Customer Reviews

A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys

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Clutter: A quotidian phenomenon resulting from the detritus of living. Each day almost all of us perform a cleansing to prevent this Hydra from swallowing up our physical and mental space, thereby winning a small victory against a seemingly dark and chaotic universe. We thus impose our human order and give ourselves the freedom to live another day...to create more detritus.

In this funny and endearing memoir, the author has a special relationship with her clutter. For decades she has been a spiritual seeker, a gentle soul who takes enormous comfort in cozy things like cups of steaming hot coffee, fluffy clean sheets, clean cotton clothing, and warm cookies. But somewhere along the path to God, the clutter has become a huge roadblock.

The author brilliantly chronicles the clutter around her in hilarious and loving detail. Who would have thought such junk existed, but here it is in all its ridiculousness, each item lovingly preserved and having a special place in the pantheon of the improbable, and each locking away an emotion, an event, a moment in time for its increasingly overwhelmed owner.

As all the stuff, papers, and unpaid bills begin to mount to stratospheric heights and personal catastrophes multiply, whatever the author thought of as God has become a distant abstraction, indifferent to her miseries. What to do? The clutter has become a shameful running joke, impossible to live with but impossible to live without. It's downright revolting!

Fortunately, Ms Dinnerstein is surrounded by a group of loving Holy Sisters. This loose association of insightful and artistic fellow seekers is a ready nuclear family to mentor her through her plight. Each member contributes to her "Project" of recovery. But it isn't until she joins Clutterers Anonymous and escapes to Israel from the latest catastrophe that genuine progress toward a personal and real relationship with God and with herself is made.

In addition to rendering witty, humorous, and insightful writing, Ms Dinnerstein presents stunningly beautiful descriptions of Israel. She shows tremendous promise as a travel writer if she could ever bring herself onto an airplane again.

As a bit of criticism, it has been impossible for the text itself to escape some clutter of words. And although a few details would have been fine to leave out, navigating through them will pay off for the understanding and patient reader. In the end, you will fly through the debris and be rewarded for your efforts.

Funny, insightful, and well worth your time, especially if you are a seeker and a clutterer. Highly recommended!

This book is fabulous. It is written with depth and humour, while filled with clear inspiring jewels. For those people that struggle with the abundance of physical objects in the world, this book will help you live your life lighter and with more meaning and less frustration. It has the ability to transform your day to day life by accessing the highest part of yourself, if the reader is willing. I highly recommend this book.

Ms. Dinnerstein's book is insightful, deep, witty and brilliantly funny. You feel as though you are going on a journey with her...... and you are. She looks at the deeper meaning of the clutter in her life and the unexpected challenges that seem to constantly surround her - and illustrates how, with the help of friends and other guides, she is able to make changes on both the tangible and deeper levels. Ms. Dinnerstein's writing is beautiful and flowing and engages the reader fully. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in joining a wise woman on her journey and in better understanding and navigating their own clutter-related challenges, and having a few laughs along the way. A delightful read!

I usually do not like memoirs but I found this one highly engaging and readable. For a woman so plagued by clutter and chaos, Dinnerstein writes with a clarity and control that belies the premise of the book. Also, let's not forget the humor and emotional honesty that makes her story a deep investigation into the ways we assign meaning to our physical possessions and the notion that these things somehow come to define who we are.

Pesi Dinnerstein's "A Cluttered Life" is both lol funny and inspirational - a unique and valuable combination. While Ms. Dinnerstein writes about physical clutter and the challenges it poses, she is also talking on a deeper level. As she talks about the physical objects impinging on her life, she conjures up ideas about different kinds of clutter: clutter of the mind, clutter of the heart, old ideas and feelings that need to be examined, packed up and cleared out to make room for new ideas and feelings more appropriate to where one is at the present. "A Cluttered Life" is an excellent choice for the reader who either faces challenges of "clutter" or who just wants to laugh with Pesi as she goes on her journey.

This book made me think of the many ways that I clutter in my life and how I can begin to take a different path to free myself from this disaster called 'Clutter'.

This book is about finding yourself among chaos. The author is a woman turning fifty years old and realizes that she is unorganized and out of touch with herself. She decides, with the help of her friends (the Holy Sisters), that she needs a major life change to become more efficient, happy and balanced in her life. By eliminating the clutter in her home and car she thinks she can get her life back on track. The author finds a new relationship with God in the mix, and the story is interesting with all of the real life exploits she overcomes to be truly clutter free.

Our state of mind is cluttered or not, and so is our spiritual being. The author goes on a spiritual quest, and finds what she expects to find. She struggled with being and staying present, and truly enjoying her life wherever adventure would take her. The author learns as we all do that trying to live is actually living itself. And we can take away from the book that "finding yourself" is never easy but always satisfying - especially knowing that there are no wrong answers.

The book was interesting because the reader will relate to the author's sincere attempts to find a better balance. What I liked about the author's personality was that she did not give the impression that what she was doing had to be perfect or that there was only one way of being. Her journey seemed authentic and you saw her personality shining through each epiphany that she had regarding where her life should go (in relation to where it was).

I would recommend the story to anyone interested in a new way of reviewing self-help, and any age reader will relate to the journey.

Ms. Dinnerstein's path to the Divine is paved with landmines of her own clutter. Paced slowly but engagingly, her journey to something higher and deeper than her piles of memories and maybes is supported by the love and laughter of her husband and many sister-friends. Her writing is smooth, not pedantic, not cluttered. Her sense of humor comes through and buoys up her search, unlike many "journey" books weighed down by the author's angst.

I found the book charming, easy to read and often very funny. The style is conversational and it feels like the author is talking to the reader. I have recommended the book to several friends.

A Cluttered Life: Searching for God, Serenity, and My Missing Keys by Pesi Dinnerstein is a memoir filled with motivating quotes and thought-provoking paradoxes. As the author explains, "Trying to simplify can be really complicated." Fortunately, we are offered a ray of hope as she eases us along with her on a journey through a life in disarray.

The topic, ordinarily a heavy burden for many of us, is lightened by Dinnerstein's humorous insight and honesty. From tables stored in the garage to the fitness equipment stored in the basement, she touches upon those areas where many of us conceal an abundance of unused items.

Clutter accumulates. Piles of unresolved problems loom over our heads. I know only too well these facts of life. Dinnerstein's blunt observations and confessions reveal certain truths that we all might acknowledge. The first of many words to resonate with me were these:

"My chronic struggle with clutter keeps me too preoccupied with the physical world to focus on anything that transcends it." She explains that clutter serves as her creative muse. Yet she muses that "...the abundance that stimulates my imagination also clutters my path..."

Numerous friends support her transition as she works through her dilemma--and through delay after delay. At one gathering of her friends, she confides her belief that if she could only free herself of clutter then "...the physical universe would be transformed into an unobstructed reflection of the spiritual". As if it were that simple.

I enjoyed the pithy words of wisdom that open each chapter and serve as inspiration. For example, this one, by Henry David Thoreau: "Simplify. Simplify. We are happy in proportion to the things we can live without." I resisted the urge to write each one of them on a Post-it Note to affix to my mirror for daily affirmations.

My only discomfort reading this story resulted from the author's prolonged procrastination and lack of progress toward her goals. By the final chapters I was eager to read of some resolutions that helped her along to some semblance of internal peace.

A reader who is feeling overwhelmed with clutter may discover some solace in this story where the author finds a way to include spiritual practice in every-day life.

by Martha Meacham
for Story Circle Book Reviews
reviewing books by, for, and about women