Interesting, mildly amusing read. Much more of a memoir than a how to guide.

Read the book very helpful and useful information I would recommend to my friends but would not reread my self

Funny, funny, funny. I enjoyed reading sections of this book aloud to friends. The narrator is relatable and real. This is a good contribution to the genre of home clearing.

Year of No Clutter (Amazon, $9.99) felt like an aptly inspirational title to help motivate me to trim down my house. Like all techies and moms, I am surrounded by outdated equipment (that is occasionally useful) and boxes of “precious” artwork by my “artistically gifted” children, including single crayon scribbles on a page (post modernism) and several thousand RCA cables.

My kids lean towards hoarder tendencies. (“No, you can’t possibly throw that away. I drew it for you!” and “I won that precious partially-destroyed plastic trinket by playing carnival games all day!”). These I must fight with action, as reason goes only so far.

For me, I often lack the time to sort, organize, and toss my things that have become outdated, especially when there’s a real cost to replacing them when they’re eventually needed. (Quick, how many Firewire cables do you own? 30-pin iPod cables? I have too many, but sorting and disposing is hard.)

My go-to solution has long been to put things into boxes and then move them downstairs into the crawlspace. From “memory boxes” to “stuff I don’t use any more”, it’s become a desperate habit of clearing out space.

If I could, I’d go on a rampage throwing things out. The physical and time commitments to make this happen have been overwhelmingly daunting.

Schaub’s book reflects a slightly contrasting reality in that she’s taking on a different kind of clutter. Her Hell Room(TM) represented a “disposophobic” reality, of her well intentioned safety net. She freely calls it a “giant ridiculous mess”. It was stuffed both with items of potential use and necessary memory. Each hoarded item had a history, and a story, and a connection to her life.

Her memoir offers an amusing tale of the steps in letting go. It’s a record of catharsis and finding the things that actually matter. If you’ve ever looked at a pile of ancient soy sauce packets, trying to decide whether to organize them or toss them, her story will resonate with your experience.

The most interesting thing about the book are the discoveries, where removing surface levels of clutter revealed real treasures and memories, allowing them the priorities they deserved. From family silver to handwritten letters, decluttering has a tendency to hit us in the emotions.

Throughout, Shaub scatters useful little charts and how-to’s. Things you use on a regular basis should have a place to live, and a regimen to restore it to that place after use:



In sum, the book is a conglomeration of reminiscences, self-reflection, how-to, and coaching. There are some delightfully amusing bits and some parts that kind of slog. I particularly enjoyed the section on “The Weirdest Things I Own”. I enjoyed it as a “library read” but I don’t know if I’d purchase it for re-reading.

I probably won’t ever match my own Mom’s ideal of “When in doubt, throw it out”, but the more control I take over our clutter, the better we’ve been able to function as a family. I want to own things, not have my things own me.

This is a humorous memoir of how the author worked through her issues with clutter. As the book began, she had read Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which I have also read, and quite frankly, a lot of that book is very weird. I did stop balling up my socks after reading her book, but not because they can't rest that way, I just think it helps the elastic last longer and I don't thank my inanimate objects for their service or empty my purse nightly so it can rest. Kondo's book is popular, but people are either ignoring that stuff or they are all weird and I am not. Anyway, as a result, Eve, the author of this book, decided to clean out her "hell room", a large room in her house filled with clutter. As the book goes on she visited the home of a deceased hoarder and wondered if she had hoarding tendencies. The book is funny and fun to read and it inspired me to get rid of more of my clutter - I will have a bag of stuff picked up tomorrow. Like Eve, I still have things I need to work on - I had a difficult time finding an important piece of paperwork this morning - so I will continue working on making things neater and keeping less unimportant items.

This title is a quick read but worth it. Really brings home the idea that physical clutter leads to mental clutter and how clearing one helps with the other.

I thought this book would be more of a guide and less of a memoir, but it was still a good read. Eve Schaub shares the story of her "hell room" where she has accumulated years and years of things. She is basically a hoarder in this room. Throughout the book she realizes that it is less about the objects and more about emotions. The author is kept on track by her oldest daughter who wants to get things done! You feel a special place for the author and can't help but feel for her and rooting for her.

