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House of Order Handbook: The Best Way to An Organized Life
This step-by-step handbook guides you to being totally, completely, and wonderfully organized in your personal and family life. This book will help you set up a your personal life so you can function a full 10% better and gain up to 90 minutes every day for the rest of your life. Let's get you organized!
- GenresSelf Help
232 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 2, 2009
This is the kind of self-help book I like: quick and easy to read, well organized, and jam-packed with ideas. The information is very practical, and there are a few anecdotal stories to make it interesting. The book also includes a bunch of helpful worksheets that can be used as templates.
I am relatively organized already, but this has some ideas for streamlining my home so I have more time for other things. I particularly like the 3x5 card housecleaning plan (which I've already adapted to myself and love) and the ideas for training children.
I am taking a 'House of Order' class by the author at the same time, and they compliment each other well.
I am relatively organized already, but this has some ideas for streamlining my home so I have more time for other things. I particularly like the 3x5 card housecleaning plan (which I've already adapted to myself and love) and the ideas for training children.
I am taking a 'House of Order' class by the author at the same time, and they compliment each other well.
March 3, 2019
Much like her Organize as You Go: Successful Skills for Busy Parents, this book is riddled with typos and grammatical errors. It discredits much of what Ms. Ricks has to say about organizing, makes the book difficult to read, and makes me feel as though she didn't have her life together enough to get a good editor. And if she can't do that, how can I trust her to give me good organizing tips? Truly, the only reason I read this was to be prepared for my book club meeting about it.
Additionally, many of the "tips" she gives are common sense (or at least should be). Her worksheets, while handy, could easily be created on your own, so unless you need someone to hold your hand and walk you through the process of organizing your life--from rolling over to crawling to walking--skip this book.
Additionally, many of the "tips" she gives are common sense (or at least should be). Her worksheets, while handy, could easily be created on your own, so unless you need someone to hold your hand and walk you through the process of organizing your life--from rolling over to crawling to walking--skip this book.
April 23, 2008
First off, I have to say that this book was absolutely riddled with typos. In fact, someone who had this book checked out before me had started writing in corrections but stopped after the first few chapters. I don't know if they stopped because they stopped reading or because they just got tired of marking all the typos. This was a self-published book but clearly it needed some good editing.
All the typos aside, it is a pretty basic book on housekeeping and organization. I went through this book in a few hours and took about one page of notes on things that I thought would be helpful. Each chapter has a story from a former client of Ricks. I found myself rolling my eyes at many of these stories and decided that maybe I am not as unorganized as I thought. In fact, if these stories are actually true, than I am light years ahead of these women in my organizing skills or at least knowledge. (Even if I don't do these things I at least know I could be doing them.) For example, there is a story about a woman who fed her family cornflakes for dinner because she forgot to take the beef out of the freezer in the morning. She does not have a microwave she could defrost the meat in? And I am thinking her shelves must have been pretty bare if the only alternative to beef she could come up with was cereal. I also could not believe that there are women, mothers even, who need to be told that taking toys and snacks along in the car when running errands with the kids will make said errands easier. Really?? What mother can't figure that out for herself?
For a book published in 2006, much of the information seemed very dated. Who uses the term variety store these days? Ricks suggests taping coins to the bottom of your purse for making calls at a pay phone. I can't even remember the last time I saw a working pay phone.
A few times in the book, Ricks suggests that you set aside 3 hours a day for housework and not to let anything distract or interrupt you. My first thought was does this women have kids? There is no possible way I could go 3 straight hours doing housework without being interrupted or distracted. It is just not practical. Ricks also suggests that you schedule appointments around this 3 hour time frame and if a friend invites you to do something during this time you should tell them no. Basically, pick a 3 hour time frame where you will not leave your house for any reason or let anyone or anything distract or interrupt you. And do this everyday. Seems a little bit extreme to me!
With all that said, the book did have some decent ideas, you just had to work past all the crazy stuff to get to them. In fact, I already use a 3x5 filing system similar to the one Ricks suggest for organizing and tracking my daily, weekly, monthly etc chores.
Some of the other good things I gleaned from this book:
* The buy back box. When kids leave toys, books etc etc laying around you put them in a box and they have to buy them back by either picking up other things that are laying around or doing some other special chore.
* Master Key copies in my family binder. I have a family binder with important documents and papers in it but it is nothing like the one Ricks suggests. However, she suggests making copies of your car and house keys and putting them in a business card organizer and then adding it to your family binder. I thought this was a good idea. (Just tape the opening closed so that the keys don't fall out.)
