Too Much Stuff: De-Cluttering Your Heart and Home [Paperback]

Kathryn Porter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 10, 2006

We love stuff. Clothes. Shoes. Make-up. Jewelry. Books. Pictures. Movies. CDs. Letters. Recipes. Magazines. STUFF! Our consumer-driven society is constantly enticing us to want more, and before we know it--it’s just too much!We collect things for someday--recipes we plan to bake, craft projects we want to make, or gifts we hope to give. And unfortunately, what begins as an innocent collection of odds and ends soon grows into heaping mounds of clutter and chaos. Before we realize it, clutter seeps in and sucks away our time, our peace of mind, and our freedom. And if we’re not careful, our possessions end up owning us. Clutter mentally and physically sucks the life out of us and traps us in a life we were never meant to have. But there is hope.In Too Much Stuff, author Kathryn Porter challenges us to dig into the clutter of our homes and attack the attitudes and behaviors that allow this chaos to immobilize us. While giving practical steps on how to de-clutter our homes, she shows us how to de-clutter our hearts by realizing that God loves us through the messes we make and has a plan for us that doesn’t involve being confined to clutter.Too Much Stuff includes:Reflection questions within each chapter to help you assess the extent of your clutterRoom-by-room de-cluttering techniques and practical advice on how to keep a clutter free, beautiful homeHomebuilding sections to remind you to seek God and His word as your foundationPrayer points in each chapter that help you focus on God throughout your de-cluttering journeyAn internal assessment for understanding how our childhoods and choices affect the way we deal with clutter and how to end the destructive cycle

Editorial Reviews

Review

SOUL FOOD: Organizing our messy lives By MICHÈLE MARR

I nearly missed it. If it hadn't been for a CBS Sunday Morning segment late in the month, I would have. January was Get Organized Month.

Makes sense. Getting organized is one of the top five New Year's resolutions people make, according to the National Assn. of Professional Organizers, which christened January Get Organized Month.

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In light of the occasion, Sunday Morning correspondent Bill Geist took viewers on a tour of the offices of some of the CBS News staff. Science writer David H. Freeman, co-author of "A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder," tagged along with him.

Martha Teichner, Charles Osgood, Andy Rooney, emerged, one by one, from behind great piles of papers, paraphernalia, beverages and snacks. In their offices, by varying degrees, it was difficult to distinguish counters from cabinets, cabinets from desks and, in some cases, desks from floors.

Heaps of stuff camouflaged them all. Useful messes by Freeman's assessment, receiving nods of his approval.

You see, the premise of Freeman's book is this: moderately messy systems can lead to strokes of brilliance. (For example, the bloom of mold we know as the source of penicillin was a by-product, not of Alexander Fleming's carefully organized genius, but of his chronic untidiness.)

Not that anyone at CBS News has had a recent lifesaving scientific breakthrough. But they do -- don't they? -- bring us the news with keen insight and wit, time and time again.

Only at the door of Phil Chin's office did Freeman finally falter. Surveying the mountainous landscape of stuff, he turned to Geist and confessed, "I try not to be judgmental about other people, but I am tempted to say that maybe this is getting a little out of control."

Maybe. Maybe Chin overshot the operative word, "moderate," in Freeman's equation.

But if, as lore has it, one man's trash can be another man's treasure, why can't one man's mega-mess be another man's moderate? Who's to say when someone's stuff becomes not a useful "perfect mess" but too much?

At what point does a perfect mess unravel? One file folder too many? One too many dirty coffee mugs?

Oblivious to Get Organized Month, I had nonetheless been reading through Kathryn Porter's book, "Too Much Stuff: De-cluttering Your Heart and Home." While hardly judgmental in the condemnatory sense of the word, Porter does have a different take on messes than Freeman -- at least when it comes to messy homes.

There, she believes, clutter can stifle our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health, not to mention its knack for putting the kibosh on relationships.

Straightforward and deceptively simple in its detailed tips and advice, "Too Much Stuff" reads like an antithesis to the meandering and philosophical "A Perfect Mess."

Porter is a self-described (although reformed) fourth-generation clutter bug. Now a member of the National Assn. Of Professional Organizers and the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization, she offers a faith-based message about how to de-clutter and then maintain a clutter-free heart and home.

Her story is personal, unflinchingly honest, and engaging from the get-go. At the risk of sounding corny, I'm going to tell you it's inspirational. (And I am, I think, harder than most to inspire.)

"Too Much Stuff" begins with Porter's own story (Chapter 1: My Story) and also ends with it (Epilogue: The Dirt On Me).

The book's prologue, titled, "The Ultimate Cost of Clutter," tenderly recounts the death of Porter's packrat mother. "How," she wonders, "do you tell someone your mother was suffocated by a house filled with waist-high clutter?"

The suffocation is both figurative and all too literal. In a final emergency wrought from the complications of diabetes, paramedics could not clear the clutter quickly enough to reach Porter's 57-year-old mother in time.

"Boxes, bags, trash, and debris were everywhere," Porter writes, "three- to 4-feet high in many places. A narrow pathway carved a trail from the front door to the couch that became [her] deathbed. A layer of vomit lined the clutter by the couch."

