Ponder: Outer Order Inner Calm

Gretchen Rubin's first and second books were The Happiness Project and Happier at Home. They were good non-fiction reads, although I liked the first one better. Her third book, Better Than Before, was about habits and I reviewed it in my post for 5/5/15 giving it four stars.

Her latest book however, Outer Order Inner Calm ©2019 is not up to the same standard. I gave it a rating of 1 star which in my scale translates to, "Awful but I read most or maybe even all of it". The book is subtitled, Declutter & Organize to Make More Room for Happiness and I will be inspired to do just that by donating this book to my local library.

The book is structured with five topic areas. I dutifully read all five; it did not take long at all. The only additional kernels of wisdom or moments of revelation I gleaned were in the first section about making choices.

1. Beware of the duration effect. Just because something has been kept for fifteen+ years or so, if it had been used rarely or not at all in that time then it is time to let go. Storing something just because it has been stored it is the equivalent of throwing good money after bad, also know as the sunk-cost fallacy. In this case the sunk-cost is the storage space that has been wasted on this item for so long. It would be foolish to keeping wasting storage space on it. I acknowledge this action is difficult to implement if the item has sentimental or emotional value.
2. Don't foist your clutter on other people. Guilty as charged. "Maybe my sister would like this necklace I never wore," or "Maybe my son /daughter would like this toy from his/her childhood for one of his/her kids."

Granted this book was small – it traveled well in my suitcase and it was a fast read  – because it had large font and lots of white space on the pages. These two incidental physical attributes are about the limit of any positive remarks I am able to honestly provide. There was almost no original material in Outer Order Inner Calm that had not been stated before in one of Gretchen Rubin's previous books or in other books about clutter. I was expecting some well researched psychological analyses and was disappointed.

Reading the Look inside ↴ prompt on the Amazon link for this book will reveal the majority of its contents. I advise avoiding the purchase of this book, thus precluding any additional contribution to household clutter.