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

From the Publisher

When you think of what it will take to clean your house, are you so overwhelmed you throw up your hands and cry, "It's all too much"? Do you dream of having a closet where your clothes aren't crammed in so tightly that you can actually get to them? Is your basement filled with boxes of precious family mementos you haven't opened in ten years but are too afraid to toss? Are your kitchen counters overrun with appliances you've never used? Do your kids play in the living room because there's no room left in their playroom? If somewhere along the way you've simply lost the ability to keep your home organized and clutter-free, then It's All Too Much has the solution you've been searching for.

Peter Walsh, the organizational guru from TLC's hit show Clean Sweep, understands how easy it is for clutter to creep into your life and how hard it is to get rid of it. In It's All Too Much, he shares his proven system for letting go of your emotional and physical clutter so that you can create a happier, more stress-free home and life. At last, here is a system for managing your clutter, regaining control, and living the life you imagine for yourself.

Peter has helped clients from every walk of life. With his trademark humor and insight, Peter guides you step-by-step through the very charged process of decluttering your home, organizing your possessions, and reclaiming your life. Going way beyond color-coded boxes and storage bin solutions, It's All Too Much shows you how to reexamine your priorities and let go of the things that are weighing you down. Clearly and simply, Peter gives you the courage you need to go through your home, room by room -- even possession by possession -- and honestly assess what adds to your quality of life and what's keeping you from living the life of your dreams.

Filled with real-life examples and advice for homes of all sizes and personalities, It's All Too Much will set you free from the emotional baggage that goes along with clutter and help you lead a fuller, richer life with less stuff.

Deborah Bigelow - Library Journal

While books on clutter control abound, these two offerings delve into the emotional factors that prevent people from parting with their possessions. Library patrons might recognize Walsh (How To Organize (Just About) Everything) as the organizational guru of The Learning Channel's Clean Sweep. In a book geared to busy families, he draws on his experiences tackling family clutter issues to help readers assess the emotional cost of their clutter and their excuses for hanging on to things. He then provides a household assessment for determining each room's function and the items necessary for optimal use. There are also handy guidelines for holding a garage sale and selling items online.

Print and broadcast journalist Ware's book is aimed at those baby boomers making the transition to smaller quarters because of age, lifestyle, or illness. Through a seven-step program, she helps readers take account of their future finances and family situations to make a successful downsizing plan. She concentrates on the emotional factors that can interfere with the process, such as nostalgic partners, overattachment to possessions, and reluctant children. A particularly helpful section addresses an elderly parent's move to assisted-living quarters, a rarely covered topic. Both books offer valuable suggestions and are recommended for public libraries. If one must choose, however, Ware's is preferred because of the gap it fills in books about aging, though Walsh's high media profile may spark demand.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

Something is afoot. Something that until recently I could not have imagined or predicted. Something that is changing the basic fabric of people's lives and is impacting how all of us relate to the things we have and the things we own. Something that affects us all. We are, as a nation, overwhelmed with too much stuff.

Did the title of this book catch your eye? Maybe you are at a stage in your life where something in your life is too much — your career, your relationship, or "just everything" is suddenly overwhelming. If so, you are part of a harsh awakening in this country, and across much of the developed world, as we come to realize that happiness and success might not be measured by more material things. That having more possessions may be more suffocating than liberating. That a larger house, better car, and more "stuff" come with no guarantee of greater happiness. That for many of us, the stuff we own ends up owning us. Suddenly you look around at the life you've built and all you've acquired and realize that it's all too much!

I have an unusual job. I help people dig themselves out from under the overwhelming crush of their own possessions. I'm not talking about a messy closet or one too many boxes of holiday decorations in the garage. I work with people who have filled their homes, their offices, sometimes their cars, and always their lives with too much stuff. These are people who have lost the ability to deal reasonably and rationally with what they own. They fill every corner of their homes with clothes, papers, their kids' school projects, wrapping paper, collectibles, scrapbooking materials, garden tools, kitchen products,sporting gear, antiques, dolls, toys, books, car parts, and every imaginable (and unimaginable!) item you could list.

Surprisingly, as I've traveled across the United States helping people declutter and get organized, I have come to see that the problem is one that affects far more families than I could have imagined. Every single person I have met tells me not only about their own clutter problem, but the clutter problems of a family member, or those of a friend. Nobody seems immune. The stories are not dissimilar — papers and magazines run amok, garages overflow with unopened boxes, kids' toys fill rooms, and closets are so stuffed that it looks like the clothing department of a major retailer is having a fire sale. The epidemic of clutter, the seeming inability to get organized, and the sense that "the stuff" is taking over affects us all.

We are at the center of an orgy of consumption, and many are now seeing that this need to own so much comes with a heavy price: Kids so overstimulated by the sheer volume of stuff in their home that they lose the ability to concentrate and focus. Financial strain caused by misplaced bills or overpurchasing. Constant fighting because neither partner is prepared to let go of their possessions. The embarrassment of living in a house that long ago became more of a storage facility than a home.

This clutter doesn't just come in the form of the physical items that crowd our homes. We are bombarded every day with dire predictions of disaster and face many uncertainties — some real and many manufactured. Think about the perils that we've been warned about in the last decade alone — killer bees, Y2K, SARS, anthrax, mad cow disease, avian flu, flesh-eating bacteria . . . the list goes on and on. We are also faced daily with reports of war, an unstable economy, and global terrorism coming very close to home. Surprisingly, this endless barrage (its own kind of clutter) inspires many of the families with whom I work to finally take control of their own clutter. In an unpredictable, dangerous world that is out of their control, they look to their homes for stability — to get some degree of organization back into their closets, their garages, their home offices, their lives. This quest for organization is a deeply personal response to the feeling that the rest of the world is out of control.

Among the clutter, the frustration, and the yearning for organization, I constantly hear the same refrain: It is all overwhelming. The stuff has taken on a life of its own and families have no idea where to even begin. They are paralyzed by their own stuff. Often the people I work with lament, "It's all too much — help me!"

If you find yourself at the point of being overwhelmed by your possessions, you have a clear choice: Decide here and now that you no longer want your stuff to overrun your life. Work with me to get balance and harmony back into your family and relationships. It can be done and I know how. None of this frightens me or overwhelms me because I have seen it all. I have never walked away from a cluttered home because it was too much. However, I have walked away from those who value their stuff over their relationships, their things over their dreams, or their possessions over their vision for the life they really want.

If you are one of those for whom it's suddenly all too much and want to let go, come on an exciting journey with me to reclaim your life. Living a richer, fuller, more exciting, and rewarding life is not that far away. Trust me, I've led many there already and you can be next. I promise you, if you do this, there is nothing you can't do!

IT'S ALL TOO MUCH

Let me tell you about one of my average workdays. One sunny June day, Jared and Lisa invited me into their modest house in the suburbs of Maryland. From the tree-lined street their home looked welcoming. The grass was neatly trimmed, the garden in full bloom. A gray sedan was parked in the driveway. I rang the doorbell.

