It’s easy for us as home renovators to collect stuff: scraps of wood, bits and pieces of metal parts, salvaged trim, doors, knobs and pulls, light fixtures, and stuff left over from the previous owners. Each of us needs to balance the practicality of collecting useful things with cluttering up our home. While we manage to get our living and dining room under control after doing the Apartment Therapy Cure, I didn’t have time to be smug because shortly thereafter, I discovered we had been sweeping our crap into the guest bedroom, basement, and attic. There, the stuff gleefully multiplied behind our backs.

Peter Walsh a professional organizer on the TLC show “Clean Sweep”, has written a book It’s All to Much to help people battle their own clutter demons.

Book Cover

The book has two parts. The first part tackles the psychological issues behind clutter. The second part walks you through the actual process of decluttering.

It’s worthwhile to read the chapter “Excuses, Excuses”, which covers some of the most common justifications for clutter, and to really let it digest. Let’s face it, if clutter were so easy to get rid of, there would not be books and shows dedicated to it. Very few people live in the happy nirvana where they and their loved ones coexist peacefully with just the right stuff.

The best part of the book is the chapter “Imagine the Life you Want to Live”, which walks you through your home in it’s ideal state, how you live in it, and how it looks. This is a powerful exercise, because it begins with the end in mind. Most people do not visualize a dining room table so full of junk that no one can eat a Thanksgiving dinner, or a basement so clogged they can’t set up a workshop. The life you want to live within your home becomes the driving motivation

Walsh’s Room Function Chart is an excellent tool that is essentially a gap analysis. You start with a room and think about it’s current function, who uses it and what is in it. Then you think about it’s ideal function, who should use it, and what it should contain. This is where you and your loved ones hash with each other your visions for the room (this process is much easier for people who live by themselves, they can be ruler of their own domain). Finally, you analyze the gap between existing and ideal and decide what needs to go. Hopefully, the shared vision is stronger and more compelling than the desire to hold on to stuff. Walsh provides some tips on how to communicate with each other and phrasing questions when challenging loved ones.

The rest of the book is devoted to tackling individual rooms. I will only cover two chapters of note. Walsh covers the master bedroom first, stating that “no room in a home should be more important to a couple than their bedroom.” I tend to agree because I believe that a couple’s relationship with each other is the foundation of a home and that their bedroom reflects the state of their foundation. Although Wash doesn’t specifically address single people, I would hazard to guess that the bedroom may be a reflection of the relationship they have with themselves.

The other chapter worth noting is the Kid’s Room. Although we don’t have kids, we’ve seen enough homes that act as “one giant toy chest” (Walsh’s words), to scare us off from having any. Here the author provides sound advice about setting toy limits and routines for putting toys away. He also points out the lessons children learn from having toy limits and routines. He advocates making children part of the divesting process, deciding what they’ve outgrown, selecting items to give away, and going with parents to donate items. Lastly, he has some tips on heading off the Santa Claus effect when the grandparents come to town.

The rest of the chapters gives pretty standard advice. After taking in his tough love message against clutter, we donated a car load of stuff that had been lying unused for over a year. We also set aside some items that need to go back to our parents (storing other people’s stuff doesn’t mean it’s not clutter). I’d recommend this book to anyone who needs a motivational boost before tackling their own stuff.