Apartment Therapy: The Eight-Step Home Cure Book

Probably it's good that I took so long to read this. Usually I zip through something like this and get fired up with enthusiasm that fades away fast. Maybe I will implement a little more over time when I have the book to refer to.
The overall philosophy is sound: make your home do what you want and need it to do. If you have less stuff and room to move around things, it is much easier to keep everything clean. If everything belongs somewhere it's easier to put things away. If you can get to your windows it is easier to open them and clean them. And I do really like his insistence that your house feel good to you and to company: usually the emphasis is on how it looks rather than how it makes you feel. As an allergy sufferer, I like that focus. Plus his idea of capping off your accomplishments with a party provides the sort of specific reward that some of us need to trick our brains.
I don't read it as any kind of bible: no one who has children and a house is going to keep to his cleaning schedule, whereas perhaps childless people in tiny apartments maybe can. But even if I can't and wouldn't dream of attempting it, I can maybe increase the timelines while maintaining the relative frequency of tasks. I have never cleaned a window in my life, nor have I ever lived with anyone who did. There's no way I'm going to start doing it once a month. But I might manage it once. And then, having managed it once, I might be able to do it again.
Keeping to the schedules or timelines or details about cleaning products however is never the point for me. It's not even a goal. But if I manage to acquire a few more good habits AND give myself a concrete reward to work towards, that will be something.
Gillingham-Ryan says you should only read one book at a time, and not keep more than one on your bedside table, and get rid of them after you read them. Despite being so obviously wrong on that, otherwise he's quite good. And the group on the website working through the Home cure or a Spring clean or whatever are supportive and helping to reinforce the positive habits with positive reinforcement. And that's all to the good.

Personal copy