Martha's New Book on Organizing

Tis the season to unclutter and get our lives back in tip-top shape. As if on cue, Martha publishes her 96th book tomorrow (January 7) and it's all about organizing. This will be the follow-up to last year's The Martha Manual: How to do (Almost) Everything, which was a bestseller and was number one on Amazon in its category for several months. Published by the same imprint, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Martha Stewart's Organizing (288 pages) promises to be an indispensable textbook and guide for anyone wanting to learn not only how to organize but how to maintain organizational practices throughout the year to reduce clutter and stay on top of seasonal chores.

The book is hardcover and is divided into parts with the first one devoted to organizing your year, month by month. It consists of monthly guides with lists of tasks the reader should focus on as the year rolls on. In January, for instance, as the cover subtly notes, there are instructions on how best to put away and pack your holiday ornaments, how to organize your pantry, how to make and freeze stocks for the winter, when and how to donate old clothing, as well as when and where to order your seeds and bulbs for the spring. There are lifestyle tips and reminders, too, such as scheduling an appointment with your accountant, scheduling spring car repair, buying annual passes to galleries and theaters and booking classes you're interested in taking.

 

The book then goes on to offer advice on how to organize each room in the house with seasonal, weekly and day-to-day checklists to keep you on top of your organization game! Martha also shares her organizational calendars with the personal tips and strategies she employs to keep her homes organized and ready for living. I'm looking forward to receiving my copy! It's available for order now on Amazon.

MARTHA'S OTHER ORGANIZING GUIDES:

Martha has released several publications on organizing over the years, including one other book and several special-issue magazines. Below is a list.

In 2001 Martha published her first book on organizing. Good Things for Organizing is a fairly slim, softcover book (144 pages) with a collection of the best organizing ideas published in her magazine, Martha Stewart Living, to that point. I find it to be a very good book, especially for the practical and innovative ways it suggests to make use of your space at home to keep clutter at bay. There are lots of great ideas on how to store items, room by room, with tips on how to keep organizing simple and pleasurable.

These digest-sized publications were issued in 2004 and 2005. They are small but they are packed with really simple ideas to help you unclutter and clean your home. They are still often available secondhand on eBay and Amazon.

These larger magazines are also very nice compendiums of the organizing ideas that have been published in Martha Stewart Living magazine. They are advertisement-free and are really like small booklets. Again, they are collector's editions and can still be sourced secondhand online.