I am a sucker for an organizing book. I love looking at the pretty pictures of the before and afters and thinking about the items that I will buy to help me get my house organized. Then reality sets in and I remember that my house isn’t over cluttered or super messy. No new organizing tools for me. I do however need a little inspiration in the cleaning and organizing department on occasion to keep me motivated and give me new ideas on ways to keep my house clean.

I recently checked out Absolutely Organized by Debbie Lillard from the library because it was cute and looked pretty. It is a small book, and a quick read. There a pretty pictures in the book, but no before and afters. I have read through it cover to cover a couple of times now and then referred back to several of the sections a few more times because of the helpful information offered.

It has great tips not only on how to get organized, but how to organize your time. The book is broken down into nineteen easy to read chapters. The first four chapters of the book deal with how to organize your time. This is one of the most important aspects of cleaning and keeping a house organized since time frequently gets away from the best of us.

The second section of the book deals with organizing your belongings. I like the simple solutions of keeping on top of your paper piles. We are a paper creating society, but there need to be guidelines on what is kept so that it isn’t so overwhelming. A couple of the chapters deal with children and their toys and artwork. I have learned that if I ask my children what they want to get rid of, that we end up keeping ninety-five percent of what we started out with.

The final section of the book talks about organizing your home in a way that is efficient for everyone living there. I love the alternative storage solutions offered and the always present mantra “a place for everything”. Organizing really comes down to having all of the items that you use every day in a place that makes sense and is easy to put away.

I have looked over this book so many times in the last week that I have seriously thought about purchasing it because of all of the helpful hints. If you need some quick inspiration for a jump start on getting your house organized, this is the book.

Saving Dinner by Leanne Ely is a book designed to bring families back to the dinner table. I discovered it after finding Flylady. I originally visited Flylady for tips on keeping on my home clean and liked the idea of weekly menu planning that was introduced in Saving Dinner.

The book is divided into four main sections, with each section being designated by the season of the year. Saving Dinner is not a cook book, but a collection of menus designed to inspire you to cook for your family. Each section brings new recipes based on the season. There are eight weeks of menus in each section with six days for each week. The weekly menu is designed to have only six days to accommodate a family’s favorite meal, or activities that would eliminate the need for the seventh day’s menu.

The other thing that makes this book different is that each week of recipes also comes with a shopping list for the entire week of menus. If you are sticking to each weeks menu it would work really well, but if you need to eliminate one of the meals or alter it, it may take a little work in figuring out what items on the shopping list need to be changed.

The book offers some great recipes that are designed to be healthy, but taste good as well. The other item I like in the book are the side bars of information sporadically placed throughout the book. The side bars of information offer useful information on cooking and kitchen tips. I found the tips to be quite useful and enjoyed the authors insight.