The lure of the de-clutter book
I saw a link to this book at Instapundit. It’s called Real Life Organizing: Clean and Clutter-Free in 15 Minutes a Day.
As soon as I saw that, I felt the old seductive pull: maybe I should buy that, I thought. Maybe that one will finally do the trick.
It’s not that I’m so dreadfully disorganized or cluttered. But I’m certainly no neat freak, and organizational ability is not my strong suit. There was a time, back in my young mother/wife days, when I was a sucker for books like that, until I saw that they were merely adding to the clutter. That’s when I decided that de-cluttering books only really help the already-organized get even more organized.
For example, when I followed the link to the book’s Amazon listing, I discovered that according to the book the following is the first item people are supposed to do to become organized: create a household management binder.
As soon as I read that sort of thing I feel an incredible lassitude come over me.
Many decades ago I got rid of all the books I owned on de-cluttering my home. It felt good. But maybe I’ll just buy this one…just one…
My aunt and uncle lived for 50 years in a house with one closet. It was a nice sized house with two parlors (built in 1880) and a good sized kitchen but, I suppose, it was built when most people had two sets of clothes, one for Sunday and one for work. Her son, my cousin, had a wardrobe in his bedroom. Her daughters had the only closet. There was a small closet in the entry for cold weather coats but that was it.
Talk about decluttering !
There was one from, I think, sometime in the ’80s, by two sisters, both married, trying to motivate themselves to do a better job of keeping up with housework, which was not on their shortlists of fun things to do. They came up with a method where they wrote down each recurring task on an index card, marked it “daily” or “weekly” or “monthly” or whatever, and then filed the cards in do-date order. So they broke the jobs up into steps and followed the steps, so as to give themselves a feeling of accomplishment at the end of each step. They also drew up flow charts …. I just loved that book. It was quite entertaining, and reading it was a lot more fun than doing housework.
They tried to get their kids to do their chores by showing them the flow charts, and putting up a poster-board with stars to be stuck on as they were earned, etc. Exchange I’ll never forget: Mom to young son: “Don’t you want to put up your stars, and color the flow charts, and all?” “Yes, Mom, but I don’t wanna do the work.”*
LOL! This is a young man well in touch with his feelings. He will never need therapy.
I remember that one of them was able to rescue her marriage, which was disappearing under the litter. I think the husband’s name was Danny. The other sister’s marriage failed ultimately, but I don’t think the book said why.
I wish I could remember the book’s name, or the authors’, but I’m coming up empty. Oh well….
* Does anyone remember Dr. Haim Ginott’s book on parenting, “How to Talk so Kids Will Listen and Listen So Kids Will Talk”? Very popular — when, back in the ’70s? Highly recommended by Nathaniel Branden. It illustrated its ideas with fictional conversations between parent and child. I read it rather quickly, sounded more-or-less helpful at the time; but later on I read a remark in one of the women’s magazines (maybe Woman’s Day?) by a mother who’d tried to use the Doctor’s approach. She said the problem was that her kids never read the book. :>)))!!!
There is a similar, parallel genre for businesspeople – Getting Things Done was the last big title, of many.
None of them ever worked for me, and left me feeling worse.
I should throw out all these books – not sure I can find them all….
All those jokes about putting things off (“the procastinators’ club meeting has been postponed until a later date”) apply to de-cluttering. If you don’t clutter you don’t need the book. If you do, you won’t use it.
Seinfeld – The Coffee Table Book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dE5ROl2YPbs
The kind of people who need a book like this are not the kind of people who will actually follow a book like this.
I saw the same link and I actually did buy it, but on Kindle. (One of my big clutter areas was books and Kindle has eliminated that.) She has readers take a test to find their clutter style and she hit the nail on the head with me. That’s as far as I’ve read but I like it so far.
Mike K. It wasn’t all because they had less clothes. In past they taxed your house based on the number of rooms you had. A built in closet, especially with a door, was counted as an additional room in some places. Thus many old houses have few closets and the people who lived in them used wardrobes & armoires instead.