The door opened to an appalling site. The floor was invisible. Every flat surface was stacked high with papers. The walls were lined with wall-to-wall file boxes, some stacked on shelves or tables. Many of the piles reached the top of my head and I'm not a short man. The living room was so crowded that the kitchen had become their little boy Cooper's playroom. A toy train track ran through the legs of the kitchen table, its cars long ago scattered, tripped on, and lost. The family was overrun with what appeared to be scrapbooking materials: glue, notebooks, piles of photos, trim, and all sorts of craft material. In short, the house was a disaster. I glanced at Jared and Lisa. To all appearances they are clean, hardworking, upstanding citizens, no different from you or me. Jared manages a successful airport shuttle business. After taking a few years off to have their first child, Lisa has just gotten her real-estate license. Cooper was three years old and delighted in showing me his firm handshake. A great family. And a successful one, in spite of the clutter. But underneath their sunny exterior was tension. They wanted more from their lives and believed the chaos of their home was taking away from their happiness. There was an obvious question that needed an answer: Why was their house completely out of control?

I asked Lisa what it was like living in this chaos. She said, "It's suffocating. I feel like I can't breathe when I look in the office." Lisa felt buried by her own stuff. She went on, "Something has to change. I don't want to live like this. But I have no idea where to begin."

And then I heard the one refrain that sums it all up, the words of despair that I hear over and over again from everyone I work with: "It's all too much."

That is why I decided to call this book It's All Too Much. It's a response to the hopelessness of that refrain. It's about what to do when you reach the point where you don't know where to start. When you're faced with so much mess that you throw up your hands in despair and give up. When you just want to move into a hotel, or throw it all out, or shove it in the garage, like when you were a kid and stuffed all your dirty clothes under the bed. Amazingly, I have dealt with people who have purchased a second home rather than face the mammoth task of decluttering the home they have lived in for many years! Well, there's no place to hide your mess when you're an adult and, eventually, you have to come home, so you might as well start dealing with the problem now. It's All Too Much is the solution.

It's just stuff

I asked Jared if he felt as overwhelmed as Lisa. He shrugged. "I know our house doesn't belong in Martha Stewart, but we're busy. It's just stuff. I don't see what the big deal is." I walked over to their bookshelf and started scanning the titles. There were diet books. Exercise books. Self-esteem books. Career motivation books. Parenting books. Finance books. Marriage books. Books on how to live better, happier, richer, fuller lives. It was a complete library of self-help books for every issue a family might have. It was time for me to tell him what I tell all of my clients: the truth. It was time to hold a mirror up to their life and their clutter so that they could see what was happening. I sat him and Lisa down and said, "You think the state of this house is no big deal, but look at all these problems you're trying to solve." I gestured toward the stack of self-help books. "Your home is the physical and emotional base for your family. You want to change? To get motivated? Improve your self-image? Lose weight? Start by taking a look at your home.

"You want a life built on a solid foundation, but you can't even see the floor beneath you. You want to lose weight, but your kitchen is overwhelmed with appliances you never use. You want to build your career, but your office literally makes you feel ill. You want change? This is where it starts: your home. Where you live, breathe, rest, love, and create. Forget the self-help books. Get rid of the clutter. Get organized. If you do, I promise that every aspect of your life will change in ways that you never imagined possible."

Jared and Lisa were like so many couples that I deal with — they had lost sight of the fact that who you are and what you have are intimately linked. The things you buy, the items you value, the possessions you hoard are all a reflection of you, your life, your relationships, your career, and your aspirations. You are not your stuff, but, believe me, your stuff reveals a great deal about who you are.

THIS MEANS YOU

Jared and Lisa did want to change. That's exactly why they called me. In 2003, I became the organization expert on a TV show called Clean Sweep, a series for the cable station TLC. The mission of each episode of Clean Sweep was clear: A team of experts had forty-eight hours to help a family get uncluttered and organized. It was a simple formula. We had two days and two thousand dollars to redo two clutter-ridden rooms of the family's home. I do the same thing for private clients like Jared and Lisa. But simple as the concept seems — getting rid of the stuff that overwhelms their homes — there's more to the problem than meets the eye.

Bear with me here as I walk you through Lisa and Jared's home. It may not look exactly like your house — you may make beaded jewelry or collect ancient pottery instead of scrapbooking — but I have a feeling you'll recognize bits and pieces of your own life in Jared and Lisa's. If I have learned one thing in this job, it's that when it comes to clutter, we are all far more similar than we think!

As Jared and Lisa finished showing me their house, Lisa turned to me and asked, "How did this happen? We work hard; we live in a nice neighborhood. Why us?" I looked out the window at the other houses up and down the street. From the outside they looked just like Jared and Lisa's. And I was willing to bet that they had the same problems behind those closed doors. The person for whom clutter is not an issue is rare. We are all in some way owned by our possessions. As we get older our families grow. Children outgrow their toys and their clothes. We accumulate books and papers. We take on new hobbies and collections. Our extended family members die and we inherit boxes — or truckloads — of their possessions. Stuff is cheap — look at electronics. Not too long ago, televisions and computers were big purchases that you only made a few times during your life. Now we think nothing of replacing them every couple of years or buying new ones rather than having them repaired.

The Container Store is a national chain — thirty-four stores and growing — selling storage and organization solutions, but, as their website boasts, there's no containing their growth. Their sales revenues grow 20 to 30 percent every year. Can you imagine if your possessions grew at that rate? This year The Container Store secured a new distribution center that's 65 percent bigger than the last to accommodate continued growth. Think about it: This is a store that sells only organizing solutions; that means that there are millions of Americans buying and trying to organize, but I guarantee there's very little organization as a result. And what's the typical American solution to having too much stuff? Buy another organization solution!

Then there are those of us who can't fit our belongings in containers and resort to self-storage, the no-man's-land of stuff. Self-storage is often supposed to be temporary — we'll just store this couch until we move to our next house, where we might have space for it — but it's a fifteen-billion-dollar industry. There are more than forty thousand self-storage facilities in this country, each averaging about fifty-five thousand square feet! This accumulation of stuff is a national trend. At some point, every one of us has to figure out how to manage this influx of stuff before it gets out of control.

FYI — SELF-STORAGE MANIA

The first self-storage facilities appeared in Texas in the late 1960s. Today, approximately 10 percent of American households have items in one of the forty thousand self-storage facilities in this country. This is a 75 percent increase from just ten years ago and it has happened during a time when the size of the average American house has increased by half. Larger houses and more stuff in storage!

Our home is too small

Before I could help Jared and Lisa get their clutter under control, I needed more information. What was all this stuff they owned? Where had it come from? How important was it to them? Why did they hold on to it?

