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    Clutter: An Untidy History
    Unavailable
    Clutter: An Untidy History
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    Clutter: An Untidy History
    Ebook195 pages3 hours

    Clutter: An Untidy History

    By Jennifer Howard

    3.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

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    About this ebook

    “I’m sitting on the floor in my mother’s house, surrounded by stuff.” So begins Jennifer Howard’s Clutter, an expansive assessment of our relationship to the things that share and shape our lives. Sparked by the painful two-year process of cleaning out her mother’s house in the wake of a devastating physical and emotional collapse, Howard sets her own personal struggle with clutter against a meticulously researched history of just how the developed world came to drown in material goods. With sharp prose and an eye for telling detail, she connects the dots between the Industrial Revolution, the Sears & Roebuck catalog, and the Container Store, and shines unsparing light on clutter’s darker connections to environmental devastation and hoarding disorder. In a confounding age when Amazon can deliver anything at the click of a mouse and decluttering guru Marie Kondo can become a reality TV star, Howard’s bracing analysis has never been more timely.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBelt Publishing
    Release dateSep 1, 2020
    ISBN9781948742870

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    Reviews for Clutter

    3.5/5

    10 ratings2 reviews

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    • 5/5
      This little book packs a wonderful punch. It is both a touching personal memoir of loss and cleaning, and a history of, well, "stuff." I read it in one go, and enjoyed every minute.
    • 4/5
      A history of how we ended up drowning in a sea of possessions. The book gives a good overview of what happens to all that "stuff" once we no longer want it. We should be aware that it really never goes away whether because it is being reused by someone else, think Goodwill, or whether it ends up in a landfill or floating around in the ocean. The book explains how we became addicted to buying more and more things beginning in the Victorian era, and continuing through present times where our social standing is often equated with how many possessions we own, or as the author points out how many possessions own us. This is not a how to book but the author says organizing experts recommend that we buy less things of better quality so they last longer, and pay attention to the well known adage "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without: In other words, as the author points out, there are no easy answers.