The Zen of Organizing

Customer Reviews

In the "Getting Started" section, Leeds prepares you for the journey ahead. Organizing isn't easy even though it's simple. Everyone carries emotional baggage that ties in with the physical clutter in their lives. Prior to accomplishing anything, one must identify goals and challenges and then plan for success. The Zen of Organizing lets you know that you are in for a challenge in putting your life in order. It assures you that you're up to that task by helping you break it down into manageable tasks and providing some exercises geared to establish your motivation.

The main body consists of several chapters with specific advice for dealing with your work space, closets, bathroom, kitchen, common rooms and children's rooms. At each way point, you get a helping of common sense advice as well as deeper insight into why the common sense advice has been so hard to follow before. It's obvious from the stories she tells that Leeds has worked for and with people who have more money than the average reader. The principles she espouses, however, are universal: Eliminate, Categorize, Organize. This stuff works whether you're organizing your villa in Spain or your bachelor pad in Venice. Everyone has stuff. Everyone has issues. If you follow the advice in this book, your stuff and your issues will both become easier to manage.

The spirituality in The Zen of Organizing fits seamlessly into the functionality. It's about getting your life organized which is impossible unless your life can reflect your own inner peace. There is one chapter on Feng Shui which I've always thought of as a load of superstitious hooey. After reading this chapter, I see it as some common sense rules for space management as well as some superstitious hooey. A short chapter can be forgiven and doesn't detract from the clarity of the book as a whole. An important message that spoke to me is where the author says that organization shouldn't be used as a weapon in the relationship wars. You cannot create harmony while destroying someone else's peace. That alone is worth the price of admission.

The Zen of Organizing is well-organized (no surprise) and as profound in its details as it is detailed in its profundity. It lives up to its promise and has helped me create order and peace in my home, career and life. Anybody who is already organized could probably pick up a few pointers here and anybody who isn't already organized needs the kind of help offered in this book. Reading this book is the closest thing to having a personal organizer/spiritual guru/shrink/friend stand by and support you while you get your life together.

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