From the Clearance Shelf: How to Simplify Your Life

Here is another self-help winner. I paid $1.00 for it, and it's got some terrific tips for those of us with too much clutter. (Guilty!) Check out this factoid: Step 1: Your Things. Statisticians say that on average we each own over 10,000 things.

How to Simplify Your Life : Seven Practical Steps to Letting Go of Your Burdens and Living a Happier Life by Werner Tiki Kustenmacher, Lothar Seiwert, and Tiki Kustenmacher.

Practical wisdom on work, money, health, and relationships

The international bestseller How to Simplify Your Life offers concrete advice on achieving happiness in a time of economic contraction and uncertainty. The book explains, in seven steps, how to get rid of unnecessary stuff and unload the burdens of modern life -- and points the way back to what we know is important but have forgotten. By following the path outlined in the book, readers will learn to organize their time (and their desks), change the way they think about money, improve their health and relationships, and find meaning in their lives.

This book shows readers how to:

Eliminate chaos in the workplace
Cut back on activities and slow down
Get rid of money hang-ups and get out of debt
Balance private life with career life
Make room for relationships

Stuff

Stuff Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things gives deep insights into collecting that are somewhat discomforting. Hoarding, once thought to be a variant of OCD, may actually get its own separate anxiety disorder listing in the DSM. There is a very, very faint line between collecting and hoarding, and I have seen this line vanish when massive collections from deceased collectors are consigned to the auction house by their estates. There's a passage in the book about a woman nicknamed "The Keeper of the Magazines" who is obsessed about buying only magazines that are free from flaws that will strike a nerve with any high-grade comic book collector. She insists on ringing up her purchases at the bookstore chain herself, buys so many magazines she doesn't even read them, and so on.