5 Books to Read That Will Inspire You To Declutter

This post contains affiliate links. Click here for full disclaimer.

When you have too much stuff, it can feel overwhelming to decide where to start the decluttering process. Fortunately, there are many decluttering experts out there who have laid out the steps for us to get started on a delcuttering project. Here are five books that will give you the steps you need to get inspired to start decluttering.

SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life

Julie Morgenstern has written a variety of books on organizing and personal productivity. SHED is all about more than simply weeding through some overflowing drawers and closets. It’s about the process of letting go of the things that hold us back from becoming the person we were meant to become.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

You would have to be living under a rock to have not heard about Marie Kondo in recent years. Marie Kondo has a particular order of decluttering your entire house, starting with clothes and ending with everything miscellaneous. She has coined her own term for her specific method of tidying: The KonMari Method.

My favorite aspect of this method is the requirement that an item sparks joy as a qualifier of whether or not to get rid of it during the decluttering process. While this can be a helpful measure of an item’s value, it can be a lot to ask of some of the more mundane household items like a hammer or a ladder. Fortunately, she wrote a second book which clarifies this point.

Spark Joy

Spark Joy is the sequel to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. In it, Marie Kondo clarifies some of the points in her first book. One of the biggest clarifications for me was that not every single item in your home need spark joy. Which is a relief. The joy can be in knowing that you have this or that practical item when the time comes to use it.

This process isn’t about getting rid of things for the sake of getting rid of them. It’s about surrounding yourself with only the things you truly want and/or need and developing the skill of letting go of those things that are no longer wanted or needed. Spark Joy also has some really cute illustrations on the art of folding clothes and provides more guidance beyond the original book on the process of tidying. I recommend reading both! But you don’t have to wait to finish both to get started tidying.

The Power of Less

Leo Babauta is a living example of the concept of what it means to live a minimalist life through and through. In his book, he walks the reader through his various daily activities and gives us very real life examples on how one goes about cutting down the excesses in our lives. He writes about the beauty of simplicity in all areas of life, from where he buys his jeans to save money to saying no to social media. His level of minimalism might not work for everyone, but his ideas might inspire you to create your own system for minimizing an area of life.

Have you read any of these books? Or do you have any other books on decluttering?