Totally Organized the Bonnie McCullough Way by...

Totally Organized the Bonnie McCullough Way by Bonnie McCullough (St. Martin’s Press: $10.95).

Bonnie McCullough wasn’t always a paragon of organization. When she was a young house-bound mother, the breakfast dishes congealed in the sink, the laundry went unlaundered and her three toddlers often stayed in their pajamas all day, until it didn’t seem worthwhile dressing them for their Daddy’s return at nightfall.

Somewhere along the line, slowly and surely, McCullough got her act together. She developed her MM (minimum maintenance) system, one that, she claims, will free you for work or play at 9:30 a.m.--but only if you spend five minutes giving each room a lick and a promise.

Organization begins with getting up on time, getting dressed--even if you’re not going anywhere--and, most importantly, deciding on dinner early in the day, because so much time must be devoted to the preparation and cleanup of this meal.

McCullough devotes highly instructive chapters to deep-cleaning the house, ways to “lick the laundry” (an average family of four uses 224 items each week), methods of organizing a closet (we wear 20% of our clothes 80% of the time) and of coping with the daily “paper chase” of newspapers, mail and other items. She’s also instructive in telling us when to keep or discard myriad things, as she ranges through the house from garage to bathroom--though one woman’s reject might be another’s precious memento.

During this post-Friedan era of liberation from household drudgery, some may bridle at such unabashed dedication to the Home Perfect. Others, despite our files and personal organization systems, can still profit from the McCullough way of creating order from chaos.