In past they taxed your house based on the number of rooms you had.
I knew that they taxed on the number of windows but that was colonial times.
I think it was just fewer closets needed.
If you need a de-clutter book you are unlikely to make good use of de-clutter book advice, right?
martin – we have a very old house, with miniscule closets, and 3 armoires.
They are useful for “zoning” clothing (of which we have far too much).
Organizing books are very personal – they will work for you, or they won’t.
I had Julie’s book and used it when our kids were small, because my brain didn’t function unless it was on paper somewhere. It was called “Sidetracked Home Executives,” and it’s become an industry.
http://organizedhome.com/shes-organized
Peg Bracken’s “I Hate to Housekeep” book was funny, but Don Aslett’s books were actually useful. He got sucked into the field because he offered to take over the house & kids while his wife made an extended trip to see her parents.
Being an office-cleaning professional with a good business, he says he thought, “How hard can it be? I’ll just show her how it’s supposed to get done.”
Talk about rude awakenings.
But he decided that if keeping a home organized and clean was that hard, it needed to be studied and codified.
My favorite, however, is Bonnie Runyan McCullough’s “Totally Organized” (1986) because she wrote as a mom dealing with the daily problems, didn’t overshoot the mark, and kept things simple.
AesopFan! Bless you! Side-tracked Home Executives, yes, indeed. I went bonkers before I sent the comment, trying to remember or track down the book. Did you know Amazon gives > 10,000 results if you search on “organizing”? LOL
Also, Don Aslett! I’d forgotten all about him. I read his book (but didn’t buy it) as far as the point where he told us not to bother vacuuming except in the empty spots, because nobody ever sees the dust-bunnies in the corners and behind the couch. Well, I see ’em, Mr. Aslett, and while a quickie in the middle will do in a pinch where the company is due in five minutes and you still have to take off your ratty old bathrobe, eventually what you get back there is more like dust dinosaurs.
I hope I still have the book (Side-tracked)somewhere in one of my many boxes of books. I had fond dreams of unpacking most of my stuff when I moved in with the Young Miss et Monsieur, but I’m having trouble figuring out where to put it, as here I have only 1-1/2 rooms instead of six (not counting kitchen and 2 bathrooms) and the garage.
I remember Peg Bracken, whom I’d also forgotten, but I don’t think I ever did read her book.
Thanks for the walk through the Housekeeping Stacks in the Memory Library. And for the link. :>)))
LOL As with many others here, the lure is to buy the book, the reality is the only thing that the only de-cluttering that will happen is giving away the book.
he told us not to bother vacuuming except in the empty spots, because nobody ever sees the dust-bunnies in the corners and behind the couch.
I send the Roomba after them. My house is all tile but I have a basset hound and they shed constantly. Also, she loves to roll on my nice western pattern rug in the living room. When I can’t see the pattern anymore, it is time to vacuum.
The Roomba spends an hour in the bedroom sucking up dust bunnies, and sending Google my floor plan, and then I rescue it and put it back on its charger.
Dust bunnies are what you track down during Spring and Fall cleaning.
The reason for those seasons for deep-diving:
they have mostly nice weather but not too hot (most places in continental USA).
Spring gets out all the clutter that stacked up during the winter when everyone was indoors in the 1 to 2 room house and could’t do much playing or working outside, plus to wash all the winter clothes and bedding.
Fall to get out all the dust and dirt tracked in by kids & adults working and playing outside, and wash the summer clothes.
Being organized and living in an uncluttered space do not require a lot of work, only commitment is needed. I often joke that my excellent sense of being and remaining organized is an affliction. Of course this is done as an act of self-deprecation, and a little bit of pride. 🙂
I think i should write a book on the subject but rather than add another long and boring how-to instruction guide to the catalog will advise those of you that are cluttered and disorganized to embrace your state of being, own it, and reject the judgey attitudes and sidelong glances of your more kempt friends and family.