We started with Lisa's scrapbooking materials. Truth be told, they were all over the house, but we started in their family room, scrapbooking headquarters. Lisa had taken up scrapbooking when Cooper was born. Her baby shower had a scrapbook theme, and it blossomed from there. There were photos, memorabilia, ribbons, stickers, and rubber stamps jockeying for space on her wraparound desk. The built-in bookshelves were stocked with labeled plastic storage bins, all so full that their lids floated inches above the bins. Lisa smiled weakly. "I know it looks bad, but I actually need all this stuff to do my albums. And I know where everything is. Almost."

Lisa didn't think that she was disorganized. There was a method behind the madness of that room. The real problem, as far as she was concerned, was that the room was too small. I agreed with her — but not on the size of the room. She was, indeed, organized, but she had organized an entire extra room's worth of stuff that wasn't necessary. We finally agreed that the problem wasn't that Lisa didn't have enough room; she simply had too much stuff. Instead of getting rid of some of it when she felt overwhelmed, Lisa just bought more storage systems (more stuff!). Who hasn't tried the same thing? At some time or another, we've all bought storage bins or file cabinets or a closet organizing system or invested in some other shiny new system that promises to elevate us to a higher plane of organization. In fact, I've found plenty of these very storage systems, still unused, wasting valuable space in people's garages, offices, and bedrooms. I am constantly amazed by the amount of stuff that people will squeeze into a room. Listen to me — it's a basic law of physics that you can't fit five cubic feet of stuff into three cubic feet of space! You cannot create more space than you have. Nevertheless, I know that people will keep on trying! Like I always say, rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as much as you want, the ship is still going down!

Meanwhile, Jared isn't sentimental like Lisa, but he is afraid of identity theft. He has saved every envelope or magazine that comes into the house with his name on it because he wants to make sure he shreds every single label to pulp. Jared's piles of paper and shredded strips completely overwhelmed their small office. While Jared's worry may be justified, the way he is dealing with the concern is creating a bigger, more immediate issue for his family that affects the way they live every day.

What's really important

Jared and Lisa couldn't just throw away their excess. For them, none of it was garbage because everything seemed important. Lisa had family photographs she wanted to arrange in albums for Cooper to pass down to his kids. Jared's office was full of materials he wanted for his company: employee records and business articles that he thought he'd get around to reading. How could they let go of any of it? This was all stuff that they would certainly need one day. "Fine," I said, "you have too much stuff, but you believe that all of it is critical to you. I understand. Instead of talking about the whole house, let's talk about the rooms one by one." They followed me into the family room. "What's the purpose of this room?" I asked Lisa.

"It's the family room. It's where I scrapbook and, well, Cooper's supposed to play in here, but he's always in the kitchen or the hall."

"I see. So what you're telling me is that hoarding photos for Cooper's future is more important to you than giving him room to play today?" I didn't wait for Lisa to answer. Jared was starting to gloat. He'd been down on Lisa's scrapbooking from the start, but I wasn't about to let him off easy. I went straight to the office.

"You're up, Jared."

"This is the office. I store my business papers here, pay bills, and we all use the computer."

"No you don't!" Lisa burst out. "You pay your bills standing up in the kitchen. When I'm trying to make dinner." She turned to me. "We almost had our electricity shut off because Jared lost the bill behind the stove."

I turned to Jared, "Is this true?" Jared nodded. "Because of the clutter in your office, some bills aren't getting paid. But you're still giving your paper shredding and business papers priority over paying bills and getting rid of the tension that it is causing between the two of you?"

"That's exactly what he's doing," Lisa said, shooting an apologetic look at Jared. "And I'm supposed to work from home. In that office? What a joke!" We went through every room of the house like this. I learned that Jared had every tablecloth his grandmother had owned stuffed in moldy cardboard boxes in the garage. He knew they were ruined, but he couldn't let them go. And Lisa was using the messy office as an excuse. She really wasn't sure if she wanted to go back to work or to take care of Cooper full-time. Their house reflected all of these conflicts. But there was no way to resolve them until they could see what the real cost of keeping these "prized possessions" was to their family. They had to face some tough questions, answer them honestly, and decide on specific actions to change their situation.

IMAGINE THE LIFE YOU WANT

Once I understood the physical space and emotions behind Jared and Lisa's clutter, I told them that I wanted them to do an exercise that is fundamental to helping people declutter and get organized.

As I do with all my clients, I first asked Jared and Lisa to imagine their ideal lives. This is a question that always catches people off guard. They expect me to ask for an inventory of what they own, or a list of their collectibles, or even details of their home lives when they were children. My starting point, however, has nothing to do with "the stuff." I know it sounds strange, but if you start by focusing on the clutter, you will never get organized. Getting truly organized is rarely about "the stuff."

To get Jared and Lisa started, I gave them a little help. You're healthy, happy, and successful. Maybe you have a second child. Perhaps your family lives nearby — or all the way across the world. Your choice. You wake up in the morning feeling bright, energized, and ready to face the day. You know what you want — a rewarding career, a supportive community, minimal stress, a loving family, time to relax, and time to pursue your interests — and you've found a way to have it all.

"Yeah, right," Jared said.

Now I asked them to think about the lives they were actually living. Did the stuff they owned contribute to the lives they were hoping to achieve, or was it getting in the way of that vision? Jared said, "I want to be organized, efficient, and smart in how I use my time." Moments earlier I had watched him spend fifteen minutes trying to find his checkbook. He told me that he misplaced it several times a week. And Lisa had to admit that she couldn't really imagine launching her new work-from-home plan in a house that looked like this. This is the bottom line: If your stuff and the way it is organized is getting you to your goals . . . fantastic. But if it's impeding your vision for the life you want, then why is it in your home? Why is it in your life? Why do you cling to it? For me, this is the only starting point in dealing with clutter. These questions are the ultimate reality check when it comes to what you own and what you have in your home. The first step to getting organized is to work from the vision of the life you want to live. Everything flows from this.

In the eighteenth century, an English architect named William Morris wrote that you should not have anything in your home that is not beautiful or functional. A tough task. Your home is a metaphor for your life — it represents who you are and what you value. When your house is a wreck, your life starts to crumble. For Jared, who spent fifteen minutes twice a day looking for misplaced items, the cost of that activity alone was more than a week lost every year. That's not efficiency — that's lost opportunity!

You can't feel at peace when you're tripping over boxes of golf balls or struggling to find last month's electric bill. You can't have a happy family when you can't even see the dining table. For Jared and Lisa, the damage went beyond the overstuffed closets and overflowing desk drawers. They let stuff mess up their lives, their relationships, their priorities, their hopes, and, yes, their dreams — everything that should have been most important to them. Clutter had stopped them from living the lives they wished they had.

