Clutter's Last Stand by Don Aslett

Like it or not, our lives are filled with clutter. When we are young, we throw out toys that are broken, or leave them behind or give them to friends. But as we get older, we want to hang on to more and more clutter. Even if we know we don't need it, we keep it instead of throwing it away. We make many excuses to justify it to ourself and others, but in the end, our lives get more and more taken over by things we have no use for amd keep only for the sake of the comfort it gives us in having them.

But if we only knew how harmful clutter is, we'd do more to get rid of the things that take over our storage space and clutter up our lives. Clutter is harmful, to our spaces and ourselves. For whatever reasons we hang on to it, it ends up hurting us more than helping us. And the amount of energy we spend moving our clutter around and hauling it from place to place could be much, much better spent on actually living our lives and not having to worry about the clutter.

Don Aslett came from a farm family, and as he can attest, Farmers and their families are massive holders of clutter and junk. Once you have the space a farm and a barn afford you, you can keep much, much more clutter and junk than someone who lives in an urban area. Old tractors, farm equipment and tools pile up. If something goes bad, the farmer justifies buying a new one while keeping the old one somewhere falling to rust with the idea that he can always strip parts from the old one if the new one breaks or needs a replacement part.

But when he moved to college, clutter built up in his dorm room, nearly forcing him to live elsewhere. That's when he decided to clean up his own clutter, and he did so well at it, be started a company cleaning up other people's clutter. So when he describes himself as a clutter-buster, you know he's serious. And now he's brought his own secrets to readers everywhere.

He starts by describing how clutter holds us back, and why we should de-clutter our lives. He goes on to debunk the justifications we use for keeping clutter around, and suggests specific ways to go about decluttering your life. His four box system gives a method for dealing with clutter. One part is junk. That's stuff that nobody wants or needs, things that are outdated and no longer useful.

The next box is charity. Stuff that is still useful to someone, but which doesn't fit or suit you, the person who is currently owning it. He suggests letting someone else worry about it for a change, and to give it away. The third box is for sorting: things that should be elsewhere, but maybe you aren't sure where to put it. Keep these for a month, and sort it again. The last box is emotional withdrawal. You keep it for emotional reasons, but you really don't need it. He suggests keeping these items unseen in a box for six months, and then throwing it away or giving it away. If you haven't needed it in six months, you don't really need it.

I liked this book, though I am probably the last person to keep stuff for my emotional needs. My mom recently passed away, and I had to go all through her stuff because she wanted to donate it to charity. She was late in her life, and kept a lot of stuff we didn't really need, and so it all went to charity (some of it, I am still trying to get rid of, which is too big to be hauled by me or me and my Dad together, and so it sits for now. But I am the least sentimental person in the world, and I got rid of a lot of junk my mom couldn't or wouldn't. It was a job I wouldn't have wished on anyone. And yes, I wish I'd had this book when I cleaned the house. I still have more to do, so I found this book invaluable, and since it is a library book, I can't keep it, but I am very glad that I read it.

It may not get you to start de-junking and de-cluttering your life, but it may well change your attitudes towards the stuff you have and keep. Read it once, and it will probably stay with you for a lifetime. A good book for anyone who has run into the "too much stuff, too little space" dilemma.