The Sentimental Person's Guide to Decluttering

by Claire Middleton

Overview

How can you have the organized home of your dreams when you're emotionally attached to almost all of your stuff?

In The Sentimental Person's Guide to Decluttering, Claire Middleton offers a real-life organizing plan that you can work through, step by step, to turn your home into the welcoming, roomy haven you've always dreamed of, filled with charm, personality... and none of the mess you live with now.

Declutter Your Home and Let Go of Your Stuff Without Losing Your Nostalgic Memories

In this book, Claire shares tips that will help you give up the bulk of your sentimental clutter while keeping your most precious treasures to use and display. Learn how to shrink your collections of nostalgic items such as:

Your children's baby clothes and toys

Mementos from your own youth

Clothes you've kept for decades

Heirlooms you inherited

Books you've kept for years

Gifts you don't want (but feel you have to keep)

Holiday decorations

And everything else that brings back happy memories.

Claire will teach you the art of discarding items that trigger your memories without actually losing those memories. If you've been hoarding too much stuff because you fear losing the memories along with the stuff, you need this book.

This Decluttering Guide is Packed with Advice

Whether you're downsizing the family home or you simply need to learn how to declutter in a way that honors your memories, this book is for you.

If your adult children are moving out, or you're faced with going through the belongings of a beloved parent or other loved one, this will be one of your books that you refer to again and again, as it lists categories of sentimental items, and how to deal with each.

Yes, You Can Declutter Without Losing Your Treasured Memories

You don't have to live with overflowing closets, an attic full of boxes and a basement packed with more of the same, just because it's so hard for you to sort through and give up belongings linked to your past.

The truth is, you CAN finally free yourself of clutter while keeping your most treasured belongings. There are many decluttering books and downsizing books, but this one is written by someone with personal experience.

Claire and her family gave up more than half their possessions when they downsized from their large family home to a much smaller house. She let go of things she'd been carrying around for most of her life, as well as treasured mementos from many years of raising her large family to adulthood. In this book, she spells out the steps a sentimental person can take to reduce their clutter while keeping their memories intact.

Read The Sentimental Person's Guide to Decluttering now, and start on the path to conquering clutter without giving up happy memories.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998045306
Publisher:	Cardamom Publishers
Publication date:	01/02/2019
Pages:	216
Sales rank:	234,785
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.49(d)

About the Author

Claire Middleton is a writer who also loves to garden, cook and sew. A business failure forced Claire and her family to move from their McMansion to a small house; they sold or donated well over half of their possessions in the process. Now she enjoys a much simpler life. Her website is claire-middleton.com.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1

● Decluttering: The Sentimental Person’s Challenge

● What Do People Get Sentimental About?

● The Advantage to Being a 21st Century Declutterer

● Don’t Be Afraid

● Keep What You Will Use…And Use It!

● Becoming a Sentimental Declutterer

Chapter 2

● The Opposite of Sentimental: Clean-Sweepers

● Have They No Heart?

● Maybe Clean-Sweepers Aren’t Heartless After All

● Clean-Sweepers Hate Clutter Just Like We Do

Chapter 3

● Three Rules for Decluttering Success (for Sentimental People Only)

● Rule 1: It Has to Go to a Good Home

● Rule 2: The Memory Must Be Preserved

● Rule 3: It May Take Time

Chapter 4

● Decluttering Your Home

● Method One: One Room at a Time

● Method Two: The Big Purge

● How to Choose?

● What Worked for Me

● Choose Destinations Carefully and Quickly Dispatch Everything

● When You Get Bogged Down

● The Four Steps of Decluttering

Chapter 5

● Going Through Your Keep Piles

● Two Parameters That Will Help You Prioritize Your Belongings

● Choosing Your Most Beautiful Things

● How Many Items Should You Keep?

● Where Will You Keep Your Most Beautiful Items?

● How to Sort and Set Priorities While Decluttering

● More Strategies for Prioritizing Your Sentimental Items

● Useful and Beautiful

Chapter 6

● The Sentimental Seven

● Books

● Babies’ and Kids’ Clothes, Toys, Artwork and Schoolwork

● Possessions of Late Loved Ones, Heirlooms, and Inherited Belongings

● Let a Little Time (Not Decades) Pass Before You Go Through Everything

● Gifts and Other Expensive Items

● Collections

● Items That Represent a Lost Dream

Chapter 7

● Other People’s Sentimental Clutter

Chapter 8

● A Final Word

● The Second Time Around

● Stay Motivated

● No Regrets

● What If You Can’t Give Any of It Up?

About the Author

Also by Claire Middleton