One Year to an Organized Life: From Your Closets to Your Finances, the Week-by-Week Guide to Getting Completely Organized for Good [Paperback]

There's books to help you get organized, and then there's books to help you get organized- and this book is great! I think what makes it so different than your typical book on organization is that is leads you through the organizational steps and process so well....EVERY WEEK FOR AN ENTIRE YEAR!! And this, I feel, is its main strength. So how does it accomplish the lofty goal of getting one organized? According to the book, the magic formula is as follows:

1) eliminate
2) categorize
and 3) organize!

If it sounds simple, it is- or rather should I say that this book makes it about as simple as it can get. Three steps, eliminate, categorize, and organize- and that's about what you can expect to do for each month of the year for a specific disorganized area, easily broken into down steps, week-by-week. Here's some of the areas of your life the book tackles:

-the kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, attic, the home office and living room
-additionally, the book covers getting organized while traveling, while moving, while entertaining, as well as the busy school time and holiday seasons.

As you can tell, the book is really complete and will guide you to a more organized life, week-by-week for an ENTIRE year. Get it if you're lazy like me and need to be led by the hand. If you can't get past just reading the steps, try The Sixty-Second Motivator. Good luck!

My primary bit of advice for this book...there is no 'look inside' feature on it at this time here on amazon.ca...so head over to amazon.com and look at it there, where there IS a 'look inside' feature on it. Read the excerpt. What you see there is how the book continues, so if you're not feeling inspired or hopeful after reading that, you probably won't get anything out of the rest of the book, either.

I gave this book three stars because for me, it was a one star (totally useless). But at the same time, I feel that for many people, it might be a five star book that will change lives.

So, why is it a one star for ME? It's because it's more like you're being sold a lifestyle than that you're being given organizing tips. The whole time I read, I felt like the author was trying to convert me to a new religion, and I found that very distasteful. The book is also full of personality, and if you LIKE the personality coming across, that's great...but I hated it. One simple example is the fact that the author always capitalizes the word 'soul', no matter where or how she is using it. Such as saying that she put her 'heart and Soul' into a task. I find that kind of thing an embarrassing affectation and it really turns me off. For each month, the author includes an 'affirmation'. April's is: "I honor the body I have been given for my earthly adventure. I keep it clean. I release tension. I relax. I am at peace and all is well."

I really do NOT need that kind of thing. I am not looking for a new lifestyle OR a religion. All I want is tips for how to organize my craft area, which contains so many different sizes and textures of things, from tiny glass beads up to balls of yarn and an anvil, that I can't figure out how to store them in a way that is hidden away neatly yet easy to access so that I remember what I have. That is what I wanted. This is the most highly rated book on organizing that I came across, so I thought it would help me...but it did not. Not one tiny speck. The organizing tips in this book do exist, but they're littered through huge blocks of text and hard to find (kind of disorganized, haha, irony!) And so much of the text was so irritating to me (I found it smarmy, to the point that I felt somewhat nauseated while reading) that trying to find the information that would help ME was a painful task. And I never DID find any information that would help in my situation.

So why am I giving it THREE stars? Because as I mentioned at the beginning, I really do believe that for some people, this book would be amazing...maybe even one of the best things that has ever happened to them. For those who need a REASON to be organized, or motivation/the right mindset to become organized, then this book could well be fantastic, if it suits their personality. The usefulness to me is one star, but I think the usefulness OVERALL, to the world or however I should say it, evens out more in the region of three stars.

So as at the beginning, please...go check the 'look inside' feature on this book on amazon.com and read the whole part that's available. If you like what you see and feel charged up by reading it, GET IT. If you read it and feel vaguely nauseated...skip it, as you will end up putting the book immediately into a 'to give away as quickly as possible' pile, just like I did. (Make sure to click 'surprise me' many times, until new pages stop popping up...what you get at first is half or less than half of what is actually available.)

This book honestly has changed my life. After living in the same (small!) house for 13 years I was drowning in clutter, out of room and entirely lacking the motivation to tackle this problem. Room by room, month by month this book gave me the inspiration and advice I needed to work out storage solutions and get rid of stuff I no longer want or need.

I really connected with the book, as the author recognized that not everyone has giant houses with rooms which can be single-purpose. Also, it really helped me to get rid of things which I was holding on to out of guilt (old presents) or because they held some emotional connection for me. It has helped me to change my relationship with "stuff", reclaim my house and create spaces which reflect and re-inforce my happiness.