Tidying

What sets Bob Flowerdew’s Pruning, Training, and Tidying apart from other books on the subject is that it does not advise pruning every single plant in your garden. Rather, as Flowerdew puts it, this guide explains the simplest basics of pruning, and how to get admirable results without obsessing over the growing pattern of every plant.

Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles? Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).