutter and downsize. As a featured cleaner on Hoarders and host of the Emmy-nominated Legacy List with Matt Paxton on PBS, he has identified the psychological roadblocks that most organizational experts routinely miss but that prevent so many of us from lightening our material load. Using poignant stories from the thousands of individuals and families he has worked with, Paxton brings his signature insight to a necessary task. Whether you’re tired of living with clutter, making space for a loved one, or moving to a smaller home or retirement community, this book is for you. Paxton’s unique, step-by-step process gives you the tools you need to get the job done.




Stuff Your Face Or Face Your Stuff


Book Description

While organizing the lives of her many clients, Emmy-nominated organizing expert Dorothy Breininger learned to face her own stuff, and lost seventy-five pounds in the process. In this one-of-a-kind book she addresses weight loss from the much-needed perspective of what lies underneath our clutter metaphorically, physically, and emotionally. Whether you're a packrat or a calorie-counter, a neat freak or a binge eater, Breininger reveals why, to be successful on the scale, you must first master the clutter within you and around you. With the same no-holds barred candor that resonates with TV viewers, she offers prescient advice to help anyone face their stuff, with an organized, step-by-step approach to either toss it, tame it, or tailor it to fit their lives. Filled with personal stories from clients, her own success story, and tips from fitness coaches and organizing experts, this imminently practical book gives everyone the tools to declutter their way to their dream size.




The Secret Lives of Hoarders


Book Description

On the front lines with extreme hoarders The Secret Lives of Hoarders is much more than harrowing tales of attacking the ugliest, dirtiest, and most shocking hoarding cases in the country. It is a behind-the-scenes look at this hidden epidemic- what it means, how to recognize it before it gets out of hand, and how to deal with it. Through his work with hundreds of clients in the worst circumstances- from the giant "rat's nest" that hid more than $13,000 in cash to a vast cache of cartoon pornography to twenty-five years' worth of unopened mail-Matt Paxton has learned to understand this disorder and his clients' impulses to collect, to speak the hoarders' language, and to reach out to them with compassion and concern while avoiding criticism and judgment. Most important, he guides compulsive hoarders successfully through every step of the clean-up and healing process. The Secret Lives of Hoarders is an engrossing and sometimes unsettling look at extreme clutter but one that helps hoarders, their families, and their friends to find meaning in the chaos.




Breathing Room


Book Description

Cleaning out your cupboards isn’t just about a tidier kitchen. Find peace, repair your past, and live a more fulfilled life with this uplifting guide to the spiritual practice of decluttering. Bless your clutter. Yes, you heard right: Bless it. Bless everything in your life that is superfluous, broken, burdensome, and overwhelming—because it is all here to teach you an important lesson, perhaps the most important lesson there is: what really matters. Everyone’s lives could use some serious decluttering. But decluttering isn’t just about sorting junk into piles and tossing things in the trash. Decluttering can inform us of our burdens, help us to understand our attachments, and aid us in identifying what is truly valuable in our lives. Written by a medical doctor and a spiritual intuitive, with case studies of people just like you, Breathing Room takes you on an enlightening room-by-room tour where each room in your home corresponds to a “room” in your heart, and where declutter­ing will not just make space but improve the spirit. So, if it’s weighing you down, if it’s become an obstacle, if it’s making it near impossible for you to find the things you really love—it’s time for you to let it go and find a little breathing room.




The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning


Book Description

*The basis for the wonderfully funny and moving TV series developed by Amy Poehler and Scout Productions* A charming, practical, and unsentimental approach to putting a home in order while reflecting on the tiny joys that make up a long life. In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning “death” and städning meaning “cleaning.” This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you. In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace minimalism. Her radical and joyous method for putting things in order helps families broach sensitive conversations, and makes the process uplifting rather than overwhelming. Margareta suggests which possessions you can easily get rid of (unworn clothes, unwanted presents, more plates than you’d ever use) and which you might want to keep (photographs, love letters, a few of your children’s art projects). Digging into her late husband’s tool shed, and her own secret drawer of vices, Margareta introduces an element of fun to a potentially daunting task. Along the way readers get a glimpse into her life in Sweden, and also become more comfortable with the idea of letting go.




