Anna Newton - An Edited Life: Simple Steps to Streamlining your Life, at Work and at Home

If you need someone to hold your hand while you clear out your wardrobe a task youve been postponing for the last five years then Im your girl. If you want to have a look in a friends diary to see how they organise their shit, then mines an open book. If you fancy some meditation app recommendations so you can live a life more zen, I have some suggestions up my sleeve. But most importantly, if you need a karaoke partner to do the Sean Paul rap in Blu Cantrells Breathe, look no further.

Im Anna, a part-time carpool karaoke singer at the weekends and a full-time blogger and organisation freak the rest of the time. Im a textbook Virgo and thoroughly enjoy reading about the hard-working and efficient tendencies of my star sign with an annoying smugness that drives my other half insane. Classic Virgo right there. Ive had my blog The Anna Edit since 2010, and although it started off as a chronicle of the large abundance of beauty products and makeup that I was secretly building a fort with at home, its since turned into a place where I share a bit of everything from productivity tips to Ryan Gosling memes, and from capsule wardrobe how-tos to dealing with facial hair when youve inherited your dads genes and look like Tom Selleck if you dodge your razor for too long. Its a pretty varied corner of the internet. Come and say hi sometime.

Although I was a child who enjoyed colour-coordinating her Crayola crayons in her spare time, my personal editing journey began when I lived in East London for three years post-university with my now-husband Mark, in a one-bedroom flat. We basked in our close proximity to Westfield (a retail centre that was shopping nirvana during the week and claustrophobic shopping hell at the weekend), spent 45 on a pack of crackers, chia pudding and hummus crisps at Whole Foods and knew the exact carriage to embark on the central line to conveniently drop us at the foot of the stairs at our destination station. We further revelled in this authentic London experience with a flat that was the size of a postage stamp. We devised our own little space-saving hacks like hiding the ironing board behind the sofa and squashing a vacuum cleaner behind an open door, but after years of a consumer-heavy lifestyle, my new purchases soon began to creep into every empty crevice. The bathroom became a candle-hoarding zone, drawers were overflowing with new bedding, and opening the wardrobe door became a task that should have had its own health-and-safety warning: HARD HATS MANDATORY. Now, being the Virgo that I am, nothing was ever messy, but there was just an overwhelming amount of stuff.

An amount that you truly dont realise you have until you move. And isnt that always fun? As we made the journey 50 miles south to Brighton after our time in the big smoke, I still remember moving into our new place lugging a box that said: OLD MAKEUP BOX 3 on the side, much to our new neighbours amusement.

Thankfully our new home was a little roomier, but as I unpacked the seemingly never-ending pile of boxes, I realised that the majority were full of items that I didnt need, like or even use. A broken iPod Shuffle! A sequin dress from Topshop that made me look like an overstuffed sausage when I tried it on! A university textbook that wasnt just unread, but still had the plastic wrapping intact! The moment I pulled out an egg slicer dont ask was the icing on the cake. Cue an afternoon read of Marie Kondos The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying; the bestselling decluttering bible that preaches that we should only hold on to possessions that are either purely functional or give us a feeling of joy when we hold them in our clutches. Fast-forward to a couple of days later and the egg slicer had been removed, along with another five bin bags of complete tat, two bags of items for the clothes bank and a pile of electronic goods for the charity shop. That week my lifestyle did a subtle shift without me even realising, and began to point in the direction towards a scary sounding place minimalism. In the months that followed, not only did our home instantly feel more functional, my brain took a long exhale for the first time in months, giving new ideas a spot to nestle in. It was a truly clichd weight off my shoulders moment and, with our belongings in order, I found myself being more productive with work and more efficient with my time. We even started to plan our meals ahead and ditched the too-frequent takeaways that were zapping away at our bank accounts. I found myself buying less in general and gravitating towards purchases that fitted with that classic quality over quantity saying. This physical dumping of stuff also meant fewer boxes to unpack. DOUBLE WIN.

Being the all or nothing gal that I am its in my star sign, you know? this feeling quickly became addictive, to the point where my husband was concerned that hed come home to find that Id binned the TV remote because it just wasnt bringing me joy. I devoured books, blogs and podcasts on the subject and loved nothing more than throwing shit out. I cleared kitchen cupboards at the weekend, looted our loft for more items to take down to the dump, bullied my mum into downsizing her vase collection (which, in fairness, had got a little out of control and was nearing the 50+ mark) and developed a penchant for PP storage from MUJI. In my eyes I was ticking all the minimalist boxes, but in reality I was living with a capsule wardrobe that only contained seven tops and I never had any clean clothes to wear. Id become the complete opposite of a hoarder and instead became a bin-bag-filling tyrant, obsessed with lobbing the next load into the tip, to the point that I was parting with things that we actually needed. As I suspiciously eyed up the TV remote, I realised that there had to be a more comfortable middle ground.

Over the next couple of years I devised methods, mantras and editing processes that still sat within a semi-minimalist framework, but didnt act as a strict rulebook like all the texts on the topic that Id previously read. The TV remote breathed a sigh of relief and the capsule wardrobe became a staple part of my lifestyle without the how long can I wear this top for before it grows legs? aspect.

Minimalism as a term is broad. It covers a whole spectrum of living with less beliefs, from only owning possessions that you can squeeze into one suitcase, to halving your collection of Now Thats What I Call Music CDs that were about to topple off your shelf anyway. At the strictest end, it can be very prescriptive. I struggled with the whole seven shirts thing, let alone those who set themselves the challenge of a 10-item-only capsule wardrobe. So what Ive come to see as the middle ground is to aim for a more edited life. Its an ongoing process that embraces imperfections and shrugs off the need for perfectionism, because perfection just doesnt exist unless were talking about Ryan Gosling.

So welcome to An Edited Life. A book crammed full of practical tips Ive discovered over the years through my journey from consumer queen to militant thrower-outer to a slightly more chilled neat-freak. By clearing out those dusty possessions and creating daily time-saving habits, youll be given a bit more space in your brain to deal with everything else thats going on in life. Ive read enough of these books to know that they can get a little