Substance: Centers the organizing process around personal desires and needs. Emphasizes "spiriutal" approaches and includes advice from Feng Shui traditions.
The final page of the book (230) says: "All professional organizers are teaching the same material. Each of us simply has a different approach. You may be deeply impacted by something I say and not understand the exact same piece of information when it is expressed by another professional organizers."
... "We are here to learn. Every challenge that is met is replaced by a new challenge for us to face. It is the nature of life on this planet. It happens that an organized life will help you better face every challenge heading in your direction. " ( )

Eh. I wanted to like this book, and parts of it have good ideas, but it wasn't anything I could really recommend. I think the problem is that the author tries to do too much, and doesn't cover any one thing with enough thoroughness. I had hoped for something that would offer a system for really starting from scratch, and getting a home organized. Instead, the author talks a lot about herself and how she used to be in TV commercials, and then she offers some storage/organization ideas for various parts of the house. Then, there's a section on packing for travel, and four pages on Feng Shui (which is a pet peeve of mine; it's not possible to cover the subject in this amount of space, so why even bring it up? Really, if she wanted to write about Feng Shui, that's a book of it's own. Or just recommend one of the books that are already on the market). Finally, she talks about ways to make packing and unpacking easier on yourself when moving house.

Some of these things were interesting and somewhat useful (I might use her ideas next time I'm going on a trip), but probably more useful as individual articles. On the whole, it seemed like a hodgepodge of things, none of which I really found immediately helpful.

If you're looking for a book that will really give advice on the nitty-gritty of organizing a home, I'd recommend "Organizing from the Inside Out" (I think the author's name is Morgenstern). ( )