A former professional organizer, Alison Roberts has helped thousands of people discover a new way of living (hint…less is more)
What lies buried beneath your stuff? When people take the time to systematically sort through their stuff and let go of those items, relationships and behaviours that no longer serve them, they realize that they have been living their life based on a corporate agenda of work, shop and consume.
That’s what Alison Roberts discovered when she shrugged off her materialistic lifestyle and became an advertising critic. After systematically de-cluttering her own life, she decided rather than write just another how-to book about clutter, she would “in the spirit of Naomi Klein…create a political manifesto.” Her book was called Clutter’s Dirty Secret: A provocative look at the media’s impact on our spending habits, consumer debt and accumulation of clutter.
Alison says that “after decades of relentless messages to consume, we have created a legion of people who believe that we can buy our way to happiness” [opens to PDF] — the “good life” is but one purchase away. But what has become apparent is that “retail therapy doesn’t work.”
Her prescription? The solution lies in consciously disconnecting from the mainstream media’s mantras of consumption. And, of course, dealing with all of the unneeded, unused, and unnecessary items we’ve collected over the years.
Alison Roberts joined us in the studio in September 2012. The Nanaimo-based author no longer offers professional organizing services, but was happy to hear we’re going to rebroadcast our original interview with her this Thursday February 26, 2015.
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