Jane Brown is a decluttering queen, but only if you have big 
money. That’s maybe the least appealing part of the story for 
me. She will only sort out your MESS if you are a millionaire. 
I get that a Los Angeles-based professional organiser will 
have plenty of wealthy clients, but we can see from TV shows 
about hoarding, that families club together to get help for an 
ordinary person stuck with rooms full of dolls and clothes 
never taken out of wrappers.

Jane, oddly, is heading a bit that way herself. She has a 
storage bin of items she decided not to gift to her live-in 
boyfriend, Teddy. The mean part of this is that she steals 
items from her clients, who are wealthy, as observed, and 
won’t miss a purse, a tie, a wallet, or a toy. She helps to 
declutter drawers full of lipsticks sent to influencers, and 
mementoes of earlier days now in tatters. Jane sees a 
different person and mansion each day, hardly making a dent, 
with a different co-worker from their agency most days, and 
she thinks about her life.

I think Jane is heavily compensating for a lack of perfection 
in her personal life. For one, her family was shaken when her 
brother turned out to have special needs, so she may have to 
show her stressed parents that she is nearly perfect. Or 
perhaps, while she enjoys tidying someone’s files and clothes, 
she wants to think that, however messy her life is, it’s not 
this bad.

Some aspects of Jane make her a not-so-nice person. I already 
said she steals from her clients, when they would probably let 
her take anything they don’t want, if she asked. The agency 
disapproves, so she can’t ask. I can tell this was written by 
a man because Jane’s first thought about her female clients 
is what their bodies look like. Jane is okay with a boyfriend 
who does nothing all day but play computer games, smoke drugs 
and get tattoos. None of this makes me like her.

Michael Chessler may be hoping to help women readers get their 
lives together. Or maybe just to entertain them with sarcastic 
jibes at modern influencers while looking more thoughtfully at 
past actresses. He doesn’t really give many tips, though; for 
instance, it’s good to take a photo of a memorable item like a 
dress and then donate the item. The author just goes with 
keeping what brings you joy and not what sparks bad memories. 
MESS is not that easy to follow, with many names and 
locations, but the principle of discarding what you don’t need 
(and buying less) holds true. Even if what you don’t need is a 
relationship.