Houseworks

Oh, wow, this is definitely a keeper and a great household management reference book, hence, not a one time read.It has so many tips, checklists, organizing, cleaning and decluttering plans, it's a real wealth of information on just about any household topic. It even has food storage guidlines for fridge, freezer and pantry, which I find really useful.It is divided into useful chapters on clothing, rooms, surfaces and systems, paper and finances, cleaning and planning your home. It also has forms and lists samples at the end, although every chapter already provides various checklists and to do lists. (I love lists!)I read a lot of books on organizing and I am fairly well organized myself, but this book has something for everyone without getting down unecessarily to 'emotions' (i find it annoying when organizers also try to be therapists). It is practical and immediately applicable.Highly recommended

After reading the glowing reviews, I decided to give this book a try, hoping to glean some new ideas. I found the book very slick and quite hefty, not easy to read or carry around. High quality paper isn't what I'm looking for in a manual about keeping house. I need something I can learn from, mark up, carry around, and generally use as a handbook, rather than a beautiful book I'm afraid to mess up. There might be one or two new ideas here, but I don't remember any. Right now, Houseworks is on my bookshelf, gathering dust.

I got this book because I've been following the author's website and participating in her 2014 Cleaning Grand Challenge. I expected to love the book, and to be able to promote Ms. Ewer to my official Organization Guru. While I think the book is very good, I felt it fell somewhat short of perfection.The author recommends some very good basic principles, and I thought this was the best information in the book:1. Organization is not a decorating scheme, it is a way to make household processes flow smoothly. A lot of organization gurus fail here -- One well-known organizer who shall remain nameless sorts her books by color.. a method that looks pretty, but is basically useless if you want to find anything. Also, this book is not big on product recommendations, and even says that buying organization products should be a last step (and an optional one at that) in organizing a space. I think this is a good thing.2. Items should be easier to put away than to retrieve. Again, a lot of organization methods fail here with elaborate systems that rely on you putting things back just right. She recommends methods where items belong in a certain zone or container, but are considered put away when they are anywhere in that container. In the bookshelf example again (this is my example, not hers), this is the difference between having titles sorted alphabetically, rather than having one shelf for each general category. In the first method, it is easy to retrieve the book, but the system will fall apart if don't put the book right back in its exact slot. With the shelf method, it may take longer to find a particular book on the shelf, but to put the book away, you only need to slap it on the appropriate shelf rather than locate its exact alphabetical spot.3. You should organize your house by activity centers where all the tools you need for that activity are within reach.4. You should establish a household Launch Pad. This is the place where you stick the stuff you need when you leave the house, and also where you process stuff that comes into the house. This is probably my single favorite tip in the book. It prevents everything (coats, backpacks, mail, etc) from just piling up on the nearest horizontal surface to the door. This was the first change I implemented, and it improved my life dramatically.5. You should grade your storage space: A -- for spaces easy to reach, B -- for spaces in which you have to reach, stoop, or bend to obtain items, C -- spaces where you have to get out the step ladder or get on your hands and knees to reach. You want stuff used daily in grade A spaces, stuff used weekly or monthly in grade B spaces, and stuff used once a year in grade C spaces.Now for the stuff that I think could have been better.1. The book is dated -- the last version was 2009. Some things have changed since then. For example, it suggests a physical Household Command center with a binder containing menus, freezer inventory, health records, maintenance records, calendar, to do list, etc. Almost all of these things can be done better with electronic tools now, and almost everyone I know uses smart phones, Outlook, or Google documents to track all this same stuff. Even health records are online now. So, this part seemed really dated. Also dated were the suggestions about a greeting card center (does anyone send physical greeting cards anymore?) and a physical phone call processing center (lots of people don't even have land line phones anymore). Maybe this is a generational thing, but these recommendations stood out to me as being very obsolete.2. A lot of the suggestions in the book seem to assume you are a family with children living in a house with fairly ample storage space, and the main problem is organizing your stuff within your ample space. If you are an apartment dweller with very little space, you would probably be better served by a different book, perhaps one that focuses on learning to live with less stuff, like The Joy of Less by Francine Jay.3. Related to point 2, the issue of simply having too much stuff is not addressed adequately. Houses with less stuff are, by definition, far easier to organize. She touches on this a little bit with dishes. She suggests putting them all in a box, and fetching what you need from the box when you need it. Then, after you wash it, you put it in your usual storage space (shelf or whatever). Then, anything you haven't retrieved from the box after, say, a couple of weeks you can safely get rid of. This is good advice, and I wish she had given more advice of this nature with respect to other aspects of life. Like, for example, how do you go about figuring out how many pieces and of what type do you need in your personal wardrobe? What about linens? How many do you actually need? There are other books on specific issues like this, but it would have been nice to get a little more on this subject.4. Related to point 3, she actually undermines her own message about having less stuff in some cases. Like, for example, she recommends establishing a `clothing library' for children. This is where you get, say, 10 plastic bins, and label them with consecutive sizes. Then, when you see some clothes on sale that are 5 sizes too big for your child, you buy them anyway and file them in the appropriate bin. Then, when the kid reaches that size, you just pull the clothes out of the appropriate bin. This might be pretty good advice for very large families, but I see problems with this idea for your typical 1-3 child family: (a) It assumes you have a lot of storage space (see point 2), (b) Kids have been known to have growth spurts and jump sizes so there is a risk you will never need the clothes you buy in advance, (c) It is recommending buying stuff that you have no immediate need for, which falls smack dab in the middle of my definition of clutter. Another example of this undermining of her own message is in the pantry section, where she describes `beginning' through `advanced' pantry skills. Under advanced pantry skills, she talks about having a 1 year supply of long storage food... I would hazard a guess that most people would define a 1 year supply of food as a hoarding problem, not something desirable to achieve. Besides, LDS-style long storage food pantry keeping is a whole separate specialty topic, which also requires special cooking techniques. Why include it in a general audience book like this? Advice like this detracts from the quality of the book, in my opinion.5. She waters down her book considerably by having sections devoted to cleaning, information about green living, and other side topics. There are far better books on these topics, and it would have been better to just stay focused on her strong area, organization. It waters down the book and takes space that could have been devoted to more detail on organization.Well, anyway, this is what I liked and didn't like about the book. I thought it was good, and it will probably stay on my shelf, but I thought it fell sort of what it could have been.

I was so impressed with mine I bought one for each of my college roommates. We have a reunion every year (and it's been 40 years since we graduated)and we often give each other our favorite product of the previous year--kind of like Oprah! This was it for me this year. I bought six of them!

Just love this book. Had a lot of great suggestion and ideas. I have used several of the recipes and it works great.

I had starting following her website many years ago and I bought the book just to support her endeavors. I owe her that much. I always wanted to be organized and she gives you a lifestyle, not just a checklist. Thanks Cynthia!

Some items have been very basic and kind of a "Duh" moment for me but others have stirred some thoughts and actions that I did not realize were adding to the clutter and disorganization of our family.

Unfortunately , the book is NOT for experienced homemakers like me... may be for beginners... a new bride ...? I did not get anything new from it.So, if you are looking for something advanced, this book is not for u, if u r a beginner, it might be for u...

This is a lovely book for remedial housekeepers. It isn't as in depth as Cheryl Mendelson's "Home Comforts" but it is more geared for the basics and how to establish routines for people new to good housekeeping.