Reddit reviews It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff

The book It's All Too Much addresses this subject to some extent. For example, he describes how people unpack in a new house. Tired and overwhelmed, they jam stuff in the first place they see, just to be unpacked. Then they spend the next 10 years living with those hasty decisions.

This book really helped me declutter my life. It's by some guy on a TLC reality show. It talks a lot about the motivations people have for accumulating stuff, and focuses on preserving memories associated with things rather than the things themselves.

I got it from the library a while ago, but I took some notes. This is the first thing he recommends doing, before you get to the sentimental stuff.

Fix a time - spend about fifteen minutes getting rid of:
Anything you haven't use in the past 12 months
Someone else's stuff - if you have it, give it back or get rid of it
Trash - get it out the door!

Get it? FAST. Anyway, some things that have helped me with sentimental clutter...

Photograph things
Ask yourself, if this were in a fire, would I pay to replace it?
Anything you aren't sure about, put in a box and don't look at it for six months. If you can still remember anything in there, take it out, then give the rest away.
Remember that your possessions are sunk costs. Even if you paid a lot of money for something, if it is not enriching your life, you shouldn't hold on to that just because you paid for it. Then you are paying twice!

> I'm open to anything at this point.

Your brother's advice matches very closely the advice in the excellent book "Its All Too Much".

That author takes the idea one step further, with a twist that is tailor made for the ADHD mind. He encourages tackling the 'clutter' problem by creating a daily habit. Choose a ten minute time in your daily routine, say the first 10 minutes when you come home from work. Before you do anything else, grab the two bags from a stash you keep by the front door (garbage bag & thrift store donation bag) and spend just ten minutes filling. Use a timer if that helps. EVERY DAY, never fail.

At the end, drop the garbage bag in the can, and put the thrift store bag in your automobile (handy to drop it off on your next car trip).

Ten minutes a day over weeks & months really adds up to tangible amounts of declutter.

Most ADHD people, with practice, can learn to repeat a ritual/habit as a coping strategy, and ten minutes of two-bag declutter a day can actually work.

no offense, but that won't work until you get step 0 down.

First thing is to visualize your room like it SHOULD be. Design it. Then you will easily get rid of the stuff that doesn't fit the goal.

Actually, this book will set you straight.

read the first page of chapter 3

If that link doesn't work, search google here, and hit the first link

A good one for starting out with de-cluttering: It's All Too Much by Peter Walsh (He was on TLC's "Clean Sweep" a few years ago). Easy-to-follow method. It's very step-by-step and explanatory.

http://www.amazon.com/Its-All-Too-Much-Living/dp/0743292650/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1345184624&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=its+all+toom+much

I've been reading this book: It's All Too Much (Link: http://amzn.com/0743292650), the Kindle edition is less than $10 and really if you have a bunch of clutter, you've spent $10 multiple times getting here