She caused a stir when she married into the royal family, and then a bigger one when she and her Prince Charming left the royal family. Now Cinderella, also known for her popular Instagram account @CindytherealElla and cleaning/organization business, is hoping to make new news with a new project.
Ella’s first book, Clean Queen: Turn Your Cottage into a Castle takes the tips she shares online and turns them into a more cohesive, actionable plan for organizing your life and belongings. About three hundred and fifty pages with color pictures and diagrams, the book outlines a step-by-step plan. It has sections on paring down your items, making the most of your space, and “living like a queen” as a result.
I tested her steps on my writing desk, a long established, cluttered mess.
Her tips for throwing out, giving away, or donating things that you no longer use, will not use again, haven’t been used in three months, or have duplicates of did result in fewer things on and around my desk. And her breezy style and suggestions even made the decluttering process fun.
When it was done, my desk looked beautiful. It probably hasn’t looked that nice since I started using it.
But that leads to the real problem here.
My desk looked beautiful, and I didn’t want to work at it for three days after my deep clean. Which was not conducive to my working at all. When I finally bit the bullet and returned, I found all of my efforts took twice as long, as every time I used anything in my space I followed her instructions to always put things back where they came from the second you were done with it. This was a real time-waster, and also a stressor every time I realized I hadn’t followed the rule, even though it was often times of greater convenience.
Similarly, Ella’s really hard about following all her decluttering rules, and she’s a persuasive writer, so I got rid of several of my style guides and reference books, such as the one detailing royal titles, because I rarely use it. But while Ella might not be using her titles anymore, she’s not the only princess in the Kingdom, and I found myself needing it just a few hours after donating my book to Another Ever After thrift store.
The entire book had a very high-minded, minimalist feel to it. The idea that you can just get rid of things because you don’t need them right that second is pretty impractical. Not everyone can just drop everything and buy new things, when they’ve recently gotten rid of perfectly functional versions.
Similarly, not everyone thrives in a completely empty space. Once I cluttered my desk up again, my productivity increased. The clean-up and declutter definitely changed my work habits, but the only queen I felt like was one of Henry VIII’s wives: constantly stressed and afraid of losing my head.
Princesses might all want castles, but I feel like every good witch (or even wicked ones) wants to live in a cottage.
If you’re into ridgid rules by the nouveau riche about how to live your life, you could do worse than this fun and breezy read. If you like your cottage the way it is, you can skip it.
Clean Queen is available September 1st from the Perrault Imprint of Ye Xian Publish.
