{"id":1070,"date":"2012-05-30T19:03:26","date_gmt":"2012-05-31T00:03:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/?p=1070"},"modified":"2012-05-29T22:44:43","modified_gmt":"2012-05-30T03:44:43","slug":"book-review-making-peace-with-the-things-in-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/2012\/05\/book-review-making-peace-with-the-things-in-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Making Peace with the Things in Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the extreme numbers of organizing books available, this book was on my radar, though cannot be sure where it would have landed if it hadn\u2019t been included as part of the coaching program I took.\u00a0 We weren\u2019t required to read the whole thing, just a section \u2013 though once I had the book I was reading it.\u00a0 Making Peace with the Things in Your Life<\/a>: Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You \u2013 and What to Do About It by Cindy Glovinsky, M.S.W., A.C.S.W. is quite possibly one of the best books on organizing I\u2019ve read.<\/p>\n

This book takes a different approach than many organizing books out there \u2013 it\u2019s designed to help you look at the internal stuff that happens around Things in your life.\u00a0 Often when dealing with all the stuff that surrounds us, we target the physical items first and this doesn\u2019t always work well \u2013 the stuff keeps returning.\u00a0 Cindy Glovinsky is trained as a psychotherapist and walks the reader through many aspects to explore around the problem with Things.\u00a0 It\u2019s designed to get you ready to use all those other more typical organizing books available.<\/p>\n

One of the aspects that I really appreciated was that early on she talks about chaos and order \u2013 how \u201cthe two interweave in a perpetual, ever-changing dance.\u201d\u00a0 She spends a little time talking about how these are both part of our universe and serve a purpose.\u00a0 Here I go again, my passions \u2013 the balance, the self-acceptance, the inevitable changes of life \u2013 this is part of life.<\/p>\n

You might have noticed that when the word Things appears, it\u2019s always capitalized.\u00a0 This is done throughout the book to draw your attention to it and change your perspective on the stuff around you.\u00a0 Generally I dislike the device of using capitals in such ways, though I found that it did shift my perspective.\u00a0 The word itself is wonderfully vague so it can apply to any of us, with whatever it is that we have.\u00a0 Her language and use of aliens and characters convey her compassion \u2013 for others and yourself.<\/p>\n

If you want quick and easy answers, this book is not for you.\u00a0 It takes you through the major tasks needed to make lasting change. The book is broken into 4 parts \u2013 Part I: assumptions about Things; Part II: systematic inventory of Thing habits and Thing feelings; Part III: possible causes of Thing problems with suggestions for coping with them; Part IV: putting what you\u2019ve learned into action. \u00a0In the introduction she acknowledges that figuring out what is going on for you with Things is hard work and that it might feel like this is a lot of trouble to go through, yet \u201c[O]nly action informed by insight can lead you out of the circles.\u201d<\/p>\n

As with many things \u2013 from time management and scheduling to organizing and beyond \u2013 there\u2019s a need for the foundation.\u00a0 I look at David Allen\u2019s Getting Things Done<\/a> (GTD) as foundational work for scheduling and managing time (at least so far in my reading), which means that Franklin Covey might not work for you until you get the basics of GTD.\u00a0 If you struggle with handling your stuff well, Making Peace with Things in Your Life is a great foundation on which to start.\u00a0 Then you might move on to the books dealing with physically handling your stuff and space.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A great foundation to tackle the organizational challenges you face \u2013 it takes work and a willingness to look inside yourself \u2013 yet by doing this you can find a way through \u2013 and help you get out of the circles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[10,8,18,13,19,5,9,7,22,15],"class_list":["post-1070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-gratitude","tag-hoarding","tag-household","tag-motivation","tag-procrastination","tag-productivity","tag-resources"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-hg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1070"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1075,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1070\/revisions\/1075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}