Easy Home Organizer: 15-Minute Step-by-Step Solutions (Hardcover)

by Vicki Payne (Author), Mickey Baskett (Producer)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Are things at home out of hand? Is the thought of putting things in order just…overwhelming? With these simple, quickly implemented solutions, life can become less stressful—and the messy habits of a lifetime will disappear along with the chaos. The focus is on the little things that make a big difference—like not having to search for the car keys at the last minute—and the book is as organized as the house will be when you’re through: it begins with advice on assessing the accumulated junk and eliminating the excess, and moves on to shopping for containers, applying clutter strategies, labeling jars and boxes, and creating a proper place for everything, room by room. The ideas are smart and attractive!

Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Sterling (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 140272442X
• ISBN-13: 978-1402724428
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #914,253 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT..But a Few More Pictures Would Have Been Helpful!!, May 3, 2007

By	Mom with Teenagers (Chicago) - See all my reviews

I received this book today and sat down and read it cover to cover! It was very easy reading and helpful in many areas. My only suggestion would be additional pictures in some of those areas that most of us struggle with. For example, on page 57, the author makes suggestions for storing lids for pots and pans, as well as plastic storage containers. The idea "might" be good, but a picture would have been very helpful for this unusual suggestion. Instead, there are 3 pictures extolling the virtues of installing sliding shelves to store pots and pans (without lids!) Another place pictures would have been helpful is on page 72. The author suggests installing an extension rod or pot rack a few inches from the closet ceiling to hang purses. It is unclear how this would work - a picture would have been worth a 1000 words! Other than a few more pictures that would have been helpful, this book is GREAT! I would recommend it for anyone looking for additional and creative ways to control the everyday clutter!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Pretty pictures, but not much else..., June 24, 2008

By	AkS "Windy City Reader" (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews

15 minutes is all it took me to skim through the book! The author has very general ideas and unless you're completely starting out on a space of your own, you already employ most of these anyways. The photos are nice, as is the general layout of the book. But I found it short on actual material. This one is better loaned out from the library.

I recommend instead: Organizing from the Inside Out, second edition: The Foolproof System For Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life,
Sink Reflections, Martha Stewart's Homekeeping Handbook: The Essential Guide to Caring for Everything in Your Home

1.0 out of 5 stars Fails to go much beyond common sense, December 2, 2008

By	Amitropa "pogalo" (Harrisburg, PA) - See all my reviews

I'll get right to the point: there isn't a lot in this book that you aren't already doing if you have a grain of common sense. Most people with difficulty organizing their space have problems that this book doesn't address. The "solutions" shown assume you have plenty of space and plenty of money to buy all sorts of things. If this is the case, you probably have a housekeeper to straighten up your house!

I'll give just one example of the author's cluelessness, and you can extrapolate from it. The section on organizing your home office shows a large room with an expensive-looking piece of furniture full of shelves, drawers and cubby holes, and a single computer monitor sitting atop a lonely, gleaming expanse of desk. What world do these people live in? My home office contains four computers, printers, scanners, fax machines, routers, CPUs and a veritable jungle of cords and wires. The author has no suggestion as to what I might do with these. Her advice is: "acknowledge technology" and protect your stuff from power surges. What does that have to do with organizing your space? What does the spotless and nearly empty space in the picture have to do with the home offices most of us use?

Other advice such as "keep track of important papers" (duh!) and "recycle and clear out the clutter" are equally useless. The author evidently feels her readers are so stupid they must actually be told to "choose a space" for their home office - otherwise we might just scatter it idly around the house, or possibly in other people's houses.

I could go on but I think you get the point. If you really have no common sense, and think this book might help you, I suggest you borrow it from a library - or ask any passerby to help you organize your home. I guarantee they'll have more ideas than are in this book.