Year of No Clutter by Eve Schaub. Follow the link to the author’s website.
This book was a suggestion for me on Hoopla, the audio service I can access through my library system, so I gave it a try. So far I’m only about an hour and a half into it, but it has already made me laugh out loud several times. Schaub’s sometimes-rather-preachy tone about sugar is completely absent in this book, and the reader (who isn’t the author) is excellent. Since we’re moving out of our house we have to get rid of a bunch of our stuff, and we (or rather Jim) have to make room for what we are taking with us over at my in-laws’. So this is a very timely book.
Schaub’s husband says in the intro that when they were dating he once wrote “I love you” on a packet of sugar at a restaurant where they were eating and gave it to Eve. She smiled and tucked it into her purse, saying that she’d have to save it. Years later he found that sugar packet in their junk room. (She calls it the “hell room,” a term I don’t like, but there it is.) So this book is a chronicle of her attempt to clear out said room, a 500-square-foot load of utter and complete junk, over the course of a year. (Yet another one of those year-long stunt books, I know, but this one is really good, I promise.) So far she’s enlisted her 10-year-old and 15-year-old daughters in the cause, although the 10-year-old is just like her mother and so probably won’t be much help. She has also visited the house of a true, dyed-in-the-wool hoarder, a man who has died in the midst of an unbelievable horror, and her powers of description are pretty great. Now she’s back to her own house, determined to get going. I’m finding the book to be so charming that I’m champing at the bit to keep going on it, so as soon as i finish this post I’m going to go fold laundry so I can listen to it some more. Can you believe it?
There’ll be an update as soon as I finish it. Even if you’re the most strict minimalist on the planet, I think you’d enjoy the book. It’ll be like exploring a whole alien culture. And if you’re a “collector” . . . well, maybe it will be a nudge. Who knows what may be lurking under that pile?
Promised update: I did indeed finish the book, finding myself as fascinated with how this whole story was going to end as I’ve been in the past with murder mysteries. Did I mention that it’s just charming? Oh yes, I did. Schaub manages to deal with some fairly serious issues, including depression and OCD, within the framework of a lighthearted narrative. I just can’t recommend it enough. If you struggle with stuff yourself you’ll get some much-needed sympathetic advice, and if you struggle with someone else who struggles with stuff you’ll gain understanding. I won’t tell you how it ends–you’ll just have to find out for yourself!