26 of 52
A book written by a woman A book written by someone under 30: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. Written by Marie Kondo. Audio performed by Emily Woo Zeller, Tantor Audio, 2015.
Yes, it sounds like it's too good to be true. You can't tidy your home once and then be done, right? The jury is out for me, since I haven't finished or had time to maintain, but it sounds like it could work. Kondo was born with an instinct to keep her space tidy, and she has tried and studied many methods for organizing, storing, and tidying. (You hear the word "tidy" a lot in this book.) She doesn't seem to take mental illnesses like depression -- which affects motivation and whether or not you even care about a tidy home -- into account. She only focuses on tidiness (the place not being cluttered with stuff) and not on cleanliness. Since my home currently lacks both tidiness and cleanliness, I'm tackling the former first so there's less stuff to shift around when I do my annual occasional pre-holiday heavy cleaning. Cleaning has to be done when I dirty a dish or use a bath towel, but tidying only has to be done once, because the mind set behind the Konmari method stays with you and affects everything you acquire from there on out.
Her method centers around one question that you apply, individually, to EVERY SINGLE ITEM YOU OWN. Every knickknack, sock, dish towel, spatula, and photograph. You touch it and ask yourself, "Does this spark joy?" If it does, put it in its place. If it doesn't spark joy, then it gets donated, recycled, or put in the trash. I'm not sure if it's more cultural or religious, but she anthropomorphizes items, including writing utensils, clothes, books, and the house itself. As a result, when you do discard an item, you thank it for what it has done, even if all it did was give you the pleasure of buying it or show you that this isn't a good color on you. I don't assign emotions to inanimate objects, but thanking these things helped me make progress over the weekend.
Kondo's last name has even become a verb for jettisoning possessions that don't spark joy: "I Kondoed three bags of trash and enough recycling and shredded stuff to fill two recycling bins." (True story; I did this from Friday night to Sunday evening before collapsing on the sofa around 8 pm last night. I almost feel bad for not leaving enough space in the recycling bins for the other eight households in my building.) I thanked a perfectly good Winnie the Pooh, kissed his nose, and put him gently on a pile of books by the dumpster yesterday. Ten minutes later, a woman came by and took him with her. Instead of being squashed in a box in the garage, he's free to be loved by her nephew.
There's more to this than does-this-spark-joy. Absorbing the concept of only keeping things that make you happy isn't just about choosing material items in your home; it's a mind set that people have carried over into their personal and vocational lives. In that way, this is a sort of self help book. It's easy for me to be all gung ho at the beginning, which is where I am, but I have a hard time finishing what I start. Time will tell if it helps me, but I liked listening to this book, and I appreciate the motivation I got from it over the weekend. I was happy every time I put something in the trash or recycling, so even though I didn't find my passport and am going through a big disappointment because of this, I can truthfully say that it's been a good weekend. I'm already glad I got this book.
Here are a couple of blog posts about the method and its effects:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/12/19/the_life_changing_magic_of_tidying_up_by_marie_kondo_is_a_best_selling_guide.html
http://rvanews.com/news/a-true-account-of-the-life-changing-magic-of-tidying-up/124633
As for Marie Kondo herself, she has stopped taking individual clients and is training others her method so they can take on clients. If I find that this method works for me in the long term, I'll look into getting certified.
Onward and upward: twenty-six down and twenty-six to go! I'm two books ahead of my one-a-week pace, and that pleases me, but books are taking a back seat to finding my passport this week.
I'm still at FB but have otherwise fallen off the social media wagon recently. I'm okay, but I don't want to discuss why until I know the outcome of this passport thing. *waves to flist* I hope you all are doing well!
Yes, it sounds like it's too good to be true. You can't tidy your home once and then be done, right? The jury is out for me, since I haven't finished or had time to maintain, but it sounds like it could work. Kondo was born with an instinct to keep her space tidy, and she has tried and studied many methods for organizing, storing, and tidying. (You hear the word "tidy" a lot in this book.) She doesn't seem to take mental illnesses like depression -- which affects motivation and whether or not you even care about a tidy home -- into account. She only focuses on tidiness (the place not being cluttered with stuff) and not on cleanliness. Since my home currently lacks both tidiness and cleanliness, I'm tackling the former first so there's less stuff to shift around when I do my annual occasional pre-holiday heavy cleaning. Cleaning has to be done when I dirty a dish or use a bath towel, but tidying only has to be done once, because the mind set behind the Konmari method stays with you and affects everything you acquire from there on out.
Her method centers around one question that you apply, individually, to EVERY SINGLE ITEM YOU OWN. Every knickknack, sock, dish towel, spatula, and photograph. You touch it and ask yourself, "Does this spark joy?" If it does, put it in its place. If it doesn't spark joy, then it gets donated, recycled, or put in the trash. I'm not sure if it's more cultural or religious, but she anthropomorphizes items, including writing utensils, clothes, books, and the house itself. As a result, when you do discard an item, you thank it for what it has done, even if all it did was give you the pleasure of buying it or show you that this isn't a good color on you. I don't assign emotions to inanimate objects, but thanking these things helped me make progress over the weekend.
Kondo's last name has even become a verb for jettisoning possessions that don't spark joy: "I Kondoed three bags of trash and enough recycling and shredded stuff to fill two recycling bins." (True story; I did this from Friday night to Sunday evening before collapsing on the sofa around 8 pm last night. I almost feel bad for not leaving enough space in the recycling bins for the other eight households in my building.) I thanked a perfectly good Winnie the Pooh, kissed his nose, and put him gently on a pile of books by the dumpster yesterday. Ten minutes later, a woman came by and took him with her. Instead of being squashed in a box in the garage, he's free to be loved by her nephew.
There's more to this than does-this-spark-joy. Absorbing the concept of only keeping things that make you happy isn't just about choosing material items in your home; it's a mind set that people have carried over into their personal and vocational lives. In that way, this is a sort of self help book. It's easy for me to be all gung ho at the beginning, which is where I am, but I have a hard time finishing what I start. Time will tell if it helps me, but I liked listening to this book, and I appreciate the motivation I got from it over the weekend. I was happy every time I put something in the trash or recycling, so even though I didn't find my passport and am going through a big disappointment because of this, I can truthfully say that it's been a good weekend. I'm already glad I got this book.
Here are a couple of blog posts about the method and its effects:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_eye/2014/12/19/the_life_changing_magic_of_tidying_up_by_marie_kondo_is_a_best_selling_guide.html
http://rvanews.com/news/a-true-account-of-the-life-changing-magic-of-tidying-up/124633
As for Marie Kondo herself, she has stopped taking individual clients and is training others her method so they can take on clients. If I find that this method works for me in the long term, I'll look into getting certified.
Onward and upward: twenty-six down and twenty-six to go! I'm two books ahead of my one-a-week pace, and that pleases me, but books are taking a back seat to finding my passport this week.
I'm still at FB but have otherwise fallen off the social media wagon recently. I'm okay, but I don't want to discuss why until I know the outcome of this passport thing. *waves to flist* I hope you all are doing well!