Overview

This study of organizing and decluttering professionals helps us understand—and perhaps alleviate—the overwhelming demands society places on our time and energy. For a widely dreaded, often mundane task, organizing one's possessions has taken a surprising hold on our cultural imagination. Today, those with the means can hire professionals to help sort and declutter their homes. In More Than Pretty Boxes, Carrie M. Lane introduces us to this world of professional organizers and offers new insight into the domains of work and home, forever entangled—especially for women. The female-dominated organizing profession didn't have a name until the 1980s, but it is now the subject of countless reality shows, podcasts, and magazines. Lane draws on interviews with organizers, including many of the field's founders, to trace the profession's history and uncover its enduring appeal to those seeking meaningful, flexible, self-directed work. Taking readers behind the scenes of real-life organizing sessions, More Than Pretty Boxes details the strategies organizers use to help people part with their belongings, and it also explores the intimate, empathetic relationships that can form between clients and organizers. But perhaps most importantly, More Than Pretty Boxes helps us think through a tangled set of questions around neoliberal work arrangements, overconsumption, emotional connection, and the deeply gendered nature of paid and unpaid work. Ultimately, Lane situates organizing at the center of contemporary conversations around how work isn't working anymore and makes a case for organizing's radical potential to push back against the overwhelming demands of work and the home, too often placed on women's shoulders. Organizers aren't the sole answer to this crisis, but their work can help us better understand both the nature of the problem and the sorts of solace, support, and solutions that might help ease it.

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9780226832777

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Reviews

“A surprising number of us live with too much stuff or face life crises in which what used to be a comfortable amount turns into overwhelming excess. This all-too-common problem has led to professional organizing, a job that Carrie M. Lane describes with great warmth and humor as she shows how these everyday champions of personal order emerged as a modern-day professional guild to bring solace to clients afflicted with some of the curses of capitalist consumption. More Than Pretty Boxes is a captivating exploration of how a feminized job gains recognition and symbolic value—ethnography at its most sympathetic, savvy, and subtle.” * Ilana Gershon, author of ""The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office"" * “I began my career as a professional organizer in 2008, at the age of fifty and after a twenty-five-year stint in higher education, earning a Ph.D. in women’s history along the way. As such, I read More Than Pretty Boxes with particular interest. Lane offers a unique blend of storytelling, history, biography, and analysis on an understudied group of entrepreneurs, mostly women, who navigate the closets and underwear drawers of their clients. Examining the industry through the lens of feminism and the ‘doubly gendered’ nature of the work, Lane offers a rare glimpse into the mind and heart of these ‘therapists of capitalism.’” * Regina F. Lark, Ph.D. and founder of A Clear Path, LLC * “Lane has managed to perfectly capture the spirit and soul of the organizing profession. As a twenty-year ‘industry insider,’ I was delighted by her insightful take on what makes organizers tick and the nuance with which we approach this work that we love. I found her exploration of the rise of the profession as a reflection of the realities of the modern U.S. labor market to be especially interesting and relevant to my own lived experience. I would recommend this book for anyone who is already operating within the profession, curious about organizing for a career, or contemplating hiring an organizer for support in their home or business.” * Mindy Godding, president, National Association of Organizing and Productivity Professionals * “More Than Pretty Boxes takes us into the fascinating world of professional organizing. With an anthropologist’s keen eye, Lane shows us how the rise of this profession is a sign of our times—an age of overwork, overwhelm, and uncertainty, in which too much is being asked of women at work and at home. In this deeply researched book she provides an up close view into the societal burdens placed on women—to be the good employee, the perfect mother, and to have the perfect home—and how professional organizers (mostly women) become the ‘therapists of capitalism,’ helping their clients (mostly women) to better cope by decluttering their homes and by doing the ‘feminist work’ of encouraging clients to let go of the perfectionist standards put on them. This is an important book and a must read.” * Marianne Cooper, VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford University * “Gripping from the very start, More Than Pretty Boxes takes us inside the homes where people feel trapped by their stuff and allows us to witness the intimate care-work of the professional organizers working their magic. With an acute analysis leavened by humor and compassion, Lane chronicles the ‘palpable too-muchness’ of contemporary life and shows how it is linked to trends in work, family, and gender. It turns out that organizing is feminist care-work, a connective labor plumbing meaning from clients and bringing new identities within reach. And as Lane tells it, the (mostly) women who create this profound alchemy are themselves forging a path towards new forms of meaningful work. This fascinating book is at once critical and deeply humane, straightforward about the challenges that face us and yet hopeful with the bracing air of possibility.” * Allison J. Pugh, author of ""The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World"" *

"“A surprising number of us live with too much stuff, or face life crises in which what used to be a comfortable amount turns into overwhelming excess. This all-too-common problem has led to professional organizers, a job that Carrie M. Lane describes with great warmth and humor as she shows how these everyday champions of personal order emerged as a modern-day professional guild to bring solace to clients afflicted with some of the curses of capitalist consumption. More Than Pretty Boxes is a captivating exploration of how a feminized job gains recognition and symbolic value, ethnography at its most sympathetic, savvy, and subtle.” * Ilana Gershon, author of ""The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office"" *"

"“A surprising number of us live with too much stuff, or face life crises in which what used to be a comfortable amount turns into overwhelming excess. This all-too-common problem has led to professional organizers, a job that Carrie M. Lane describes with great warmth and humor as she shows how these everyday champions of personal order emerged as a modern-day professional guild to bring solace to clients afflicted with some of the curses of capitalist consumption. More Than Pretty Boxes is a captivating exploration of how a feminized job gains recognition and symbolic value, ethnography at its most sympathetic, savvy, and subtle.” * Ilana Gershon, author of ""The Pandemic Workplace: How We Learned to Be Citizens in the Office"" * “I began my career as a professional organizer in 2008, at the age of fifty and after a twenty-five-year stint in higher education, earning a Ph.D. in women’s history along the way. As such, I read More Than Pretty Boxes with particular interest. Lane offers a unique blend of storytelling, history, biography, and analysis on an understudied group of entrepreneurs, mostly women, who navigate the closets and underwear drawers of their clients. Examining the industry through the lens of feminism and the ‘doubly gendered’ nature of the work, Lane offers a rare glimpse into the mind and heart of these ‘therapists of capitalism.’” * Regina F. Lark, Ph.D. and founder of A Clear Path, LLC * “Lane has managed to perfectly capture the spirit and soul of the organizing profession. As a twenty-year ‘industry insider,’ I was delighted by her insightful take on what makes organizers tick and the nuance with which we approach this work that we love. I found her exploration of the rise of the profession as a reflection of the realities of the modern U.S. labor market to be especially interesting and relevant to my own lived experience. I would recommend this book for anyone who is already operating within the profession, curious about organizing for a career, or contemplating hiring an organizer for support in their home or business.” * Mindy Godding, President, National Association of Organizing and Productivity Professionals *"

Author Information

Carrie M. Lane is professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton. For more than two decades, she has conducted ethnographic and historical research on the changing nature of work in contemporary America. She is the author of the award-winning book A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment and coeditor of Anthropologies of Unemployment: New Perspectives on Work and Its Absence.

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