I tend to think of myself as a minimalist by heart. Every month I go through my closet and home and get rid of things I haven't used or worn in over 6months. Maybe its growing up in a home where mess wasn't appreciate or knowing that a lot of things wont give you joy, but I try to keep my stuff at a manageable level.

I requested this book on Netgally because I was curious as to what the author had to say about clutter and what her year of no clutter entailed. I think as much as I cut back, there are still genius ways in which I can cut back a lot more, I thought this book would have given me more ideas to combat clutter. Needless to say, I wasn't entirely pleased, nor did a learn a lot about how to de-clutter from this book.

It's great that the author had some inspiration and got around to cleaning up her act, but this book was more for entertainment than knowledge. Needless to say, I wasn't entirely entertained, in more ways than one I found myself judging the author a little. I guess I need to be more empathetic with people and their problems but this book did not do it for me.

The year of no clutter takes you into a journey with the author and her goal to get rid of clutter from the hell room.
At times you might see yourself reflected on the author's way of thinking or habits and go: "I know right?" or "guiltyyyyy". Other times you might find yourself denying any similitude with your life. But as you keep reading you'll find her journey refreshing, inspiring and a good lesson for getting rid of clutter and taking the first step into a more satisfying life. I really enjoyed her sense of humor, the whole book felt like a friend telling me her adventures in great detail.

In a way, Year of No Clutter is a book about nothing of great significance. The author has a large room in her house that she refers to as the "Hell Room" that had become the depository stuff of all sorts – symbolizing her inability to get rid of anything.  She spends a year decluttering the room, while analyzing why she has so much trouble getting rid of things. In today’s world, it’s hard to figure out why such a book matters, but it nevertheless resonated for me…

My husband and I bought an old house in need of much work close to twenty years ago.  At the time, we had just had our first child and were both early in our careers. Some work got done on the house, but it quickly became our personal chaos.  There was little time to sort through the things brought into the house that we had amassed as students or the things we accumulated as young parents. So things got shoved into closets, the basement and our own “hell room”.  Fast forward to a few years ago when we finally were in a position to fully renovate the house.  The first step was to empty the house, which turned into quite an enterprise.  I had no idea we had accumulated so much stuff or why we had a compulsion to keep so much.  But what started off as a daunting task turned into what I now think of a really liberating experience. By the end, we had pretty much pared down our possessions to what we truly use or what has sincere sentimental value. I even got rid of all my old diaries. I love the ways in which we improved the house with the renovation, but I also equally appreciate that I no longer live in a state of perpetual clutter. And now, I’ve become a jealous guardian of clear space – one of the only significant exceptions is the bookcase shown in my profile. 

I never went through the mental exercise Eve Schaub goes through of figuring out why getting rid of stuff felt so mentally liberating.  So it was interesting to read Schaub’s reflections – her thoughts on why she had a tendency to keep everything, why it was so hard to go through things and make decisions about what to keep and what to toss, and the sense of accomplishment that came with getting through the exercise. Again, in the real world, these are silly problems. But I have to admit that I was heartened to see that I wasn’t alone.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

The author of this book, Eve Schaub, writes engagingly at times and seems to have a likable voice. She also has a "Hell Room" where she stashes all of the things that she is too afraid to discard but that has no real place in her home. She decides that she will clear out all of this clutter in a year and have a functional room again. She flirts with the hoarder label without ever really owning it. This book spent 320 long pages detailing her sporadic attempts to clear out various categories of things in the room. I kept waiting for something a bit deeper, and there were occasional insights sprinkled in, but I felt like the book lacked a real purpose. At the end of the year and the end of the book, the Hell Room has been sort-of, but not totally, transformed, but at that point, I found I couldn't care.

I requested this book from NetGalley because I can't resist books about clutter, which is kind of ironic given that my natural tendency is to hoard stuff!

I have to be honest and say that the first couple of chapters of this book didn't pull me in, reading about someone's room full of clutter that they know has a dead mouse in, and also that a cat has peed all over made me feel a bit squeamish. This isn't the kind of clutter situation that I can identify with. I do tend to want to keep things but I'm also quite obsessive about cleaning.

