Here are 100 books that Breathing Room fans have personally recommended if you like
Breathing Room.
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I speak from experience because within the decade of 2009–2019, I downsized from my enormous home and cleared out both of my parent’s houses. I felt like I was drowning in stuff when I added up all three houses. Lighter Living is a collection of my insights from, and candid reflections on, my journey of owning less. The benefits of lighter living are so broad and deep that they can’t be boiled down to one end result. My hope is that you will find the process of consolidation to be satisfying and fulfilling. That was my experience. My choice of a lighter lifestyle has brought me a greater sense of well-being. In a world that often seems stressful and chaotic, that’s a feeling I cherish.
Sometimes I just need a major kick-in-the-butt motivational book. In 2020, author Julie Hall renamed her previous book entitled Boomer Burden: Dealing with Your Parents Lifetime Accumulation of Stuff. The content is the same, but the title and cover changed. Julie Hall is a personal property expert, who wishes to show you how to clear a family home and minimize family feuds. The book is filled with excellent advice and guidance and also a few horror stories to motivate the reader to take positive action sooner than later. It is a wake-up call if you need one!
Every day, hundreds of adult children become middle-aged orphans when their elderly parents pass away. . . but what should you do with what they've left behind? Professional estate liquidator Julie Hall provides essential guidance for any executor, heir, or beneficiary.
You've heard the horror stories: arguments over stuff, an inheritance lost forever when easily deceived parents are scammed, siblings estranged, an adult heir taken from daily responsibilities for months because of the enormous task of clearing out a childhood home. It doesn't have to be that way.
The Estate Lady, professional estate liquidator Julie Hall, knows what to do.…
Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!
On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…
I didn’t choose clutter as a topic—it chose me. Around the time Marie Kondo became a tidying-up sensation, my mother suffered a breakdown and could no longer live in her dangerously cluttered house. I’m an only child, so it fell to me to figure what to do with it all. So much stuff! It got me wondering: How did clutter get to be such a huge problem for so many people? The books on this list helped answer that question and made me feel less alone in the struggle with stuff. I hope you find them useful too.
Dealing with a lifetime’s worth of possessions feels like a heavy task—heavy in every sense. In this breezy book, Margareta Magnuson reminds readers that it doesn’t have to be a drag. Figuring out what to do with all your things can be cathartic, liberating, even fun, a chance to relive some of the highlights of your life and celebrate where you’ve landed. It’s also a kindness to your nearest and dearest. As she wisely observes, “A loved one wishes to inherit nice things from you. Not all things from you.” I wish I could go back in time and give a copy of this book to my mother with that passage highlighted.
Dostadning, or the art of death cleaning, is a Swedish phenomenon by which the elderly and their families set their affairs in order. Whether it's sorting the family heirlooms from the junk, downsizing to a smaller place, or using a failsafe system to stop you losing essentials, death cleaning gives us the chance to make the later years of our lives as comfortable and stress-free as possible. Whatever your age, Swedish death cleaning can be used to help you de-clutter your life, and take stock of what's important.
I’ll admit it: I love the domestic arts. As a natural klutz, I knew sports would be out and I focused on organizing, cooking, gardening, cleaning, and decorating. My mother knew all the old-fashioned tricks and I collected the new ones. Today I have several thousand followers on my youtube channel, where I share life hacks, housekeeping hints, and even motherly advice as the Youtube Mom. One of my sons said that none of his buddies knew how to do laundry, cook, iron, etc., and suggested I have a channel to fill in the gaps for Millenials. Having hosted a TV talk show in Los Angeles, this appealed to me right away. And, you guessed it, lots of moms and grandmas write in as well, saying they never knew those tricks themselves. It’s truly gratifying to share these time-and-money-saving ideas.
This is the book for people who want to truly embrace minimalism. Becker offers a spiritual approach to living with less, and really knows how to motivate his readers to slow down, live deliberately, be grateful, and donate generously. Even tips on staying out of debt. It will affect many aspects of your life, not just organizing. You simply feel like a better person after reading his book!
Most of us know we own too much stuff. We feel the weight and burden of our clutter, and we tire of cleaning and managing and organizing.
While excess consumption leads to bigger houses, faster cars, fancier technology, and cluttered homes, it never brings happiness. Rather, it results in a desire for more. It redirects our greatest passions to things that can never fulfill. And it distracts us from the very life we wish we were living.
Former model Kira McGovern picks up the paint brushes of her youth and through an unexpected epiphany she decides to mix ashes of the deceased with her paints to produce tributes for grieving families.
Unexpectedly this leads to visions and images of the subjects of her work and terrifying changes…
As a professional organizer since 1999, I’ve realized that the problem isn’t so much that we are disorganized, but that we are out-matched. We have too much stuff, it is too cheap and we are too busy and we can’t keep up. If you really want to stay organized, you have to examine your relationship to stuff. Why we want what we want and buy what we buy. Less but better!
