Love Your Clutter Away: A step-by-step guide to gently letting clutter go for good

by Carmen Klassen

Do you want a home that makes you feel happy and peaceful? Love Your Clutter Away offers a detailed, easy-to-read solution to overwhelming clutter. The “secret” to this book is to focus first on loving yourself. Regardless of how much clutter you have, it’s very difficult to let go of clutter when you feel terrible about yourself. If you constantly berate yourself about your clutter and your life, it’s much harder for you to declutter. As you start to really love yourself, you can begin to deal with your clutter successfully. Love Your Clutter Away gives you practical ways to start loving yourself immediately so you can start decluttering immediately. An attitude of loving yourself combined with the effective decluttering actions in this book will create magic in your space and your life!

We’re pressured to buy/get/find things everywhere we turn, and then we’re pressured to have perfect clutter free homes that never ever reach perfection. It’s time for a new strategy that will help you feel better and start to love your clutter away. This book walks you through each room in your house, explaining how to sort, organize, and choose the best things to keep. Everything from kitchens to kid’s rooms to stuff from the past can be less cluttered with the Love Your Clutter Away approach, AND you'll be able to do it with a caring, supportive coach talking you through each step.

In Love Your Clutter Away, you will learn:
*The secret to decluttering
*How to set the stage for a clutter free home
*Decluttering techniques for each room in the house
*Easy solutions to paper clutter
*How to deal with clutter from the past
*Where to put things to organize your home
*How to fill your life with things other than clutter – ‘things’ that matter
*To create an amazing life and keep a calm, clutter free home

Genres: Nonfiction

149 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 27, 2017

About the author

Carmen Klassen is a new author with an old soul. After years of finding inspiration in the stories (both real and fictional) of women, she's decided to share her own vision of amazing women. The Net Worth series is the first group of stories about women who come from harsh pasts and create brilliant futures.

Carmen lived in the United States and then Scotland before finding her way back home. She enjoys scenic walks, a good cup of coffee, Mediterranean food, doing puzzles with her kids (when they are feeling especially generous with their time) and curling up with a good book on a rainy day (or a sunny day, or really any day).

Reviews

[Ruth A Van Art · Rating 5 out of 5]

Clear, concise and gentle plan for clearing clutter

This book is very well written and contains a simple (but not necessarily easy) plan for clearing the clutter from your home. Each chapter contains specific steps for cleaning up a single room and they are organized from the easiest to most difficult. The book is written for folks with serious clutter issues, and it can also be used for "regular" people who just need a guideline and a gentle push. The author's focus on loving yourself seems a little strange at first, but I think most people will come to appreciate the power in those three words.
I read the entire book and will now go back to the beginning to work through the chapters. I feel confident that I can succeed as long as I remember to love myself more than I love my stuff.

[Angie Carroll · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this book. It gave me great ideas for every area of my house and how to make it easier to clean and to keep it clean. I am already starting to use some of the tips from the book. I like how the author breaks it down into chapters so that we can concentrate on one area at a time. I also like that the author constantly says to love yourself. It is so easy to get overwhelmed but if you take it step by step you can manage it. I would like to read more books from this author. I received a free copy and I voluntarily chose to review it. It is my honest and fair opinion.

[Kell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very helpful! Really inspired me to purge. Out with the old and out with the new (yes, I said that right)

[Nicole Normand · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received a copy from the author via AXP; this is my honest review.
-I love the intro. She gives pointers as to what works and what doesn’t.
-The author has good tips and a step-by-step routine to use throughout the house while decluttering each room.
-The system works. I tried it in the four corners of my kitchen as trials from “warming up, chap.4.
-I liked her “setting the stage” chapter. I don’t have garbage laying around but I know I can find recycling items like this.
-I found it a good idea to check on previously clean spaces to see how they were doing.
-Chap #7 Bathroom, #14 Car and #22 Office made me laugh because those are kept super clean and organized. My father used to organize our personal files and that's where I got that: we each have our own file folder color (DH blue, me red, son yellow, daughter pink, son green) and each of us have at least: birth, health, school transcripts, diplomas, etc. Then we have house and furniture, insurances, car, wills, etc. Furniture? Yes, we keep the sizes for when we move next and we can see if we fit in a home we like (space planning). We also have drawers for office supplies, batteries, etc.
-Chap #11 Kitchen: The cups we use are personalized and they all go by pairs. I kept a dozen of mismatched cups stored into a chest for when we receive the family for breakfast (and we do).
-Chap #24 Paperwork: Good tip about using Pinterest for magazine cuttings and recipes with pictures. I have plastic boxes for 10 different years and all the receipts go into the box. The office was specially designed to accommodate these boxes.
-Chap #12 Laundry Room: Here, I let go the system because: 1. I have several categories for laundry: sheets, towels, whites for the dryers, whites to hang, dark for the dryer, dark to hang. Then I have the pillows and duvet which I launder every 3 months. 2. I do not wash in cold water. Cold water doesn’t take care of sweat and dead skin. In the bedroom we have a sorter and it’s white, dark, dry cleaning. In the big bathroom we have a basket for when we take a shower. 3. I always, always finish a run: wash, dry or hang, fold, put back where they belong. 4. I do laundry once a month over 2 days, usually a weekend but not necessarily since I’m home. We have enough to cover a month of underwear, bras, dress shirts, undershirts, socks, dress socks, sheets, blankets, etc. I’ve been doing this for over 30 years and wouldn’t change it for the world. My kids started doing their own laundry when they were ten. Now that they left, they kept the same routine since they already have a month’s worth of things.
-Chap #15 Front Closet & Entryway: we also keep: 1. Our emergency kits; they need to be at the door and we each have one. 2. Shoes/Boots accessories because this is where it’s used. 3. A boot horn 4. Our mittens, scarves, gloves 5. The computer bags we use. 6. My DONATE bag is in the spare room and it’s not in the way at all.
-Chap #16 The MB: My category is COLOR for tees, dresses, blouses, camisoles. The pants are apart. The balance goes into drawers. My husband’s categories are dress shirts and pants. The balance goes into drawers. We have 3 IKEA dressers, so one drawer each for socks, another one for underwear, etc. Our shoes also go into a drawer.
-She uses the words “thing, something, stuff, etc.” way too often and most of them could’ve been switched to the most appropriate word.
-I know why the clutter came in, where it comes from, and why it’s been staying so I didn’t pick on the “you don’t love yourself” and “how bad other people have made you feel” because my family knows what happened and don't blame me for it.
-The “take three” was really annoying. I love myself and no one has ever said anything mean to me. She has a whole chapter on this and also repeats herself through the book and several times during the same chapter.
-Talking about repeating brings me to the fact that she repeats herself constantly, copy/paste a lot of loving yourself, steps, tips, etc. It didn’t work for me. My first sense is hearing and it’s like she’s nagging me. Also, it’s such a short book, I didn’t see the point.