Read to Restore: Leisure Books for Mental Wellness: Home Life

Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you'll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo's clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list). With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house "spark joy" (and which don't), this international bestseller will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home--and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.

Can good design truly make us happier? Given that we spend over 80% of our time in buildings, shouldn't we have a better understanding of how they make us feel? This book explores the ways in which buildings, spaces and cities affect our moods. It reveals how architecture and design can make us happy and support mental health and explains how poor design can have the opposite effect.

How do acts of caring for the sick or grieving for the dead change the way we move through our living rooms and bedrooms? Why do elderly homeowners struggle to remain in messy, junk-filled houses? Why are we so attached to our pets, even when they damage and soil our living spaces? In Home Bodies: Tactile Experience in Domestic Space, James Krasner offers an interdisciplinary, humanistic investigation of the sense of touch in our experience of domestic space and identity.

The definitive book on the use of colour and paint in interior decoration over a three-hundred year period, The Anatomy of Colour is certain to appeal to both amateur and professional restorers, renovators, enthusiastic decorators and all those with an interest in interior decoration and design. Drawing on his huge specialist archive, Patrick Baty traces the evolution of pigments and paint colours together with colour systems and standards, and examines their impact on the colour palettes used in interiors from the 1660s to the 1960s.

Recipes, tips, and strategies for easy, delicious vegan meals every day of the week, from America's bestselling vegan cookbook author

The Fresh 20, the popular budget-friendly meal-planning service founded by working mother Melissa Lanz, is now a cookbook, offering families an all-natural and easy approach to mealtimes. Using just 20 organic, non-processed ingredients per week, home cooks can create 5 wholesome, delicious meals in just minutes.

Breakfast may be, as some say, the most important meal--but not unless it's the best tasting. With the help of James Beard Cookbook Hall of Famer Beatrice Ojakangas, that is precisely what breakfast will be. With recipes drawn from her storied career and honed in her home kitchen, Breakfast with Beatrice prepares the cook--seasoned veteran or novice--to make breakfast the perfect start to every day.

Since its original publication, Joy of Cooking has been the most authoritative cookbook in America the one upon which millions of cooks have confidently relied for more than sixty-five years.

Mark Bittman's award-winning How to Cook Everything has helped countless home cooks discover the rewards of simple cooking. Now the ultimate cookbook has been revised and expanded (almost half the material is new), making it absolutely indispensable for anyone who cooks--or wants to. With Bittman's straightforward instructions and advice, you'll make crowd-pleasing food using fresh, natural ingredients; simple techniques; and basic equipment.