Making Peace With the Things in Your Life: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You and What to Do About It

Rating:
Summary: okay
Review: After recieving Cindy Glovinsky's book as a gift, I was very skeptical. Why would I spend any of my precious time reading a book about dealing with clutter? Who would even write such a thing? But it works! I'm not Martha Stewart, but I do now have a filing cabinet instead of a sea of papers on the floor and I've learned to part with lots of [stuff] that I never really needed. Glovinsky doesn't badger you or try to give you some miracle solution. Just some new ways of thinking about "things" that make life a little easier. Buy it!

Rating:
Summary: Praise from a Professional Organizer
Review: As a professional organizer, I have shelves full of organizing books, but Glovinsky's is the first to consider the problem of disorganization from a psychological perspective. Her unique vantage point as a therapist who is also an organizer provides valuable insights for other organizers, yet is presented in a way that is accessible to anyone wishing to get a grip on clutter. Some people have success molding their lives around a generic how-to system, but many need to know why they are the way they are before they can embrace the change required to get organized. If you need a deeper explanation combined with an empathetic, humorous approach to clearing out your clutter, or if you are an organizer looking for new ways to help clients understand disorganization, I strongly recommend Glovinsky's book.

Rating:
Summary: A fresh perspective on the things/Things in your life!
Review: As Editor-in-Chief of a magazine about getting and staying organized, I read a lot of books on organizing to find good writers. But sometimes books get repetitive. When I read Making Peace with the Things in Your Life, I just had to email the author. What a fresh perspective! This book helps you to differentiate between the things in your life and the Things in your life (when you buy it, you will really get this point). It also helps you to understand the meanings you attribute to your stuff. Not only was there value in this book from my perspective as an editor (I asked her to write an article for the magazine), but I also found gems that helped me to stop and think about my own possessions and those of my family members. For example, I was able to understand why my daughter's room was swamped with paper by examining the meanings she attached to each and every sheet. Soon I was able to help her see the difference between things and Things, and that's just one success story. I loved this book and highly recommend it to anyone, whether you are organized, not so organized, or somewhere in between.

Rating:
Summary: thoughtful, helpful, and persuasive
Review: I'm not surprised this book's receiving consistently high ratings from its readers. It's the most useful book to address the problem of clutter I've read, apart from Julie Morgenstern's Organizing From the Inside Out. What I particularly like is its pace -- Glovinsky doesn't skip through issues, but rather she teases out the implications of our need for posessions in an intelligent prose that reads much more like a series of essays than a "how to." I'm impressed.

Rating:
Summary: thoughtful, helpful, and persuasive
Review: I'm not surprised this book's receiving consistently high ratings from its readers. It's the most useful book to address the problem of clutter I've read, apart from Julie Morgenstern's Organizing From the Inside Out. What I particularly like is its pace -- Glovinsky doesn't skip through issues, but rather she teases out the implications of our need for posessions in an intelligent prose that reads much more like a series of essays than a "how to." I'm impressed.

Rating:
Summary: This book changed my life
Review: It really did. Knowing the "why" that I was doing something really helped to change the habit. And the part where the author says that there is no "Magic System" was perfect!
This book approaches a problem in a counseling manner. And anyone who has been through AA or counseling understands getting to the root of something, in order to make a change.
Frankly, I look at the above negative reviews and see that those people missed the whole point of the book.
No, feeling overwhelmed is not as serious of a problem as drug abuse, but when the author helps you look at the base issues and reasons why you may feel overwhelmed with all the things and things to do in your life, it DOES help you in other areas of your life that are important.
Get this book - it will change your life.

Rating:
Summary: The most insightful book on "clutter" out there...
Review: This book adds the missing ingredient that all of the other organization and "clutter-busting" books were missing--the psychological component!! Not merely a "pop" psychology look at this phenomenon, but a truly insightful and extremely helpful tool to help you find your way out of the mess! Highly recommended...

Rating:
Summary: Okay, but then what?
Review: This book is about the psychology of things - how and why we acquire then, how and why we organize them - or not, and how and why we do or do not discard things.

The author suggests an approach to acquisition, organization and de-acquisition.

Fine. I figured a few things out about my psychology. Get fewer things. Throw more things away. But - the middle step - the organization - is what I'm clueless about.

This book offers few if any concrete hints for organization. Evidently the psychological insight alone is supposed to get you through. Uh, no.

I wish I could return this book. I read it in one night and now it's just another thing to organize.

Rating:
Summary: Total loss
Review: This book may be the most pointless waste of time I've ever read. I blame myself for continuing to read it on the premise that "it can't stay this stupid throughout." It did, at least until I gave up.

This book is not about reconciling the dialectic between materialism and asceticism. It is not even about how to organize your possessions. It is a collection of trite observations along the lines of "Some Things seem to accumulate in piles." Yep, that's as deep as it gets. Add to that some of the most sophomoric and even offensive propositions from the cesspool of pop psychology, such as a definition of autism as "staring at Things for a long time," and you will have a clear understanding of this book without bothering to read it. Move on, pilgrim, before you sink into this vapid quicksand.

Rating:
Summary: Sounds as if she's talking to a first-grader
Review: This book sounded at first as if it were designed for me--for someone with ADHD who has trouble getting rid of clutter. But the tone was so condescending and painfully patronizing I couldn't bear it. Why all the CAPITAL LETTERS? Afraid I WON'T UNDERSTAND? I'm attention-deficit--not STUPID. I felt like I was in KINDERGARTEN. There are some decent tips buried in here, but with all the obnoxious little names like Nancy Neatfreak and pretend aliens, you may want to knock the author in the head before you get to them.