Get Your Act Together!: A 7-Day Get-Organized Program for the Overworked, Overbooked, and Overwhelmed by Pam Young, Peggy Jones

Living Mind
Home Improvement

Household Hints Book

Get Your Act Together!: A 7-Day Get-Organized Program for the Overworked, Overbooked, and Overwhelmed
by Pam Young, Peggy Jones (Contributor)

Paperback: 224 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.54 x 8.01 x 5.31
Publisher: Perennial; (September 1993)
ISBN: 0060969911

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Book Description: The SLOB Sisters are back after the phenomenal success of Sidetracked Home Executives (750,000 paperback copies sold), with a new program for organizing your home and personal life.

Ingram: The authors of Sidetracked Home Executives shows readers how to organize their homes and personal lives, updating and streamlining their own program for de-junking. $40,000 ad/promo.

Customer Reviews
More humorous than educational, January 2, 2003
Reviewer: AmyLeone from Hershey, Pa USA
I loved this book and am glad I read it. However, the title is misleading as this is more a book about people issues than a manual on organization. The book reassures you that you are not a bad person for being disorganized and that the kinds of conflicts you have in your family are actually quite universal. So it was like chatting with your girlfriends.

Personally I enjoy reading about other woman's personal lives and I enjoy humor, however if you are actually looking for a book on organizing you are much better off with the original SHE (Sidetracked Home Executives) book that they wrote.

If they can do it, anyone can, November 26, 2002
Reviewer: Marianne S. Rankin from University Park, Maryland USA
This is an interesting, even entertaining chronicle of how two first-class messies cleaned up their act. They describe how they gradually decided that their lifestyle was not working, and how they eventually reworked it to the point where they were giving advice to others. They show their very human side, as well as their basically warm personalities.

They have a card system for getting chores done, which probably would work for a lot of people. I now use and prefer to-do lists, but the card method is flexible. I used to use a similar system with sticky notes (less durable than cards) before I read this book, and they proved that for them and many others, it works.

As with a couple of other organizing books I've read, my main critique is that they don't allow sufficient time to do things. They apparently were stay-at-home moms who are not under the often stringent time constraints many others must deal with. If a job didn't get done one day, it could get done another. But the estimates for any task at any time, in my opinion, simply are too low. Can you clean a floor in 10 minutes? People are different, and have different sizes of homes and so forth, but I don't think I could do most chores (which also include errands to stores and so on) as fast as they can. Can you do a week's worth of grocery shopping, start to finish, in 45 minutes? Car to store to purchases to standing in line to loading to drive home to unload and put away?

If one takes the time estimates with grains of salt, the rest of the book is helpful, and since most readers won't be starting from the extreme situation that these sisters did, they won't have to exert themselves as much to dig out. Certainly worth a try.

Strange book...., October 25, 2002
Reviewer: andreaadam from Aberdeen, WA USA
I've read several household organization books and although this one is funny, there are better ones out there. (check out "confessions of an organized homemaker".) The organizational advice essentially revolves around the use of index cards and motivational games to get your family to pick up after themselves. While these are good ideas, the last couple of chapters go off course and delve into the authors personal lives and marital woes. A few lengthy, bad poems by one of the authors are thrown in as well. Buy something else.

Pretty useful for males too!, May 30, 2002
Reviewer: Dr. Eduard van Kleef from Martínez, Buenos Aires Argentina
This is a book written by two sisters who used to live in "pig-pens" and together developed a way to bring order into their lives. The targeted audience of the book are women with a family who are desperate to get their house-holds under control.

Therefore, I'm probably the only male manager who's ever bought and read this book (actually I was looking for a time-management book and hadn't made a careful selection). Having accidentally bought the book, I decided 200 pages of large print in a small book wouldn't kill me and I might as well read it.

I'm glad I did. My family (and especially my wife) doesn't really need the book, but we aren't perfect either and one can never have enough good ideas in this department.

The book really assumes the worst about you (if you aren't, all the better) in terms of self-organization and house-keeping. The system that the "slob sisters" introduces is interspersed among a lot of real-life experiences and shared thoughts to show that you are NOT alone with this problem, that you ARE a loveable person, that you REALLY CAN change the mess and that an hours worth of work WILL make a difference (which does not mean that you can read the book, put it back on the shelf and assume that you life all of a sudden will become wonderful). Having read the first part, I wished I had read it as a single male student. Then again, in those days I wouldn't have been caught carrying a book with this kind of front cover out of a bookshop for my life!

What really touched me were the latter chapters of the book (including a chapter called "can this marriage be saved") showing how topics like this can undermine family life, how the women of this world often are abused by the men in their lifes without the latter really knowing about it and how these sort of problems CAN be solved.

Once again, I think that we as a family are far removed from the extremities described in this book, but it contains food for thought for males working outside the house.

Changed my life!, April 3, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from Roswell, GA United States
Really and truly, this book has improved the quality of my life tremendously. Written by the chronically disorganized, for the chronically disorganized, this book hits right at the heart of the problem and gives actual step-by-step advice for turning it around. Would you believe that I have both of my kids in bed by 9:00? That all the dishes are washed, the laundry is folded and put away, that the dog's been walked, the bills are paid and I know precisely how much money is in my checking account? I kid you not. Read this book, and you too can be sitting at the computer at 9:30 writing book reviews for total strangers . . .completely guilt free!

How to Get Your Kids to Pitch In!, December 15, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Renton, WA USA
I won't repeat all the things the other reviewers said, but I will add this: The Slob Sisters have a great idea for getting family members to help out. It's called the Infraction Game, and with it, my living room has stayed spotless! My son, who is ADD and never puts anything without being asked, is now hanging up his backpack and coat, and putting his shoes neatly by the front door. This is without me saying a word! It's a miracle--and I thank Pam and Peggy and the good Lord for inspiring them. We are still incorporating other ideas, and my husband is going to read the book himself for my Christmas present. Highly recommended!

I couldn't put it down!, October 29, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Arlington, WA USA
Once I saw this book I couldn't put it down. I felt as if they were peeking into my home and writing about me! After reading many other home organization books and feeling like an utter failure I finally realized that I didn't fail, the system failed. Pam and Peggys book certainly helped me to see that. Their system showed me step by step how to become organized in a way that I understand and they did it without being strict and serious. The humor in this book kept me laughing as I imagined myself in similar situations. I am well on my way to having my home become a warm and welcoming place, my familys haven from the world.

Reading this book is one of the BEST things I've ever done!, October 29, 2000
Reviewer: A reader from Ohio
In addition to being funny, light, and easy to read, reading this book was a life-changing experience for me. Although it's written for all sidetracked people, I recommend it also for women with ADD (attention deficit disorder).

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