This was kind of uncomfortable to read it was so blunt and self deprecating at the beginning! I didn't get past that part this time, but I'm still so happy for her and impressed that she could bare her life so much and overcome a life-long struggle. I still plan to finish reading this book someday!

I voluntarily read and reviewed an ARC of Year of No Clutter by Eve Schaub. Thanks to NetGalley and Sourcebooks for the opportunity to read and review this book! Year of No Clutter is a woman's memoir of her lifetime struggle with clutter and how she overcame it and dealt with the objects in her home. I'm immediately drawn in by the author's sense of humor and I can also relate to the clutter problem. As we all know, clutter can just build and build! I worry that I'm a book hoarder, of course I am, and I'm determined to fix that title to home library owner and consolidate my book collection into a functional room. The quotes opening each chapter are charmingly appropriate and dead on with the content of each chapter. Many profound statements can be found throughout this book, but this one really stuck with me, "...I guess what we hoard says an awful lot about us and what we're afraid of." I love the idea of photographing children's artwork and creating a book with the photos for each child. Great space saver with easy access to the artwork. I appreciate the helpful resources listed at the end of the book because sometimes the biggest hurdle in de-junking is what to do with the items you're getting rid of. 5 stars for an inspiring, interesting and helpful book!

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I picked this up on a whim in December right after I got my very first kindle and it went by surprisingly fast. I love organisation and I love memoirs so Year of No Clutter sounded right up my alley. It was a nice read and I could definitely relate to Eve at times. I, without a doubt, wanted to clean out my closet and messy cupboard after reading it. It was actually hard reading about cleaning and then not cleaning my apartment afterwards.

Would I recommend it, yes! Would I purchase a physical copy for my shelf, no.

Funny and inspiring. Time to don the rubber gloves!

The humor in this book was refreshing, though I did find it to be a little long for the subject matter. I like the way the author added in quotes at the beginning of each chapter that tied in, and I liked the family orient of this challenge becoming a group effort.

I was excited to read Year of No Clutter as a jump-start to my annual spring cleaning: I would find some inspiration, maybe learn some helpful tips, and hopefully enjoy a bit of schadenfreude as I read about someone with a worse clutter problem than me. I really enjoyed the book, but not for the reasons I thought.

For starters, I overlooked the subtitle, A Memoir, in very tiny letters on the cover. Year of No Clutter is really the story of Eve Schaub’s efforts to tame her clutter and change some lifelong habits. Anyone looking for Marie Kondo-esque instructions will be sorely disappointed. In fact, Eve herself is a devotee of Kondo’s mantra, “Does it spark joy?” but she adds her own: “Trust yourself.”

Eve does a LOT of research into clutter, hoarding, garbage, and why Americans in particular seem so beholden to our stuff. This section is interesting, maybe inspirational in a negative way (as in, “wow, I don’t want to cross over into hoarding”), but still no tips and no real story yet. In fact, my one complaint about the book was how long it took Eve to actually get on with the clutter busting. An example: chapter 6 is titled, “We Continue to Begin,” while chapter 9 is called “We Continue Continuing.” I had the sense that it really shouldn’t have taken Eve and her daughters a year to clean out one room, albeit a large, 567-square-foot room.

The best part of Year of No Clutter is Eve’s sense of humor. Her story is funny and relatable for anyone who battles clutter on any scale. I totally identified with the way Eve struggled with indecision: clutter allowed her to avoid making decisions on whether an item should stay or go--she just kept everything--and she admires Kondo’s confidence as she deftly incises the non-joy-sparking items.

Ultimately, Eve’s story inspired to tackle my own clutter: I got three bags of trash out of the attic and lots of donation items. However, we won’t talk about the “undecided” piles that are still sitting in my hallway. I guess for those, I need Marie Kondo.

