A Review of Making Peace with the Things in Your Life by Cindy Glovinsky
Topic
An organized guide that offers the reader new insights into people and Things,
as well as suggestions for developing a more clutter-free lifestyle. By the end of this book , readers should have been able
to free themselves from clutter by having mastered new organizing skills based on the understanding of our relationship with
Things.
Reviewed by Liana Metal
MAKING PEACE WITH THE THINGS IN YOUR LIFE
By Cindy Glovinsky, M.S.W, A.C.S.W.
St Martins Griffin, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, 2002
Paperback, ISBN 0-312-28488-8, U.S. $ 14.95,CAN $ 21.95, 304 pp
Highly Recommended.
Cindy Glovinsky, a psychotherapist, professional organizer, author, and public
speaker whose insights help relieve others from the anxiety, stress, and overwhelm resulting from chronic clutter, is also
the founder of Fresh Start Organizing, an organizing consulting business located in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
There are many books in the market on the subject of getting organized that
give us suggestions on how to best store our goods or arrange our closets, but this book is unique in the way it deals with
the problem of clutter.
MAKING PEACE WITH THE THINGS IN YOUR LIFE is not just another book of How-to
solutions, but rather a journey through lifes experiences and the residue they leave behind in the form of both emotional
and physical clutter. The author focuses on the internal issues of clutter, the emotional attachments to clutter and finally,
how we can make peace with all the things cluttering our lives.
Packed with reflective questions which help readers to evaluate habits and
understand the underlying reasons why they have trouble with things, this book makes them become conscious of habits and feelings
that may have been buried for years.
Did your parents reward you with things?
Do you feel ashamed by the number of things you have?
Do you often put things someplace temporary that turns out to be permanent?
These are only some of the questions the readers will find in the book.
There are four sections in all, each one dealing with the analysis of all
the pros and cons of our relationship with things and then providing practical solutions to the problem. It starts with Rethinking
Things, where the readers are helped to rethink their concept of Things. ...the first step in resolving the Thing issue is
to recognize that, for you, it IS an issue. For someone else- even someone much messier than you are- it may not be, but its
an issue for you because it BOTHERS you, the author says.
You and Your THINGS: Taking Inventory comes next, guiding you through a systematic
inventory of your Thing habits and Thing feelings.
Why THINGS Keep overwhelming you is section three . It describes possible
causes of Thing problems together with suggestions for dealing with them. Cindy Glovinsky advises:
Make homes for all your possessions as near as possible to where you use them
Keep your possessions as minimal and as low maintenance as possible.
Accept the fact that YOU CANNOT HAVE AS MANY THINGS AS PEOPLE HAVE WHO ARE
NOT SPACE POOR.
Section four is What to Do About THINGS. Here the readers will put what they
have learned into action. ONE THING AT A TIME, the author says, means doing something with your eyes and with your mind. You
must, first of all, stop looking at too many Things at the same time. And the author concludes: In the final analysis, the
best things in life are not Things but moments. No sane person would think of sacrificing moments with loved ones, ...for
the sake of mere Things-or so it seems.
The author emphasizes words and phrases throughout the book by putting them
in all caps in order to help chronically disorganized people who have attention problems and need more intense stimuli to
catch their attention.
At the end of the book , there is an appendix including Cindy Glovinskys website:
www.freststartorganizing.com
Here the readers can find articles, links, resources and info about Cindys
organizing business , Fresh Start Organizing, as well as information about how to order this book.
There is also a list of Resources for Help with Organizing, such as the
Obsessive-Compulsive disorder Foundation, and the Simple living/volunteer
opportunities list packed with websites and other info.
There is a Sources section as well, offering more info and a Further Reading
section on page 277.
MAKING PEACE WITH THE THINGS IN YOUR LIFE is a highly informative and useful
book that it is not meant to replace the externally focused organizing books that you may already have but to enable you to
make better use of them after rethinking every aspect of you and Things, the author says. It offers the reader invaluable
info and practical advice on how to get rid of clutter-chaos that pests most of us.
The book caters for Therapists, stress-suffering patients, and a wider audience
- all of those who feel that they need a more organized lifestyle. It is accessible to both chronically disorganized people
and everyone else who is curious to find out why they are messy. Cindy Glovinskys style is supportive and friendly and the
book is easy to read as well as enjoyable.
Cindys articles on organizing have been published in various papers such as
the Washtenaw PARENT and the Naponews, and Emma Jackson, a reporter of The Ann Arbor News ,has commended on Cindys work in
a full page article of hers.
For more info on Cindys workshops and keynote programs call 1-888-68-impact
or
630-377-8101 or visit
www.Doitwithimpact.com
Related titles
Five Days to an Organized Life by Lucy Hedrick, Dell, 1990
Conquering Chronic Disorganization by Judith Lolberg, Squall Press, 1998-
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