Honestly not what I expected. It seemed pointless to finish reading it.
Repetitive, didn't like it.

Hmmm I wanted more helpful advice from this book, but it was still super interesting (in a nosy way) to see behind the curtain of how someone else runs their home and deals with all this stuff we all have! Enjoyable, but not really that remarkable.

I loved reading as I kid but struggle to find time as an adult. It’s often impossible to sit down to focus. While this book was not memorable overall, I’m sure it’s not you, dear book, it’s me.

This memoir about decluttering was less helpful than I anticipated. Still it was interesting to see how someone else handles their room of shame.

DNF. I couldn't connect with this book at all and found it really hard to get into. I had high hopes for this, which is a shame.

This book had many interesting stories about the author's problems with clutter, and while I don't have an emotional attachment to my clutter, I do have a lot of it. It is an inspiring book to start working on getting rid of the "stuff"

I thought this was an ironic book for me to be reading at the moment as due to building work being done on our house, and still having stuff from my parents house scattered around the place waiting to be sorted , my home is anything but clutter free !
This is a great book for anyone who needs to declutter their lives and has some good insights into why we hoard and how difficult it is to let things go.
I love the naming of the 'hell room' , oh yes , I think we all have one of those.
I think this book can be recommended as a guide for anyone who needs a good declutter in their lives and I certainly need to follow some of her recommendations once the home decorating has finished and we start to put stuff back in it's rightful place.

Thank you to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for this free readers edition. In exchange, I am providing an honest review.

I love shows about hoarders. I find the reasons for their hoarding fascinating and they cause me to reflect on my own home and its clutter. Okay, it also makes me feel a wee bit better when I look around my own house but that's not why I love those shows. All this to say when I saw this book about tackling clutter for a year I was all about it.

Schaub was already on my TBR for her Year of No Sugar, which I have yet to read. The "year of" memoirs aren't new to anyone, they are relatively popular to read. Why a year? Because as humans it makes us feel like it is a realistic goal. We can do lots of things in a year, in a month? Not so much. Turns out Schaub needed a full year plus to work on her clutter in what she affectionately calls the Hell Room. If you are a Friends viewer you might remember an episode in one of the later seasons in which Chandler breaks into a closet Monica has locked at all times and nobody has ever looked into. When he finally gets it open it looks basically like the cover of Schaub's book - stuffed to the gills with all manner of things. It's Monica's one messy secret that she is embarrassed about. Chandler is, of course, delighted to find out this secret. In real life when people find out someone they love has a room or closet (or house) like this they are rarely delighted. Schaub felt like the good news was, and I would agree with her is that she had it contained in one room. One very large room. (If I agree with her does that mean I perhaps need to look a little closer at my own spaces? Hmmm.) She knew to tackle this room she would need mental and emotional fortitude, I believe she mentions she was in therapy at the time - good call.

Schaub recounts her personal history of saving things for sentimental reasons or for that reason we all have uttered at least once, for future use in an art project, a home improvement project, a decoration, etc etc etc. Some of us save those items for a season and then return to them and realize we aren't really going to use them in a project or they aren't that sentimental to us and we dispose of the item(s). Schaub found herself unable to do that, thus the Hell Room. While Schaub's account of the year of no clutter...or rather cleaning up the clutter...is breezy, witty, and light I am positive it was not in her day-to-day. She does mention an episode or two where tears were shed, mental and physical fatigue were the winners for the day or month, and the pain of realizing certain life moments were over and done with making her incredibly sad. She also shares her small and bigger victories of getting rid of things plus refusing to bring more into the house - learning how to say no to family and friends who were trying to foist their own clutter on her. Her husband participated on the fringes but her two daughters jumped in and helped - one enthused to get it cleaned out and decluttered, one bent towards sentimentality like Schaub.

Schaub shares her hard-learned lessons about her clutter and in fact the clutter we all have and her end result and victories were inspiring. So much so that I'm tackling my own day-to-day starting this month (February 2020). I don't have a Hell Room but I have drawers, closets, and parts of rooms that need some TLC. Thanks Schaub for the motivation to clutter control my own spaces.

This book made me laugh as I took a hard look in the mirror. There are a ton of other books out there about clutter, and us hoarders should read them all-- but this is the most fun!

I needed this book in my life....and it was amazing! Life changing and to the point....no need for clutter. So I took her advice and cleaned out the house! I feel so good; more free....and saved so much money! A must read for all!

