Customer Reviews

Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As a reviewer previously noted, there really isn't anything new here. But like a chef who takes ingredients we are well familiar with and combines them to give us a new experience, so too does Maxwell. There are the little gimmicks--calling people warm and cool, talking about the house like a body when he could just say he's writing about attending to repairs (bones), arranging and organizing the stuff in your space (breath), figuring out the functions of each room (head) and decorating (heart). But this is not a meal of last night's leftovers. Instead it is packaged into another gimmick: the eight week cure. There's a lot to do in your eight weeks: and the work seems unbalanced. It starts out slowly (throwing out one thing, making lists) and ends slowly (preparing for a party) but in the middle there's almost an impossible amount of things to do. But it's all laid out. There are worksheets and practical tips to begin. Maxwell has taken all the steps to transforming a living space and laid them all out sequentially. This book is about more than just fixing up your place however: Maxwell aims to change and enrich your experience of your home. And that's the spice that makes the book worth consuming.

This book is also something else. It's a primer for a web site and blog. It sets out the vocabulary and explains the aims of hundreds of people who have already participated in the first on-line cure. Like Marla Cilley's Sink Reflections, the book functions as a portal to the collective on-line experience. There are no lush photographs in the book.They are on the web site.

More than anything, though, Maxwell writes his prose well and in such a way that one feels inspired to tackle transforming one's home and experience in it. I'm not in a small apartment in the city---but a small house in a city whose burbs are ever expanding outwards. I don't need to start cooking at home--as he recommends--but taking those wonderful morning baths he advocates. It'll be a challenge to implement the cure for my home and it will take longer than eight weeks. Nonetheless, he has inspired me to do all he counsels and for that reason I recommend the book.

Unlike a lot of other books about design and interior spaces, this one doesn't give you photos and examples of what you can do with the space... it really helps you evaluate what it is you feel/have with your living space and steps to take to make it into the space you feel better living in. It's as insightful into your self as it is where you live.

While I didn't dislike the book with quite the venom of other reviewers, I do understand their frustrations. I did find the tone a little off-putting, but I decided to put those feeling aside and see if the book had anything useful to offer.

It does and it doesn't. Like many design/decorating book it suffers from a lack of realistic understanding of its audience. Let's face it, anyone seeking design advice and is only ponying up 14 bucks, probably isn't the same kind of person who would spend 3000.00 on a couch.

still there is some excellent advice for clearing cluttering and making your home more of a refuge. And for the people that didn't enjoy the book, you can just toss it, sell it or give it away (which is what the author recommending doing with books you don't love.)

Bottom line: it can get you motivated to live more simply and if you can ignore the classist attitudes about what kind of decor best suits a home and how NYC centric the book is you might be able to find a few bits of advice worth taking.

Its hard to find books that are accessible and inspire you to find your own aesthetic (rather than imitate the authors). In many ways this is a very gentle and non-judgemental book - its not flashy, hasn't got photos, but it gets the job done. My apartment is coming together beautifully.

And the associated website www.apartmenttherapy.com is great - and provides ongoing inspiration and support as I find new ways to make my apartment into the home of my dreams.

Thanks to Max, I entertain constantly now!

There are so many books to choose from when wanting to fix up your home. But this book really gets to the heart of what our spaces are all about - they're about us. I don't think there's much psycho-babble at all; I think this guy knows what he's talking about. It's clear, concise, funny at times, heart-warming. It has true stories of real people he's worked with and worksheets for the rest of us to fill out so we can benefit from his knowledge.

I also found his website, apartmenttherapy.com, really helpful - it's a daily digest of ideas, news and forums about the home.

I think I'll order a few copies as gifts for friends who are struggling with their homes, like I was.

I've been interested in decorating for a long time, but now find a new approach in several books by design psychologists. House Thinking by Gallagher and Some Place Like Home by Israel are examples of this. Apartment Therapy exhorts readers "to heal their apartment, heal themselves, in gentle prose and feng-shui-like exercises."
The advice offered should work equally well for houses as for apartments. The book doesn't suggest expensive remodeling like some books do. It helps you work with what you have and make it fit your personality. There is emphasis on reducing clutter since apartment space is so precious.
I'll be looking at my home with new eyes now.

This won't be the only decorating book you ever need -- but it may be the decorating book you need after reading all the others.

Conventional decorating books provide plenty of fantasy fodder. This book provides a concrete eight-week plan for turning a dissatisfying apartment into an inviting home. The emphasis is not on this year's styles in drapes, on rearranging the furniture with the sofa at an angle, on how to "style" a table vignette with clever flea market finds, or even on how some kicky mid-century modern accessories will punch up your home.

Instead, it's primarily about analyzing how you live in your home and taking orderly steps to make it a more satisfying environment. The emphasis on apartments puts a focus on decluttering, as well as on breaking the pattern of "it's just a place to sleep and shower."

If you've read every design psychology book on the library shelves, you won't be bowled over by extensive new material -- but you may be motivated to muck out the back bedroom because Maxwell makes it so simple and satisfying.

While I always linger over the home decor books, there has yet been one that is down to earth and which I've actually wanted to READ. I picked this book up in the store, started reading and finished it in two days. Apartment Therapy weirdly combines the best of both worlds, true stories about others struggling with their decor and solutions that you can put to work immediately by yourself. The author definitely hits hard on the therapy side at times, but I found this refreshing. It also got me motivated and going to work on my home for the first time in over 12 months.

This book is so fun to read and so motivating. It gets you to look at your home differently and gets you working in little ways to make it what you really want. It is great at getting you to organize your stuff. It is hard to decide whether to finish the chapter or start putting things in the outbox, or the out basement as I call it. The blog is so interesting and helpful. Anytime I am wondering what I should do or what might be in the realm of possibility, I just go out and see what others have already figured out on the blog. It is a great resource for places to buy things or to see photos of what others have done.I have already cleaned out three closets, painted, and reconstructed those closets to glorious results. I began working on redoing my kitchen on my own, it is going well, the kitchen does not look the same. This book really got me organized and thinking until I just have to do it. Seriously buy this book.

Much more than a mere decorating book, this book will change the way you view home organization. It actually changed the way I look at my home.