It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff

This book saved me and my home! Growing up in a family where organization and decluttering wasn’t a priority, I didn’t feel I had all the skills I needed to take care of my own home when I left for college. I always saw other people’s homes and wondered how they kept everything so organized! After reading this book I felt inspired and motivated to make my home the way I wanted it to be. Fast forward to now (over a decade later!!!) I bought this book for a friend who was struggling with having too much clutter. This book did the exact same thing for him and he’s working towards making sure that he owns his stuff, and that his stuff doesn’t own him.

I have read a dozen or so organization books, and most helped in one area or another, but there were a few areas that keep coming back to haunt me. After reading this book and spending a few hours a WEEK on these areas, my life has become MUCH less stressful. Peter Walsh directs you to the reasons you acquire and can't let go of certain things. You choose the problem and solve it yourself with a few easy questions, which is totally different than any other organization book out there. The only hard part is acknowledging the feelings you have about objects, and why buying them makes you feel good. If you ever ask yourself "do I really need this?" when shopping for ____ (insert your favorite item), this book CAN help you. And HOW to let go of things (where should this go?) I could sort and shuffle things, put them on display or in clear plastic boxes so I could use them, but I couldn't tell what to just let go of, so I could have more breathing room. If you need pretty pictures of color-coded, organized areas to make you feel better about your mess, don't bother. If you tired of those problem areas and are ready to tackle your issues, this IS the book. THANK YOU, Mr. Walsh.

As a lifelong "pack rat", I have a problem with clutter. I have bought many books on conquering clutter. Some of those books talk about buying more stuff to organize the stuff I already have too much of. Other books talk about handling your clutter in different ways, such as color coding everything as a solution to cleaning up clutter. I am sorry, I am not going to go there. Still, other books ask you to figure out why you have clutter in the first place, as in psychoanalyzing yourself. Personally, I have not had much success at reducing my clutter by focusing my attention on my dysfunctional childhood or personal frustrations. It just does not work for me. This breakthrough book, however, takes a truly novel approach to solving the problem of clutter and owning too much stuff. It does not talk about buying more stuff like organization systems or merely re-handling your clutter in different ways. Instead, the author of "It's All Too Much" asks you to look at the space you have and asks you what you want that space for? Simply, "wanting" less clutter in your life is too vague a goal. It reminds me of wanting to lose weight. Wanting and accomplishing are two different things as some wise person once said. In this short book, the author gets right to the point. The author asks you what do you want to do with the space you have. Once you establish what you want your space to do or be for you, you then have a clear path for reaching that goal. For example, is your home office accomplishing what you want it to do, or is it a storage area for things you either did not put away; cannot figure out somewhere else to put it, or; just cannot part with? Sounds too simple, I know. And it is. The author's advice reminds me of something a wise person once said about a sculptor. The sculptor sees a block of granite as a figure trying to get out instead of a just a block of granite. The sculptor removes all the granite that is not the figure they perceive. Simple, eh? Well, yes and no. This book is truly a breakthrough in helping you make that necessary paradigm shift in thinking to finally get your space to serve your needs. The author is a consultant on the cable television show "Clean Sweep", and shares his unique perspective on finally solving the problem of too much clutter. I highly recommended this book to anyone who has a problem with clutter.

***** What I found most valuable with this outstanding book was that it was about the motivation behind excess accumulation and cluttering. Unless you address this motivation, the clutter is bound to come back, even if you hire a professional organizer and everything in your home is perfect. All of the clutter will creep back. There are so many outstanding points in this book. For example, with sentimental-type clutter, the author says that the most important thing is to separate the memory from the item. Then the item can be dealt with appropriately. You are not discarding the memory, just the item. Thus, if you have an overabundance of momentos, you can divorce the memory from the item, pick a few items that you want to represent the memory and truly honor them by displaying them in your home (rather than storing them in boxes in your garage), and discard (or digitally scan and then discard) the rest. In my house, my husband has a wealth of pictures of his children when they were small. These pictures are filling boxes in the garage and our barn. We have all of their schoolwork and many personal items because he loves his children and feels as though throwing away one of their things is throwing away a part of them. They are now adults; however, until this underlying motivation for hanging onto things is addressed, all attempts at decluttering will be futile. For me, the whole book was profound. I'm great at organizing techniques, but the idea of looking at the feelings and problems sourcing the whole hoarding behavior was most helpful. I am getting ready to declutter my house, as we are bursting at the seams and can no longer function well in our home. This is the perfect book to read to understand the emotional work and the letting go that must go on so that the process of decluttering can take place. Then whatever vision and purpose you have for your home can be implemented, and you can enjoy the space you have in your home. The book targets a huge consumeristic flaw in our American culture, and gives solutions. I cannot imagine who would not benefit from this important book. Highly recommended. *****

If you're drowning in your possessions and it seems too much to handle, this book provides a great guide to turning your mess into a peaceful paradise. Unlike a lot of home organization and renovation books, it just doesn't suggest how to organize the stuff you have (which it does), but it gets to the bottom of the cause of the mess and clutter, shows you how much the clutter is truly costing you, gets you past the excuses, lets you see the psychology behind how things got so bad without making you feel guilty, and guides you to taking control of your space. If you have a large house or a small apartment, Peter shows you how to make what you have the best it can be, and how much a clean organized home can improve your mood, health and overall life.