Clutter Busting Your Life by Brooks Palmer

As you know, one of my favorite aspects of web publishing is the opportunity to read a lot of books for reviews. I love books like a squirrel loves nuts, and I devour them as quickly.

If you’ve ever wondered how to overcome clutter, Brooks Palmer is the one to help you dig your way out. Years of practice, counseling, researching, and on the job experience has made him more than an author, he’s a bona fide clutter busting Svengali. Best of all, he can help clear the clutter out of your life so you can breath again… and, thereby, live again!

Clutter Busting Your Life: Clearing Physical and Emotional Clutter to Reconnect with Yourself and Others is Brooks Palmer’s second book on overcoming clutter. The first, Clutter Busting: Letting Go of What’s Holding You Back has helped countless people find their way back.

From the back cover of Clutter Busting Your Life: Clearing Physical and Emotional Clutter to Reconnect with Yourself and Others (pictured above):

Cut the Crap — and Discover What Really Matters

Over the course of his career helping people let go of things they no longer need, Brooks Palmer has been struck by the many ways that clutter affects relationships. In these pages, he shows how we use clutter to protect ourselves, control others, and cling to the past, and how it keeps us from experiencing the joy of connection. With insight-prompting questions, exercises, client examples, and even whimsical line drawings, Palmer will take you from overwhelmed to empowered. His gentle guidance will help you to not only clear clutter from your home but also enjoy deeper, more authentic, and clutter-free relationships of all kinds.

This wonderful book (which is a fascinating read, by the way) could help the individual who has the problem as well as two other groups I can think of:

• Clutter Busting could be just the thing someone with a hoarding loved one needs.  We all feel kind of helpless when someone we love needs help – especially when they don’t want help. Reading Clutter Busting could help you better understand what they’re going through and know the right way to give your loved one what they need.  You can’t approach these things from a selfish, non-sympathetic direction. You’ll do more harm than good. Reading the stories included in this book as well as the author’s insight will help you understand that the problem lies deeper than the 3 feet of mail., People who have this problem are suffocating themselves and holding the pillow on their own face.  I know Brooks Palmer’s book(s) can help.  Having this book handy would be a GREAT solution the next time the loved one mentions feeling “overwhelmed” or says they “have so much cleaning to do.”  You could simply tell them that you’ve read a great book that has really helped you.  If you point out that the strategies inside the book have helped millions of people, it’ll help your loved one feel less isolated, guilty, or ashamed.  They are, by no means alone. If they were, would there be so many books and shows about the subject?!?!
• Brooks Palmer can also be the answer for the individual who isn’t quite “there” right now, but  they have no problem at all envisioning themselves there!  The best cure is prevention, and this is the perfect book to prevent a full blown problem.

For more information about Clutter Busting, clutter, hoarding, and helping individuals who are buried beneath their own emotions, read a Q & A with Brooks Palmer on my mental fitness blog (the link will open in a new window, so you can go read about the book too!).

~ Joi

See Clutter Busting Your Life: Clearing Physical and Emotional Clutter to Reconnect with Yourself and Others for more information.