|
|
Review
by Janet Jensen, author
Visit
Marie’s House of Order website and you’ll find the most organized
and user-friendly website I’ve ever seen. That’s to be expected,
because Marie Ricks is The Real Thing, a professional organizer. I met
her at a book signing, and as always, I learned so much from spending
two hours sitting beside another author.
She’s outgoing, a wonderful trait for an author. She’d approach
people by saying, “Hi, my name is Marie and I’ve written a book on
how to be organized. And after you get organized, you’ll want to read
Janet’s novel!” Obviously, Marie is more than an author. She is a
wife, mother, teacher, radio talk show host, web designer,
self-publisher, motivational speaker, organizer . . . and a wonderful
person.
Some of us are born organized. I suspect Marie was. I know her aunt
well, and she, also, is very organized. So was Marie’s grandmother. I
think it runs in the family.
However, some of us are organizationally impaired. That would be me.
However, I think everyone struggles with organization at one time or
another, and Marie has easy-to-implement systems for all of it:
household organization, mission and travel, schoolwork, finances,
paperwork, meals . . . you name it. At her website are some great free
downloadable forms. For example, do YOU know where to find all of your
favorite websites, usernames, and passwords? I do now, because Marie has
a convenient print-out form you can download for free, and now I can
find all of that information in one place.
Marie’s latest book, Organize As You go, Successful Skills for
Busy Lifestyles, is based on the author’s simple premise that
“It takes a lot of work to be organized, but it takes a lot more work
to be disorganized!”
Chapter headings include: Organized Every Day, An Organized Home,
Organization Challenges, Organization for Parents and Children,
Organized for Big Events and Holidays, Organized for Traveling and
Moving, and Organized for the Future. At the end of the book is a
twenty-year plan. Wow! I’m not quite there yet (thank you very much,
I’m still on chapter one) but it’s a marvelous idea to put your life
goals in writing.
Of course organization affects all areas of your life; it’s not just
about improving your efficiency at home and work. It affects the very
fiber of personal, family, and spiritual life. That concept is at the
heart of this book. We don’t organize just to establish a neat,
orderly, low-stress life; organization will help us to find more joy and
satisfaction in all aspects of life, too.
I can’t recommend Marie, her books and products and her website, or
her personal influence, highly enough.
|