I'm so glad that I decided to give the book another go through because from the point when Eve starts to explore what makes a hoarder, and what makes her the way she is I was fascinated and I could really identify with some of the things she discovered about herself.

There is a point where she writes that as a child she believed she had to keep everything so that she'd have enough stuff to fill her own home when she was grown up, and that is just how I was too. I kept all my childhood ornaments for years because I believed that shelves had to be filled with stuff. The idea that some people had empty surfaces in their home was alien to me. Eve's father had a problem with clutter so she sees that her issues partly came from seeing what his house was like. My mum was very sentimental and could never get rid of things that people had given her, so I can see how Eve, and I, ended up being clutter bugs.

The part that really got to me was when Eve talks about her belief that if she lets go of things that she is sentimental about then she risks losing the memory of that particular point in time: that by holding on to the object, she has a trigger to bring back the memories instantly. I struggle with this too. It's really hard when you get to an age where you've lost people who meant the world to you, how do you let go of the things they gave you? I felt Eve's pain as she tried to work out which things to keep, and which to let go of.

Eve has an issue with making decisions, she really fears making a wrong choice and believes this feeds into her obsession with keeping things. This was eye-opening for me. I've always been indecisive but have never connected that to the way I keep things, but it makes total sense that if you really dread making a bad decision that you would find it hard to be confident in the things you get rid of. Eve gradually learns that it's not the end of the world if you get rid of something and later wish you hadn't, and that's something I've learnt during my regular de-cluttering sessions. To be honest, I've agonised over some of the things I've being considering getting rid of but once they're out of my house I've never regretted any of it. Objects might hold memories but they can't bring a person back, it's how you feel in your heart that matters.

One of the things Eve struggled with most was dealing with her paperwork. She couldn't get rid of any of it without reading it first and then had to deal with whatever memory was attached before she could move on to the next lot of papers. It really struck a chord with me when Eve said: '... I keep souvenirs even of negative occurrences in my life, for fear that without them I would forget that event and even any lesson learnt from that event'. It sounds utterly ridiculous to keep paperwork from the worst moments of your life, but I used to be exactly the same. My mum kept some papers that were so painful to her but she felt she couldn't ever shred them. When she died I took the papers for safe-keeping, and added some of my own from the year my mum was dying. I kept all of her hospital letters because I didn't want to forget, and yet I was trying to hard not to drown in all the trauma that happened in that year. I moved in with my then new boyfriend (now my husband) the year my mum died and I took all the paperwork with me because I just couldn't leave it behind - it felt like it was haunting me. Then one day I decided enough was enough. I burnt the lot and it was so therapeutic to let it go for both me, and my mum's memory. I try to always remember now that the things we keep will one day be someone else's problem to deal with and it helps me get rid of stuff that's not really important in the grand scheme of things. Eve learns the same lesson in a different way. We can't keep everything, we don't have the room. So if you can only keep a fraction of the stuff, pick the good stuff, the happy stuff.

This isn't a how-to book, it's not about helping you clear your clutter. It is one woman's open and honest journey through her own battle with clutter but in the process of reading you will probably recognise yourself in Eve, as I did, and it will spur you on to deal with your own clutter.

I highly recommend this book. Year of No Clutter is out now and available here.

I received a copy of this book from Sourcebooks via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I received a free copy from NetGalley; this is my honest review.
- The author relates how she turned her "hell room" into an almost-organized room in a little bit over a year, and even then, she wasn't finished yet.
- There is no question about it, the author does have a "separation anxiety with her stuff". She is re-evaluating each piece individually - that must have taken an eternity to work through given the loads of STUFF she had.
- I had to take a break at some point because she talks about other subjects - she did get sidetracked a lot in her mission, all by herself or by well-intended people around her.
- I found her attachment to her treasures such as broken things, spoiled food, dead insects or rodent horrifying, and she doesn't seem to have any qualms about them either, which is even more shocking to me.
- A funny phrase I came by in the book: "The U.S.A. is hoarding hoarders!"
- She does give a definition of mess vs. clutter, but she rationalizes all through her book.
- I would not read this book again considering that it did not inspire me nor did it give me any insight on how to go about gaining tidiness in one's house.

