Most Helpful Customer Reviews
129 of 130 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Make Purging Painless - Read this book & live clutter-free!, April 3, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Not for Packrats Only: How to Clean Up, Clear Out, and Live Clutter-Free Forever (Paperback)
I have never considered myself a packrat. Nevertheless, this book's title intrigued me, and I thought it would be an smug, intellectual exercise to confirm my "clutter-free" life. Two hundred pages later, I was purging closets with a vengeance, filling boxes for my neighborhood garage sale, and making daily trips to the Goodwill Drive-thru donation center.
Don Aslett owns a multi-million dollar cleaning business, and after cleaning thousands of homes and offices, he knows clutter! He also speaks nationwide at seminars that have helped countless packrats. Unlike most "organizing" books, Don's book is aimed at removing clutter, not piling it higher and deeper. Packrats will use almost any excuse in the book to hold onto clutter, and Don has heard them all. In this book, Don goes from closet to closet, room to room, constantly stressing the cost and burden of our junk.
His style is both inspiring and hilarious. "Not for Packrats Only" combines down to earth purging techniques with real life "confessions of clutter" and stories of success. In one of Don's seminars, he held a contest for the most useless piece of clutter. A couple with a goat-bra (and no goat) were the hands down winners. The runners-up included a man still saving his ex-wife's, late husband's leg brace and several women who had saved their baby's umbilical cord stumps (I almost fell off the sofa when I read this one-I still have my daughter's!)
After reading the introduction, I took the "packrat quiz", and discovered I was not quite as free as I had thought. I poured over the chapters on clothing and shoe junk (do I really need the purse with the baby alligator on top?), kitchen gadget junk (I finally got rid of the never-used "tart-master"), photo junk (those ex-boyfriend shots had to go), memorabilia junk, craft project junk (I finally acknowledged that I will never finish the cross-stitch I started in 1967), and the ever present garage junk (and we've only had a garage for a year). I especially enjoyed the chapter on de-junking your spouse (his junk, not him!) Don Aslett understands the emotional power our possessions hold, and uses humor to encourage even the most diehard junker to let go.
The most difficult aspect of a clutter-free life is to stay that way. Madison Avenue spends billions of dollars every year convincing us what we NEED to feel happy, sexy, successful and confident. The truth is that things will never make us happy. The last chapter of the book is filled with inspiring testimonies of the exhilarating freedom of a clutter-free life. Don realizes how difficult it is to resist the urge to shop, and reminds us "not to love what does not love you back". This is one of those books that really changed the way I think about myself, and I can't say enough to recommend this book.
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56 of 56 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent book!, October 12, 2000
This review is from: Not for Packrats Only: How to Clean Up, Clear Out, and Live Clutter-Free Forever (Paperback)
I was so inspired to declutter my house, I couldn't even wait till I had finished reading the whole book, I started right in on some overflowing drawers. I like his writing style; it's very down-to-earth and funny, especially when he mentions some of the things he himself had accumulated before he "saw the light." I laughed out loud several times while reading it. He really gets into the nitty-gritty details of decluttering too, like how to identify clutter, why you've saved it, excuses and reasons for cluttering/saving, how to get rid of it, and even how to spot potential clutter before you even acquire it. There was no aspect of clutter that he didn't cover. I loved the cartoons too; they really hit home and lightened up the whole prospect of the task ahead. I highly recommend this book. After decluttering my own areas, my husband (who said he didn't have any clutter) starting reading the book and amazingly found some things he could part with too. Yippee! I plan on re-reading parts of it whenever I start backsliding. (Yes, he covers that too.)
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51 of 51 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This book saved my life!, November 11, 1998
This review is from: Not for Packrats Only: How to Clean Up, Clear Out, and Live Clutter-Free Forever (Paperback)
I grew up with packrats for parents. The need to save was ingrained in me from day one. If I was eating a bag of M&M's and feeling sentimental - I'd save the bag! I was drowning in my clutter without even knowing it. This book quickly became my bible. I became a tossing tornado only pages into the book. Don has a way of pointing out the junk in our lives and the emotional, physical and financial cost of our clutter. He gently prods us and pokes us and keeps us motivated to clean out that junk! In the past three years, since I first read this book, I have made hundreds of dollars of tax deductable donations to charities and completely changed my life. My house is clean and neat and very easy to clean, and the treasures I've held onto are truly treasures that I can enjoy everyday. You'll save yourself thousands of dollars on what you may have spent on clutter and thearapy sessions if you invest less than $20. in this book. He leaves no cranny untouched! It's truly a godsend!
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