Customer Reviews

Eliminate Chaos: The 10-Step Process to Organize Your Home and Life

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a great book, one of the better ones that outlines the CONCISE steps of organizing each part of the house. Because the book is short,you don't get bored. The STEPS she explain are critical because you'll see that most of your time should be spent weeding out things, figuring out what belongs in the room, and little time is spent BUYING organizational tools. Most people just immediately run out to BUY organizational tools thinking that'll do the magic, but this book really shows you that this is the last step, not the first. Also, her stories about her clients are fun to read.

Now, when I watch talk shows on 'closet makeovers', I laugh when I see them look at someone's closet and immediately install a customized system BEFORE they do the weeding out and counting of items!!! What's the point of customizing before you know what you really will be keeping?

I wish there were MORE before and after photos. The photos in the book were tiny and hard to see, and very few.

I also wish she would show pics of more org. tools.

I'm famous for my clutter and every so often I pick up a book on organizing...and give up, frustrated.

Leist's book is different because she offers totally practical solutions that even organizing-challenged people like me can appreciate. She foregoes the simplistic solutions in favor of getting into the big reasons why we have so much clutter. Inspired by this book, I've actually taken a few steps already: I keepp noticing things I'll probably never use again and I've put together a collection for donation.

Highly recommended.

Very practical ideas to organize every room in your home. The before and after pictures were ideal. The author also addresses the need to have so much "stuff" and how to conquer it. An inspiring book!

Easy to read, easy to follow guide. I looked at several books on this subject in a bookstore before I chose this one for its straightforwardness and ease of reading. It has great before-and-after pictures from projects from REAL people with REAL issues. Every area of the home is covered. Great.

It's advertised as a methodical approach to organizing every room of your house. What it turned out to be is mostly examples of the author organizing other people's rooms, none of which are particularly usable in my own situation. She even admits when covering one particularly unusual closet that the readers will probably not be able to use the related chapter.

The one worthwhile thing was a suggestion from her method that you decide on the purpose of the room and what will belong in it before buying any organizing products - I'm guilty of buying organizers in search of a solution. And I got a few ideas from the products used, but actually I could have gotten everything I did from this book by browsing a catalog somewhere.

I also ordered other similar books (more dense and more expensive), but found them to be demotivating because of the effort required. I read a couple of chapters from "Eliminatig Chaos" in an hour, and immediately it clicked in my mind. The next day I spent organizing the kids' room and the home office (after a trip to Ikea). There are plenty of pictures to illustrate the ideas.

Great book! Outlines in ample detail the process of de-cluttering various types of rooms in the house. Most important--get rid of stuff before you put more stuff away!

Eliminate Chaos: The Ten-Step Process To Organize Your Home And Life by Laura Leist is an incredibly useful collection of ideals and innovations for properly organizing an efficient and space-friendly home environment. Drawing upon organizational skills developed through Laura's many years of professional experience, Eliminate Chaos provides readers with a thorough understanding of the procedures for making organization a key priority in the general lifestyle, establishing a home-organization "staging-area", making valid decisions about stuff, categorizing what is kept, making the most of space, and maintaining the new life of cleanliness. Eliminate Chaos is to be given high praise and recommendation as a completely "user friendly" instruction manual for organizing the home through an easy to apply ten step process.

I purchased this book after having the chance to attend an organizing workshop with the author Laura Leist. I had (too many) other books about organizing and clutter that were adding to the chaos in my house, but I decided to give one more book a chance. I'm glad I did! The 10-step plan in this book is simple yet comprehensive enough to really address the problems and challenges I face on a daily basis with all the stuff in my house. The before and after pictures were great, and it was clear that the solutions were based on real situations other people had dealt with. I highly reccomend this book, it helped me so much!

I bought this book for help in decluttering my garage (my car is parked outside and we had one too many ice storms this year). I identified with the case study. What hit home was the cost of disorganization (my windshield cracked under the ice when I was defrosting it. If it had been in the garage I would have saved both time and money). I now am aware of other examples of the cost of disorganization in my life. This concept helped me get to the point of prioritizing organization and setting time aside for it.

I have followed the 10 steps for some lesser projects and they work like a charm! Once it warms up and I have my staging area outside on the lawn, I will tackle the garage. In fact, I am looking forward to it (how weird is that?)

My 83 year old mom is downsizing and asked for me to visit for a week and help. I sent her the book and marked the case study about the older woman downsizing. She liked the book too.