YEAR OF NO CLUTTER by Eve O. Schaub is a memoir which tells the story of Eve Schaub as a collector and her efforts to de-clutter the "Hell Room" in her house. She says, "In a way, it's kind of cool. It's a bit of a time capsule of my life; it's my own private Eve Museum." Having attacked similar storage spaces, I empathize. It's like being transported to another year, another decade. Fun in its way, but not an especially productive use of space. Schaub uses humor and personal anecdotes to help lighten the psychological distress, isolation and unsafe living conditions associated with hoarding at its worse. Like others who commented upon YEAR OF NO CLUTTER, I wanted to go and start straightening immediately, all while wishing Eve Schaub good luck with her own quest.

I can really relate to much of this. This is a woman's story of how she wanted to let go of some of her clutter. I have plenty of it myself. Unfortunately. My spouse would really like for me to release a lot of it. I've bought about 4 books..paid good money for...on how to declutter. None really helped.

I liked this one tho. And its funny and inspiring. It helped me "let go" of a box of CD cases - yep, the ones that the CDs used to be in that still have the jackets. I long ago either purchased those favorite ones in iTunes to listen to on my phone, or at least, placed all of those CDs in one of those big CD binders to keep them all together. The box of CD cases sat in the top of the closet for years. Taking up a lot of space. I would look at them and just walk away. At least while reading this I realized there just was no need to keep them. Silly you say? Maybe. But, I am a bit of hoarder a heart. I get it.

It felt good. I think I will add some more items from the top of the closet next week. I like seeing that empty space there.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for giving me a digital edition of this book to read in exchange for a review. I am going to keep it up. Eve is someone I can identify with. The struggle is real! Highly recommended. Helpful and entertaining.

Year of No Clutter by Eve Schaub is a very interesting read. Eve sheds light on her inner thoughts regarding her internal drive to save things. Some items Eve save seem to have no purpose. The need to save these items are entirely unconceivable to me. I am not a saver or collector. I don’t even keep books once I have read them.

It is interesting, that while Eve has family members that are collectors/saver to a great degree she can not understand their reasoning for keeping items. Year of No Clutter shows that the thought processes that lead to someone becoming a saver/hoarder is very personal to their life story. As a social worker for the last 20 years, I have been in many homes where people have difficulty with saving. I found it very helpful to understand Eve’s inner thought process and walk with her as she works to regain control of her “Hell Room”. Eve is very cognizant of her behavior/tendencies and how they are being handed down to her daughters. Will Eve end this family cycle of collecting after this year of working through her relationship with clutter?

“Periodically I would stop whatever it was I was doing to register the thought: the very fact that I have a Hell Room – much less the leisure to write an entire book about it – is one heck of a First World problem if I ever heard one. “ Eve Schaub

Year of No Clutter by Eve Schaub is a 3.5 read for me! I was very interested in understanding Eve’s inner thought process that led to her having having a “Hell Room”.

Oh what to say about this book. It was an interesting one. I requested this book on Netgalley because I expected it to be a bit more like Marie Condo and less like the diary of a mentally unstable person. But hey, I got something halfway in between. The beginning irritated me a little because there was just a lot of obsessive talk going on. While I could recognise some people of my family, cluttering isn't something that I can identity with many real people in my life, making some of the hoarder thoughts sound insane (like 'oh I can't throw away this dead mouse, it's basically a friend'...hm what?). BUT, and yes it's a big BUT, Schaub's writing is excellent. I laughed out loud and by half the book I was captivated by her quest, not just to clear the one 'hell room' in her house, but her way of seeing life and her relationship to 'things' in general. I really enjoyed it in the end and would recommend it to anyone who likes the idea of reading about someone decluttering their house.

