Life in Jeneral: A Joyful Guide to Organizing Your Home and Creating the Space for What Matters Most

Robin, founder of design company Life in Jeneral, offers no shortage of organizational tips in her upbeat debut. “People are the happiest... when they are organized,” Robin suggests, and getting there involves a “soulful approach” focused on how items make one feel. Her tips are broken into three sections. First, there’s “soul work,” which involves a plan for identifying one’s values and emotional barriers to neatness, while “the process” introduces Robin’s five-step method: start by removing everything from a room; then sort, discard or donate; and finally add organizational systems (such as labeled containers) and commit to maintaining them. She offers suggestions for each area: a game can be made of cleaning kids’ rooms; in the “joy drawer” (formerly known as the junk drawer), old photos can be digitized; and open shelving racks go great in the garage. A section on upkeep rounds things out. Her advice is easy to follow and her tone encouraging, though the program (and the photos used to illustrate it) skews heavily toward large, high-end homes and readers with time and money at their disposal. Still, fans of Marie Kondo will find this full of practical ideas. (Dec.)