Give Clutter the Middle Finger
A Chingona's Guide to Taking Control of Your Stuff and Your Life
Challenging expectations of perfection set forth by social media influencers and traditional home organizers, Give Clutter the Middle Finger is a warm and funny self-help guide.
Meggie Mangione’s Give Clutter the Middle Finger is a candid, compassionate home organizing guide that redefines tidiness as a tool for freedom rather than perfection.
Written by a professional organizer and the founder of Organized Life Design, who introduces herself as “a busy small business owner with even busier kids trying my best to hold it all together with a prayer and superglue,” the book challenges the expectation of perfection set forth by social media influencers and traditional home organizers. It encourages homeowners to cast aside shame and judgment by untangling the state of their homes from their individual self-worth. Organizing one’s home should not be treated as an aesthetic goal, it asserts, but should instead be about feelings of freedom. It calls clutter “visual noise” that distracts people from living fully, chasing their dreams, and enjoying time with their loved ones. It introduces the ROAR method (Remove, Organize, Analyze, and Return) for decluttering homes, from the mudroom to the garage—“where everything you don’t want in your house goes to die.”
One of the book’s most useful refrains is its rejection of the perfectionist mindset. Organizing one’s home should be about achieving a “passing grade,” not getting straight A’s. It also compares the organizing process to the pursuit of personal fitness, complete with setbacks, plateaus, and personal goals. Throughout, the emphasis is on progress, not transformation. Its advice for mindful consumption and guarding what enters one’s home in the first place is empowering too.
The prose is is frank, self-deprecating, and warm. Drawing connections between clutter and mental health in a thoughtful and convincing manner, it introduces memorable images, as of clutter-keeper personas including “Shopper Sally,” “Procrastinator Paula,” and “Collector Carol” to help untangle common tendencies and work toward personalized solutions. It addresses the shame, guilt, and overwhelm that keep people stuck in emotionally loaded spaces like closets. Such subjects are handled with tact and empathy, as with the introduction of practical questions to guide one’s discernment on what to keep, including whether they would buy an item again, want to be photographed with it, or want to be seen by a former partner while wearing it.
Some contradictions arise: Despite its promise to avoid idealized home imagery, the book opens with pristine photographs and continues to include them throughout, undermining its mission to dismantle social media–driven myths about picture-perfect homes. Similar dissonance arises from the repeated assurance that this is “not your average self-help book”—a statement that loses strength through overuse. Still, the presentation on the whole is marked by humor, clarity, and humanity.
Give Clutter the Middle Finger is an irreverent home organization guide for ridding homes of clutter and improving one’s mental health.
Reviewed by
Hannah Pearson
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