To a greater or lesser degree, I have seen this happen to hundreds of people. The stuff takes over. At some point there is a shift and suddenly life, love, family, and friends all take second place to the clutter. Think about the words we use when we talk about clutter. "There was so much stuff in that room I felt like I was suffocating," or "You should see that garage, you can hardly breathe in there with all those boxes," or "He is really buried under all that paperwork." We use these words for a specific reason — they aren't exaggerations. Clutter is insidious, a slow but steady tide. It enters your home little by little, usually over years. Clutter sucks life away. It leaves you depressed, overwhelmed, lacking motivation, and unable to breathe. Clutter prevents you from enjoying the most precious, intimate moments in life. Clutter robs you of far more than the space it occupies — it steals your life!

I told Lisa and Jared that if they wanted to change, they had to admit that lots of their "important stuff" wasn't as important as the space it was consuming. There was an absolute limit to what they should own and that limit was set by the space they had. Period. Their stuff exceeded the space they had to contain it reasonably, so it had started taking up the space they needed to live. Put another way, if they wanted to achieve the lives they envisioned for themselves, Lisa and Jared had to start redefining their relationship to their stuff. It may seem obvious, but — hard as some people try — you can't own everything! "Listen," I said to Lisa and Jared, "it's you or your stuff — make the choice!"

We started in the family room. Jared, Lisa, and I talked about their vision for the room. More than anything, they wanted a comfortable place to gather as a family. They wanted to have empty space for Cooper's play dates. They wanted a pleasant space to watch TV several nights a week. Lisa finally understood that she didn't need all the scrapbooking stuff she'd so assiduously acquired and organized when she actually spent more of her leisure time watching TV in a room cluttered with unused hobbies. So she made decisions about what to keep based on the space that she wanted to devote to the hobby. She agreed that half the bookshelves should be hers and half should be for Cooper's toys. She also agreed that she wouldn't keep any scrapbooking materials that didn't fit on her side of the bookshelves in closed bins. Jared proposed that she give up on scrapbooking any of their vacation photos. She gave him a gentle punch, but he didn't give in: "They're boring and you know it." Once we knew the vision, purpose, and goals for the room, we went through the whole mess, bin by bin, with Jared alternately teasing Lisa mercilessly and helping her through the toughest decisions. With a clear vision in mind, we had criteria for deciding what stayed and what was no longer needed. Anything that contributed to their vision for that space stayed. Everything else went.

The sweet spot

Jared, Lisa, and I spent two days clearing the clutter from their home. We went through every room, figuring out what they wanted from each space and whether its contents served that purpose. We made some tough decisions. Lisa threw away piles of Cooper's first crayon drawings, picking her favorite three to frame for his room. Jared donated his unused Rollerblades to make room for his new paper shredder. Jared and Lisa made the hard choices while constantly asking themselves, "Does this item enhance the life we want to live?" By the end, Lisa voluntarily threw away or donated every item of clothing she hadn't worn in the last year. "When I'm through I want extra room in my closet. Just for fresh air." When it was all said and done, Lisa said, "It feels like Christmas!" and Jared had to admit, "It's like I just graduated from school. No tests hanging over my head. Nothing is due. I feel free."

We've all had a taste of that relief and joy. If you've ever played tennis or another racket sport, think about when you hit the ball on the sweet spot. You're laboring to hit the ball, using all your might, but when the point of connection is perfect, everything suddenly feels smooth and easy. Or think of the feeling you have when you've just mailed in your taxes. Or when you totally clear your desk before going on vacation. You can walk out of your office, turn off the light, and just know that everything is in its place, right where it's supposed to be. You're doing your job and doing it well. When you succeed in decluttering it will be because you've made good life choices. And when you're living by those choices, you'll experience the joy, the lightness, and the freedom that come with natural order. That sense of achievement can be yours every day, and I'm going to help you accomplish it, step by step, just like I did with Jared and Lisa.

Jared and Lisa had a million self-help books and endless file boxes and organizing "solutions." What I did for them isn't a quick fix; it's an ongoing process that has changed their lives in almost every way. This book doesn't waste time telling people how to stick pretty labels on color-coded boxes the way so many organizing experts do. For me, it's not first and foremost about "the stuff" — that's way too superficial! It's about changing your relationship to your stuff. It's about keeping things that make sense for your life — your real life, not a fantasy of what was or what could be. Stuff is secondary to who you are, and that needs to be reflected in your home and in your life. When you solve the stuff problem, clarity follows. Jared and Lisa did it, and so can you.

In this book we start at the beginning, as I did with Jared and Lisa. I'm going to help you clearly define the life you want to be living. I'll lead you through your house, as I do with all my clients, to help you assess the state of your home without any sugarcoating. What is the room? What's its purpose? What is this item? Does it contribute positively to the life you want? What is the emotion that ties you to this item that stops you from letting it go? What power does this item wield over you? I'll guide you through the process of understanding your priorities and fixing your relationship with your stuff. You'll learn how and why your use of space doesn't match your priorities. That's the first step.

But it doesn't stop there. Once you have confronted the physical and emotional hurdles that cause clutter, we'll work to overcome the feeling that "it's all too much." I'm going to lead you, step-by-step, through the program that helped Jared and Lisa and hundreds of others conquer their clutter. You'll figure out where your problems lie. You'll examine what the clutter is doing to your life. You'll decide what you'd like your home to be like. You'll answer, as a household, a series of essential questions that I pose to all my clients. As a family, you'll decide what purpose each room serves and how it should be filled. Work, play, eating, entertainment, and rest are assigned dedicated, functional spaces that give each of those activities a new clarity. Together we'll break down your house, room by room, cabinet by dresser, and get rid of the extra stuff that is keeping you from living your ideal life. You'll learn to ask yourself, "Do I even remember what's inside these boxes? Do I need it? Do I honor and respect it?" I can't tell you how many people I've met who still have their baby's umbilical cord or the first diaper their child soiled (I kid you not!). Is this the best way to preserve the memory of a child's first days?

Maybe your problem isn't extreme — you're not drowning in clutter, but you've run out of space in your house and want to find ways to bring order and purpose back into your home. That's great! You'll rethink your home organization and discover new space and clarity. And the good news is, the smaller your problem, the less time it will take to solve.

If you're on the other end of the spectrum — a lifelong hoarder — the process will take longer. You'll have to purge, then purge again. If it's taken you ten years or more to accumulate your mess, it's impossible to make it disappear overnight. Letting go is a learning process. You might need to start slowly, and it may take time to discover that not having things makes your life better, not worse.

Ultimately, the job is done. Tabletops are cleared. Closets are skeleton-free. Bookshelves recover from near collapse. From boxes of memorabilia you'll have handpicked the most important, symbolic pieces, given them places of honor in your home, and thrown away, donated, or sold the rest. The dining room table that's been a junk mail storage bin for ten years is reinstated as a family gathering place. The bedroom is no longer overflowing with laundry and toys. It's a peaceful place where love and sleep come easily. And when everything is finally in order, I will show you how to maintain this level of order for a clutter-free lifetime.

