Over my last vacation, we organized all of our books on our bookshelves (I know, very exciting). We scanned them into Delicious Library (I LOVE, LOVE this program), arranged them alphabetically by author, returned those books that weren’t ours, etc. After doing all that, I’ve come to realize that I have a lot of books! That’s quite of bit of money tied up in four bookshelves in our extra bedroom. So, I’ve decided to put a stop to my addiction. No more purchasing of books. If I really want to own a book, I’ll just put it on my wish list and cross my fingers that someone will gift me with it. If I’m dying to read a book, I will utilize this place called the St. Louis County Library. Apparently, they loan you books for free, that’s right, free. I can’t believe it! And what’s even better is that you can request books to be sent to a specific library for easy pick-up. Amazing!

When the New Year came around, I thought, like millions of people, it was the perfect time to start fresh, begin some life changes, purge, blah, blah, blah. I decided that I would start with my life, more accurately, my home. When I looked around my 1084 square foot home (with no basement), I realized I needed to do something about the chaos if I was going to stay there for a couple more years. So I took a step toward decluttering my home by reading Peter Walsh’s book, “It’s All Too Much” for guidance.

After reading this book, I realized something about myself: I’m not that bad! I’m sure he told stories of his most extreme cases to emphasize his point, but all it did was make me feel better about how I’m doing. But there were some interesting pieces of advice/tips that he had that I’m going to share so we can all live 2009 clutter-free or just more organized.

• If you haven’t used something in 12 months, get rid of it.
• If it does not belong to you, it is time to return the item(s) to their rightful owners. You are not their free storage space.
• Reverse the hangers in your closet. When you wear a piece of clothing, flip that hanger forward. After 6 months, you can easily see what you haven’t worn and you should really think about getting rid them.
• Get rid of “wish” clothes (clothes that you would like to fit into when you lose weight). When you get down to that size, then you can celebrate by buying new clothes.
• Group similar items together, whether it’s clothing, DVDs, CDs, etc. It’ll be easier to see what you have or don’t have.
• Get rid of junk mail as soon as you walk into the house with it.
• Purge your cupboards and fridge every 6 months to get rid of old/expired food.
• For each thing that you bring in, one thing goes out.

It pretty much comes down to the fact that you have to put his ideas into practice, which will be hard. He really emphasizes that we, as a population, consume too much and things that we buy/bring into our homes soon run our lives. So what I’m going to take from this book is to buy less, purge more and to organize. I’ll let you know how it goes.