If I Could Just Get Organized! Home Management Hope for Pilers and Filers [Paperback]

Karen Jogerst (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 30, 1999

If I Could Just Get Organized! It's the heart's cry of every busy homemaker juggling the diverse needs of a family in today's world. For years, all of Karen Jogerst's best efforts to get organized failed until she discovered the differences between home management styles-- pilers and filers.

Are you a filer? Do you need a place for everything and everything in its place?

Or, are you a piler? A person who has anything and everything in a precarious pile?

With comfortable candor and side-splitting humor, If I Could Just Get Organized! provides pilers with practical, realistic, and flexible guidelines for organizing a home and managing a family. Chapters include information on personal management styles, piled systems of management, proven techniques for conquering clutter, household organization room by room, the "drop and shop" method of house cleaning, advice on ordering personal and family priorities, tips on how to motivate your family to work together, strategies for paper training paper monsters, and more!

If I Could Just Get Organized! encourages homemakers to let go of perfection while providing them with an effective means to find the floor!

Editorial Reviews

Review

...the book is wonderful! ... I expected it to be humorous and helpful, but I didn't expect to laugh so hard that I frequently had to set the book down so I could just laugh out loud, wiping tears of mirth from my eyes, as my bewildered family stared at me like I'd lost my mind! I expected Karen's piler-filer book to be helpful, but never in my wildest dreams did I expect to have both my hall closet and bedroom closet organized completely within two days of reading the book. It was amazing! My husband and children have found the ideas that I've implemented from the book to be sensible, easy to follow, and even fun! -- Deborah Taylor-Hough, author of Frozen Assets: How to Cook for a Day and Eat for a Month and editor of Simple Times On-line Magazine

About the Author

Karen Jogerst is a freelance writer whose humorous and practical home management workshops on piling and filing methods of organization have made her a popular speaker at support groups, conventions, and churches throughout the Northwest. She's the former editor of Rubies in the Rough Magazine, and a regular columnist for Simple Times On-line Magazine. She and her husband, Alan, have three children. The Jogersts make their home in Manhattan, Montana.

Product Details

• Paperback: 170 pages
• Publisher: Rubies Pub (May 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967211603
• ISBN-13: 978-0967211602
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,821,352 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

58 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Highly Recommended for those struggling with messy homes!, January 21, 2001

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: If I Could Just Get Organized! Home Management Hope for Pilers and Filers (Paperback)

I own many organization books and implemented their strategies only to fail miserably a few months later. Why? Because I'm a Piler - I have piles all over the house, on every flat surface imaginable. Ironically, I KNEW what was in those piles. Karen's book helped me to realize that I needed to work with my natural instinct to "pile". Her book is delightfully funny, and at the same time, uncanny because she described me perfectly (my husband says that Karen and I were "twins seperated at birth"). The book will show you the difference between a Piler (a person who battles with chronic piles) and a Filer (Martha Stewart-types), how to organize each room, how to sift through clutter without getting bogged down, how to handle paperwork, cooking, doing chores, and holidays. I had already been doing some of the things she suggested, but feeling like a failure because "it wasn't the way Emilie Barnes does it." She validated my successes. PLEASE get this book if you are the type of person who has trouble keeping up with calendars & planners, live by "out of sight, out of mind" (think of those "science projects" lurking in the back of the fridge), have piles on every flat surface in your home, have "Laundry Mountain", don't mop floors, clean toilets & tubs until you "see a ring", always late when sending cards, letters, bills, have rolls of undeveloped film, etc. My piles are now contained, and I can easily locate things when I need them. Karen gave me HOPE and appreciation for my differences, instead of feeling like a failure for not being able to "keep up" with all the lists and schedules, like my "cleanie counterparts". You will enjoy her sense of humor, too. Thanks, Karen!

52 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Easy Reading, Great Ideas to use with a Busy Family., November 6, 1999

By 

Kay Baltz ([e-mail]) (Wet Western Washington) - See all my reviews

This review is from: If I Could Just Get Organized! Home Management Hope for Pilers and Filers (Paperback)

This book is wonderful! It is like sitting down and talking with the author over a cup of tea... except the author is not there in person. But the ideas! Wow! So many simple to implement ideas that make sense, if only I had thought of them first! One of the ideas I tried out... which was hard to do, as I have been a preschool teacher and believe everything should be sorted carefully and put away with like items... well, I tried the method of containing piles within a clear bin for my boys. It was amazing! They didnt care if the army guys, the super heros, and the cars were all mixed up or not! They really do dig through the stuff to find what they are looking for, if they can see the pile to start with! That idea alone has saved me hours of sorting! I highly reccomend this book to anyone who has a home, and a family and would like to have a life besides stepping over piles or sorting and putting away for hours on end! Great book, Great story besides!

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful. Humorous. Practical. Nearly miraculous for me!, July 25, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: If I Could Just Get Organized! Home Management Hope for Pilers and Filers (Paperback)

Is the author a mind reader? How did she know exactly what my kitchen cupboards looked like?! It was great to read a book that had me laughing (instead of crying!) about my personal organizational style. I always thought I was just an unorganized person since I could never get any of the usual home organization systems to work for me (ie: notebooks, file cards, etc.). Nothing helped much, and sometimes just the attempt to get more organized was often depressing. Well, after reading this book, I feel I have hope! The author understood how my mind worked, helped me laugh at myself (and my piles throughout the house!), and taught me that being "differently" organized isn't wrong--just different. If you've tried EVERYTHING and nothing's worked, try reading (and applying) this helpful and humorous book.