A year after I helped Jared and Lisa clean up their home, I got an invitation to a party they were hosting. When I walked through the front door, I saw a home that any family could be proud of. Surfaces were clear. There were no piles anywhere. Even when I peeked into the family room, I saw that Lisa had one desk and the space above it was devoted to her scrapbooking. The rest of the room was a comfortable space that was clearly Cooper's hangout. Every room served a purpose. Everything had its place. Best of all, the house reflected who Jared and Lisa were: a happy, productive, successful family and you could see that on their faces. As Lisa offered me a drink, I said, "Tell me it's this clean every day!" She smiled and admitted, "We knew you were coming. We cleaned up a little. But it only took an hour." As far as I'm concerned, that's success.

I hope and expect this book to generate discussions between you and your partner and family members that are honest and heartfelt. Change will be necessary and it will be a tough process at times. Compromise is essential, but the end result is worth it. When you've finished my program, you will come away with clear priorities and practical new skills for safeguarding them. You will be able to look around your home and see only things that you truly want and need to have in your living space. A home is the beginning of every day. Changing it changes your life.

Copyright © 2007 by Peter Walsh

Read a Sample Chapter

It's All Too Much

Free Press

Introduction

Something is afoot. Something that until recently I could not have imagined or predicted. Something that is changing the basic fabric of people's lives and is impacting how all of us relate to the things we have and the things we own. Something that affects us all. We are, as a nation, overwhelmed with too much stuff.

Did the title of this book catch your eye? Maybe you are at a stage in your life where something in your life is too much -- your career, your relationship, or "just everything" is suddenly overwhelming. If so, you are part of a harsh awakening in this country, and across much of the developed world, as we come to realize that happiness and success might not be measured by more material things. That having more possessions may be more suffocating than liberating. That a larger house, better car, and more "stuff" come with no guarantee of greater happiness. That for many of us, the stuff we own ends up owning us. Suddenly you look around at the life you've built and all you've acquired and realize that it's all too much!

I have an unusual job. I help people dig themselves out from under the overwhelming crush of their own possessions. I'm not talking about a messy closet or one too many boxes of holiday decorations in the garage. I work with people who have filled their homes, their offices,sometimes their cars, and always their lives with too much stuff. These are people who have lost the ability to deal reasonably and rationally with what they own. They fill every corner of their homes with clothes, papers, their kids' school projects, wrapping paper, collectibles, scrapbooking materials, garden tools, kitchen products, sporting gear, antiques, dolls, toys, books, car parts, and every imaginable (and unimaginable!) item you could list.

Surprisingly, as I've traveled across the United States helping people declutter and get organized, I have come to see that the problem is one that affects far more families than I could have imagined. Every single person I have met tells me not only about their own clutter problem, but the clutter problems of a family member, or those of a friend. Nobody seems immune. The stories are not dissimilar -- papers and magazines run amok, garages overflow with unopened boxes, kids' toys fill rooms, and closets are so stuffed that it looks like the clothing department of a major retailer is having a fire sale. The epidemic of clutter, the seeming inability to get organized, and the sense that "the stuff" is taking over affects us all.

We are at the center of an orgy of consumption, and many are now seeing that this need to own so much comes with a heavy price: Kids so overstimulated by the sheer volume of stuff in their home that they lose the ability to concentrate and focus. Financial strain caused by misplaced bills or overpurchasing. Constant fighting because neither partner is prepared to let go of their possessions. The embarrassment of living in a house that long ago became more of a storage facility than a home.

This clutter doesn't just come in the form of the physical items that crowd our homes. We are bombarded every day with dire predictions of disaster and face many uncertainties -- some real and many manufactured. Think about the perils that we've been warned about in the last decade alone -- killer bees, Y2K, SARS, anthrax, mad cow disease, avian flu, flesh-eating bacteria . . . the list goes on and on. We are also faced daily with reports of war, an unstable economy, and global terrorism coming very close to home. Surprisingly, this endless barrage (its own kind of clutter) inspires many of the families with whom I work to finally take control of their own clutter. In an unpredictable, dangerous world that is out of their control, they look to their homes for stability -- to get some degree of organization back into their closets, their garages, their home offices, their lives. This quest for organization is a deeply personal response to the feeling that the rest of the world is out of control.

Among the clutter, the frustration, and the yearning for organization, I constantly hear the same refrain: It is all overwhelming. The stuff has taken on a life of its own and families have no idea where to even begin. They are paralyzed by their own stuff. Often the people I work with lament, "It's all too much -- help me!"

If you find yourself at the point of being overwhelmed by your possessions, you have a clear choice: Decide here and now that you no longer want your stuff to overrun your life. Work with me to get balance and harmony back into your family and relationships. It can be done and I know how. None of this frightens me or overwhelms me because I have seen it all. I have never walked away from a cluttered home because it was too much. However, I have walked away from those who value their stuff over their relationships, their things over their dreams, or their possessions over their vision for the life they really want.

If you are one of those for whom it's suddenly all too much and want to let go, come on an exciting journey with me to reclaim your life. Living a richer, fuller, more exciting, and rewarding life is not that far away. Trust me, I've led many there already and you can be next. I promise you, if you do this, there is nothing you can't do!

IT'S ALL TOO MUCH

Let me tell you about one of my average workdays. One sunny June day, Jared and Lisa invited me into their modest house in the suburbs of Maryland. From the tree-lined street their home looked welcoming. The grass was neatly trimmed, the garden in full bloom. A gray sedan was parked in the driveway. I rang the doorbell.

The door opened to an appalling site. The floor was invisible. Every flat surface was stacked high with papers. The walls were lined with wall-to-wall file boxes, some stacked on shelves or tables. Many of the piles reached the top of my head and I'm not a short man. The living room was so crowded that the kitchen had become their little boy Cooper's playroom. A toy train track ran through the legs of the kitchen table, its cars long ago scattered, tripped on, and lost. The family was overrun with what appeared to be scrapbooking materials: glue, notebooks, piles of photos, trim, and all sorts of craft material. In short, the house was a disaster. I glanced at Jared and Lisa. To all appearances they are clean, hardworking, upstanding citizens, no different from you or me. Jared manages a successful airport shuttle business. After taking a few years off to have their first child, Lisa has just gotten her real-estate license. Cooper was three years old and delighted in showing me his firm handshake. A great family. And a successful one, in spite of the clutter. But underneath their sunny exterior was tension. They wanted more from their lives and believed the chaos of their home was taking away from their happiness. There was an obvious question that needed an answer: Why was their house completely out of control?

I asked Lisa what it was like living in this chaos. She said, "It's suffocating. I feel like I can't breathe when I look in the office." Lisa felt buried by her own stuff. She went on, "Something has to change. I don't want to live like this. But I have no idea where to begin."

