Who is the author of Outer Order, Inner Calm?

The author of Outer Order, Inner Calm is Gretchen Rubin.

Mindfulness & Happiness

Outer Order, Inner Calm Book Summary - Outer Order, Inner Calm Book explained in key points

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Outer Order, Inner Calm summary

Name: Outer Order, Inner Calm
Rating: 4.2 (262 reviews)
Author: Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen Rubin

Declutter and Organize to Make More Room for Happiness

4.2 (262 ratings)

16 mins

Brief summary

'Outer Order, Inner Calm' by Gretchen Rubin is a guide to decluttering your space and finding inner peace. With practical tips and real-life examples, this book helps turn chaos into calm and free up mental space for more joyful living.

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Table of Contents

Outer Order, Inner Calm
Summary of 6 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 6

What’s in it for me? Declutter your life.

In a world of mass consumption and persuasive advertising, it’s easier than ever to fill your home with things you neither want, need nor love. Before you know it, your belongings are spilling out of closets, heaped in piles on the floor and bursting out of your garage. The result? You’re left feeling stressed, out of control, and overwhelmed with clutter.

So how you can you decide what to keep and what to throw away? And how can you ensure your home remains uncluttered? Happiness and habits expert Gretchen Rubin has the answer. In these blinks you’ll discover why maintaining a clutter-free home is so important for your wellbeing and you’ll learn simple tricks, tips and habits to keep your personal surroundings conducive to inner calm, all with minimum effort.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

the three questions that determine whether something is trash or treasure;
what cleaning your kitchen has to do with your next career move; and
why decluttering becomes so much harder in old age.

Taking control of our possessions helps us to take stock and reflect on the rest of our lives.

Many of us struggle to keep an orderly home or workspace. What’s the big deal, we tell ourselves, if things are a little messy? Unfortunately, in truth, the tidiness of your external surroundings can have a bigger impact on your inner peace than you might think. In other words, your overflowing desk drawers and jumbled wardrobe are not a trivial issue. They’re getting in the way of your happiness.

Importantly, clearing up our stuff and taking control of our possessions can give us a sense of control in other areas of life. Just consider the author’s friend, who once remarked that when she eventually cleaned and organized her fridge, she finally realized that she could change her career as well.

What’s the connection between your fridge and your work life? It all comes down to the promise of new possibilities.

When the food in our refrigerator or the dirty clothes in our laundry basket start to accumulate, we feel a creeping sense of paralysis. Working ourselves free of the mess we’ve created can start to feel like an insurmountable task. So we freeze up and get stuck in a trapped frame of mind.

But when we finally shift all that clutter or throw out all that old food, our sense of hopelessness will be replaced by a feeling of renewal. And we’ll start thinking about the future again: what do we want to buy, and what sort of lifestyle do we want? This is what happened to the author’s friend. As she was throwing out old mayonnaise and jam jars, removing stains and carefully arranging her condiments, she saw that there was a possibility for her to change her working environment too.

Crucially, getting your external world in order also means prioritizing the here and now, as well as looking to the future. Once you’re no longer crowding your house with those giant stuffed toys your children played with as babies, you’ll be able to reflect on your family as it is right now, not as it was several years ago.

Stop making excuses and take logical, informed decisions about what to keep and what to chuck.

Sorting through our clutter is often a mammoth undertaking. It’s a task that requires difficult choices as to what to keep and what to throw away.

Moreover, in the process of clearing, keeping and discarding, we must also face the wishful thinking and excuses that have caused us to keep certain possessions for so long. For instance, the author often finds herself hanging onto items of clothing that are too old or stained to be worn anymore. Her excuse? She tells herself she loves these clothes and so she must keep them. But really, they’re just useless clutter.

Don’t delay in bringing order to your home because decluttering gets harder as you get older.

Once you’ve decided which possessions to keep and which to get rid of, the next step toward external tidiness and inner peace can begin. In this stage, you’ll find an appropriate place for each of your things and make sure they stay there too.

When you’re considering where something should live, bear in mind this simple piece of wisdom: Something you can’t get to is something you won’t use. Therefore, it’s more important to consider how accessible an item will be in a particular place as well as whether it can be stored there. And if you find yourself thinking that storage is more important than accessibility? Well, chances are that you should throw that thing out now because it doesn’t sound like you’re planning on using it.

Self-knowledge is a valuable weapon in the fight against mess.

How well do you know yourself? Although this might seem like an odd question to ask in the context of tidying up, it couldn’t be more relevant to the process of restoring order to your home. Why? Because if you know yourself and what you want, you can reorder your home to help yourself thrive.

The first question you should ask yourself is: what am I specifically trying to achieve by decluttering this particular space? Once you understand why you’re decluttering you’ll be able to spend your energy and your time more productively – and you’ll also know when you’ve achieved success.

Adopt simple, effective habits to maintain an orderly and clutter-free home.

Once you’ve successfully decluttered and restored order to your home, you may be thinking, how am I going to keep everything like this?

If you adopt some simple habits to help keep things neat, you can look forward to a lifetime of outer order and inner calm. And the great thing about habits is that after a while they become automatic. In other words, you’ll be maintaining order without even paying it much thought.

We are often conflicted about what we want from our homes, but they can still be beautiful.

It’s finally time to add something to your surroundings instead of merely taking things away. What are we going to add? Beauty, of course.

All too often though, it can be difficult to tell what beauty in our homes should look like. Why? Because what is beautiful is always dependent on what we want our home to be.

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What is Outer Order, Inner Calm about?

Outer Order, Inner Calm (2019) explains how you can declutter your home and keep it neat and beautiful. Exploring the reasons why orderly surroundings are so important for our wellbeing, these blinks offer practical tips and advice on how to overcome messiness for good.

Outer Order, Inner Calm Review

Outer Order, Inner Calm (2019) by Gretchen Rubin is a book that explores the connection between our surroundings and our sense of inner calm, inviting readers to create an organized and serene environment. Here's why this book is worth reading:

With its practical tips and strategies, the book empowers readers to declutter and organize their spaces, leading to a more peaceful and harmonious life.
Drawing from personal experiences and research, Rubin provides relatable stories and insights, making the book relatable, informative, and engaging.
The book's emphasis on simplicity and the understanding that outer order contributes to inner calm make it a compelling and inspiring read.

Best quote from Outer Order, Inner Calm

I keep a few precious mementos from the old days, but most of my space is devoted to whats important now.

—Gretchen Rubin

Who should read Outer Order, Inner Calm?

Anyone wanting to take back control of their life
Neat freaks looking for new tips
Homeowners hoping to organize their homes better

About the Author

Gretchen Rubin is an American author and blogger. Rubin’s writing focuses on habits and happiness, and her books Better Than Before, Happier at Home, and The Happiness Project were New York Times best-sellers. Rubin has sold over two million books worldwide, and her work has been translated into more than 30 languages.

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Mindfulness & Happiness

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