Reviewed: Organizing Outside the Box

Organizing Outside the Box was written by Hellen Buttigieg and Sari Brandes. The authors have impressive pedigrees, and the book itself was the winner of the 2010 Los Angeles Organizing Awards award for best organizing book. The subtitle is Conquer Clutter Using Your Natural Learning Style and the book does an excellent job of laying out the three major learning styles--visual, kinesthetic and auditory--and giving specific recommendations for motivating each learner to get started and then outlining common organizing problems and solutions for each type.

The book is put together in a simple way, with lots of bulletted lists and not a lot of words on the page. The information is presented so straightforwardly that some readers may wonder if that's all there is to it. Organizing isn't complicated, but our feelings toward it may be. This book sidesteps psychology in favor of practicality; people who want more emotional handholding may do better with a different guide. However, if you are able to implement the extremely practical and well-tested solutions presented in the book, you will very likely find yourself a great deal more organized than you were before you picked it up.

The chapters toward the end of the book on "When Organizing Styles Collide" offer very workable solutions for negotiating organizing peace among families, with your children and in the workplace. As the authors write, "The solution does not have to be complicated." Having some common sense ideas written in book for may be all some families need to make a breakthrough in their lives and to begin to coexist with more care for the other member's learning styles.

All in all, the book is a concise guide to organizing solutions through the lens of learning styles. I'm a visual learner with a strong dose of kinesthetic thrown in for good measure, and I picked up more than one useful bit of information from Organizing Outside the Box.

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Lelah Baker-Rabe is a Los Angeles-based professional organizer. To discuss your organizing needs, call her at 818.269.6671 or email lelah@lelahwithanh.com