You don’t need to be at death’s door to find this little book inspirational and charming. It has lots of simple ways to approach the often daunting task of getting rid of a life-time’s worth of STUFF!

Here are the quotes that resonated the most for me:

‘Life will become more pleasant and comfortable if we get rid of some of the abundance.’

‘Do not ever imagine that anyone will wish to schedule time off to take care of what you didn’t bother to take care of yourself. No matter how much they love you, don’t leave this burden to them.’

‘Sooner or later you will get your own infirmities, and then it is damn nice to be able to enjoy the things you can still manage to do without the burden of too many things to look after and too many messes to organise.’

‘That is [another] benefit of death cleaning: thinking more about how to reuse, recycle, and make your life simpler and a bit (or a lot) smaller. Living smaller is a relief. ‘

‘My vice is things. It took me a while to understand this, but you can enjoy all these things without owning them. Even though this may sometimes seem quite hard to do, training yourself to enjoy only looking at things, instead of buying them, is very nice and also a good practice. You really can’t take everything with you, so maybe it is better to not try to own it all.’

‘If you don’t like something, get rid of it’ (even if it’s a gift from your favourite aunt)!

So get cracking and start sorting through all your stuff - it’s liberating!