Best Home Organization Books to Help You Get Organized
I’ve put together this list of the best books on home organization to help you get your living space in shape!
Finding ways to have a more organized home will not only help you have a physically organized life. You’ll also feel better emotionally and mentally as you start to see the chaos turn into order.
Best Home Organization Books to Help You Get Organized
Let’s face it: so many of us feel overwhelmed by stuff and disorder.
We live in a time of unprecedented material prosperity and shopping convenience.
You can order just about anything with the click of a button and have it delivered in just a few days (and sometimes even the same or next day).
Supermarkets and shopping malls dot the landscape of cities. This makes the accumulation of more and more stuff an easy and favorite pastime of many.
Thrift stores receive donations from people with homes overflowing with clutter. These stores sometimes have to turn away donations because they just don’t have any more room!
An article with the title “Survey Finds 54 Percent of Americans are Overwhelmed with Clutter and Don’t Know What to Do With It” describes how a majority of people are overwhelmed by all their stuff and just let it pile up rather than finding solutions for dealing with it.
Maybe you’re a young mom struggling under piles of kid clothes, toys and random possessions.
You could be a homeschooler who can’t keep up with all the books, papers and school supplies littering your house.
Or maybe you’re a middle-aged or senior adult whose closets, garage, or basement are stuffed full and piled high with years and years of accumulated stuff.
And then there are all the papers—you know, those old bills, receipts, and insurance documents that you don’t want to throw away but can’t seem to get organized.
I get it! I’ve shared before about how overwhelming it can be to be buried in mountains of clutter and disorganization.
And a lack of efficient time management only adds to the disorder!
Sometimes it helps to step back and read a good book or two filled with the wisdom of a professional organizer. Someone who’s put their thoughts into a great book filled with practical tips on how to finally get your home organized.
My hope is that this list of books encourages you to take some actionable steps to get started with home organizing.
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Martha Stewart’s Organizing: The Manual for Bringing Order to Your Life, Home & Routines
Few names are as well known in the world of homekeeping as that of Martha Stewart.
In her book Martha Stewart’s Organizing, Martha covers just about every area of home organization. She provides strategies that will help anyone looking to organize and clean their house.
Martha covers several important topics to help you organize every aspect of your life.
She goes over not only basic principles of organizing but practical tips for getting specific rooms organized. She also discusses how to organize clothing and bedding (including closets), and much more.
This book also gives helpful tips for organizing by season, which is a great way to approach home organization.
(I like using checklists such as this deep cleaning checklist, spring cleaning checklist, and fall cleaning checklist).
All in all, Martha Stewart’s Organizing is highly recommended as one of the better books organizing available.
How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind: Dealing with Your House’s Dirty Little Secrets by Dana K White
I don’t know about you, but sometimes I read books about home organization and decluttering and think, “This person just doesn’t get me. They’ve never been in my situation and can’t understand my life.”
In How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind, Dana White talks to the reader as a friend. Although she’s an organizing expert, she doesn’t look down on the rest of us who haven’t yet arrived.
This is one of the more practical books on organizing your house. Dana has been there herself and understands what it’s like to feel overwhelmed and not know where to begin.
She has a down-to-earth approach with realistic, manageable steps that anyone can take to start getting organized.
This books gives guidance for strategies like using timers, organizing laundry, and how to prioritize decluttering project.
I highly recommend this book for anyone needing encouragement in organizing their home.
Dana also speaks directly when she needs to. She writes, “Methods don’t clean your house. You have to clean your house.” This is the kind of helpful advice many of us need to finally get organized.
How to Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind is a must-read. I’m happy to include it on this list of best home organization books.
Real Life Organizing: Clean and Clutter-Free in 15 Minutes a Day by Cassandra Aarssen
Cassandra Aarssen is a professional organizer whose book Real Life Organizing has helped many people finally get their homes in order.
This book promises to help you keep your house organized in just 15 minutes a day. But in all fairness, it will take quite a bit more time than that to get initially organized if your home is really messy.
Cassandra recommends using a household management binder to coordinate your organizing and decluttering tasks.
She also has tips for organizing papers, which is a big challenge for many people.
For those with kids, she provides helpful advice for managing toys, including having a “kids’ cupboard” in the kitchen.
The tips in this book are practical and real-life for just about everyone. While she recommends getting some tools and supplies to get organized, she tries to make getting these supplies budget-friendly.
Cassandra has a great sense of humor and also seems relatable. These are both big pluses when dealing with what can be an emotional topic that literally hits close to home.
Real Life Organizing is another great selection in a list of books to help you organize your home.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
Several years ago, I wrote a whole blog post on the KonKari Method of organizing and decluttering.
This Japanese art of decluttering method has been popularized by Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo.
Her most famous book is The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
The main theme of Marie’s writing is that you should only keep the things that bring you joy. In other words, if something you have doesn’t “spark joy,” you probably don’t need it!
This concept has helped me and thousands of others to get rid of things that we don’t really need.
It’s truly freeing to let go of all the stuff we’ve held onto “just in case” when in reality so much stuff just stifles and clutters our lives and homes.
