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Real Life Organizing by Cas Aarssen
Yes, yet another decluttering read. A _reread_ in fact!
I bought it back in 2017, and I read and reviewed it in 2017:
https://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/1522026.html
I mostly agree with what I wrote at the time.
I’m a lot less skeptical about whether she started out as a “slob”. In the last 6 years, while I haven’t necessarily changed that much in terms of my own orderliness or whatever, I _have_ become much more acutely aware of other people’s presentation to the outside world vs. what’s going on for them in the privacy of their own home. I still don’t _really_ get her butterfly/ladybug/cricket/bee (dragonfly) taxonomy of people and their clutter, but I didn’t even _mention_ it in my previous review and it is absolutely core to making sense of the book.
Books about decluttering — as Aarssen ably notes and describes in some detail! — all have roughly the same toolbox, and while there are tons of tips and tricks out there, only a few of them work for basically everyone. Aarssen’s taxonomy of people and the type of “clutterbug” they are provides a great deal of insight into how the rest of the strategies / tips and tricks will (fail to) work for them. So I’m super glad I reread it, and may have to reread it a couple more times before I really grasp that core idea. I may see if she’s written about that taxonomy in more detail elsewhere, on the off chance that helps me “get” it better.
Also, from the perspective of 2023, Aarssen’s book brilliantly straddles the hinge of 2017ish in decluttering — when it went from an “activity” or series of exercises to a personalized “self-help” approach. She uses her experience helping other people to simultaneously provide a core set of ideas (refactoring!) that are broadly useful, along with a guide to understanding whether or not you and/or your family members should even try to use some of the other ideas out there. (Yes, this paragraph says the same thing the previous paragraph did, but from a different perspective.)
I’ve never been that impressed by Peter Walsh, but Aarssen was, and she got him to do the foreword. I mostly read, and only very occasionally watch video, and Walsh’s primary format was a TV show. It might have been enough different on TV, that watching even a couple episodes would help me get what she saw in what he did.
I bought it back in 2017, and I read and reviewed it in 2017:
https://walkitout.dreamwidth.org/1522026.html
I mostly agree with what I wrote at the time.
I’m a lot less skeptical about whether she started out as a “slob”. In the last 6 years, while I haven’t necessarily changed that much in terms of my own orderliness or whatever, I _have_ become much more acutely aware of other people’s presentation to the outside world vs. what’s going on for them in the privacy of their own home. I still don’t _really_ get her butterfly/ladybug/cricket/bee (dragonfly) taxonomy of people and their clutter, but I didn’t even _mention_ it in my previous review and it is absolutely core to making sense of the book.
Books about decluttering — as Aarssen ably notes and describes in some detail! — all have roughly the same toolbox, and while there are tons of tips and tricks out there, only a few of them work for basically everyone. Aarssen’s taxonomy of people and the type of “clutterbug” they are provides a great deal of insight into how the rest of the strategies / tips and tricks will (fail to) work for them. So I’m super glad I reread it, and may have to reread it a couple more times before I really grasp that core idea. I may see if she’s written about that taxonomy in more detail elsewhere, on the off chance that helps me “get” it better.
Also, from the perspective of 2023, Aarssen’s book brilliantly straddles the hinge of 2017ish in decluttering — when it went from an “activity” or series of exercises to a personalized “self-help” approach. She uses her experience helping other people to simultaneously provide a core set of ideas (refactoring!) that are broadly useful, along with a guide to understanding whether or not you and/or your family members should even try to use some of the other ideas out there. (Yes, this paragraph says the same thing the previous paragraph did, but from a different perspective.)
I’ve never been that impressed by Peter Walsh, but Aarssen was, and she got him to do the foreword. I mostly read, and only very occasionally watch video, and Walsh’s primary format was a TV show. It might have been enough different on TV, that watching even a couple episodes would help me get what she saw in what he did.