The Declutter Challenge: A Guided Journal for Getting your Home Organized in 30 Quick Steps by Cassandra Aarssen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a guided journal. You will get out of it what you put into it by writing your reflections on the questions, suggestions, and do-it-now tasks.

The title says 30 Quick Steps but I need more than 30 days of 15-minute tasks to do what must be done to my stored sentimental items that I kept for my hobby of writing family history and genealogy, my hobby of organizing photos into digital copies that are tagged with the names of the people in the photos with the goal of making photo books, and my hobby of reading. I am making daily progress to reduce space these items have used in the past to make room to expand the storage for the art hobbies I had time to explore during the 2020 pandemic.

This book is helping me build on what I used from the information with Marie Kondo. I was really stuck when the category came to Sentimental and I stored too much stuff in my organized hobby closet and organized garage shelves. Other family members do not share my hobby of genealogy and my memories attached to what I stored. The time to declutter these totes is sooner rather than later. The time to organize with the goal of preparing the collection for an appropriate family history archive is sooner rather than later.


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The Clutter Connection: How Your Personality Type Determines Why You Organize the Way You Do by Cassandra Aarssen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I borrowed this ebook on the Hoopla app from my local library after I finished reading Aarssen's Real Life Organizing. Most of the information is the similar.
I like the emphasis she puts on how to live with/compromise with different clutterbugs in the same household or same workplace.
I need the emphasis she puts on overcoming perfectionism in order to get something done and make some progress. I am currently working on finding homes for projects that gained a higher priority during more time at home during a pandemic, and also micro-organizing what had been macro-organized so that non-essential items may be donated or discarded.

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Real Life Organizing: Clean and Clutter-Free in 15 Minutes a Day by Cassandra Aarssen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I found this at the library after watching the 4-episode HGTV series Hot Mess House hosted by this author. I hoped for more information about the ways to display and store some art supplies I am currently using during this Pandemic. What I learned is she recommends for this Bee not to have more than 3 projects going at a time! NO! But I need this stuff, or I MIGHT need it someday-just like I already had enough art supplies to work on "someday" projects while quarantined when retail stores were closed.
I use the form on page 43 to help me think through this plan of attack: I also am a Ladybug who had sufficient totes to macro-organize my art supplies, if only those were not full of Sentimental Clutter I moved three years ago and kept stored on shelving in the garage. That location might be used for newer Sentimental Clutter/"Projects I got stuck on" so that my art supplies may be stored closer to where I work on a current project.
The book includes a link to her website where there are some free and some items available for sale. I downloaded and printed the form from page 43 plus a page titled, Current Projects which has room for 26 projects--Now that it closer to what this Bee is comfortable with. If you think I am not a Bee, look at the 13 books on my Currently Reading shelf. If you think I am not a Ladybug, look at the 548 books on my Want to Read shelf.
Five stars for being the book I needed RIGHT NOW!


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