A Year to Clear: A Daily Guide to Creating Spaciousness In Your Home and Heart

by Stephanie Bennett Vogt

A Daily Guide to Simplifying, Decluttering, and Letting Go

With all our best intentions and rich resources, why is it so hard to slow down, simplify, and care for ourselves? Why are we so afraid to let go?

In A Year to Clear, leading space-clearing expert Stephanie Bennett Vogt takes you on a journey of self-discovery, letting go, and transformation. Each of the 365 lessons—organized into 52 weeklong themes—offers daily inspiration designed to release stress and stuff in ways that lighten, enlighten, and last.

This is YOUR YEAR to . . .

Free yourself of unwanted things in your home and mind by bringing awareness to messy habits and the outdated beliefs behind them.
Transform those mindless housekeeping tasks you do every day (on auto-pilot) into nurturing, soul-filled experiences.
Realize at the deepest level the essence of who you are and what you came here to be.

Stephanie’s methods of gentle encouragement and humor will guide you to look at the items and clutter in your home not simply as a “mess” to be dealt with, but as an outward reflection of your inner presence. By using her clearing exercises to clean up on the outside and the inside, both your physical and emotional realms will return to a sparkling state of balance and serenity.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Personal Development

384 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2015

About the author

Stephanie Bennett Vogt is a leading space clearing expert, teacher, and author of five books. She brings forty years of teaching experience through her practice SpaceClear, which she founded in 1996 to help homes and people come into balance. She has taught her inspiring clearing programs at centers worldwide including Kripalu and the New England School of Feng Shui, and is the creator of several bestselling courses on DailyOM which have attracted over 300,000 participants.

Stephanie is best known for her game-changing and transformational approach to clearing and simplifying known as the Spacious Way: a proven method that releases the underlying causes of clutter, stress, struggle, and overwhelm for good.
Besides teaching, Stephanie loves tending her home, cultivating simplicity, and using her camera to find beauty in the every day.

Stephanie and her husband divide their time between Concord, Massachusetts and San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

Reviews

[Sharon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even though this is not a long book, I deliberately took my time when reading it. I am in the midst of a year-long course based on this book, and I didn't want to get *too* far ahead.

Well, the good news is that I read it at a decent pace that allowed me to incorporate where I was in the lessons with where I was in the book. The bad news is that I still finished it way ahead of time! Luckily, the lessons come once a day to my e-mail, so I'm not stuck referring back to the book all of the time.

This is an interesting approach to clearing clutter, starting with understanding that clutter is partially mental -- that is to say, fear-based. That sense of panic you might feel when you are working on clearing needs to be overcome by basically fooling your amygdala out of worrying about lack. This book contains many useful lessons to help you get there, and also to help you recognize when your amygdala kicks in so that you know it's time to quit for the day rather than pushing to the point of panic.

I found the book extraordinarily useful and am employing its techniques on an ongoing basis.

[Elizabeth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the second best book about decluttering that exists - the best being Marie Kondo's "The Life-changing Magic of Tidying up". But Marie Kondo's book is all simple practicality. This one is about that more elusive decluttering project, of focusing brain and feeling and getting at root causes of not just clutter but dissatifaction, delusion and distress.

An easy task? No, but nothing is more worth doing.

The author is a yoga teacher and practicioner, and it shows.

[BookBec · Rating 1 out of 5]

Advice to future readers: If you work through a week or two of this book and think, "Well, this isn't really my style, but I'll keep going to see if it changes," just stop now. There are lots of meditations, visualizations, breathing, emotions, sensations, intuition. Lots of being gentle and reflective without much action. The book/system clearly works for some people, but it's not my cup of tea.

I tried a couple of weeks on the one-section-per-day plan. Then I tried one-week's-sections-per-day. When I found myself reading skimming several weeks' entries in a single sitting just to try to reach the end, I admitted that it was time to stop.

[Kathy Claiborne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Helped in many ways

I read this book straight through instead of taking the year as intended. I think I needed the “answers” too badly to take it slowly. The plan is to go through it again or to do one of the online courses in 2019 which stars tomorrow.

[Terrie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me 2 years to do a one year book, but I finally made it. My plan for 2018 is to start over and do it all again. Really helpful.

[Annburnett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enjoyed reading this book. It is very good for motivating you to clear clutter of all kinds.

[LemontreeLime · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked this, but it was hard to space out. Found myself doing several days at once just to get thru.

[Diane]

I could not manage to do this 'Daily guide'
I found 'Your Spacious Self' more useful for me personally.
Did not finish.

[Debra Leigh Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've started this book several times. I've worked my way through it with the thoughtfulness and contemplative approach it suggests. I seriously appreciate this book and Vogt's approach to getting your life in order. The reason that I didn't give the book five stars is because I have yet to read all the way to the end of the book -- largely because I get bogged down in the emotional explorations the boo inspires, and also because I seem eternally doomed to live in chaos. Perhaps I shouldn't take a star away from Vogt for what is clearly my own personal failing, but I'm being peevish. I plan to dive into this book again. The aspiration that the book inspires speaks well for it. That someone as hapless and hopeless as I am in maintaining any sort of order in my life determines to return to this work again and again speaks well of what Vogt offers. I don't expect to triumph, frankly. But I do expect to keep trying. That's thanks to Vogt's approach and to my belief in the myth of progress.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A light and airy book with an important message-to “clear” you do well to be aware of triggers that set off our fight-flight defensive responses as these lead to the opposite of what you seek. Rather than clarity, ease, creativity and openness you may find constriction, rigidity or chaos. To limit these defensive responses and/or to find you’re way through them she suggests many small practices, like taking small, regular steps to maintain feeling of control and success, breath awareness, journaling, open, curious self- monitoring, and the like. Good strategies to have available.

[Lisa J Shultz · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers many aspects of clearing: physical, mental and emotional. I bought the book because I am investing in clearing many parts of my life. The book is designed to be read a day at a time for a year. I admit that I usually read a week at a time and took breaks here and there. Nonetheless, I finished it and found many valuable nuggets of worthy suggestions. Now I am passing it on to a friend for the next year.

[Tiffany · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read approximately a page a day (as the book instructs) and after 7 weeks and 46 pages I had to give up. It’s just not my thing.

[Candace Haskell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. It takes you through 365 days of bite-size, baby step clearing suggestions which, if even partially attempted, start clearing detritus within and without. I enjoyed the authorial voice and, now the year is done, I miss her daily pep talk.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed my life. Set up as a book of daily meditations, reflections, and exercises to help you transform your life, this book was so effective at helping me see and address my life foibles that I referred to it as The Magic Workbook. I picked it up to help me deal with household clutter and got so much more - a deeper understanding of my family of origin and of how early life lessons prepared me for my current life. Day by day, I was able to identify and chip away at those things that are holding me back. I highly recommend this to anyone in search of their true self, their best self, or even just a better relationship with their self and their life.