Memories To Keep

America’s top cleaning expert and star of the hit series Legacy List with Matt Paxton distills his fail-proof approach to decluttering and downsizing. Your boxes of photos, family’s china, and even the kids' height charts aren’t just stuff; they’re attached to a lifetime of memories--and letting them go can be scary. With empathy, expertise, and humor, Keep the Memories, Lose the Stuff, written in collaboration with AARP, helps you sift through years of clutter, let go of what no longer serves you, and identify the items worth keeping so that you can focus on living in the present. For over 20 years, Matt Paxton has helped people from all walks of life who want to live more simply declutter and downsize. As a featured cleaner on Hoarders and host of the Emmy-nominated Legacy List with Matt Paxton on PBS, he has identified the psychological roadblocks that most organizational experts routinely miss but that prevent so many of us from lightening our material load. Using poignant stories from the thousands of individuals and families he has worked with, Paxton brings his signature insight to a necessary task. Whether you’re tired of living with clutter, making space for a loved one, or moving to a smaller home or retirement community, this book is for you. Paxton’s unique, step-by-step process gives you the tools you need to get the job done.

What’s the actual secret to happiness? Great memories! Meik Wiking—happiness researcher and New York Times bestselling author of The Little Book of Hygge and The Little Book of Lykke—shows us how to create memories that make life sweet in this charming book. Do you remember your first kiss? The day you graduated? Your favorite vacation? Or the best meal you ever had? Memories are the cornerstones of our identity, shaping who we are, how we act, and how we feel. In his work as a happiness researcher, Meik Wiking has learned that people are happier if they hold a positive, nostalgic view of the past. But how do we make and keep the memories that bring us lasting joy? The Art of Making Memories examines how mental images are made, stored, and recalled in our brains, as well as the “art of letting go”—why we tend to forget certain moments to make room for deeper, more meaningful ones. Meik uses data, interviews, global surveys, and real-life experiments to explain the nuances of nostalgia and the different ways we form memories around our experiences and recall them—revealing the power that a “first time” has on our recollections, and why a piece of music, a smell, or a taste can unexpectedly conjure a moment from the past. Ultimately, Meik shows how we each can create warm memories that will stay with us for years. Combining his signature charm with Scandinavian forthrightness, filled with infographics, illustrations, and photographs, and featuring “Happy Memory Tips,” The Art of Making Memories is an inspiration meditation and practical handbook filled with ideas to help us make the memories that will bring us joy throughout our lives.

"This will cast a spell on fans of Cheryl Strayed and Glennon Doyle." - Publishers Weekly Between Two Kingdoms meets Wild. In this heart wrenching and inspirational memoir a woman and her mother, who is suffering from dementia, embark on a road trip through national parks, revisiting the memories, and the mountains, that made them who they are. Steph Jagger lost her mother before she lost her. Her mother, stricken with an incurable disease that slowly erases all sense of self, struggles to remember her favorite drink, her favorite song, and—perhaps most heartbreaking of all—Steph herself. Steph watches as the woman who loved and raised her slips away before getting the chance to tell her story, and so Steph makes a promise: her mother will walk it and she will write it. Too aware of her mother’s waning memory, Steph proposes that the two take a camping trip out to Montana—which her mother, on the urging of Steph’s father, agrees to embark upon. An adventure full of horseback riding, hiking, and “tenting” out West quickly turns into one woman’s reflection on childhood, motherhood, personhood—and what it means to love someone who doesn’t quite remember the person she spent her lifetime becoming. A staggeringly beautiful examination of how stories are passed down through generations and from Mother Nature, Everything Left to Remember brings us the wisdom of who our memories make us under the constellations of the vast Montana sky.

You can still work and be a great parent! Most modern parents work. And we have limited time, limited energy, limited patience and too much to do. We are seldom at our best at the end of a long working day when the parenting shift kicks in. We want to do the right thing but, in the thick of it, with no time to think and no energy to spare, it’s easy to miss the small changes that could make a big difference to our child’s (and our own) well-being. The Work/Parent Switch is essential reading for every working parent. Written by an expert in child development and psychology who has worked with thousands of stressed out working parents, it will walk you through an approach to parenting that will transform family life and can be fitted into modern working patterns. Covering all the key challenges such getting everyone out of the house on time in the morning, managing difficult behaviour when you’re tired at the end of the day, controlling tech time and avoiding Sunday night homework battles, The Parent/Work Switch will help you to stop feeling guilty about being at work and give you the tools to create the family life you want to come home to.

