"A thorough and insightful investigation into the meaning of the things we have, written by a journalist who lost nearly everything she owned. "
Stuff. Why we have it. Why we want it. What’s important. Why we love it. Why we need it. Why we’re attached to it. Why it makes us happy. Why it makes us sad. Stuff comes with a lot of baggage.
Helen Chandler-Wilde spent a lot of time thinking about stuff, and all the questions surrounding it, when she lost nearly everything she owned in a fire. She used this tragedy to rethink her relationship with her possessions, and the result is Lost and Found: 9 Life-Changing Lessons About Stuff, From Someone Who Lost Everything.
Most of Chandler-Wilde’s things were in storage after she had broken up with her boyfriend and moved back home with her parents. She kept the bare minimum—a few suitcases and a box marked “Random”—while she planned her next steps. When her parents first broke the news that the Croydon storage facility had burned to the ground, she thought they were kidding. They weren’t.
Part memoir, part journalism and part self-help, this meticulously researched and reported book looks at the subject of stuff from all angles. Chandler-Wilde, a reporter at Bloomberg, interviews a wide variety of people about the subject, including a library curator, a nun who’s taken a vow of poverty, behavioural psychologists and marketing experts.
She shares some hard truths for people who love to acquire things: shopping will never satisfy you. Also, people won’t like you more because of your stuff—sociometric status means that people think of you based on your character alone, making your possessions irrelevant. The book also includes practical tips on how to reframe your relationship to things.
After reading this brilliant book, you will never look at your stuff in the same way ever again.
| Primary Genre | Self Help and Personal Development |
| Other Genres: | |
| Recommendations: |
An exploration into why we keep holding on to material things and what they mean to us
On New Year's Eve of 2018, journalist Helen Chandler-Wilde lost everything she owned in a storage unit fire in Croydon, where she'd stowed all her possessions after a big break-up. She was left devastated, and forced to re-evaluate her relationship with owning material things.
A mix of memoir, self-help and journalism, Lost & Found explores the psychological reasons for why we buy and keep the things we do, and explains how we can liberate ourselves from the tyranny of 'too much'. Helen interviews people from all walks of life, including behavioural psychologists on the science of nostalgia, a nun on what it's like to own almost nothing and consumer psychologists on why we spend impulsively, to help us better understand why we're surrounded by clutter and what we can do to change it.
This smart-thinking book explains the sociological quirks of human nature and the fascinating science behind why we buy and hold onto things. By the end of it, your relationship with your belongings will be changed forever.
Lost & Found features in the following genres: Self Help and Personal Development, Biographies & Autobiographies, Health & Fitness, Home and house maintenance, Lifestyle, Hobbies and Leisure, Popular psychology, Social, group or collective psychology, Memoirs, Household management and home hints, Biography, Literature and Literary studies, Society and Social Sciences, Psychology, Non-Fiction Books of the Month, Star Books, Recommendations
Lost & Found is available in Paperback, Hardback
Lost & Found was written by Helen Chandler-Wilde and published by Aster an imprint of Octopus
Lost & Found has 320 pages
£11.69
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