I have recently read a book that might interest most of you. Awhile back I wrote a post on conquering clutter, as I was in the mist of cleaning and rearranging my room.  The post was only meant as a introduction to the broad topic of cleaning and organizing.

So after going though the KonMarie Method, I recently found a book on my recommended list on Amazon, called “Living with Less: How to Downsize to 100 Personal Possessions.” by Mary Lambert. Intrigued with this book, I purchased it.

So here are my thoughts about this book after a month of reading and reflecting.

This is actually a great book for those who have done much de-cluttering and want to take a step further to minimalism. I especially like all the illustrations, as I am a visual learner, I can see exactly what the author means  when she writes about a particular topic. I also like the bullet points of problems and helpful solutions in the types of clutter by room. This makes it easier to narrow down and de-clutter similar items. I also love that the author has pages dedicated to your inventory of your personal items. So often we fail to estimate the sheer amount of our stuff, and counting everything  can be a real eye-opener.

However, this book is quite direct and doesn’t explain a whole lot. If I had stumbled across this book without reading “The Magic of Tidying Up” and “Spark Joy” I would be quite lost, not knowing how to discard, organize and downsize to such a significant extent. So keep this in mind if this is your first de-cluttering book, as you will need most of the techniques Marie Kondo describes in her book.

Now of course, if you have read Marie Kondo’s books and other books, and just want to take your organizing and downsizing even further, than this is the perfect book to get down to that perfect number, be it 100, 50, 20, etc.

I actually haven’t started downsizing to 100 items yet, because I need to do the fist step which is counting everything I have.  I have been quite busy with work, and counting everything is quite intimidating, but I am hoping to get this first step down this coming Monday, and I will blog all of my progress towards 100 items.

Now you may be wondering, Why am I doing this?  Well, I believe that we in our modern society are too bombarded with stuff. We oftentimes place such a high value on stuff that we forget the simple pleasures of life.  We elevate status by how expensive our stuff is. So I am trying to break away from this system of status and consumerism attitude, and try to live elegantly, simply, and consciously.  We can be elegant with fewer possessions.

Have a great evening,

Alyssa

 

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