As Porter sorted through her mother's things following her death, she came face to face with a truth she had until then avoided. "I am," she realized at that point, "my mother's daughter."

Between the book's prologue and epilogue, Porter shares what she learned during her own escape from clutter. First and foremost are her mantras.

One: "The most beautiful treasures filling our homes are not our possessions, but the people who live with us. The other Porter gleaned early on from a woman at her church named Jan: "You can't keep everything and keep a clean house."

For Porter these were magic words. In them is a truth that set her free.

As those words freed her, she hopes they will free her readers. Through them she learned it's OK to get rid of nice gifts she will never use. It's OK to toss the boxes, the wrapping paper, tissue and ribbon -- things her mother, her grandmother and her great-grandmother always carefully saved.

Chapter by chapter Porter leads the reader with a gentle heart and hand, much as her friend Jan and another friend, Holly, once led her. From the general (What is clutter?) to the specific (How many towels, how many pairs of jeans, how many pairs of socks do you really need?) Porter forges the way.

Chapter 2, "First Things First: Define Clutter" lays down the basics. Porter does pull out the old chestnut about one person's trash being another person's treasure -- but with an immediate caveat: "There are some things that are just plain trash." (That McDonald's bag with the used burger wrapper setting on the kitchen counter, for instance.)

Aside from that, she gives examples, such as unfinished projects (the front, back and sleeves of the sweater I knitted for my husband 19 years ago but never joined together qualifies) and obsolete things -- say, a pre-Pentium computer used as a doorstop, kept because it cost $4,000 when it was new.

Porter identifies 11 categories of clutter, not all of them material. There's financial clutter (a.k.a. credit card debt), activity clutter (overbooked calendars), conversational clutter (gossip and profanity) and the clutter of the heart (think bitterness, anger, envy, worry, pride, unhealthy relationships or anxiety).

Each chapter ends with spiritual exercises to help de-clutter the heart ("Lord, forgive me for:", "Lord, thank you for:", and "Lord, help me with:") and questions to help with de-cluttering the home ("In what room will I start?", "In what ways do I place inflated value on my possessions?").

With its faith-based perspective, the 167-page book remains a down-to-earth guide to owning your possessions instead of them owning you. It reads like a conversation with a wise and caring friend. -- Huntington Beach Independent, January 31, 2007

Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City (March 10, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0834122561
• ISBN-13: 978-0834122567
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #617,684 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Uncluttered Spaces, June 14, 2006

By 

SMS (Colorado Springs, CO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Too Much Stuff: De-Cluttering Your Heart and Home (Paperback)

Yes, I have too much stuff including a collection of books instructing me in the art of decluttering. That collection offers me pages and pages of practical solutions for the sifting, the sorting, and the removing of all of my crippling clutter. I'm overwhelmed with everyone's decluttering advice!
Katerine Porter's book has those practical suggestions too, but I found it to be more helpful that overwhelming. TOO MUCH STUFF, unlike most of those other decluttering books, adds spiritual weapons to it's de-cluttering arsenal. Without getting pretensious or clinical Ms. Porter addresses some of the underlying factors that compel us to collect and clutter. She uses examples from her own life to uncover the reasons we surround ourselves with too much stuff. She asks us to see the problem as a spiritual one, not just as an aberration of consumerism. Porter also forces us to see that there are other types of clutter in our lives besides "things." I have more uncluttered space in my life now because I took Porter's advice to heart.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My favorite decluttering/cleaning book, December 26, 2006

By 

Elaine G. Lambert "mitfordfan" (Fort Worth, TX) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Too Much Stuff: De-Cluttering Your Heart and Home (Paperback)

I have really enjoyed reading this book and putting the principles into action. I related to almost everything she said about her own life, esp. "Having a presentable home seemed like an impossible dream, yet I knew it was possible because other people did it." This sentence gave me the encouragement I needed instead of the defeat I usually feel when I think of other's "perfect" homes. I also loved her friends very practical advice, "You can't keep everything and keep a clean house." And Kathyrn repeats that sentence a lot, which is good for me. I love how she gives an overview plan, but also gives detailed tips (like buying Glad Flex bags and how to do laundry). Her book isn't only about decluttering, it's about cleaning too. Overall, this is a wonderful book...very encouraging and very practical. Thanks Kathryn!

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE HELP YOU NEED TO DECLUTTER YOUR LIFE!, March 7, 2007

By 

Heather Ivester (Georgia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Too Much Stuff: De-Cluttering Your Heart and Home (Paperback)

If you struggle with holding onto clutter in your home, it can be an act of deep faith to let it go. Kathryn Porter understands a woman's desire to keep "too much stuff."

In her inspiring book, she bares her heart to readers with the story of how she grew up in a cluttered home and took these habits into her adult lifestyle. When she reached a point of desperation, she prayed to God for help and enlisted the advice of wise friends.

In learning to rid her home of material junk, Katherine began to feel deep spiritual cleansing, uncovering peace and joy. She wants to help YOU do the same.

Her book is a powerful tool for today's busy women who need help letting go of things to make room for God. (If you love FlyLady, you'll love this book, and the principles for decluttering come from a Christian perspective.)

--Christian Women Online Book Buzz