It’s spring! And for many of us, that means spring cleaning. Ugh. But don’t worry, these books will help you get your home and garden in tip-top shape in no time. From inspiration to practical tips and tricks, you’ll find everything you need to get it done.
Don’t Be Trashy by Tara McKenna
Say goodbye to your bursting toiletries bag, fast fashion, and all the plastic crowding your pantry. It’s time to build less trashy habits for a more sustainable and ethical life. With relatable stories, compassion, and a realistic perspective, Tara McKenna will show you how in this ultimate guide to going zero waste(ish).
We’re all trapped in a wasteful convenience-based cycle, but Don’t Be Trashy offers an alternative: an approach to reducing waste that emphasizes progress over perfection. McKenna guides you month by month through a year of reducing consumption, covering:
- Decluttering and turning off the flow of stuff into your home
- Breaking up with fast fashion and developing a capsule wardrobe
- Cutting off your supply of single-use plastic in your kitchen, cleaning supplies, and bathroom
- Investing in home goods that’ll last for decades without breaking the bank
- And more!
Ultimately, it’s about changing your mindset to one of minimalism and conscious consumption—a mindset that’s as good for your wallet and your well-being as it is for the planet. Don’t Be Trashy will guide you to your best life—one with less waste and more joy!
Raised Bed Gardening For Beginners by Tammy Wylie
Start a thriving garden with the beginner’s guide to raised bed gardening
Are you interested in creating a bountiful garden but worried that you don’t have enough space? Raised-Bed Gardening for Beginners shows you how simple it can be to plan, build, and grow your own raised-bed garden in whatever space is available. Learn to build your bed, select the right plants, grow your own vegetables, and much more. This book makes it easy for even inexperienced gardeners to serve up freshly picked vegetables and herbs in no time.
Plant a flourishing garden in minimal space with:
- An introduction to raised-bed gardening―From constructing a planting box to mixing and maintaining soil, step-by-step instructions make getting started easy.
- Beginner’s guidance―Help your garden thrive with detailed suggestions for crop rotation, partner planting, seed starting, and growing zones.
- 30 easy-to-grow plants―Full profiles plus growing and harvesting tips on beginner-friendly vegetables and herbs make choosing the right ones for your garden a cinch.
Learn basic methods that will get you growing fast using this easy guide to raised-bed gardening.
Homebody by Joanna Gaines
In Homebody: A Guide to Creating Spaces You Never Want to Leave, Joanna Gaines walks you through how to create a home that reflects the personalities and stories of the people who live there. Using examples from her own farmhouse as well as a range of other homes, this comprehensive guide will help you assess your priorities and instincts, as well as your likes and dislikes, with practical steps for navigating and embracing your authentic design style. Room by room, Homebody gives you an in-depth look at how these styles are implemented as well as how to blend the looks you’re drawn to in order to create spaces that feel distinctly yours. A removable design template at the back of the book offers a step-by-step guide to planning and sketching out your own design plans. The insight shared in Homebody will instill in you the confidence to thoughtfully create spaces you never want to leave.
The Home Edit by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin
Believe this: every single space in your house has the potential to function efficiently and look great. The mishmash of summer and winter clothes in the closet? Yep. Even the dreaded junk drawer? Consider it done. And the best news: it’s not hard to do—in fact, it’s a lot of fun.
From the home organizers who made their orderly eye candy the method that everyone swears by comes Joanna and Clea’s signature approach to decluttering. The Home Edit walks you through paring down your belongings in every room, arranging them in a stunning and easy-to-find way (hello, labels!), and maintaining the system so you don’t need another do-over in six months. When you’re done, you’ll not only know exactly where to find things, but you’ll also love the way it looks.
A masterclass and look book in one, The Home Edit is filled with bright photographs and detailed tips, from placing plastic dishware in a drawer where little hands can reach to categorizing pantry items by color (there’s nothing like a little ROYGBIV to soothe the soul). Above all, it’s like having your best friends at your side to help you turn the chaos into calm.
How to Keep House While Drowning by Kc Davis
If you’re struggling to stay on top of your to-do list, you probably have a good reason: anxiety, fatigue, depression, ADHD, or lack of support. For therapist KC Davis, the birth of her second child triggered a stress-mess cycle. The more behind she felt, the less motivated she was to start. She didn’t fold a single piece of laundry for seven months. One life-changing realization restored her sanity—and the functionality of her home: You don’t work for your home; your home works for you.
In other words, messiness is not a moral failing. A new sense of calm washed over her as she let go of the shame-based messaging that interpreted a pile of dirty laundry as “I can never keep up” and a chaotic kitchen as “I’m a bad mother.” Instead, she looked at unwashed clothes and thought, “I am alive,” and at stacks of dishes and thought, “I cooked my family dinner three nights in a row.”
Building on this foundation of self-compassion, KC devised the powerful practical approach that has exploded in popularity through her TikTok account, @domesticblisters. The secret is to simplify your to-do list and to find creative workarounds that accommodate your limited time and energy. In this book, you’ll learn exactly how to customize your cleaning strategy and rebuild your relationship with your home, including:
-How to see chores as kindnesses to your future self, not as a reflection of your worth
-How to start by setting priorities
-How to stagger tasks so you won’t procrastinate
-How to clean in quick bursts within your existing daily routine
-How to use creative shortcuts to transform a room from messy to functional
With KC’s help, your home will feel like a sanctuary again. It will become a place to rest, even when things aren’t finished. You will move with ease, and peace and calm will edge out guilt, self-criticism, and endless checklists. They have no place here.
