A presentation of latest Christian books to hit the stores

Title: The Clutter Fix: The No-Fail, Stress-Free Guide to Organizing Your Home

Genre: Nonfiction

Authors: Shannon Acheson

Publishing Date: September 13, 2022

Availability in London: Creation Bookstore.

Available in: Paperback

Summary:

If you struggle with a disorganized, cluttered home, decorator and author Shannon Acheson is here to help. She will help you create the space that best serves the rhythms and routines of your family through checklists, cheat sheets, charts, and fun coloring sheets. Clutter isn't just about the stuff. It's about how you feel in your home--and in your mind.

Review and personal reflection by Marilyn Vanderstaay

Declutter Your Home: Organize Your Life
Based on the new book: The Clutter Fix: The No-Fail, Stress-Free Guide to Organizing Your Home

Isaiah 32:18 My people will live in peaceful dwelling places, in secure homes, in undisturbed places of rest.

God’s plan for His people is to live in peaceful dwelling places. But the proliferation of belongings, possessions, stuff and more over the last 50 years in too many homes in North America has caused an innocuous undercurrent of stress, guilt, and anxiety, the feeling of being overwhelmed, a lack of that peaceful dwelling that has become known as clutter. With no direction or plan to subdue and organize the clutter and get back to our undisturbed places of rest in our homes, we live with the clutter and the unspoken fear of that developing into hoarding. Arg!

After an unexpected move from Westmount, Quebec back to London in 2019 I learned more about clutter and its emotional hold on us than I wanted to. I kind of sorted and then packed my life into boxes… 62 in fact. When I finally moved them out of storage and into a new, smaller apartment, I was faced with a mountain of boxes that literally touched the ceiling with no plan or physical resources to unpack and organize it. It was so challenging I didn’t even realize there was a large entrance into the living room/office, and I was using the narrow entrance through the dining room/kitchen.

I didn’t panic, however. Instead, I did what I do whenever I am faced with an urgent faith project.

I went to the Word to recruit the angels as I spoke to the mountain of boxes, kindly but emphatically and told them in the authority of the name of Jesus they were in a new home and to be unpacked and organized. I didn’t yell… I simply spoke to them, reminding them that was my life packed in them and I needed to have organized access to them in a peaceable home.

Mark. 11:23 KJV For verily I say unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

I asked God for some assistance in doing the work, some helpers who would help me unpack and organize my whole apartment. Matthew 7:7-12 KJV 7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

I declared I would have the peaceful home I had moved back to Ontario for and that God promises in His Word. Job 22:28 NKJV You will also declare a thing, and it will be established for you. So light will shine on your ways.

Sadly, neither of the two professional organizers knew much more than I did about the art of decluttering. Minimalists, they knew about tossing things out, giving things to thrift shops, and keeping what they perceived I needed. We did not know there is a system and a rhythm to decluttering that once we learn and understand and implement the concepts, methods, and tools we can declutter every room and space in the home even those clutter magnets the kitchen counter and dining room table, that kitchen drawer, the front entrance where too much gets just dropped, even that formidable jam-packed clothes closet and that parking lot basement and that garage that for too long has kept the car in the driveway.

As with everything we do in life, we are most productive when we have a personalized plan we can follow step by step. In her book The Clutter Fix: The No-Fail, Stress-Free Guide to Organizing Your Home, Toronto decorator and author Shannon Acheson has created a hands-on manual of not only how to declutter, but also the tools, including that personalized plan, the mindset and more you will need to tackle the clutter in your home room by room to get back the peace. Once and for all.

Written from a Christian perspective, Acheson has included relevant Scripture verses to encourage the reader as you put the plans and tools to work in your projects.

This is not a review of Acheson’s book, but rather a recommendation and an overview of what you will learn in the Clutter Fix. Acheson begins with an introduction and a chapter on how to use and personalize the book so you can get to know and hopefully trust her. She explains what you will benefit from step by step as you use her system.

Divided into four parts the book helps you with deciding where to start with a 10-day decluttering short cut, sort of like a diet plan kick off, in which you do some easy hands-on mini decluttering projects including 120 things to throw away guilt free.

Not just a one size fits all, she helps you identify your organizing personality, and also why you personally collect clutter. Then how to put together a room-by-room plan that suits you including how to deal with sentimental items. And how to recruit your family into participating not grudgingly but as part of the project.

Once you are prepared for the task, she deftly gets into the meat of how to declutter from identifying the method best for you to deciding what to get rid of to breaking down the project minute by minute and day by day and even a 30-day whole home declutter method. And she has wisely included a Master Maintenance Mode to nurture that peaceful de-cluttered state, room by room after you invest all that time, effort and even tools.

This is an endorsement that there is hope for anyone wanting to declutter their homes and that the self-help workbook of how to do it will work with commitment and perseverance.

Winter is the perfect time to take to task all that clutter and stuff and put it in its place.

About Sue Acheson, the author of The Clutter Fix,
Shannon Acheson is a mostly self-taught designer, decorator, writer, and stylist. Although she has completed her interior design training, she'd much rather teach you how to decorate your own home than do it for you. She is the editor and designer behind the design and lifestyle company and blog HomeMadeLovely.com. Her happy place is in the suburbs of Toronto, where she is a Homebody with a capital H, a Jesus girl, a happy wife to Dean, and a homeschooling mom of three teenagers.

The Clutter Fix is available locally at Creation Book Store, 900 Oxford Street East 519.659.2610 www.creationbookstore.ca and on Amazon.ca