Quick Look
A practical step-by-step guide to freeing your home -- and your mind -- from clutter. Packed with handy tips, diagrams and checklists.
Description
-- Why do you never have clean clothes when you need them?
-- Why do you never know where you put something for safekeeping?
-- And why does your life feel so out of control?
Whether you need to know how to organize your laundry, weekly shopping, office computer files or your 10-year backlog of family photographs, this book can help. Full of no-nonsense advice, practical exercises, handy tips and checklists, it can be used to address a specific problem or as an overview for clearing up your life.
Sorting out your surroundings has other benefits too: the practical experience of ordering a home or work space leads on naturally to rethinking other aspects of life. Clearing out the clutter really can make space for your life, and offer greater emotional and personal stability.
Table of Contents
Foreword: Come Inside and Make Yourself at Home
1. Hearth and Home: A Genuine Goddess Lends a Helping Hand
2. Juggling with Five Balls: The Foundation of Housekeeping
3. Migrating Objects: The Road Things Travel in Your Home and in Your Life
4. To Have and To Hold: How Things are Acquired and How to Give Them a Place
5. To Save or Discard: Decision-Making and the Concept: Fulfilling Goals
6. The Art of Saving: The Difference Between Storing Systems and Finding Systems
7. Making a Clean-up Plan: Looking Ahead and Liking It
8. Remaining Odds and Ends
Handy Addresses and Tips
References and Recommended Reading
Index
Reviews
'This is a deceptively simple self-help book, covering a many-layered subject. Scattered throughout are exercises, tips and asides which, if judiciously applied, will surely bring about great changes.'
-- Margaret Barty, New Vision, November 2005
'Before you go crashing into that room full of personal treasure, I would recommend taking the time to get hold of a copy of this book and read it. Not only is it a concise plan of how to go about tackling a wide variety of household problems, but it delves into the psychology of why your life may have become cluttered. Read these words of wisdom. This could be the best £6.99 you have ever invested.'
-- Jackie Harris, Worcester Evening News, 6 March 2004
Author
Inge van der Ploeg has worked for many years with "The Housingkeeping Bureau" and "The Efficiency Bureau" in her native Holland, assisting many clients -- both private individuals and professional organizations -- to order their environments more efficiently.
