Customer Reviews

Outwitting Housework: Brilliant Tips, Tricks, and Advice on Housekeeping . . . and Life

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I just wanted to tell you that I had sworn off reading any more organizational books until I saw the cover of your book, Outwitting Housework. It was TOO funny!!! I had to see what you had to say, and I'm glad I grabbed your book. I've read a large number of organizational books over the years, in a continual search for a way of approaching housework that I could do. I've taken ideas from many people, from the Sidetracked Home Executives all the way to the Fly Lady and back. What I eventually learned about myself over these years was that I had a chronic illness, inherited from my family, that keeps me short on energy and ability to handle too much stimulus/stress, even with meds. Recently I told my husband, "I think that's the last organizational book I'll read." (It was Doing Housework with Kids or something along those lines.) I was tired of reading about and understanding things I could not physically or emotionally accomplish. Enter your book. The gem I gleaned from it is your weekly schedule (floors on Monday, bathrooms on Friday, etc.). It was the first reasonable list (very nicely pared down) for weekly tasks that I have come across in 23 years! I ran at it two weeks ago, and held up through Wednesday (not bad for me!). This past week has been a blur, but I have kept elements of your suggested weekly schedule going (managed to do 7 loads of laundry in seven days, kept the dirty dishes going into the dishwasher and not neatly rinsed and stacked on the counter). My husband even said, "The kitchen has been looking so nice!" For the first time I feel like I have a list that I can work on, tailor to my needs (perhaps even do it over a two-week time period), and it just might work! I've posted it inside one of my kitchen cupboard doors (another of your tips) and I think I will keep checking it, adjusting it, poking away at it, and tweaking it until it fits. Thank you for sharing it in your book. I'd welcome any other ideas you might have for the energy-compromised and I'll probably be checking through your book, Outwitting Stress next. Many thanks. Valerie F.

I, too, have read tons of organization/beating housework/live a simpler, more streamlined life kinds of books. They all blur together after a while. This one is different because it really helps. It is practical and realistic and avoids the cutesy, the tricksy and the list-of-tips approach.
If you're overwhelmed with work and family concerns, you don't need someone's housekeeping psychobabble, and I just could not stand another cleverly named "method." Those of us who are in over our heads need direct help and this book gives it. The writer doesn't dumb things down, and she has a great sense of humor, but she does make recommendations that make sense. I'm not sure why I thought yet another deal-with-housekeeping book would be any different from all the rest, but I'm glad I gave this one a chance. I've had to buy my own copy because the library told me they would no longer let me keep renewing the one I borrowed from them!
My one little concern is that this writer is in love with PineSol. On her say-so, I've bought a couple of bottles of the stuff and I am really put off by the chemical smell and the chemical contents. A better alternative is the recommendations for cleaners found in Deirdre Imus' book Green This!