Published by Zondervan on April 15, 2025
Genres: Non-Fiction, Christian Life
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Declutter Your Heart and Your Home provides tips, tricks, and tools to rid yourself of the internal and external clutter weighing you down, as well as relatable stories and soul-nourishing truths from Scripture to fill your heart and home with what truly matters.
Do you long for a richer life? One with meaning, purpose, and simplicity? One that's lighter, freer, and more focused on who and what matters?
As moms who are busy, stressed out, and living in survival mode, we feel desperate for peace--with ourselves, our families, our homes, and God. But we often don't know how to find it.
God wants us to experience abundant life--and it all starts with clearing clutter, first in our hearts, then in our homes. Julia Ubbenga--creator of the popular blog Rich in What Matters--is a trustworthy guide and companion as she shares the tips, tricks, and inspiring lessons she's learned on her own journey to minimalism. Her book will help you:
Identify the unhealthy habits and addictions that disorder your life
Redefine your relationship with money and the stuff it buys
Find freedom from hurry, chaos, and consumerism
Reclaim God's peace in your heart and your homeThis journey toward simplicity will transform your life.
Christian women who are interested in minimalism will appreciate how this book combines home and lifestyle advice with spiritual reflections. Julia Ubbenga shares her personal story of overcoming a life of consumerism and clutter, and she reflects on how this has enhanced her life and deepened her relationship with God. She encourages readers to experience the same freedom, and the early chapters explore foundational concepts about pursuing a simpler lifestyle and address some of the spiritual issues beneath many people’s consumer habits.
The rest of Declutter Your Heart and Your Home shares practical insights for decluttering different parts of your home. The author shares helpful tips and ideas, and the writing is straightforward and easy to read, with helpful headings and lists. This is the kind of book that someone can work through systematically or skim for whatever project they’re working on at the moment. In addition to being very practical, these chapters also address common heart issues related to these spaces, such as comparison for your closet or reactivity for your child’s room. At the end of each chapter, there are also brief reflection exercises related to both your internal life and your home.
Because of the strong emphasis on spiritual themes, this book will primarily appeal to readers who share the author’s faith. People with other belief backgrounds can still appreciate the practical insights and tips, but they may find this book more of a turn-off than some other lifestyle books from Christian publishers. This one not only has very strong Christian themes, but also makes other sweeping statements, like the idea that you can’t declutter your home without God’s help. Just because a Christian’s experience is incomplete without God doesn’t mean that non-believers can’t accomplish the same earthly goal of keeping a tidy, minimalist home. I appreciate the author’s overall message about relying on God, but this kind of exaggerated phrasing is not helpful.
Declutter Your Heart and Your Home: How a Minimalist Life Yields Maximum Joy is full of deep, helpful insights and practical tips for pursuing a simpler lifestyle and letting go of excess. This will primarily appeal to Christian women, and the author’s vulnerable personal stories and wise advice can help this audience think through and reevaluate their lives, purge unneeded items from their homes, and adopt a slower, more sustainable pace of living.