3.0 - interesting, but nothing earth-shattering; could have been more tightly edited to make it a more impactful memoir

Everyone has their own Hell Room, and Eve's battle with her clutter, along with her eventual self-clarity, encourages everyone to dig into their past to declutter their future.

I requested Year of No Clutter a couple of months ago from Netgalley but have waited to read it until 40 Bags In 40 Days started because it's perfect timing, right?

I am the person most likely to declutter and purge in my house. But I am also the person responsible for most of the hoarding, too. I'm the keeper of everyone's identity, the person who can't let go of the tiny baby clothes, the kindergarten journals, the t-shirts from every team anyone has been part of, the baptism gifts. My closet is never overcrowded; my kitchen is cleaned out regularly to rid it of things I'm not using. But all of those memories? Those are my kryptonite. I can't wait to read this book and see if Schaub can help me let go of some of those things. After all, Mini-me not long ago told me he didn't really care about so many of the things that I had held onto ostensibly for him. If not for him, why am I still keeping them?

Eve Schaub's Year of No Clutter wasn't the Marie Kondo type of 'manual' I expected. At first I found it frustrating because I wasn't sure 'she was getting anywhere'. I would have liked to see pictures of the Hell Room, it's challenging visualise 500 sq metres of stuff.

However her analysis of her problems/fear of getting rid of stuff was interesting. I think this was the important lesson, it's not about attacking the issue with a rigid set of rules but developing an understanding of why she struggled to dispose of the more grotesque items as well as those with deeper significance.

Eve's visit to Gary and Miss M's house and her description of her father and uncle's home provided interesting counterpoints to her own journey.

I enjoyed sharing Eve's journey and it helped me to understand some of my concerns.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for th opportunity to review this book.

I would like to start off saying that, I have read the KonMari books. Both of them. Twice. In the space of 6 months. I also follow her on social media and even with a lack of subtitles I watch her on YouTube. Calmly arranging peoples belongings and lives. it fills me with happiness. or should I say it Sparks Joy?

So I saw "Year of no Clutter" and there was no hesitation on the request button. I was ready for more motivation (and hopefully photos? After I finished this book, I watched hoarders on YouTube for about a week straight.)

The narrative opens with Eve describing that her house was slowly being taken over by clutter of various kinds and the heart of this was the 'Hell Room.' I immediately related. Most people would have a room in the house designated to hold all the items that do not have a home. I call mine the junk room.

The book goes on to talk about how she keeps almost everything from every single life event and as a result of the years of accumulation, she no longer had any space to create and do the things she loved and neither could her husband and young children.

So she gave herself a timeline of a year to sort out the clutter and get her home in order.

I was 10% in when I was screaming at the book "someone get this woman the magic of tidying stat." It was also mentioned in my notes I made as I read the book.

My notes at 11% read - oh she did have the book.

then like 20% - she lost the damn book. Ahhhrgghh

But as I read further, especially towards the end, I felt that she must have finished the Magic of Tidying because I could see a lot of parallels in the topics she decided to discuss. She did however have a very different perspective on discarding then KonMari, as well as a refreshingly casual writing style.

It started off strong, I enjoyed her setting up to tackle the problem of discarding, I did feel at the end, not much had changed? but I guess it was hard to get a visual on it. Hence the Hoarders episodes - I needed to see all of these items floor to ceiling and watch their steps, in either direction.

My feelings from this book were, that I wanted to help her and that she should just ditch everything that didn't fit in her house (ie, TWO pianos). But I related way way way too much to her thoughts on that it was a collection of her life and all her memories.

It's a hard feeling, when you hold an item and it makes you think of a memory, but the item is of no use but for that memory.

I have many items I cannot part with because I have either had a memory with it, OR.. I have just owned it for so long that it would feel weird to no longer have it?

I have decided to give her other book a shot, since overall I did enjoy this one. I am currently not eating any thing with sugar, so I feel now is a good time.

Intelligent, motivating and the kick-up-the-bum that many of us need to get started. That was the overwhelming message I got from this one: just get started. Be confident. You can do it. I'm not sure whether I can but I've at least got strategies to try this time.