Review: Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess

Unf*ck Your Habitat: You're Better Than Your Mess by Rachel Hoffman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I figured that this would be similar to other organizational books that I seem to read every couple months. I maintain this somewhat regular diet of such books in the hopes that 1) I get some new ideas, 2) I get some reminders of what I already know, and 3) I get some motivation to clean and organize and reduce my clutter. This was different in that instead of focusing on organizing clutter, it was more focused on relationships and the impact of others on where and how one lives. There are also some other sections about habit forming, cleaning, and digital life, really a hit or miss mix of topics. I wasn’t expecting the focus on relationships, and I didn’t get much out of this topic. The other topics were covered in short chapters, and I didn’t get much out of these either. There were some specific recommendations here, for instance how to organize papers in your desk, there were lots missing. This tended to the higher level, and much more aimed to the mental aspects. While not finding any useful new ideas, I did appreciate the different topics discussed in relation to “rules for living”, and I’m feeling a bit of motivation – so for that aspect it worked.

This is another of the many recent books that contain 4-letter words in the title, and that are written with a regular sprinkling of cussing throughout. While cussing in print was novel and lent an edgy feel a few years back, this practice seems very tired now. In particular, this book felt like the author had to exert effort to find places to put cussing into the text, and it results in feeling like a book by a marketer (or even a committee of marketers) meant to manipulate the reader into feeling that this was current and young. Instead it feels more shallow, and given that this is a short book to start with, that’s a very bad thing. (I’m sounding like my parents now.) At least they didn’t try to add Zombies.

I listened to the audio version of this book. This was fine for my purposes of hoping to glean some new ideas and to build some motivation. But as I check the "Look Inside" at Amazon for this book, it seems like there are more details than I remembered from listening. It looks like you may get a different take on the book if reading it given the topics seem to be better organized in print. (In other words, there are lists and subheaders and checklists that don't work as well in audio.)


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