I’ve just started getting into Hannah’s Art of Home: Managing your home around your personality by Hannah Keeley. I’m hoping that because this is not a one-size-fits-all housekeeping manual, but rather shows you how to tailor your routine to your personality, that it’ll help me get organized and better at staying on top of things.

In the first chapter, Hannah talks about housekeeping in general, what’s so great about home, and briefly hints at her method: it’s important to keep house in a way that complements your personality, rather than trying to force yourself to manage your home just like everyone else, be it Donna Reed or Martha Stewart.

In the second chapter, Keeley introduces you to a history of personality theories, and her own Home Personality Test. There are four basic personality types (Keeley seems to be using the four Keirsey Temperaments: Rational, Artisan, Guardian and Idealist, albeit with different names), and you take a quick Cosmo-like test to assess which one you are. I got the Starry-Eyed Dreamer (Idealist); no suprise there.

At the end of each chapter, Keeley suggests a different prescription for each of the four temperament types. But before you can get that far, she asks you to create a “dream book”, an unruled notebook with collaged covers, for writing your thoughts and ideas in. Sounds like fun, except I’ve been immersed in the project for more than a week now, cutting out pictures of birds, tea accoutrements, pottery and the like and glue-sticking them on. I could see some other personality types really having to overcome some hurdles (it sort of requires being imperfect and unrestrained) but for me it’s a question of ever stopping.