* Reading Nickels. Your kids can earn nickels for summer reading goals (number of pages or books read etc) and then use the money they earned to buy school supplies at the end of the summer.
Beyond that, she had some decent worksheets that I am sure could be very useful to some people. I don't think I'll be using any of them because I use Excel a lot and already have my own versions of these worksheets or would rather make my own in order to tailor them to my needs.
This is a good book for some good, basic organizing ideas that will help your life run more smoothly if you implement them.
Marie Ricks can be found online at House of Order.
All the typos aside, it is a pretty basic book on housekeeping and organization. I went through this book in a few hours and took about one page of notes on things that I thought would be helpful. Each chapter has a story from a former client of Ricks. I found myself rolling my eyes at many of these stories and decided that maybe I am not as unorganized as I thought. In fact, if these stories are actually true, than I am light years ahead of these women in my organizing skills or at least knowledge. (Even if I don't do these things I at least know I could be doing them.) For example, there is a story about a woman who fed her family cornflakes for dinner because she forgot to take the beef out of the freezer in the morning. She does not have a microwave she could defrost the meat in? And I am thinking her shelves must have been pretty bare if the only alternative to beef she could come up with was cereal. I also could not believe that there are women, mothers even, who need to be told that taking toys and snacks along in the car when running errands with the kids will make said errands easier. Really?? What mother can't figure that out for herself?
For a book published in 2006, much of the information seemed very dated. Who uses the term variety store these days? Ricks suggests taping coins to the bottom of your purse for making calls at a pay phone. I can't even remember the last time I saw a working pay phone.
A few times in the book, Ricks suggests that you set aside 3 hours a day for housework and not to let anything distract or interrupt you. My first thought was does this women have kids? There is no possible way I could go 3 straight hours doing housework without being interrupted or distracted. It is just not practical. Ricks also suggests that you schedule appointments around this 3 hour time frame and if a friend invites you to do something during this time you should tell them no. Basically, pick a 3 hour time frame where you will not leave your house for any reason or let anyone or anything distract or interrupt you. And do this everyday. Seems a little bit extreme to me!
With all that said, the book did have some decent ideas, you just had to work past all the crazy stuff to get to them. In fact, I already use a 3x5 filing system similar to the one Ricks suggest for organizing and tracking my daily, weekly, monthly etc chores.
Some of the other good things I gleaned from this book:
* The buy back box. When kids leave toys, books etc etc laying around you put them in a box and they have to buy them back by either picking up other things that are laying around or doing some other special chore.
* Master Key copies in my family binder. I have a family binder with important documents and papers in it but it is nothing like the one Ricks suggests. However, she suggests making copies of your car and house keys and putting them in a business card organizer and then adding it to your family binder. I thought this was a good idea. (Just tape the opening closed so that the keys don't fall out.)
* Reading Nickels. Your kids can earn nickels for summer reading goals (number of pages or books read etc) and then use the money they earned to buy school supplies at the end of the summer.
Beyond that, she had some decent worksheets that I am sure could be very useful to some people. I don't think I'll be using any of them because I use Excel a lot and already have my own versions of these worksheets or would rather make my own in order to tailor them to my needs.
This is a good book for some good, basic organizing ideas that will help your life run more smoothly if you implement them.
Marie Ricks can be found online at House of Order.
August 6, 2014
After reading the grammar and spelling errors on the first few pages ("Attached list is for a good start on getting organized", "If you ready to do it all at once . . . ") I began to have my doubts that this was a book that would really be able to help me.
Instead of reading it, I skimmed through it and decided I'm already very organized. Most of the ideas were just common sense. Doesn't everyone know a "home office" (desk) should be stocked with supplies and tools like a calculator, roll of stamps, pens, tape, scissors, etc? Are there really people who keep all these things scattered throughout their house so every time they need to pay a bill or balance an account they have to search for their "supplies"?
She said when you clean out your closets you need to decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to throw in the garbage. What would you be doing if you weren't doing one of these three things? This seems like common sense.
For laundry she actually said "The biggest trouble with doing laundry routinely is that it cannot be started, be done, and be over with. Instead, you must get it started in the washer. Then you wait. You must remember to transfer it to the dryer. Then you wait. Then you must pull it from the dryer, fold and sort it; and, finally, return it to its proper place. This many steps often befuddle the most determined home manager." Really? If people are befuddled when doing laundry, how do they handle life?
