Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What's Holding You Back Author: Visit Amazon's Brooks Palmer Page | Language: English | ISBN:
1577316592 | Format: EPUB
Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What's Holding You Back Description
Review
“I have needed this book for years, and I loved it! Brooks’s advice helped me clean up clutter, which gave me more time, energy, and creativity.”
— Robert J. Kriegel, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of If It Ain’t Broke, Break It!
“Clutter Busting literally changed my life. Brooks’s gentle yet firm voice inspired me to act, to widen my eyes and take a fresh look around — and undo pockets of clutter, not only in my closet and the trunk of my car but also in my heart. This book is filled with practical, useful wisdom.”
— Marc Lesser, author of Less: Accomplishing More by Doing Less
“If you want to make your space into a transformative tool that supports your life and work, you need Clutter Busting.”
— Julia Mossbridge, PhD, author of Unfolding: The Perpetual Science of Your Soul’s Work
About the Author
BROOKS PALMER helps people get rid of things they no longer need. He has been featured in national and local media and has performed stand-up comedy for many years. A popular speaker to diverse groups, he divides his time between Los Angeles and Chicago. www.clutterbusting.com
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Paperback: 232 pages
- Publisher: New World Library (March 1, 2009)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1577316592
- ISBN-13: 978-1577316596
- Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.5 inches
- Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Brooks Palmer tells the reader more than once his purpose in writing his book is to inspire you to get rid of your clutter. I am writing this review to let the reader know the author's inspiration is not mere self-help inspiration based in some kind of Eastern wisdom but is wholly domestically practical, and the psychological aspects of his approach are pragmatic: it works!
I've been a big fan of Don Aslett and in particular his book "Clutter's Last Stand." In Aslett's book, the writing is as clear as a red fire truck and the advice is as strong as the blare of the fire truck's siren. You can readily see what needs to be thrown out and then you just do it.
With Palmer's book, the path is more indirect but no less powerful and no less clear. Palmer tells stories about his former clients and their issues with clutter. In one tale,the reader finds him accepting a client based on trading a full body massage for clutter advice; in another, he assists a young lady who works as a [...] model. His stories range from the middle-class yuppie who cannot throw out the expensive electronics he never uses stored in his garage to the weirdly intimate and bizarre clutter of women lost in past romances and previous identities. Through these often astonishing tales, the reader begins to identify hidden and often subconscious areas of clutter, some quite small and others quite embarrassingly obvious. One quickly discovers that no story is completely without some practical and beneficial relation to the reader and his or her clutter, no matter the gender, age or circumstance.
The goal of this book is to reconnect people with the true purpose of things.
Here's a quote from the book:
-- "Things are functional. Their job is to make your life easier or to increase your level of fun. Things become clutter when they no longer achieve either of these results."
It doesn't matter if these things are worn out or brand new. If they're no longer useful to you, then they're taking up precious physical and psychological space.
Instead of adding to your life, clutter ends up subtracting from it.
And it also contributes to why people don't enjoy their homes more, why they feel overwhelmed, why they can't get motivated and why they can't get organized.
The author explains that things are purchased from a place of hope...the hope being that this object will give meaning to your life, but it doesn't work. It never feels like enough and you end up needing more and more to get that high back.
To reverse this belief, he begins by creating a high level of discomfort from having too much stuff in your life...to the point where you can't wait to relieve yourself of this burden.
He explains how clutter creates friction between couples and how clutter keeps you stuck living in the past.
He also explains how advertising strongly influences us to purchase things we don't need.
Clutter competes for your attention and people try to handle this stress by putting it away in storage (the out of sight, out of mind mentality)...but he explains that it's not truly out of mind because, in the back of your mind, you still know the stuff is there...waiting to be dealt with.
The author compares stored away clutter to someone baking lasagna in the kitchen. Even though you're in the other room and can't see it, you can still smell it.
Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What's Holding You Back Preview
Link
Please Wait...