Book Review: The Quick-Fix Home Organizer, by Emilie Barnes.

The Quick-Fix Home Organizer, by Emilie Barnes, published by Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon. 2008.

This book is an attempt to look at organizing from the perspective of Christianity and Bible teachings. It is structured as little self-contained paragraphs that are easy to get through and easy to understand.

My biggest beef about this book is that it seems scatterbrained. It is structure of little self-contained paragraphs makes it seem shallow. Some of the paragraphs have a whole bunch of advice all squished together. This means that none of the individual bits get to be explained and explored. While the title says the book is supposed to be “quick fix”, but it seems too much like the author didn’t work very hard to distill the strongest ideas into the smallest space. I admit that I couldn’t finish reading this book.

The thoughts are good, but some seem to repeat. Other ideas seem to be in the wrong place, which indicates that the author didn't use an outline during the writing process. For instance, p69 “design secrets” in the organizing half seems to belong better to the second half of the book about decorating. I would suggest that to prepare for her second edition, Emilie Barnes should try to make sure all the subtitles for her paragraphs exactly describe what’s in the paragraph and then organize those paragraphs by topic. This would go a long way toward getting rid of redundancy, and creating a logical flow.

Barnes also does not give enough attention to the consistency of her message. For example, on p62 she says not to worry about tomorrow. Yet this strikes me as contradictory in a book about quick organization fixes. Part of organizing means planning, which means we have to think about tomorrow, especially if we are quickly updating our calendars. This needs some deeper elaboration so that we as readers can see how these ideas fit together.

There is a lot of process-focused instruction, but not much discussion of general principles that can be used to guide in a variety of situations, and there is no working through the many mental blocks a disorganized person has to deal with to become more organized.

For a faith-based book, I think it could be bolder and use scripture to back more things up.

This book is for people who will read one page a day. People who read straight through a book all at once should look elsewhere. I give this book a C-.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I have not received any compensation for writing this post. I have no material connection to the brands, products, or services that I have mentioned. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”