Making Peace With the Things In Your Life - Cindy Glovinsky, 2002.

The subtitle is so long I couldn't fit it in the post title: "Why Your Papers, Books, Clothes, and Other Possessions Keep Overwhelming You--and What To Do About It." As a slowly-recovering slob and clutter hound, who also has a soft spot (in my head!) for self-help, I'm a sucker for books like this. Making Peace ranks somewhere in the top third of organizing books I've read; it's good, it's useful, it actually has a new and different take on things (or Things as Glovinsky calls them), but it didn't motivate me quite as much as I hoped it would. Some of that may be resistance; Glovinsky is really good at analyzing "Thing Addiction" and unpacking the many excuses, escapes, and evasions that people like me are prone to. She makes the excellent point that before diving in to declutter and containerize, the most important step is to change our habits of piling up new Things. I should re-read this book in a few months and maybe I'll absorb more of it. The analysis of the types of problems people can have dealing with Things, which she describes as Trouble Tuning into Things, Trouble Seeing Things, Trouble Thinking about Things, and Trouble Moving Things, are especially useful.