And then I heard the one refrain that sums it all up, the words of despair that I hear over and over again from everyone I work with: "It's all too much."

That is why I decided to call this book It's All Too Much. It's a response to the hopelessness of that refrain. It's about what to do when you reach the point where you don't know where to start. When you're faced with so much mess that you throw up your hands in despair and give up. When you just want to move into a hotel, or throw it all out, or shove it in the garage, like when you were a kid and stuffed all your dirty clothes under the bed. Amazingly, I have dealt with people who have purchased a second home rather than face the mammoth task of decluttering the home they have lived in for many years! Well, there's no place to hide your mess when you're an adult and, eventually, you have to come home, so you might as well start dealing with the problem now. It's All Too Much is the solution.

It's just stuff

I asked Jared if he felt as overwhelmed as Lisa. He shrugged. "I know our house doesn't belong in Martha Stewart, but we're busy. It's just stuff. I don't see what the big deal is." I walked over to their bookshelf and started scanning the titles. There were diet books. Exercise books. Self-esteem books. Career motivation books. Parenting books. Finance books. Marriage books. Books on how to live better, happier, richer, fuller lives. It was a complete library of self-help books for every issue a family might have. It was time for me to tell him what I tell all of my clients: the truth. It was time to hold a mirror up to their life and their clutter so that they could see what was happening. I sat him and Lisa down and said, "You think the state of this house is no big deal, but look at all these problems you're trying to solve." I gestured toward the stack of self-help books. "Your home is the physical and emotional base for your family. You want to change? To get motivated? Improve your self-image? Lose weight? Start by taking a look at your home.

"You want a life built on a solid foundation, but you can't even see the floor beneath you. You want to lose weight, but your kitchen is overwhelmed with appliances you never use. You want to build your career, but your office literally makes you feel ill. You want change? This is where it starts: your home. Where you live, breathe, rest, love, and create. Forget the self-help books. Get rid of the clutter. Get organized. If you do, I promise that every aspect of your life will change in ways that you never imagined possible."

Jared and Lisa were like so many couples that I deal with -- they had lost sight of the fact that who you are and what you have are intimately linked. The things you buy, the items you value, the possessions you hoard are all a reflection of you, your life, your relationships, your career, and your aspirations. You are not your stuff, but, believe me, your stuff reveals a great deal about who you are.

THIS MEANS YOU

Jared and Lisa did want to change. That's exactly why they called me. In 2003, I became the organization expert on a TV show called Clean Sweep, a series for the cable station TLC. The mission of each episode of Clean Sweep was clear: A team of experts had forty-eight hours to help a family get uncluttered and organized. It was a simple formula. We had two days and two thousand dollars to redo two clutter-ridden rooms of the family's home. I do the same thing for private clients like Jared and Lisa. But simple as the concept seems -- getting rid of the stuff that overwhelms their homes -- there's more to the problem than meets the eye.

Bear with me here as I walk you through Lisa and Jared's home. It may not look exactly like your house -- you may make beaded jewelry or collect ancient pottery instead of scrapbooking -- but I have a feeling you'll recognize bits and pieces of your own life in Jared and Lisa's. If I have learned one thing in this job, it's that when it comes to clutter, we are all far more similar than we think!

As Jared and Lisa finished showing me their house, Lisa turned to me and asked, "How did this happen? We work hard; we live in a nice neighborhood. Why us?" I looked out the window at the other houses up and down the street. From the outside they looked just like Jared and Lisa's. And I was willing to bet that they had the same problems behind those closed doors. The person for whom clutter is not an issue is rare. We are all in some way owned by our possessions. As we get older our families grow. Children outgrow their toys and their clothes. We accumulate books and papers. We take on new hobbies and collections. Our extended family members die and we inherit boxes -- or truckloads -- of their possessions. Stuff is cheap -- look at electronics. Not too long ago, televisions and computers were big purchases that you only made a few times during your life. Now we think nothing of replacing them every couple of years or buying new ones rather than having them repaired.

The Container Store is a national chain -- thirty-four stores and growing -- selling storage and organization solutions, but, as their website boasts, there's no containing their growth. Their sales revenues grow 20 to 30 percent every year. Can you imagine if your possessions grew at that rate? This year The Container Store secured a new distribution center that's 65 percent bigger than the last to accommodate continued growth. Think about it: This is a store that sells only organizing solutions; that means that there are millions of Americans buying and trying to organize, but I guarantee there's very little organization as a result. And what's the typical American solution to having too much stuff? Buy another organization solution!

Then there are those of us who can't fit our belongings in containers and resort to self-storage, the no-man's-land of stuff. Self-storage is often supposed to be temporary -- we'll just store this couch until we move to our next house, where we might have space for it -- but it's a fifteen-billion-dollar industry. There are more than forty thousand self-storage facilities in this country, each averaging about fifty-five thousand square feet! This accumulation of stuff is a national trend. At some point, every one of us has to figure out how to manage this influx of stuff before it gets out of control.

FYI -- SELF-STORAGE MANIA

The first self-storage facilities appeared in Texas in the late 1960s. Today, approximately 10 percent of American households have items in one of the forty thousand self-storage facilities in this country. This is a 75 percent increase from just ten years ago and it has happened during a time when the size of the average American house has increased by half. Larger houses and more stuff in storage!

Our home is too small

Before I could help Jared and Lisa get their clutter under control, I needed more information. What was all this stuff they owned? Where had it come from? How important was it to them? Why did they hold on to it?

We started with Lisa's scrapbooking materials. Truth be told, they were all over the house, but we started in their family room, scrapbooking headquarters. Lisa had taken up scrapbooking when Cooper was born. Her baby shower had a scrapbook theme, and it blossomed from there. There were photos, memorabilia, ribbons, stickers, and rubber stamps jockeying for space on her wraparound desk. The built-in bookshelves were stocked with labeled plastic storage bins, all so full that their lids floated inches above the bins. Lisa smiled weakly. "I know it looks bad, but I actually need all this stuff to do my albums. And I know where everything is. Almost."

Lisa didn't think that she was disorganized. There was a method behind the madness of that room. The real problem, as far as she was concerned, was that the room was too small. I agreed with her -- but not on the size of the room. She was, indeed, organized, but she had organized an entire extra room's worth of stuff that wasn't necessary. We finally agreed that the problem wasn't that Lisa didn't have enough room; she simply had too much stuff. Instead of getting rid of some of it when she felt overwhelmed, Lisa just bought more storage systems (more stuff!). Who hasn't tried the same thing? At some time or another, we've all bought storage bins or file cabinets or a closet organizing system or invested in some other shiny new system that promises to elevate us to a higher plane of organization. In fact, I've found plenty of these very storage systems, still unused, wasting valuable space in people's garages, offices, and bedrooms. I am constantly amazed by the amount of stuff that people will squeeze into a room. Listen to me -- it's a basic law of physics that you can't fit five cubic feet of stuff into three cubic feet of space! You cannot create more space than you have. Nevertheless, I know that people will keep on trying! Like I always say, rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic as much as you want, the ship is still going down!