Probably
the grandmother of all decluttering books, this book, like all great books, is
so deep and yet so simple. She has some great practical tips for de-cluttering,
such as using a ‘transit’ box for things that go in other rooms so you don’t
have to keep getting up and end up getting distracted; as well as some
expansive interpretations of de-cluttering, like clear out old relationships.
As an organizer, I realize that almost everything a person needs to know about
de-cluttering Kingston put down on paper in 1998.
In this revised and updated edition of her classic, bestselling book, Karen Kingston draws on her wealth of experience as a clutter clearing, space-clearing, and feng shui practitioner to show you how to transform your life by letting go of clutter.
Her unique approach lies in understanding that clutter is stuck energy that has far-reaching physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual effects. You'll be motivated to clutter clear as never before when you realize just how much your junk has been holding you back! You will learn:
- Why people keep clutter - How clutter causes stagnation in your life -…
I wasn’t always a joyful person. But today I’m freaking sunshine, and full-out committed to being an effective member of the team that’s elevating the level of love and joy in the world! My positions on that team have included writing dozens of mega-selling books (my own, and as a ghostwriter), founding my online Joy School at LisaMcCourt.com, hosting my Do Joy! podcast, and collaborating on projects with many other popular teachers of consciousness and joyful living. My books have sold over 9 million copies, earned 7 publishing industry awards, and garnered over 9,000 glowing Amazon reviews. Joy is my jam. I know a joyful book when I read one!
As we explore in my joy trainings, when life sucks, our sweet little hearts want to close in defense. It’s been that way our whole lives.
We learned from experience that an open heart is a vulnerable heart, so it only seems right and natural that we’d want to safeguard this fragile part of us in this way. The problem is it doesn’t work. In walling off our hearts from experiencing pain and mess, we inadvertently block out joy, wonder, and bliss in the process.
In this gorgeous little gem of a book, S.C Lourie shows us what it looks like to bravely wedge open your tender heart, even when circumstances around you would dictate you do otherwise.
We are taught to hate mess, whether it's an untidy bedroom or a chaotic divorce. But mess is important, because, like it or not, it is a big part of our lives and who we are. Things go wrong all the time and life rarely goes to plan. How do we stop that from being a recurring negative point in our lives, though?
Life is messy, the process of cleansing and healing is hard, and the only way is through. But what if the process of 'sorting through' didn't have to feel as draining as it often does? What if…
I opened my first history book in school at 6 and have been fascinated by how people lived since then. I found the evolution of furniture, interiors, decorations, exteriors, and everything that relates to how we live of the utmost importance if we want to know who we are and why. I am the son of antique dealers, growing up in France, so furniture is my principal domain of expertise, but I always put it in relation to the epoch they are from and the people who used them. I became the go-to of Martha Stewart for antiques and furniture restoration and have been featured in TV shows and magazines regularly.
I find myself consulting this book at least once a week. I know I will find the answer or the advice for every question that may arise in decorating, organizing, cleaning, and simplifying your interior.
I am always in awe of the simplest solutions being the best ones and that Julie and her team always have their pulse on it. Kuddos!
Buy fewer (and better) things. Store like with like. Get rid of the plastic. Display-don't stash-your belongings. Let go of your inner perfectionist and remember that rooms are for living. These are a few of the central principles behind Remodelista: The Organized Home, the new book from the team behind the inspirational design site Remodelista.com. Whether you're a minimalist or someone who takes pleasure in her collections, we all yearn for an unencumbered life in a home that makes us happy. This compact tome shows us how, with more than 100 simple and stylish tips, each clearly presented and accompanied…
Rusty Allen is an Iraqi War veteran with PTSD. He moves to his grandfather's cabin in the mountains to find some peace and go back to wilderness training.
He gets wrapped up in a kidnapping first, as a suspect and then as a guide. He tolerates the sheriff's deputy with…
You know how most young kids go through a phrase where they ask “why” about everything, and then they ask it again, and again, and again? Well, I never really outgrew that. I studied journalism because it gave me permission to be curious about new things every day, and to ask experts “why.” Marketing gave me a new way to chase my curiosity: Why are people clicking this ad, opening this email, following that social account or searching for that phrase? I’ve helped 30% of the Fortune 100 answer the questions about why their content is working, or isn’t, and my first book, The Content Fuel Framework: How to Generate Unlimited Story Ideas, was born from my introspective curiosity about how my own idea generation process worked.
This book is a hefty one—I recommend the audiobook if you’ve got a bad back—but it will help you understand how your brain works in a way that almost no other book can. And the better you understand your mind, the better you’ll be able to make it do what you want, and how to protect yourself from the things that might otherwise sabotage your creative thinking.