It’s true that some things may need to be kept even if they don’t actually “spark joy.” But even then, Marie’s tips can help us be more deliberate in what we acquire and more free in what we get rid of.
Marie has some practical advice for organizing that I haven’t heard from other organization experts.
She suggests sorting our stuff by category instead of by location. Some experts recommend starting with a specific room in your house. But Marie says to start first with a category (such as clothes or papers) and then declutter and organize that category throughout the whole house.
She also encourages us to give every item a place. When each item has a specific place where it belongs, you’ll find organizing goes much smoother and the piles of clutter will disappear.
There are some things in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up that I can’t endorse as a Christian. Still, I think the book has some really helpful tips and is one of the best organization books available.
The Home Edit: A Guide to Organizing and Realizing Your House Goals by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin
Another excellent book on home organization is The Home Edit.
This book comes from Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin, the stars of a TV series about getting organized.
The Home Edit is filled with beautiful photos showing all kinds of spaces, with a proven method for arranging those spaces in an organized way.
Clea and Joanna suggest methods they think are most likely to succeed in getting your house organized.
They also make recommendations for what type of storage items you may need to organize your stuff.
The Home Edit is a New York Times Best Seller and one of the top guides for getting your home life organized at last.
The Complete Book of Home Organization by Toni Hammersley
My next recommendation is The Complete Book of Home Organization by Toni Hammersley.
One thing I love about this book is all of the high-quality photos. As a visual person, I find gorgeous photos inspiring and motivating.
Toni provides step-by-step instructions for getting organized. She talks about “challenge rooms,” specific spaces in your home that need the most help in getting organized.
Her goal of getting your home totally organized in 15 weeks with a week-by-week guide is ambitious and probably not realistic for everyone. But for those with the time and willpower to make it happen, this would be something to try!
Some people may be concerned that the book is somewhat lacking in original content.
Others appreciate the basic approach with actionable steps and enough details to guide your home organization journey.
Here’s an example of the helpful tips found in this book: “How many gadgets, small appliances, and dishes can you purge, and how much space will result? Write out your ideas and get a detailed plan on paper. Once you’ve got your guideline, it’s time to get started.”
The Complete Book of Home Organization is a very good choice, particularly for those who haven’t already read a lot of organization books.
Remodelista: The Organized Home: Simple, Stylish Storage Ideas for All Over the House by Julie Carlson
The organization ideas presented in Remodelista are designed to help you not only organize but declutter your home in a systematic way.
Julie Carlson, cofounder of the home site Remodelista, sets out to help readers learn the secrets that professional organizers use to get—and keep—houses in order.
The book recommends going through your house room by room to evaluate what needs to be kept and organized, and what can be decluttered.
Some of the products mentioned in the book may seem a little like advertisements, but the practical tips are still very helpful.
The book recommends trying to find storage solutions you already have in your home before you go out to purchase new storage products.
One particularly helpful tip is to look for overhead spaces that can be used for storing stuff.
I live in a fairly small house with not a lot of physical space. Learning to be creative with the small spaces I have has been key to helping get organized.
Remodelisata might not be my number one pick for home organization books, but it is definitely one of the top ones I recommend.
Beautifully Organized: A Guide to Function and Style in Your Home by Nikki Boyd
Another great book for anyone looking to get their home organized is Beautifully Organized by Nikki Boyd,.
Nikki is a professional organization expert and wife of a military veteran who shares tips in her books and on her YouTube channel.
In this book, she lays out what she calls the five simple steps to an organized home:
- Assess your home to transform the spaces within to enhance your lifestyle
- Declutter and curate your possessions to keep what is useful and meaningful
- Clean with efficiency, adding an element of pleasure to everyday tasks
- Organize so you can find what you need, when you need it
- Beautify and decorate to create a welcoming atmosphere for family and friends
Nikki writes in a down-to-earth style that makes the reader feel encouraged and not judged.
Her tips for organizing and living with less stuff don’t require spending lots of money, which is a big plus for many of us.
All in all, Beautifully Organized is an inspiring, practical guide that should be helpful to anyone seeking a less cluttered, more organized life.
More Organization and Decluttering Inspiration
- 10 Best Books on Decluttering Your Home and Life
- DIY Small Bedroom Organization Ideas and Tips
- 30 Bags in 30 Days Declutter Challenge
- How to Create a Cleaning Routine
- 50 Quotes About Decluttering to Inspire You
Closing Thoughts on Best Books on Home Organization
Wherever you are in your journey towards getting organized, I truly hope you’ve found some inspiration in this list of home organization books!
It took years to develop bad habits and a disorganized home, and it will take some time to get your everyday life organized. Just remember that many small steps can take you a long way!
It is possible to go from a cluttered, messy home to one that’s finally organized.
Reading helpful books can give you some encouragement and inspiration, but ultimately you have to begin taking steps to put the organizing tips into action.
Whether you choose to purchase a book or find it in your local library, may you find some organization tips and techniques that truly work for you!
