Unclutter Your Life in One Week

I’m reading/skimming several books on organization and time management for a project at work. One that I read all the way through and loved was Unclutter Your Life in One Week by Erin Rooney Doland. The subtitle is “ A 7-Day Plan to Organize Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life!” And it does just that!

I really liked how this book mixed organizing your work and your home in one book. Usually you have to read one book on organizing at work and then one on organizing your home, so it was nice to have an all-in-one type of book. She also cuts through the clutter in her writing and gets straight to the action items. She provides simple, easy to follow steps to uncluttering your life. And she makes it seem like it won’t take too long and gets you motivated to get started, although I haven’t had time to do as much from the book as I would like due to various things going on at work and home and getting ready for a business trip.

I did get my kitchen completely clean and organized, although that was partly due to the fact that we had an ant infestation this week. We’re re-landscaping our front yard and our lawn guy took out all of the flower beds in the front. Even though we have a pest control company come every two months to spray, we had ants make a break for it and head inside. After they came and sprayed again, I took everything out of the kitchen, scrubbed everything down (even the walls!) and then put everything back up. Yuck. To make matters worse, our lawn guy found signs of termites when he was cleaning out the flower beds, and so the pest control company investigated and determined we do have termites and will have to treat that as well. Apparently 70% of homes in Oklahoma and most of the surrounding states get them at some point and there’s not much you can do to prevent it, but it makes me feel like my whole house is gross. I will definitely be implementing the rest of the at home suggestions from the book as soon as I get back from my upcoming trip.

Sorry to get off topic a bit there. Some of the topics covered in the book are things like organizing your files and e-mail, cleaning closets, creating a chore schedule (and I loved that she made that Monday through Friday, no cleaning on the weekends!), tracking productivity, running meetings, cleaning your kitchen and bathrooms, and she included spring and fall cleaning tips. I checked this book out from the library, but it’s one I wish I owned so I could keep referring to it. There are about 50 little yellow sticky tabs throughout the book where I marked things I liked or want to do.

So, if you’re looking for a good book on getting more organized, this is a great choice! She also has a website, unclutter.com. Do you have any getting organized books or resources you enjoy?