Mike Nelson - Stop Clutter from Stealing Your Life

Description

This is much more than an "organizing" book. It is written for clutterers by a reformed clutterer who understands why it is so hard to let go of the things that clog our lives. This is the only book that addresses cluttering as a psychological, spiritual and physical blockage in our lives.

Mike Nelson has authored three books on cluttering and describes himself as a reformed clutterer. He founded Clutterless Recovery Groups, a nonprofit organization designed to give support to people who need help to stop the behavior that causes them to clutter. In Stop Clutter from Stealing Your Life, he writes that decluttering can be successfully accomplished only by using both a practical approach and an emotional approach. The practical approach concerns how to declutter. The emotional aspect concerns the behavior that causes us to clutter. We need to understand why we clutter in order to stop the flow of unnecessary "stuff" from coming in; otherwise, decluttering is useless. Nelson asserts that we accumulate things in a misguided effort to fulfill our need for love. In order to live a clutter-free life, clutters must change how they think about possessions and self-worth.

The first step is to determine if you are truly a clutterer. Nelson lists twelve questions for us to consider in deciding if we fit the clutterer category. The second step is to determine why we clutter. For those of us who simply don't know how to organize, all we need is instruction. But for people who clutter in response to unfulfilled emotional needs, the solution is much more complicated.

Chapter two describes various types of clutterers; including the "home- or office- only clutterer", the "clutter just happened to me clutterer", and the "terrorists in our heads clutter". The category of clutterer into which each person fits helps determine the best solutions from the many approaches Nelson offers. There are both practical and psychological methods geared toward each type of clutterer. The suggestions on how to organize are common sense ideas that are simple and fairly easy to follow. Resolving the emotional issues is much more difficult, but just as necessary. Changing the cluttering habit is the same as changing any other bad habit in one undeniable way; the clutterer must want to change.