The Home Decluttering Diet: Organize Your Way to a Clean & Lean House

by Jennifer Lifford

Like losing weight for your body, Clean & Lean House helps readers to clean their entire home month-by-month to create long-term results. The process begins with a 30-day detox and makes progress each month by cleaning and organizing the entire house, as well as maintaining the clutter-free lifestyle. Perfect for starting at the new year, but suitable for use year-round.

Tested in her own home, Jennifer Lifford brings her specific techniques to life to more than just declutter and throw stuff away. Jennifer shows readers how to change their habits and create long-term results over the course of each month. Her tips and tricks include creating zones for each room, utilizing checklists, getting the whole family involved and the option to pick and choose projects based on your goals. With time, readers can see how these projects add up to create clutter loss and a forever organized home.

Genres: Nonfiction, Lifestyle, Interior Design

208 pages, Paperback

Published February 28, 2017

Reviews

[Dina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Did I check this out without considering the title too much - yes

Did I immensely dislike it (because the only thing more dreadful than organizing is dieting) - yes

[Betsy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has some good tips and motivated me to clean out my front closet. Yay! So, worth checking out from the library!
But— and I guess this should be obvious from the title— the entire thing is an extended metaphor about dieting to lose weight as a system to declutter your house 🥴
To me the way we talk about dieting as a culture is not great, and I definitely don’t want to bring a diet-culture attitude into other parts of my life! So I had to try to look past that, but it was the organizing structure of the book and present on every page. 🤷🏻‍♀️

[Karly · Rating 3 out of 5]

There were definitely some useful tips in this book, but I found the format of the book hard to follow. Some bullet points, bolder headings and larger font would have made this a more pleasurable read. I love the “calories in, calories out” theory: If you bring something new into your house, take something out. Then you don’t end up with a full house wondering where it all came from. Overall, a helpful book!

[Panda Incognito · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book has some useful suggestions for eliminating clutter over time and improving organization around the house, but the font is so impossibly small that I ended up skimming through most of the book, unwilling to get a headache over chapters that weren't of immediate import to my life.

I have no idea why the publisher would release the book this way. Clearly, the author cares deeply about her subject, has a lot of thoughts and experiences to share, and can take really great pictures of DIY projects and organizational systems around her house, but the tiny font choice ruins all of her hard work.

[Allison · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm one of those people who loves to organize - other people's stuff. For decades I've dreamt and fantasized that one day all of my belongings are thinned out (spartan-ized, I'd like to imagine), cleaned, neatly organized and exactly where they should be for the greatest ease of access and the most positively influential feng shui. As a result, I spend a ridiculous amount of time looking for and reading about different people's take on how to, essentially, get my act together (when I really should just DO it instead). Turns out, this book was just another iteration of that drive.

If you have never attempted to get your act decluttered and together, this - or just about any of these kinds of books - would be a good place to start to get yourself and your stuff organized. I suspect because I've read about and tried so many different methods to get organized and get my "stuff" where I would finally like it all to be, I'm not really impressed anymore by any of them and they all seem to sound like knock-offs of the first method I found that really worked for me - more than a decade ago - FlyLady.net.

FlyLady has several publications, an email newsletter, a website, a Facebook page, and products. Years ago she was my saviour and morale booster. She was the first example of "just work on it for 15 mins at a time" and "it doesn't have to be perfect" that I experienced. This book is just one of a series of resources that I've come across on the past few years that use that same model but basically just rearrange the presentation of where is the most important place to start and how to stay on top if it all and deal with backsliding when you aren't able to prevent it from happening.

FlyLady's web following has gotten enormous now by 2017-2018 and I believe that the founder has had to delegate various components of her original program to others. But the gist of her program rings true and a lot of folks, including Ms. Lifford, have either adopted her methods and made them their own, or they've had the same epiphanies: Less (stuff) is more (relaxing) or Less (to stress about) is more (to enjoy); Baby-steps are better than doing nothing; every little bit is progress.