In The Organized Mind, New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author and neuroscientist Daniel Levitin offers practical solutions to the problems of information overload. ___________________________________________________
Overwhelmed by demands on your time? Caught in an unproductive spiral of emails and multitasking?
You're not alone. When we're deluged with information our creativity plummets, our decision making suffers and we grow absent-minded. Nowadays, we drown in our inboxes, forever juggle several tasks at once and try to make complex decisions ever more quickly. This is information overload.
Combining the latest neuroscience with everyday examples, Daniel Levitin explains how to take back control…
In 2012 I started a minimalist journey, inspired by my 1,500 square foot house that could no longer comfortably contain the possessions belonging to me, my partner, and our then 2-year-old triplets. I was a full-time working mom with little time to declutter, yet I knew that if I didn’t change our home, the stress of our stuff would rob us of valuable space and time to enjoy our young family. Over a period of eight months, I let go of about 70% of our possessions, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve since taught hundreds of thousands of busy parents how to do the same through my blog, book, TEDx, keynotes, classes, and coaching.
Stephanie Seferian is a good friend of mine and her Sustainable Minimalists podcast is one of my favorites! When I found out she was putting all her eco-minimalist knowledge into a book, I knew I had to get a copy. This book shares practical, well-researched advice on how you can reduce your number of possessions while also reducing your carbon footprint. Stephanie is a mother of two young girls, so her advice is applicable to busy moms who don’t have a lot of time. You’ll want to dog-ear and sticky note many of these pages!
The Aspiring Minimalist's Guide to Living Consciously and Contributing to a "Greener" Tomorrow
"This is the perfect book for people that want to find a realistic roadmap to sustainable living." The Holistic Millennial
Eco-minimalism is a hot-button issue right now, and for good reason. Living a life with less can be the key to saving our precious planet.
Break the consumption cycle. There's so much to do, and way too much to buy. Whether it's through late night TV ads, social media, or other sources of influence, we are addicted to buying and then storing things. Sometimes we consume with…
As a kindergarten teacher and mom, I have dealt with messy kids. It’s part of who they are! These books are a funny, enjoyable way to try to get kids to enjoy clean up time, and understand that messes are normal!
Llama Llama is a classic in our house, and this book is such a clever way to show cause and effect when it comes to messes.
I love how it uses imagination to get kids thinking about their role in keeping things tidy. Bonus points for the sweet mama/child moment!
Lama has a messy room that he doesn’t want to cleanup. His mama asks Lama to think of a world where mamas didn’t clean up. With the chaos that a dirty mama leaves behind, Lama quickly cleans up and realizes that even little llamas need to help clean.
Mama Llama teaches Llama Llama a humorous lesson in cleaning up in Anna Dewdney's bestselling Llama Llama series.
Time to pick up all your toys! Why is Mama making noise? Mama says it's cleaning day. Llama only wants to play.
Anna Dewdney's Llama Llama is growing up, but he still loves to play with all his toys! When Mama Llama says it's time to clean up, Llama responds like any child more interested in playing than cleaning . . . by ignoring her! But Mama has an imaginative response of her own. What if she never cleaned? What would happen…
Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman
by
Alexis Krasilovsky,
Kate from Jules et Jim meets I Love Dick.
A young woman filmmaker’s journey of self-discovery, set against a backdrop of the sexual liberation movement of the 1970s and 1980s. In Portrait of an Artist as a Young Woman, we follow Ana Fried as she faces the ultimate…
Matan has over a decade of experience at Ecoline and has helped 3500+ clients to renovate their houses. He has earned the title of the best window & door expert of the year for four consecutive years, from 2013 to 2016, helping countless homeowners to create their dream houses. Matan has built a team of 50+ professionals across Canada for Ecoline. His leadership and mentorship have enabled his team to achieve remarkable success, consulting homeowners and helping them choose and install the best products. He looks forward to helping you!
Minimalist is our go-to book for visualizing a simpler, clutter-free lifestyle. I love how helpful it is for envisioning new ideas for smaller spaces. And if you are downsizing, this book will be extra beneficial.
The book is broken down per room, and she guides you through the process in manageable chunks. It makes thinking about a remodel much more straightforward.
Elevate your personal style, trim your belongings, and transform your life, one room at a time, with this visionary lifestyle and home organization book from professional organizing expert, Shira Gill.
“Warm, funny, and direct, Shira builds you up while helping you edit down to the best version of yourself.”—Stacy London, New York Times bestselling author of The Truth About Style
As a professional home organizer with clients ranging from students to multi-millionaires, Shira Gill observed that clutter is a universal stress trigger. Over the years she created a signature decluttering and organization process that promotes sustainability, achieves lasting results, and…