Organizing For The Rest of Us by Dana K. White
Traditional organizing advice never worked for Dana K. White. Is it possible, she wondered, to get organized without color coding my sock drawer? As Dana let go of the need for perfection, she discovered the joy of having an organized house in the midst of everyday life.
In Organizing for the Rest of Us, Dana teaches us how to make great strides with minimal effort in organizing every room of our home. Here she offers 100 organizing tips to help us understand:
- Why changing how we think about clutter is the first step to getting rid of it
- The basics of organization for people who don’t like to organize
- Why you need to get a grip on laundry and dishes before getting organized
- How living with less clutter is better for the environment, our spiritual lives, and our relationships
- Why real-life decluttering requires fewer hours and less emotional bandwidth than we imagined
Organizing for the Rest of Us includes colorful photos, a presentation page, and a ribbon marker, making it a thoughtful gift or self-purchase for anyone:
- Doing spring cleaning
- Making New Year’s goals
- Downsizing their own home or their parents’ home
- Decluttering and organizing for their own peace of mind
Fans of Dana’s podcast, A Slob Comes Clean, which has been downloaded 9 million times, will treasure this book as a resource. With her lighthearted approach, Dana provides bite-size workable solutions to break through every organizational struggle you have–for good!
Beautifully Organized: A Guide to Function and Style in Your Home by Nikki Boyd
YouTube Star Nikki Boyd shares her best advice for how to design a beautiful, welcoming, and well-organized home. Nikki developed and honed her five essential steps to an organized home through her experience working as a professional organizer. Now in this book, she shows you how to transform your space and enhance your life at home.
- Assess, Declutter, Clean, Organize, and Beautify: Learn the5 simple steps to transform every room in your home and create a welcoming atmosphere for family and friends
- Interior Design Inspiration: Gorgeous, inspirational home photos on every page
- Beautiful coffee table and home decor book: Ranked best coffee table book by Stylecaster!
With her keen eye for detail and trademark warmth, Nikki guides readers through her signature steps, teaching how to graciously share your homes with family and friends to create treasured shared experiences and memories. Beautifully Organized is so much more than a home organization book—it’s a recipe for a beautiful, fulfilling life.
Cozy White Cottage: 100 Ways to Love the Feeling of Being Home by Liz Marie Galvan
In this beautiful book of house and garden photography and DIY inspiration, popular blogger Liz Marie Galvan shares:
- 100 tips and tricks to make your home feel cozy
- Budget-friendly hints to make decorating affordable
- Simple DIY projects for every room in your house
In Cozy White Cottage, you’ll get the help you need to create a space you love coming home to as Liz offers her best home décor and design tips. You’ll love Liz’s real-life, easy, and affordable ideas to get the most out of your home and discover things like:
- The passion and productivity that can pour out of an inspiring, functional workspace or home office
- The conversation and connection that flow out of a warm, well-arranged living room
- The thoughtful hospitality that can welcome guests, be it for a cup of coffee or an overnight stay
- The rejuvenation that can happen when we have quiet spaces for reading, prayer, and rest
- The calming routines and rituals that we can implement into our spaces and our lives
- The laughter, joy, and learning that can occur in adorable, functional playrooms
- The life-giving power that beats in the heart of our homes: the kitchen
Join the hundreds of thousands of readers and DIY-ers who find design inspiration on Liz’s blog, where she shares stories of life with her son, Cope, and veteran husband, Jose, in their 1800s Michigan farmhouse, and her home décor boutique.
Tiny House: Live Small, Dream Big by Brent Heaver
Imagine living debt-free in an environmentally-friendly home. No mortgage, no clutter, and boundless freedom. This is the reality and dream of people all over the world thanks to the widespread momentum of the tiny house movement in recent years. Designed to fit on the tiniest of coffee tables, this book features 250 full-color photographs of the smallest, most efficient homes around the world, with interviews, features, and smart tips straight from the homeowners. From tiny mobile homes in California, Nashville, and Minnesota to a surfer-built tree house in Washington to a school bus that has been converted to a camper in Oregon, this lookbook is packed with big inspiration.
Declutter Like A Mother: A Guilt-Free, No Stress Way to Transform Your Home and Your Life by Allie Casazza
In Declutter Like a Mother, Allie Casazza comes alongside you to explore:
- Why decluttering calms anxiety in your heart and lessens tension in your relationships.
- How to ensure your house is working for you, not against you.
- Why kids thrive when they’re not overwhelmed with options.
- How to make time, when you feel you don’t have time, to declutter.
Allie Casazza was tired of feeling it was her against the laundry in her home. She wondered if somewhere beneath her frantic days and the mountains of toys in the playroom she would ever find joy and peace in motherhood. Then she discovered the abundance . . . of less.
As she purged her home of excess stuff, Allie discovered a lifestyle that strengthened her marriage, saved her motherhood, and helped her develop her gifts in a way that no amount of new kitchen appliances or new organizing system ever could.
Research studies show a direct link between stress levels and the amount of physical possessions people have in their homes, and Allie has seen that truth play out in her own life and in the lives of hundreds of thousands of other moms she has mentored through her business and online courses. She proclaims:
You don’t need a home that’s perfect. You need a home that’s lighter. Discover less stress, more space. Less chaos, more peace. Less of what doesn’t matter, so you have room for what matters most of all.