Meanwhile, Jared isn't sentimental like Lisa, but he is afraid of identity theft. He has saved every envelope or magazine that comes into the house with his name on it because he wants to make sure he shreds every single label to pulp. Jared's piles of paper and shredded strips completely overwhelmed their small office. While Jared's worry may be justified, the way he is dealing with the concern is creating a bigger, more immediate issue for his family that affects the way they live every day.

What's really important

Jared and Lisa couldn't just throw away their excess. For them, none of it was garbage because everything seemed important. Lisa had family photographs she wanted to arrange in albums for Cooper to pass down to his kids. Jared's office was full of materials he wanted for his company: employee records and business articles that he thought he'd get around to reading. How could they let go of any of it? This was all stuff that they would certainly need one day. "Fine," I said, "you have too much stuff, but you believe that all of it is critical to you. I understand. Instead of talking about the whole house, let's talk about the rooms one by one." They followed me into the family room. "What's the purpose of this room?" I asked Lisa.

"It's the family room. It's where I scrapbook and, well, Cooper's supposed to play in here, but he's always in the kitchen or the hall."

"I see. So what you're telling me is that hoarding photos for Cooper's future is more important to you than giving him room to play today?" I didn't wait for Lisa to answer. Jared was starting to gloat. He'd been down on Lisa's scrapbooking from the start, but I wasn't about to let him off easy. I went straight to the office.

"You're up, Jared."

"This is the office. I store my business papers here, pay bills, and we all use the computer."

"No you don't!" Lisa burst out. "You pay your bills standing up in the kitchen. When I'm trying to make dinner." She turned to me. "We almost had our electricity shut off because Jared lost the bill behind the stove."

I turned to Jared, "Is this true?" Jared nodded. "Because of the clutter in your office, some bills aren't getting paid. But you're still giving your paper shredding and business papers priority over paying bills and getting rid of the tension that it is causing between the two of you?"

"That's exactly what he's doing," Lisa said, shooting an apologetic look at Jared. "And I'm supposed to work from home. In that office? What a joke!" We went through every room of the house like this. I learned that Jared had every tablecloth his grandmother had owned stuffed in moldy cardboard boxes in the garage. He knew they were ruined, but he couldn't let them go. And Lisa was using the messy office as an excuse. She really wasn't sure if she wanted to go back to work or to take care of Cooper full-time. Their house reflected all of these conflicts. But there was no way to resolve them until they could see what the real cost of keeping these "prized possessions" was to their family. They had to face some tough questions, answer them honestly, and decide on specific actions to change their situation.

IMAGINE THE LIFE YOU WANT

Once I understood the physical space and emotions behind Jared and Lisa's clutter, I told them that I wanted them to do an exercise that is fundamental to helping people declutter and get organized.

As I do with all my clients, I first asked Jared and Lisa to imagine their ideal lives. This is a question that always catches people off guard. They expect me to ask for an inventory of what they own, or a list of their collectibles, or even details of their home lives when they were children. My starting point, however, has nothing to do with "the stuff." I know it sounds strange, but if you start by focusing on the clutter, you will never get organized. Getting truly organized is rarely about "the stuff."

To get Jared and Lisa started, I gave them a little help. You're healthy, happy, and successful. Maybe you have a second child. Perhaps your family lives nearby -- or all the way across the world. Your choice. You wake up in the morning feeling bright, energized, and ready to face the day. You know what you want -- a rewarding career, a supportive community, minimal stress, a loving family, time to relax, and time to pursue your interests -- and you've found a way to have it all.

"Yeah, right," Jared said.

Now I asked them to think about the lives they were actually living. Did the stuff they owned contribute to the lives they were hoping to achieve, or was it getting in the way of that vision? Jared said, "I want to be organized, efficient, and smart in how I use my time." Moments earlier I had watched him spend fifteen minutes trying to find his checkbook. He told me that he misplaced it several times a week. And Lisa had to admit that she couldn't really imagine launching her new work-from-home plan in a house that looked like this. This is the bottom line: If your stuff and the way it is organized is getting you to your goals . . . fantastic. But if it's impeding your vision for the life you want, then why is it in your home? Why is it in your life? Why do you cling to it? For me, this is the only starting point in dealing with clutter. These questions are the ultimate reality check when it comes to what you own and what you have in your home. The first step to getting organized is to work from the vision of the life you want to live. Everything flows from this.

In the eighteenth century, an English architect named William Morris wrote that you should not have anything in your home that is not beautiful or functional. A tough task. Your home is a metaphor for your life -- it represents who you are and what you value. When your house is a wreck, your life starts to crumble. For Jared, who spent fifteen minutes twice a day looking for misplaced items, the cost of that activity alone was more than a week lost every year. That's not efficiency -- that's lost opportunity!

You can't feel at peace when you're tripping over boxes of golf balls or struggling to find last month's electric bill. You can't have a happy family when you can't even see the dining table. For Jared and Lisa, the damage went beyond the overstuffed closets and overflowing desk drawers. They let stuff mess up their lives, their relationships, their priorities, their hopes, and, yes, their dreams -- everything that should have been most important to them. Clutter had stopped them from living the lives they wished they had.

To a greater or lesser degree, I have seen this happen to hundreds of people. The stuff takes over. At some point there is a shift and suddenly life, love, family, and friends all take second place to the clutter. Think about the words we use when we talk about clutter. "There was so much stuff in that room I felt like I was suffocating," or "You should see that garage, you can hardly breathe in there with all those boxes," or "He is really buried under all that paperwork." We use these words for a specific reason -- they aren't exaggerations. Clutter is insidious, a slow but steady tide. It enters your home little by little, usually over years. Clutter sucks life away. It leaves you depressed, overwhelmed, lacking motivation, and unable to breathe. Clutter prevents you from enjoying the most precious, intimate moments in life. Clutter robs you of far more than the space it occupies -- it steals your life!

I told Lisa and Jared that if they wanted to change, they had to admit that lots of their "important stuff" wasn't as important as the space it was consuming. There was an absolute limit to what they should own and that limit was set by the space they had. Period. Their stuff exceeded the space they had to contain it reasonably, so it had started taking up the space they needed to live. Put another way, if they wanted to achieve the lives they envisioned for themselves, Lisa and Jared had to start redefining their relationship to their stuff. It may seem obvious, but -- hard as some people try -- you can't own everything! "Listen," I said to Lisa and Jared, "it's you or your stuff -- make the choice!"