If I hadn't had so much exposure to so many versions of this method, I suppose having everything all together in one well put together book that covers so much would be a great way to get going on turning over such a big new leaf as getting one's whole house organized. Now that I think of it, I'd originally rated this book with 2 stars, I think I'll bump that up.

Whatever method you eventually choose, assuming you do eventually decide to choose one and not leave all your chaos (and believe me - we ALL have too much stuff and a lot of CHAOS) to be a burden for someone else to deal with later (like your kids or your partner or your landlord) when you die or become disabled, I wish you all the luck in the world. You really won't regret it if you pace yourself and keep plugging away at it. Even if it takes decades to have a place for everything and everything in its place. It is so worth it. Hopefully, one day I'll get there myself!

[Sarah Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this one and it had a lot of great ideas. Though I live in an apartment so I did skim over some sections that didn't apply to my current living situation. I liked that not only did this give you ideas on how to organize various areas of your home that were very practical it also gave instructions on how to make some things as well. I'm big into crafts and DIY so this appealed to that side, though I probably won't use most of them because I can't with my current living situation. They were still great ideas if you can incorporate them! I also like the idea of breaking it down in chunks, not to overwhelm yourself.

[Amy Mancini · Rating 1 out of 5]

No! Just no! This book is an example of Diet Culture run amuck. Possessions are likened to calories that make our homes fat… and we all know fat is bad, right? After all, the author equates being disorganized and undisciplined with fatness. She unabashedly says that she is adopting the concepts of dieting and applying them to the home. No thank you!

[Ann · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was rather disappointed with this book. It really did not present anything new, and there was a lot of repetition from one chapter to another. Finally, the typeface was extremely small, and not easy to read.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have mixed feelings about this book.
Pros:
The pictures in this book are gorgeous! I wish my home was that beautiful
Good tips
LOVED the 30-day Home Detox Daily Plan

Cons:
The text is EXTREMELY small. Like, 2mm tall (yes, I actually measured it)
Mostly basic organization

[Karrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn’t “read” this book. Literally. The font is like a size 8 and it’s light.

The pics are nice.

I think there are some DIY stuff but it’s shelves that you can already buy at IKEA for less than $20.

I’m actually being really generous in my rating.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-read in Fall

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book uses a diet plan for cleaning. The book has really small text.

[Annburnett · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the book but there was a lot of repetition throughout. It has a lot of good ideas but it could have all been covered without repeating so much information.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this one. Great balance of ideas, charts, photos and suggestions to really help "anyone" organize and declutter their home on their own.

[Mallory · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not a ton of new information, but I did get a few ideas for home projects out of this. Worth a skim!

[Sarah Brennan-Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good for the somewhat already organized person. And the notion of devoting a day for organizing the garage and another for the basement—ha!

[Barb · Rating 4 out of 5]

I gave this book 4 stars when in reality it’s probably 3.5. It’s well organized, and well written. But there’s really nothing new to add to the topic of decluttering.

[Bea]

Holy Hannah, the font is teeny tiny and it's pale, more gray than black which doesn't work on white glossy paper. I had to give up, it was too hard to read. My library didn't have this in ebook so I have put the Kindle version on my Amazon wish list.

I skimmed the book; read the subheadings and chapter titles, even skimmed a few paragraphs. It looks like the author has a detailed, practical, flexible plan that might actually work for me. I saw a couple of ideas that I want to try. I liked enough of what I skimmed to add the ebook to my wish list. The pictures are pretty and plentiful. I noticed each chapter has a DYI suggestion for organization and pictures were included.

-3 stars for font and legiblity; +3 stars for what I read so far.

[LemontreeLime · Rating 3 out of 5]

I mainly skimmed through this, because the font type was so darn small and faint, it was hard for my eyes to read. Lifford seemed like a woman with a plan, tho. I will add that there are some great DIYs in the book.

[Kathym]

This book is amazing and is filled with lots of great ideas. The hardest part for me will be sticking to them.