About Tara Aronson

I've been writing about homes, families, cleaning and organization for a long time.

Long enough to know that most people don't need another person telling them to alphabetize the spice rack.

They need a home that works. A kitchen they can actually cook in. A living room where they can sit down without first relocating three piles. A closet that doesn't require defensive maneuvers when the door opens. And a cleaning routine that doesn't consume Saturday.

That's what Clean-Organized-Family-Home.com is about: practical ways to clean, declutter and organize your home without making home maintenance a second full-time job.

I'm Tara Aronson, an author and lifestyle journalist. I've spent three decades researching, testing and writing about the practical side of managing a home and family.

And I have never believed you need a perfect house to have a good one.

How This All Started

Long before home organization became a social media industry, I wrote about the everyday realities of keeping a household running.

Not the photographed version. The actual version.

Laundry multiplies. Paper accumulates. Children leave things in places no reasonable person would think to look. Kitchens get dirty immediately after you clean them.

And clutter has a peculiar ability to enter a house one object at a time and eventually occupy an entire room.

Those problems interested me because they're ordinary—and because solving ordinary problems can make daily life substantially easier.

Over the years, that became books, articles, and ultimately this website.

My Background

•      Newspaper columnist. I created the “Coming Clean” and “Quick Fixes” columns for the San Francisco Chronicle's Home section. “Coming Clean” ran from 1995 and reached more than half a million subscribers.

•      On TV. I've shared cleaning and organizing tips on The Rachael Ray Show, Living It Up! with Ali & Jack, SoapTalk, Coffee With America and morning shows around the country. (Watch a segment.)

•      Industry spokesperson. I served as national spokesperson for the Whirlpool Institute of Fabric Science, doing satellite media tours on laundry and fabric care.

•      Author of five books on cleaning, organizing, decluttering and housekeeping with kids. More on those below.

•      Mom of three. Every chore chart, laundry system and stain trick on this site has been tested on real kids. Some of them even worked the first time.

My Books

I've been writing books about cleaning, household organization and family life for more than two decades.

The Daily Home Reset

The Daily Home Reset

The Daily Home Reset is built around a simple premise: you shouldn't have to sacrifice your weekend to recover from your week.

The book uses short, manageable daily resets to keep ordinary household mess from becoming a major cleaning project.

No elaborate system. No cleaning marathon. No expectation that you'll suddenly become a person who finds tremendous spiritual fulfillment in wiping a kitchen counter.

Just a practical way to keep the house under control a little at a time.

Room by Room

Room by Room: How to Declutter a Lifetime of Stuff and Get Your Space Back tackles a different problem: too much stuff.

Not because you've failed at organizing. Not because you haven't bought enough containers. Because after years, or decades, of living, most of us simply accumulate things.

Some are useful. Some are sentimental. Some cost too much to throw away. Some belonged to people we loved. And some have sat in a box so long that opening them feels vaguely archaeological.

Room by Room is about reducing that accumulation without requiring you to become a minimalist. The goal isn't to own as little as possible. It's to own what lets you live comfortably in your home.

My Earlier Books

• The Clean Freak Manifesto: The Germaphobe's Guide to Sanitizing Everything in Your Home (St. Martin's), published under my legal name, Tara D. Garner. It covers the hot spots where germs hide, cleaning vs. disinfecting, and staying germ-safe away from home.

• Mrs. Clean Jeans' Housekeeping With Kids (Rodale), built on my motto: “You didn't make this mess all by yourself, so why should you have to clean it up?”

• Simplify Your Household (Simpler Life Series), my first book
  

See all my books on my Amazon author page.

Why I Don't Preach Minimalism

Minimalism works beautifully for some people. I'm not particularly interested in convincing everyone else to adopt it.

You can love books. You can keep family photographs. You can own holiday decorations. You can have hobbies that require equipment. You can keep sentimental belongings. You can even have a junk drawer.

The question isn't: Could I live without this?

The more useful question is: Does the amount of stuff I own still work in the space I have?

