93 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A fun and easy read but not exactly what I anticipated., January 30, 2007
This review is from: Rightsizing Your Life: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most (Paperback)
An upbeat book that goes with the happy house on the cover. The book is organized in three sections: reasons for rightsizing, rightsizing in seven simple steps, and enjoying the results of your rightsizing. The interviews with the people that are preparing to or have already moved are all interesting. However, both the title and the information provided on the back cover of this book are a bit misleading. The subtitle is 'Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most.' The reviews on the back also indicate the book is about simplifying and organizing. While a great deal of the information is applicable, the primary focus is on 'rightsizing' in preparation for a move to a smaller home. The information provided is excellent and while a couple of the families mentioned did add on to their current home, there isn't as much useful information for those of us whose goal is 'rightsizing and simplifying' right where we are. If your primary interest is in simplifying you life and gaining more control over clutter, you may want to borrow a copy first to ensure you will find this book helpful. If, however, you have a move planned in the near future, this is an excellent book for you as it walks you through the process making every effort to ensure a smooth transition.
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136 of 152 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Cluttered prose; aimed mostly at rich folks, February 25, 2007
This review is from: Rightsizing Your Life: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most (Paperback)
I am about halfway through this and all
I can say is: what an annoying book.
Apparently the author is/ was a radio commentator
and journalist. Perhaps the commentator
background gave her the mistaken idea that
she needs to "push" every few words in writing,
the way radio and TV announcers "push"
every few words in their oral reporting.
This results in a book that is loaded with
italics - even in sentences needing no particular
emphasis.
Moreover, her prose is wordy beyond belief..
and she belabors the simplest point.
Here's an excerpt (I will use ALL CAPS
when she used ITALICS):
"So often in my experience with rightsizers I have observed that living with the new reality [of having downsized] sometimes has the effect of eventually reordering a few of their original priorities. The trick here is to grant any partner the dignity to come to his or her own conclusions as to the wisest use of space. If rightsizers can learn to ACCEPT things as they are at the moment and assume that reason will ultimately outseigh nostalgia or angst or a need to "run the show," the person can still save fce if alter ys says "You know, I think I'm ready to donate SOME of those magazines to the library" and isn't made to feel like he's eating crow. The ultimate test will be if both spouses are able to divest themsevles of many of their OTHER possessions that aren't as highly charged. Can they accept the basic premise that psychotherapist and professoinal organizer Cindy Glovinsky proclaims in her book Making Peace with the Things in your Life: "None of us owns a single, solitary thing permanently"? In other words, our possession flow through our lives on a TEMPORARY[italics] basis, on their way to somewhere else after we fall off the perch..." [catmom comment: Yep---definitely got the point---possessions
are temporary... once we're dead, we don't own
them anymore.]
As this excerpt shows, the writing is cluttered,
wordy, full of cliches, repetitive -in short,
distracting. In addition, as one reviewer
has already noted, the book's anecdotes tend
to focus on wealthy people who "rightsized" by selling
huge expensive homes, and using
the money to purchase multiple smaller
homes, French
barges, etc.
The book is pretty useless for the average person trying to figure out how to declutter and
simplify.
I keep hoping there are at least a few practical
tips buried in this morass of verbiage but am
wondering whether I can really stomach reading
the rest of this.
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38 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not for Packrats, February 24, 2007
This review is from: Rightsizing Your Life: Simplifying Your Surroundings While Keeping What Matters Most (Paperback)
As any number of other people today, I've bought into the simplify your life, declutter your home craze. "Rightsizing Your Life" sounded different than the usual advice out there. The problem is that it IS totally different! This book is not for packrats or substandard housewives. This book is for people who are choosing to move from 5400 sq. ft. homes to barges off the French coast with pied-a-terres in San Francisco. Your usual hoarder of cardboard boxes and broken lamps doesn't usually have the opportunity to add 800 sq. ft. additions to their homes in order to accomodate visiting children and grandchildren. Somehow I thought most people looking to declutter were doing it in order to live more comfortably in the space they have. I'm sure this book will be useful to a great many people, but I was looking for a book to help me discard those old Christmas carolers I no longer put out.
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