Organizing from the Inside Out, Second Edition: The Foolproof System For Organizing Your Home, Your Office and Your Life - Softcover

Morgenstern, Julie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805075895 ISBN 13: 9780805075892

Publisher: Holt Paperbacks, 2004

Synopsis

The New York Times bestselling guide to putting things in order. Put America's #1 organizer to work for you.

Getting organized is a skill that anyone can learn, and there's no better teacher than America's organizing queen, Julie Morgenstern, as hundreds of thousands of readers have learned. Drawing on her years of experience as a professional organizer, Morgenstern outlines a simple organizing plan that starts with understanding your individual goals, natural habits, and psychological needs, so that you can work with your priorities and personality rather than against them. The basic steps-Analyze, Strategize, Attack-can be applied to any space or situation.

In this thoroughly revised edition, Morgenstern has incorporated new information in response to feedback from her clients and audiences. These changes include

- new chapters on organizing photographs, handbags, briefcases, and travel bags
- an expanded program for organizing your kitchen
- a new guide to getting started
- a guide to taming time and technology
- a fully updated resource guide

So whether it's a refrigerator cluttered with leftover mystery meals, a generation's worth of family photographs, or the challenge of living or working with a disorganized person, Julie Morgenstern will show you how to handle it all.

About this title

Review

It's about time! Julie Morgenstern has written an organizing book that covers a new way of looking at the task of organizing effectively without labeling or blaming the person behind the lack of organization. Rather, she says, people who don't organize just never learned how to organize, through no fault of their own--after all, it's not a skill that's taught in school. That said, she gets down to work helping you figure out an organizing system that will really work for you, not a system based on cookie-cutter filing concepts or special storage units.

Morgenstern's "from the inside out" system begins by laying out the possible reasons for a failure of organization: technical errors (like having a complex organizing system that breaks down), external realities (like not enough space for your belongings), and psychological obstacles (like fear of failure--or success). Then, her Analyze and Strategize steps help create a plan of action based on your needs and goals, and the brief chapter called "Attack: Getting the Job Done" offers basic ideas for making space. The largest section of the book, "Applying What You've Learned," addresses the specifics of organizing workspaces, home offices, living spaces, and storage areas. Each section has a "How Long Will It Take?" box that gives a realistic time estimate, and Morgenstern's "Julie's No-Brainer Toss List" for each area gives the permission and encouragement that most of us have been waiting for to get rid of things we'll never use again. The section at the end, "Tackling Time and Technology," is worth its weight in DayTimers and PalmPilots. Whatever your organizing issues are, you're not a hopeless case, and you don't need special equipment--just a little understanding of the problem and a willingness to plan before diving in.

From the Inside Flap

Praise for author Julie Morgenstern:

"If I had had Julie Morgenstern's tips on how to organize my workload and prioritize my days, balancing my growing business and family life would have been much easier."
-Lilian Vernon, Chairman and CEO, Lilian Vernon Corporation, on Organizing from the Inside Out

"Julie's tips on organizing really work. She transformed my office from a 'disaster area' to a livable, functioning workplace. I can actually find things now!"
-Spencer Christian, Good Morning America

Edition details

• Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0805075895
• ISBN 13: 9780805075892
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 336