I think the one thing people might like about this book are the blank worksheets. I know the one thing I found helpful was Chapter 15 "Housecleaning Plan". She had a list of chores (or you make your own) to be done daily, plus things to be done only on certain days. She had an annual "to do" list plus an annual, semi-annual, quarterly, and monthly list of "scrub" jobs. The "scrub" jobs are things I don't always remember to do (check fire extinguisher, clean freezer, clean kitchen and laundry appliances, wipe down walls, windowsills and baseboards, wipe off lighting fixtures and bulbs, clean piano keys, change furnace filters, and vacuum smoke detectors, drapes, intake vents, and underneath furniture).
Overall, this book was a complete waste of my time. Thankfully, it was only 5 minutes worth of "reading".
Instead of reading it, I skimmed through it and decided I'm already very organized. Most of the ideas were just common sense. Doesn't everyone know a "home office" (desk) should be stocked with supplies and tools like a calculator, roll of stamps, pens, tape, scissors, etc? Are there really people who keep all these things scattered throughout their house so every time they need to pay a bill or balance an account they have to search for their "supplies"?
She said when you clean out your closets you need to decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to throw in the garbage. What would you be doing if you weren't doing one of these three things? This seems like common sense.
For laundry she actually said "The biggest trouble with doing laundry routinely is that it cannot be started, be done, and be over with. Instead, you must get it started in the washer. Then you wait. You must remember to transfer it to the dryer. Then you wait. Then you must pull it from the dryer, fold and sort it; and, finally, return it to its proper place. This many steps often befuddle the most determined home manager." Really? If people are befuddled when doing laundry, how do they handle life?
I think the one thing people might like about this book are the blank worksheets. I know the one thing I found helpful was Chapter 15 "Housecleaning Plan". She had a list of chores (or you make your own) to be done daily, plus things to be done only on certain days. She had an annual "to do" list plus an annual, semi-annual, quarterly, and monthly list of "scrub" jobs. The "scrub" jobs are things I don't always remember to do (check fire extinguisher, clean freezer, clean kitchen and laundry appliances, wipe down walls, windowsills and baseboards, wipe off lighting fixtures and bulbs, clean piano keys, change furnace filters, and vacuum smoke detectors, drapes, intake vents, and underneath furniture).
Overall, this book was a complete waste of my time. Thankfully, it was only 5 minutes worth of "reading".
September 29, 2010
Easy, quick read with a few good ideas on how to stay organized as a Mom and a wife. You rarely "learn" things from books like this, but they always serve as a good reminder for how you could be doing things a little better or a little differently. The thing I think I took away from this book is the "list" idea. At heart, I am a "list" girl. I like to check things off and see what I've accomplished during the day. I took the daily schedule idea from this book and morphed it into my own way. I am going to try to sit down on Sunday night and think of things that I want/need to accomplish during the week. I will make a list of these things. They may include errands that need to be ran, chores, phone calls, websites I've been meaning to check, doing a blog post, exercising, the more things I can list...the more I'll feel like I've accomplished! Then, each morning and night during the week, I will review the list and put the items I accomplish onto my "daily list" that I am going to start keeping each day.
September 9, 2008
Thank you to Candy for adding this book to the list; thank you to WendyR for the intro to Marie and the HoOH; thank you to Gen for the idea of bringing the entire HoOW to our ward and then stake; thanks to Gen & WendyR for getting ME into helping them to bring HoOW & Marie to EMUW Stake and for creating friendships that are stronger than we ever understood on our own, but the Lord knew all along.
October 1, 2007
I absolutely love Marie Calder Ricks. She has an answer for everything! I have used her methods and I love it. If you are interested in making your life easier through organizational methods, this is the book for you.
March 3, 2008
I went to some of her classes at Education week and then we had her come to our Enrichment. I recommend just getting this book to start off with or Confessions of an organized homemaker.
December 31, 2008
I wish I was as organized as this lady! She is a little over the top with some things, but there is a lot of valuable info in here.
September 20, 2009
This book has a ton of useful info, including worksheets you can copy and fill in with vital information I never even thought about. It's a really good step-by-step guide to getting organized.
November 24, 2011
The kind of book that seems like common sense when you read it and think, "Why didn't I think of that?" Helpful.
February 7, 2013
Everyone needs to read this book!
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews