How to Build a Sustainable Home

One of my aims for this year was to improve the degree of sustainable living, but I mostly failed to my plans. My biggest concern, how to limit the consumption of plastic, hardly reached its aim, with a slight reduction of the average use of plastic in my household. However, I noticed that in fact I was doing some of the things right, like doing a regular decluttering, separating the garbage and investing smartly the money into reliable, ecologically-conscious pieces of furniture or clothing. 

Sustainable Home by Christine Liu takes every part of the house and recommends, for each and every room, solutions and recipes - not always food-related - aimed at creating a household with a higher awareness for the environment. Such an awareness means many things and the complexity of the book allows choices. Don't expect to achieve all the processes described overnight, but at least you can start somehow. For instance, by separating the garbage, adding more indoor plants to your home or even creating your own herb garden, repairing and/or repurposing clothes instead of just buying piles of unuseful outfits. The most complicated for me was the part about evaluating and eventually creating your own furniture, but with a bit of patience, this part of the plan can also work smoothly. 

At a certain extent and provided the limits of decency and moderation are maintained, Sustainable Home ofers tips and simple ideas for a different, less consumerist kind of life. It offers to the reader the option of picking up her or his own choices and adapting to his or her own household needs. I will not end up preparing my own toothpaste - except purely by curiosity for the challenge of doing it - or start creating my own furniture, but would prefer to make more balanced and realistic purchase decisions, based on my needs and not on the latest product trends (except books, obviously). 

Recommended if you are looking for a New Year's resolution or if you need more structure and aim in organising your medium or long-term decluttering plans.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in echange for an honest review  

Declutter Your House with an Expert

Dana K. White has a job which a couple of years ago would have been taken as a big joke: she is a professional decluttering expert. In other words, it helps you to get rid of all the unuseful pile of things you gathered because probably nothing else to do with your life right now.

As someone who moved quite frequently, with a clean ethic of collecting memories and trips and beautiful people around me instead of things, I am half way through the decluttering experience. Although in the last ten years I stayed in the same place - which was the highest achievement since I was born - I tried at least twice the year to do a general cleaning of the house, giving away or selling the lots of stuff that I do not need it, being books, papers, leaflets, clothes and shoes. I have a look at my food pantry at least once the month in order to check what items out of use. Still, once in a while I realize that I have way more stuff than needed and it might take more more than a couple of hours to put things in the clean order. What about people which love inanimated objects around them and keep gathering them at least every day?

Decluttering at the Speed of Life is the book for them because not only offers advice and a plan how to have a better organise house, but it gives a plan about how to life your life 'with only things that matter'. It gives you criteria and reasons why you have to start living the life, instead of hiding behind piles of whatever things. It is a good beginning for a much greater life vibe. Enough material to learn from everyone, including someone as decluttered as me.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Smart housekeeping made easy

Books and consultancy services for decluttering or wisely organising the homes are becoming a new special category in the bookstores or job classifications, but how and why we have to do it is rarely going beyond the stereotypical level.

Yes, we need to have an organised house - who loves to look for hours after the keys or the last phone bill and found it only one month later when it is already too late - and yes, we are obsessed with gathering unuseful things, lured by the consumerist passion for collecting what's new not necessarily what's useful for the daily housekeeping.

Smart Housekeeping by Anne L. Watson is a realistic approach of a very popular topic. It is honest too, as it doesn't promise than from tomorrow on your house look like a feature in a glossy magazine. The basic assumption of the author: 'An organised house doesn't mean an empty house'. Thus, the reader and potential decluttering candidate is advice to have what he or she really need not what other people advice to have or not, on TV or elsewhere. Another aspect outline is that decluttering is not the cure for our obsessions, failures or even depressions. 'Where I differ with some is that I don't think possession are mostly to blame when I feel stressed'. And even more importantly: 'Reducing clutter and organizing your life can free you for more worthwhile pursuits. But you don't get a spiritual life just from discarding possessions, any more than from owning them. If spiritual fulfillment is what you're looking for, you need to find it elsewhere'. It is an approach I really appreciated and liked it, encouraging me to skip further to the practical ideas and steps. 

The step-by-step organisation of the house should be done by the person, based on what is needed or not for the daily chores or activities. Sometimes, finding the space for objects might be easier than just throwing them up. 

This book is for independent people, able to use their own mind and set their priorities, but in need of a good advice about how to improve the house management, step-by-step, one corner at a time. Smart Housekeeping is the intelligent answer tailored to a lot of practical approaches and I strongly recommend it to anyone whose NYE resolutions are to have a friendlier and clutter-free house.

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review