That's a very different standard. Decluttering doesn't have to end with a nearly empty room and one tasteful plant. Sometimes success is simply finding the scissors.

My Approach to Cleaning

I have equally little interest in turning cleaning into an identity.

A home needs to be cleaned. That's unavoidable. But cleaning should support your life, not dominate it.

I favor routines that are:

• Simple enough to remember

• Short enough to actually do

• Flexible enough for real life

• Specific enough to be useful

• Sustainable after the initial burst of enthusiasm wears off
  

Because almost any cleaning system works beautifully for the first three days. The interesting question is whether you'll still use it three months later.

That's why you'll find so much emphasis on manageable routines throughout this site.

My Approach to Decluttering

Decluttering gets harder the longer you live. That's just arithmetic.

Twenty, thirty or forty years of possessions carry more history than the contents of a first apartment. There are inherited things. Children's things. Former-career things. Former-hobby things. Expensive things. Sentimental things.

Things you're saving for someone who's already told you they don't want them. And things you're keeping because getting rid of them would require making a decision you'd rather postpone.

So I don't approach decluttering as a contest to see how much you can discard. I approach it as a series of practical decisions: keep it, donate it, sell it, toss it.

Then move on. The objective is not deprivation. It's getting your space back.

Why You'll Find Humor Here

Because we're talking about housework. If we can't make fun of it occasionally, we're left with just the housework.

This site has plenty of serious information: step-by-step cleaning instructions, organizing strategies, stain-removal advice, home maintenance guidance, family chore systems and practical safety information.

But useful information doesn't have to sound like an appliance manual. Your home is where actual life happens. It gets messy. So does life. We can acknowledge both.

A Home Doesn't Have to Be Perfect to Work

This is the idea behind everything I write. Your home isn't a showroom. It's not content. It's not a before-and-after photograph waiting for the “after.”

It's where you eat breakfast. Lose your keys. Fold laundry. Bring home groceries. Raise children. Feed pets. Pay bills. Invite friends. Get sick. Celebrate things. Recover from things.

Live.

A good home doesn't need to stay perfectly clean and organized every minute. It needs systems that make it easy to put things right again. Not perfection. Recovery.

Can you reset the kitchen without losing the evening? Can you find what you need? Can you clear the dining table without relocating everything to another pile? Can you invite somebody inside without immediately wanting to apologize for your house?

If so, you're doing pretty well.

Start Where Your House Is Bothering You Most

You don't need to fix everything. Pick what's creating the most friction.

• If the house feels dirty, start with the Cleaning Guide for practical routines and room-by-room help.

• If there's simply too much stuff, start with the Decluttering Guide for a realistic approach to owning less.

•  If you have the right amount of stuff but can never find any of it, start with the Home Organization Guide.
  

You'll also find help with family life, pets, home maintenance, safety, kitchens, bathrooms, outdoor spaces and the family car. In other words: the ordinary machinery of running a home.

One room. One problem. One improvement. Then another.

That's how homes become easier to live in. Not through one heroic weekend in which you empty every closet onto the floor and discover at 11 p.m. that you've made a terrible mistake.

For Producers and Press

I'm available for TV segments, podcasts and interviews on cleaning, decluttering, organizing and family life. Watch a segment, or reach me at tara@clean-organized-family-home.com. Easier yet - fill out the box below.

Keep Going

Find your starting point with these related guides:

•      Coming Clean: The Cleaning Guide: Practical routines and room-by-room cleaning help.

•      How to Declutter Your Home: A realistic approach to owning less, one room at a time.

•      Organize Your Home: Systems that make everyday life easier.

•      The Daily Home Reset: Keep the house under control, 15 minutes at a time.

•      Room by Room: How to declutter a lifetime of stuff and get your space back.

•      Tara on TV: Watch Tara's segments, and book her for your show.

•      Chores for Kids by Age: What kids can do at every age, from toddlers to teens.

•      Family Life: Help with the people (and pets) who make the mess.

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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