Review: The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life

The Minimalist Home: A Room-By-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life by Joshua Becker
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Many thanks to NetGalley, Waterbrook and Multnomah, and Joshua Becker for an ARC in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are 100% my own and independent of receiving an advanced copy.

Joshua Becker has been in the “minimal” business for about 10 years. He has a website where you can get lots of tips and advice, including a newsletter sent to your inbox every so often. He has written other books but this one is sort of the culmination of his life’s work. He has been on TV, speaks all over and I have been following him for the past couple of years. In today’s world of massive consumerism, we can all use a dose of paring down and keeping things simple. We all have too much stuff. We are promoted, advertised, propagandized into thinking that it’s all stuff we need, what we have isn’t the right stuff and that the more stuff we have the happier we will be. This has been going on for years, I mean George Carlin had a bit about “Stuff” in the early 80’s. So I was excited to read what Becker had to say on what he promotes as a step by step, comprehensive room-by-room guide to decluttering your home and your life.

Ugh - what an awful read. First I felt like his tone was so condescending. I couldn’t take it. Obviously I have a lot of stuff - that’s why I’m reading this book. He would repeat himself, ad nauseam, throughout the whole book. There wasn’t any comprehensive guide - again, he would repeat the same thing over and over for each room, literally the same steps - for each room! Why bother going through each room, listing all of the possible things you might have accumulated, telling me “get rid of what you don’t use or don’t need”. Obviously I knew that much! I don’t need a book for that. I was hoping for some insight, maybe some ideas that I hadn’t thought of to help declutter, some instructions. There was no real guidance other than “don’t do it” for lasting change. Then, don’t tell me how my life is going to change, I will become richer, have a fabulous job, help the poor, have more time, blah blah blah, just because you told me to get rid of some stuff. I didn’t buy any of it. I have decluttered before and none of those things have happened to me. The “real life” examples were ridiculous, laughable. Look, I believe in keeping a home without a lot of junk. Nobody needs piles of clothes, lots of knick knacks, and yes, you should keep those things that mean something to you. You shouldn’t get sucked into marketing ideas of having the latest, greatest and best thing out there, which will go out of date and then you need something new. I also happen to live with a (mild case) hoarder, who believes every rock, piece of junk, paper, etc. is extremely important and sentimental and will not throw out anything. So according to Becker, those are the things to keep. Not helpful. But without something new or real to add to the discussion, don’t fill up a book with one idea. My advice is don’t add one more book to your bookshelf with this one.

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