Eve has a clutter problem. It's to the point in one room that would be classified as hoarding. I struggled to read this book as it was just a poor me pity party and repetitive about how horrible her room was. There was no "how-to" or tips that I could find. I didn't care for the book at all. Just felt like a woman who is a good author and can write well but just created a book that really had no substance.

Eve has a problem with clutter. Spreading across every room and surface of her house, but particularly bad in what she and her family call the Hell Room: a nightmarish mass of paper (including print-outs of every email ever sent to the long-closed gallery she used to run), art supplies, old clothes... you name it, it's in the Hell Room. Enough is enough, she decides, and embarks on the Year of No Clutter in an attempt to clear the room, her house, and her psyche.

It's less problematic than it might at first seem that Schaub can *have* so much stuff in the first place, it becoming rapidly clear to the reader that this is detritus of normal life - dried up felt tip pens, a dead mouse in a box - kept out of a deep fear of getting rid of anything, rather than the result of excessive consumption. What I did find problematic, and what is barely touched upon in the book, is the privilege inherent in having so much space that an entire room, by Eve's own admission the largest room in her house, can be given over to clutter and mess. She also fails to address the frankly appalling behaviour of her husband (he refuses to be part of the project and disappears to his studio whenever asked to help, despite piles and piles of his own belongings emerging from the room) and what this may say about how clutter, not to mention household tasks can be gendered. While I didn't necessarily want or need a treatise on this topic, an acknowledgement of it would have gone a long way to making me feel less angry when reading about his part in things (or lack thereof).

In parts brilliantly funny (especially the early and last chapters, both of which had me weeping with laughter), in parts a more sober examination on when clutter becomes hoarding, Year Of No Clutter doesn't give solutions in the style of Marie Kondo's blockbuster, but may provide gentle encouragement to take a closer look at your your own cluttered spaces.

Eve Schaub's Year of No Clutter is a memoir of Eve's battle with her clutter. I wanted to like this book. Eve's writing style is a bit like her home - messy. She took a long time to get started, and I am not certain that she really accomplished anything. It is important to remember this is a memoir and not a self-help book. The book is light on substance but did make me want to declutter my own home.

Year of No Clutter, doesn’t that sound like the dream? I knew as soon as I picked up this book that it was going to make me want to clean. And I was right. Year of No Clutter centers around author Eve Schaub, as she tries to clean out her family’s hell room. You know that room (and probably have one). It’s that room where you just stick everything. Well hers had gotten a bit out of control. She knew that she should clean it, but kept putting it off. Thanks to her editor’s insistence that she get started on her next book, the hell room became her next project.

One of the things I loved about Year of No Clutter is that she directly addresses one of the major problems that I have with getting rid of things: what if I need it later? What if I regret getting rid of it? HOW WILL I COPE WITH THAT FEELING?! Her answer? Well, there isn’t really an answer. In some cases she was able to just take everything and toss it. In some cases she had her moments of regret (she was that person that went back to Goodwill). In other cases, she realized that if she really needed something, she could just buy a new version.
The book itself was a little jumbled (I couldn’t tell if some of the stories were taking place during her year or at other points). But the author’s voice was funny and relate-able.

I'm not sure why I requested this book from NetGalley several months ago as I generally keep the clutter in our house to a minimum. I do like a good memoir, and the author's writing style in humorous and engaging. The book is popular in my library system right now, but it doesn't speak to me personally.

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.

This was a hilarious, poignant, and excellent read! Check out my review on my blog--and read this book.

A Year of No Clutter is an in depth look at one families experience with the deepest, darkest corner of their house - the Hell Room. We all have something similar, whether it is a closet, a room, under the bed, the floor of the car, anything. We keep lots of junk and don't want to deal with it, because it is too overwhelming, too sentimental or just too hard.

I enjoyed the peeks into the family history and how we learn these cluttering tendencies from other family members.

The only complaint it that for those of us who do not have an attic, a basement and multiple rooms to stash your crap, it can be a little hard to relate.

Reviewed on my blog as part of the publisher's blog tour