We started in the family room. Jared, Lisa, and I talked about their vision for the room. More than anything, they wanted a comfortable place to gather as a family. They wanted to have empty space for Cooper's play dates. They wanted a pleasant space to watch TV several nights a week. Lisa finally understood that she didn't need all the scrapbooking stuff she'd so assiduously acquired and organized when she actually spent more of her leisure time watching TV in a room cluttered with unused hobbies. So she made decisions about what to keep based on the space that she wanted to devote to the hobby. She agreed that half the bookshelves should be hers and half should be for Cooper's toys. She also agreed that she wouldn't keep any scrapbooking materials that didn't fit on her side of the bookshelves in closed bins. Jared proposed that she give up on scrapbooking any of their vacation photos. She gave him a gentle punch, but he didn't give in: "They're boring and you know it." Once we knew the vision, purpose, and goals for the room, we went through the whole mess, bin by bin, with Jared alternately teasing Lisa mercilessly and helping her through the toughest decisions. With a clear vision in mind, we had criteria for deciding what stayed and what was no longer needed. Anything that contributed to their vision for that space stayed. Everything else went.

The sweet spot

Jared, Lisa, and I spent two days clearing the clutter from their home. We went through every room, figuring out what they wanted from each space and whether its contents served that purpose. We made some tough decisions. Lisa threw away piles of Cooper's first crayon drawings, picking her favorite three to frame for his room. Jared donated his unused Rollerblades to make room for his new paper shredder. Jared and Lisa made the hard choices while constantly asking themselves, "Does this item enhance the life we want to live?" By the end, Lisa voluntarily threw away or donated every item of clothing she hadn't worn in the last year. "When I'm through I want extra room in my closet. Just for fresh air." When it was all said and done, Lisa said, "It feels like Christmas!" and Jared had to admit, "It's like I just graduated from school. No tests hanging over my head. Nothing is due. I feel free."

We've all had a taste of that relief and joy. If you've ever played tennis or another racket sport, think about when you hit the ball on the sweet spot. You're laboring to hit the ball, using all your might, but when the point of connection is perfect, everything suddenly feels smooth and easy. Or think of the feeling you have when you've just mailed in your taxes. Or when you totally clear your desk before going on vacation. You can walk out of your office, turn off the light, and just know that everything is in its place, right where it's supposed to be. You're doing your job and doing it well. When you succeed in decluttering it will be because you've made good life choices. And when you're living by those choices, you'll experience the joy, the lightness, and the freedom that come with natural order. That sense of achievement can be yours every day, and I'm going to help you accomplish it, step by step, just like I did with Jared and Lisa.

Jared and Lisa had a million self-help books and endless file boxes and organizing "solutions." What I did for them isn't a quick fix; it's an ongoing process that has changed their lives in almost every way. This book doesn't waste time telling people how to stick pretty labels on color-coded boxes the way so many organizing experts do. For me, it's not first and foremost about "the stuff" -- that's way too superficial! It's about changing your relationship to your stuff. It's about keeping things that make sense for your life -- your real life, not a fantasy of what was or what could be. Stuff is secondary to who you are, and that needs to be reflected in your home and in your life. When you solve the stuff problem, clarity follows. Jared and Lisa did it, and so can you.

In this book we start at the beginning, as I did with Jared and Lisa. I'm going to help you clearly define the life you want to be living. I'll lead you through your house, as I do with all my clients, to help you assess the state of your home without any sugarcoating. What is the room? What's its purpose? What is this item? Does it contribute positively to the life you want? What is the emotion that ties you to this item that stops you from letting it go? What power does this item wield over you? I'll guide you through the process of understanding your priorities and fixing your relationship with your stuff. You'll learn how and why your use of space doesn't match your priorities. That's the first step.

But it doesn't stop there. Once you have confronted the physical and emotional hurdles that cause clutter, we'll work to overcome the feeling that "it's all too much." I'm going to lead you, step-by-step, through the program that helped Jared and Lisa and hundreds of others conquer their clutter. You'll figure out where your problems lie. You'll examine what the clutter is doing to your life. You'll decide what you'd like your home to be like. You'll answer, as a household, a series of essential questions that I pose to all my clients. As a family, you'll decide what purpose each room serves and how it should be filled. Work, play, eating, entertainment, and rest are assigned dedicated, functional spaces that give each of those activities a new clarity. Together we'll break down your house, room by room, cabinet by dresser, and get rid of the extra stuff that is keeping you from living your ideal life. You'll learn to ask yourself, "Do I even remember what's inside these boxes? Do I need it? Do I honor and respect it?" I can't tell you how many people I've met who still have their baby's umbilical cord or the first diaper their child soiled (I kid you not!). Is this the best way to preserve the memory of a child's first days?

Maybe your problem isn't extreme -- you're not drowning in clutter, but you've run out of space in your house and want to find ways to bring order and purpose back into your home. That's great! You'll rethink your home organization and discover new space and clarity. And the good news is, the smaller your problem, the less time it will take to solve.

If you're on the other end of the spectrum -- a lifelong hoarder -- the process will take longer. You'll have to purge, then purge again. If it's taken you ten years or more to accumulate your mess, it's impossible to make it disappear overnight. Letting go is a learning process. You might need to start slowly, and it may take time to discover that not having things makes your life better, not worse.

Ultimately, the job is done. Tabletops are cleared. Closets are skeleton-free. Bookshelves recover from near collapse. From boxes of memorabilia you'll have handpicked the most important, symbolic pieces, given them places of honor in your home, and thrown away, donated, or sold the rest. The dining room table that's been a junk mail storage bin for ten years is reinstated as a family gathering place. The bedroom is no longer overflowing with laundry and toys. It's a peaceful place where love and sleep come easily. And when everything is finally in order, I will show you how to maintain this level of order for a clutter-free lifetime.

A year after I helped Jared and Lisa clean up their home, I got an invitation to a party they were hosting. When I walked through the front door, I saw a home that any family could be proud of. Surfaces were clear. There were no piles anywhere. Even when I peeked into the family room, I saw that Lisa had one desk and the space above it was devoted to her scrapbooking. The rest of the room was a comfortable space that was clearly Cooper's hangout. Every room served a purpose. Everything had its place. Best of all, the house reflected who Jared and Lisa were: a happy, productive, successful family and you could see that on their faces. As Lisa offered me a drink, I said, "Tell me it's this clean every day!" She smiled and admitted, "We knew you were coming. We cleaned up a little. But it only took an hour." As far as I'm concerned, that's success.

I hope and expect this book to generate discussions between you and your partner and family members that are honest and heartfelt. Change will be necessary and it will be a tough process at times. Compromise is essential, but the end result is worth it. When you've finished my program, you will come away with clear priorities and practical new skills for safeguarding them. You will be able to look around your home and see only things that you truly want and need to have in your living space. A home is the beginning of every day. Changing it changes your life.

Copyright 2007 by Peter Walsh

Continues...

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Excerpted from It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh Copyright © 2006 by Peter Walsh. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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