It's All Too Much


Book Description

Are your counters covered with appliances you had to have but rarely use? Are your cupboards stuffed with clothes that you hope to fit back into or that you paid a fortune for but only wore once? Have you been hanging on to that hideous teapot your mother gave you 10 years ago only because she gave it to you? Every time you go shopping do you come back with bags of more stuff because that pillow/blouse/cd/mixer will be the one thing that changes your life and then it doesn't change your life because you have nowhere to put it? In It's All Too Much,organisational guru Peter Walsh challenges you to answer a very simple but scary question: Does the stuff you own contribute to the life you hope to achieve or does it get in the way of your vision? Peter helps you assess the state of your home without any sugar coating and will teach you how to confront and conquer the stuff that is holding you back by identifying the purpose of each and every object in your home and assessing your reasons for holding onto it. He shows you how to identify which room is the heart of your home and then shows you why it is so important to keep that space clean and clear of clutter - if the heart of your home is clogged what does that say about you? He then helps you go room by room to ask the important questions: What is the room? What's its purpose? What is this item? Does it contribute positively to the life you want? The answers to these questions will help you understand your priorities and fix your relationship with your stuff. And in gaining this understanding you can start to clear out the clutter!




Let It Go


Book Description

Say goodbye to clutter, reduce stress, and live simply with this easy-to-use guide to downsizing! Whether you are selling your family home, blending households into a new home, or cleaning out your aging parents' home, sorting through a lifetime's worth of accumulated possessions can be a daunting and stressful experience. Decluttering guru Peter Walsh recently went through the process of downsizing his childhood home and dividing his late parents' family possessions. He realized that making these decisions about mementos and heirlooms creates strong emotions and can be an overwhelming chore. In Let It Go, Peter will help you turn downsizing into a rejuvenating life change with his useful tips and practical takeaways, including how to: • Understand the emotional challenges that accompany downsizing • Establish a hierarchy of mementos and collectibles • Calculate the amount of stuff you can bring into your new life • Create strategies for dividing heirlooms among family members without drama This new phase brings unexpected freedoms and opportunities, and Peter walks you through every step of the process. You’ll feel freer and happier than you ever thought possible once you Let It Go.




Christian Minimalism


Book Description

"Ehrlich’s insightful self-help guide will resonate with Christians wishing to streamline an overstuffed life."—Publishers Weekly Logically, we all know our purpose in life is not wrapped up in accumulating possessions, wealth, power, and prestige—Jesus is very clear about that—but society tells us otherwise. Christian Minimalism attempts to cut through our assumptions and society’s lies about what life should look like and invites readers into a life that Jesus calls us to live: one lived intentionally, free of physical, spiritual, and emotional clutter. Written by a woman who simplified her own life and practices these principles daily, this book gives readers a fresh perspective on how to live out God’s grace for us in new and exciting ways and live out our faith in a way that is deeply satisfying.




Sometimes I Lie


Book Description

ALICE FEENEYS NEW YORK TIMES AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER “Boldly plotted, tightly knotted—a provocative true-or-false thriller that deepens and darkens to its ink-black finale. Marvelous.” —AJ Finn, author of The Woman in the Window My name is Amber Reynolds. There are three things you should know about me: 1. I’m in a coma. 2. My husband doesn’t love me anymore. 3. Sometimes I lie. Amber wakes up in a hospital. She can’t move. She can’t speak. She can’t open her eyes. She can hear everyone around her, but they have no idea. Amber doesn’t remember what happened, but she has a suspicion her husband had something to do with it. Alternating between her paralyzed present, the week before her accident, and a series of childhood diaries from twenty years ago, this brilliant psychological thriller asks: Is something really a lie if you believe it's the truth?




Before We Were Strangers


Book Description

From the USA TODAY bestselling author of Sweet Thing and Nowhere But Here comes a love story about a Craigslist “missed connection” post that gives two people a second chance at love fifteen years after they were separated in New York City. To the Green-eyed Lovebird: We met fifteen years ago, almost to the day, when I moved my stuff into the NYU dorm room next to yours at Senior House. You called us fast friends. I like to think it was more. We lived on nothing but the excitement of finding ourselves through music (you were obsessed with Jeff Buckley), photography (I couldn’t stop taking pictures of you), hanging out in Washington Square Park, and all the weird things we did to make money. I learned more about myself that year than any other. Yet, somehow, it all fell apart. We lost touch the summer after graduation when I went to South America to work for National Geographic. When I came back, you were gone. A part of me still wonders if I pushed you too hard after the wedding… I didn’t see you again until a month ago. It was a Wednesday. You were rocking back on your heels, balancing on that thick yellow line that runs along the subway platform, waiting for the F train. I didn’t know it was you until it was too late, and then you were gone. Again. You said my name; I saw it on your lips. I tried to will the train to stop, just so I could say hello. After seeing you, all of the youthful feelings and memories came flooding back to me, and now I’ve spent the better part of a month wondering what your life is like. I might be totally out of my mind, but would you like to get a drink with me and catch up on the last decade and a half? M