'Meik's new book will change the way you think' Dr Rangan Chatterjee ___________________________________________________________________________ From the same author that brought us The Little Book of Hygge, this book reveals the secret to filling your life with happy moments, and how to remember them for ever. Happy memories don't have to be reserved for big life events. Drawing on global surveys, behavioural science experiments and data gathered by The Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen, Meik is here to show how we can we can turn ordinary experiences into something extraordinary. Whether it's eating dinner at the table rather than in front of the TV, exploring a new part of your neighbourhood, or planning how you're going to celebrate your small wins, this book will help you find the magic in the every day, and create memories you will cherish forever. PRE-ORDER THE HYGGE HOME, THE NEW BOOK FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE LITTLE BOOK OF HYGGE

“How do you talk to a child about death? Start here. This beautiful book helps contextualize loss, and provides a beautiful memory to share with the family member who will be left behind.”—Jodi Picoult, #1 NYT bestselling author of The Book of Two Ways Do you know how you want to be remembered? Through this special children’s memory book, share the many ways we can remember each other, from eating strawberries in the spring to playing dress up with friends or watching fireflies light up the summer skies. Then add your own family memories to create a life-long keepsake. Author Todd Williams remembers the day one of his hospice patients asked him if he knew of a book to help her talk about death and dying with children. She wanted to let them know how she would like them to remember her. This patient’s question provoked Todd into thinking about how he wanted to be remembered. This book is the result. Remember Me When… will help you to talk to children about how you would like to be remembered and to create your own memories. This legacy book also includes a blank page for writing in your own remembrance.

New York magazine's "Science of Us" editor explains the compelling psychology of awkwardness, and asks: what if the moments that make us feel most awkward are actually valuable? Have you ever said goodbye to someone, only to discover that you're both walking in the same direction? Or had your next thought fly out of your brain in the middle of a presentation? Or accidentally liked an old photo on someone's Instagram or Facebook, thus revealing yourself to be a creepy social media stalker? Melissa Dahl, editor of New York magazine's "Science of Us" website, has. After a lifetime of cringing, she became intrigued by awkwardness: a universal but underappreciated emotion. In this witty and compassionate book, Dahl explores the oddest, cringiest corners of our world. She chats with strangers on the busy New York City subway, goes on awkward friend dates using a "Tinder-for-friendship" app, takes improv comedy lessons, and even reads aloud from her (highly embarrassing!) middle school diary to a crowd of strangers. After all of that, she realizes: Awkward moments are opportunities to test yourself. When everyone else is pretending to have it under control, you can be a little braver and grow a little bigger--while remaining true to your awkward self. And along the way, you might find that awkward moments unite us in our mutual human ridiculousness.

In the tradition of Wild and Eat, Pray, Love comes an epic, inspiring new story about one woman’s triumph of spirit as she follows winter across five continents Steph Jagger had seen the ski-lift sign thousands of times—Raise Restraining Device, it read—but one day she took it personally as a rallying cry to shake off the life she had for the life she wanted. She had always been a force of nature, so why was she still holding herself back? Dissatisfied with the passive, limited roles she had seen for women when she was growing up, Steph emulated the men in her life—chasing success, climbing the corporate ladder, ticking the boxes, playing by the rules. She was accomplished. She was living The Dream. But it wasn’t her dream. The sign became her mantra. Steph walked away from the success and security she had worked long and hard to obtain. She quit her job, took a second mortgage on her house, sold everything except her ski equipment and her laptop and bought a plane ticket. For the next year, she followed winter across five continents on a mission to break the world record for most vertical feet skied in a year—four million. What hiking was for Cheryl Strayed, skiing became for Steph: a crucible in which to crack open her life and melt it down to its very elements. Electrifying, heartfelt and full of humour, Unbound is Steph’s story—an odyssey of courage and self-discovery that, like Wild and Eat, Pray, Love, will inspire readers to remove their own restraining devices and pursue the life they are meant to lead.