At the risk of sounding biased, reading is one of the most enriching pastimes. It is a doorway to a multitude of viewpoints that can revolutionize our perceptions of culture and consumerism.
In a world fuelled by consumption, books have the power to improve our lives and inform our lifestyle choices. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up, New Minimalist, and other organizational lifestyle books have helped to redefine our relationships to material things and consumer culture.
If you’re looking to get into organization or minimalism in 2024, we have a roundup of the 10 best decluttering books to help you declutter your life. Many readers and books lovers turn to BookScouter to find lifestyle books at the best price. Not only that, but BookScouter can help you on your decluttering journey by offering competitive buyback options for books you’ve loved that you’re ready to give away.
So, if you’re looking for your next decluttering book or want to know which popular organizational lifestyle books people have been reading, here’s a look at our 10 best decluttering books in 2024.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
You have most certainly heard of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up. Marie Kondo is a Japanese organizing consultant and a powerhouse in the minimalist lifestyle. In her book and successful Netflix series, Kondo provides a simple guide to home organization and tidying up one room at a time. Kondo encourages us all to let go of anything that does not ‘spark joy’. Through this world-famous phrase, Marie Kondo empowers us to form our own systems of priorities with which we can decide what is worth keeping and what we should give away. Fundamentally, Kondo asks us to revaluate our attachment to our belongings and consider the impact – positive or negative – that object can have in our spaces.
Real Life Organizing: Clean and Clutter-Free in 15 Minutes a Day
Cassandra Aarssen is an organizational expert who shares her decluttering knowledge through her YouTube channel ClutterBug.Real life Organizing is an amalgamation of Cas’ best tips and tricks in just 15 minutes a day. Organizing and decluttering can be overwhelming, but the author gives her readers the motivation to break down tasks in manageable steps and tackle them in 15-minute bursts. Cas has especially practical solutions for busy parents and learning to manage children’s toys and clutter.
Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff
Messy or cluttered environments are stressful to inhabit, but the prospect of getting rid of stuff is often even more anxiety inducing. In her book, author Dana White wants us to tackle the emotional component of organization and the challenges that often make it difficult to let go of our items. White provides realistic strategies for helping her readers declutter their spaces and even shares guides for helping family members to declutter including children and older parents. White’s book is a well-rounded guide for managing our homes in spite of busy schedules.
Minimalista: Your Step-by-Step Guide to a Better Home, Wardrobe, and Life
Minimalista is the book of choice for checklist lovers. Shira Gill is a home organizer offers a comprehensive guide and actionable checklists to help her readers organize different areas of their homes. Shira doesn’t just focus on the act of decluttering. She also outlines strategies to maintain clean and clear spaces as well as simple strategies to make your home and habits more sustainable; this includes composting, recycling, and product swaps among others. Shira Gill makes minimalism and sustainability approachable and achievable and, through writing prompts peppered throughout her book, she encourages her readers to think about their lifestyle goals and the reasons behind them. This book true gem for the aspiring minimalist.
Martha Stewart’s Organizing: The Manual for Bringing Order to Your Life, Home Routines
Martha Stewart is a household name in all things homemaking. In her book, Martha shares DYI projects that help with home organizing and shares goal-setting techniques for maintaining good tidying routines. To help her readers on their journey, Martha shares her own personal calendars as a template for scheduling essential housekeeping tasks that we often neglect like window cleaning, yard work, and preparing for the holidays. In true Martha fashion, this book is also full of wonderful baking ideas, practical hosting tips, and beautiful images.
The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter (The Swedish Art of Living Dying Series)
Döstädning is a Swedish word that literally translates to ‘death cleaning.’ Simply put, death cleaning is the Swedish practice of organizing our lives and earthly belongings before our departure into the afterlife. Margareta believes that this process should not be reserved for those of us in our later years. She applies Döstädning to help her readers get rid or give away unnecessary items. Though some might think her tactics are radical, Margareta infuses a dry humor in her book that can make the process fun and cathartic. The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is a reminder that at any stage in our lives, we can benefit from taking stock of our belongings and shedding what we no longer need.
Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism
Unlike most of authors on this list, Fumio Sasaki is not a professional or ‘guru’ in the field of organization, declutter, and minimalism. He is a man who decided to make a change and let go of any item he no longer needed. Sasaki details his own path towards minimalism and the ways in which it enriched his life. The fundamental minimalism detailed in the photos of this book may be quite shocking and frankly, intimidating but for Sasaki, it is not necessarily about getting rid of most of our belongings. He is primarily focused on sharing the benefits and values of simplifying our surroundings.
New Minimalism: Decluttering and Design for Sustainable, Intentional Living
Cary Telander Fortin & Kyle Louise Quilici
Fortin and Quilici share a more practical approach to minimalism. Through self-reflection exercises, the authors inspire readers to understand the reasons why we accumulate stuff and define what ‘enough’ means for us. Fortin and Quilici address the history of consumerism and how certain personality traits can affect our relationships with our things including toys, tools, and sentimental items. Minimalism and sustainability often go hand in hand. This book offers both decluttering and sustainability advice to transform our spaces and everyday lives.New Minimalism also contains a chapter on interior design that offers all readers with great organization and décor ideas.
Declutter Like a Mother: A Guilt-Free, No-Stress Way to Transform Your Home and Your Life
Declutter Like a Mother is a decluttering book that focuses on family relationships. Author Allie Casazza is certain that changing her approach to clutter and getting rid of excess stuff has strengthened her marriage and relationship with her children. Allie hopes to empower other mothers to lighten their load by removing the items in their homes that do not serve them and, in fact, could be an added source of stress. According to Allie, ‘Minimalism is not about having less for the sake of having less, it is about having less for the sake of having more of what matters.’ It is with that philosophy that Declutter Like a Mother guides its readers towards a clutter-free life.
Sustainable Minimalism: Embrace Zero Waste, Build Sustainability Habits That Last, and Become a Minimalist without Sacrificing the Planet
This book is a perfect guide to eco-minimalism. Stephanie Seferian focuses on bringing her readers a realistic guide to incorporate sustainable practices into their everyday lives to break the consumerism cycle. Decluttering our homes is great, but it certainly comes at a cost and many items we throw away contribute to environmental pollution. Seferian reminds us that our decluttering journeys must be matched with more thoughtful buying habits. Sustainable Minimalism starts with the simplest everyday solutions and builds on important tenets of environmentalism to give you a comprehensive guide to living more sustainably.
There you have it, the 10 best decluttering books to get organized and mess-free in 2024. And if you’re not sure where to start, BookScouter can help! You can purchase any of these titles at a fair price to get you started on your decluttering journey.
And if you’re thinking of downsizing your bookcase selection, BookScouter can help you get book buyback. Simply enter the ISBN for your book and BookScouter will tell you how much resellers would be willing to pay for your book.
Whether you’re thinking of buying, selling, or renting, great books play an important role in helping to declutter your space and engage us all in more sustainable living.