This was an amusing read. Alas, I too am prone to clutter and I would much rather read an account like Eve's than something along the minimalist lines.

I really enjoyed this book and could definitely relate to all the problems, and could see myself in the book far too easily!

Year of No Clutter is what every hoarder needs in their life! Minimalism has been gaining tons of popularity recently and this book promotes it even further. Great and sound advice which is easy to follow and implement.

I felt like I could relate to her in certain ways. It's so easy to be in her position when you're not able to let go of material things. Little did I know, some individuals get bad enough that medication is necessary. It's a branch of OCD.

Year of No Clutter reveals the inner thoughts of someone with a compulsion to hoard, often with self-deprecating humor. "It's easy for me to see how this line of thinking can easily go too far, to the point where I am keeping dog crap in jars and thinking it's fabulous". And the author has a few revelations that I thought were worth remembering. "Saving things is often the direct opposite of using things" and "no decision that we make about anything in life is 100 percent safe". I like that she explores the reasons it's hard to let go of things for some people. But at times, it starts to feel redundant. The items that are so precious to her mean nothing to me as a reader. It's like someone else's yearbook. It could easily be at least 100 pages shorter without losing anything substantial.

This witty, funny memoir deals with the painful subject of hoarding in a sensitive way. Eve Schaub had relatives who hoarded, and she had one room that she termed her Hell Room filled with gobs of clutter. Until she toured a deceased couples’ home filled to the brim with stuff, she didn’t realize just how bad her tendency was, and what she needed to do to stop it. She writes about her year to stop gathering clutter and start enjoying life more.

I’m about halfway through this book, and I’m really enjoying Eve’s perspective. Sometimes I watch the Hoarders TV show out of fascination, probably also as a prescription against my tendencies to hold on too hard to the past. This book offers a unique perspective of someone who terms herself a “pre-hoarder.” She probes all the questions about hoarding and emotional drives with kindness toward those who struggle. Every page shares her own self-deprecating humor and wise observations which makes this read extra enjoyable.

Here’s one of my favorite excerpts so far:
It occurred to me that clutter comes in many forms, not all of them tangible, and that clutter of the physical kind can exacerbate clutter of the mind or of the schedule, and vice versa. Just as we are lucky enough to live in a time when people can have more stuff than people have ever had before, we also live in a time when people can do more stuff than people have ever done before.
I appreciate her thoughtful perspectives on this unique time in history when many of us have far more than we need, yet feel like we’re starving inside. Even though this isn’t a Christian book (since most of you read Christian material), you’ll find spiritual truths to ponder in this interesting book, plus learn some ways you can simplify your life.

A funny, thoughtful #memoir about why we collect too much stuff: Year of No #Clutter. CLICK TO TWEET
Netgalley provided me a free review copy of this book.

AN amusing memoir, though it wasn’t very interesting or original. If we weren’t all inundated with minimalism and the konmari method then perhaps it would have been more enjoyable, but the timing is poor as it is just more of the same.

I loved this book—it was so mich more than I expected it to be.

After completing a year of no sugar challenge and documenting it in a book, Schaub was curious how she could apply lessons from the previous to dealing with clutter in her home. She makes credible parallels between sugar and clutter/things: both modern day problems of abundance.

I have picked up this book (virtually) severally over the past year but I have not been able to get into it. Like everyone else, I have been inundated with so much information about decluttering, Konmari-ing and minimalism. With the little progress that I made, I don't feel I was being drawn into her story and was not compelled to keep on reading. Overall, I believe that this could another case of good book but the never the right timing.

Far from being a rundown of a year-long effort to clear a messy room, the Year of No Clutter steps above that and becomes an exercise in addressing humanity's obsession with stuff and what stuff represents. The author has hidden a secret for a long time: The Hell Room, a room in her house which is entirely overwhelmed by the burden of items she has collected and, whether useful or not, she cannot face throwing away.

As the book progresses Schaub investigates her own family and determines that many close family members seem to suffer from a hoarding disorder, borne of different reasons and with different results in each case. Parts of this realisation are quite sad to read- especially the passages about her father, which paint a portrait of lost man, unable to cope with towers of stuff that engulf his life.

You really root for Schaub throughout- and her difficulty parting with items will strike a chord with almost everyone. I have a ready willingness to throw things away, but am aware that others don't and I understand the pain in disentangling ourselves from the things that connect us to the past. Notable mention here goes to the author's kids, who seem to be 110% delightful and add a lot of humour to the tale of The Hell Room.