The Art of Organizing Anything: Simple Principles for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life: Simple Prinicples for Organizing Your Home, Your Office, and Your Life [Paperback]

I'm definitely the right person to review this book, since I'm considered an authority on organization. Well, by me, not by other people, but I do own an extensive library on the subject.

Truth to tell, I'm not so much an organizer as I am a collector, for which I offer my garage in evidence. But it's not such good evidence as it was, because Maggio's book inspired me to clean it out, and recently I set a new personal record by actually reaching the back wall without tripping over anything.

When I got The Art of Organizing Anything, I looked at the back cover to see what sort of puffery the publisher was guilty of: "The first organizing system that can be customized to fit YOUR lifestyle."

As it turned out, this turned out to be a remarkable example of a publisher understating the value of a book. Publishers usually use the back cover to offer up a cosmic paean of joy over the appearance in the world of their book, followed by worshipful recommendations by three wise men. But Maggio's book really lives up to the publisher's promise. After I read it, I read it again to make sure I hadn't missed anything; and then I read it again to put squiggly lines in the margins, and page numbers inside the front cover, so that I could find the most useful things. Sometimes I was saying under my breath, "Please, please let the whole world learn this," as when Maggio recommends giving consumable gifts. If you don't understand this now, you will when each gift comes to represent one more thing you have to store. All old people learn this the hard way. Not that I myself am old, I'm just enjoying an extensive middle age.

But let's stay with a few of her recommendations that I eventually learned but wish I could have known at birth: "Before responding to any request, tell the person that you'll get back to them." You remember all those times you let yourself be pressured into something you didn't want to do? "I'll get back to you" trumps the pressure-tactics of your friends and colleagues. You then make your decision without the distraction of all the whimpering and begging.

And how do you say no? "It is rarely helpful to give a reason, no matter how sound your reason may be." Salesmen love people who give reasons. "You can't afford it? This gimcrack will last three hundred years, and pro-rated over that period, its cost is only thirty-five cents a day! You can't afford thirty-five cents?" Maggio points out that any reason you offer can be argued with, so you need simply to repeat your refusal. If they have a hard time understanding it, I sometimes point out that my response doesn't come with an explanation, or even that the manual for it is online.

One brusque and clueless review of this book says that the material in it is already in other books. The author of that review has certainly not read those other books and probably hasn't read Maggio either, who actually has many new recommendations. But how useful could a book on organizing be if it avoided telling you anything you could find somewhere else? If all such books did that, you'd have to buy each and every one to get an overview of the subject.

And even when Maggio offers up old recommendations, she does so with a remarkable thoroughness and thoughtfulness. I had to learn the hard way to keep a trip-list on the computer, with everything on it that I might need to take with me. Not surprisingly, Maggio recommends this too, but she gives a three-page list as an example, so that you can simply copy the items that pertain to you. This is way better than taking your cell phone along on an extensive trip and forgetting the charger.

I even bought a second copy of Maggio's book, just for lending to friends who expressed interest. I don't lend out my original copy. I didn't want to take a chance on losing all my notes, in case middle age ever ends and I get old and forgetful.

I consider myself somewhat organized, but this book was full of new ideas for me! Plus, I actually laughed out loud a couple times. Organizing isn't always easy!

This book was a waste of money. If you are even marginally organized, you already do everything she recommends. Only for someone who is a total mess!