This #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing, and storing.
Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?
Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).
With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller featuring Tokyo’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.
Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?
Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).
With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller featuring Tokyo’s newest lifestyle phenomenon will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.
Author -
Marie “KonMari” Kondo runs an acclaimed consulting business in Tokyo helping clients transform their cluttered homes into spaces of serenity and inspiration. With a three-month waiting list, her KonMari Method of decluttering and organizing has become an international phenomenon. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a best seller in Japan, Germany, and the UK, with more than two million copies sold worldwide, and has been turned into a television drama for Japanese TV. She has been named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time, featured on more than thirty major Japanese television and radio programs, and profiled in the Sunday Times, Red magazine, You magazine, the New York Times, USA Today, NPR's Here & Now, Slate, Family Circle, and the London Times, who has deemed her “Japan’s preeminent guru of tidiness, a warrior princess in the war on clutter.”
SAMPLE CUSTOMER REVIEWS –
1) Change your relationship with stuff and finally kick the clutter habit! - I will admit to having a tortured relationship with stuff. I grew up in a cluttered house and married the King of Clutter (he's the type of person who'll open a credit card bill, pay it online, and then just leave the empty envelope, inserts, and bill itself randomly strewn on whatever surface happens to be nearby). I don't like the disorder of clutter, but dealing with it is such a soul-sucking experience that I haven't gotten very far. Many days I semi-wish the whole place would burn down and save me from having to deal with it.
Typically I'll catch an episode of Hoarders, fear that I'm one incapacitating injury away from being the focus of an episode (if I can't clean up all those strewn papers, they'll just pile up to the rafters, after all!), and then go through a stack of junk in a fit of unhappiness. Not the best way to deal with it all.
Marie Kondo's book is the opposite of that. It's a breath of fresh air and positive energy that brings real joy to the process of "tidying up."
I was only about halfway through before I tackled my clothes. She's right to begin there. My clothes are all mine (which also means that they're in nowhere near as terrible a state as other things in my house), so going through them affects only me and involves only my own feelings. Her advice may sound silly at first, but if your belongings inspire feelings of unhappiness, guilt, etc., her anthropomorphism of them can really help you change your viewpoint in a positive direction. I finished up with three bags for Goodwill and one for the garbage man. My drawers and closet, which were never very messy, are now exactly as I want them, and I feel fantastic!
My one quibble with her instructions has to do with folding. I've always disliked rolls of items. Instead, I fold so I can line things up like files. This makes it easy to pull things out without everything falling over. For my five-year-old, I fold his t-shirts so the front image is visible on the fold, then file them in the drawer so he can see exactly which shirt is which. (Here's an example: http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/have-a-more-organized-monday-5-tips-for-tidying-your-dresser-drawers-136085) This works well for socks as well as t-shirts, pajamas, etc.
Most of her advice and content is really focused on a Japanese audience. There are many things in the book that won't translate as well culturally for a Western/American readership. For example, she suggests that you greet your home much as you would a Shinto shrine. That is likely to carry a different level of meaning for someone in Japan than in the U.S. Other references to spiritual practice and feng-shui are not likely to resonate the same way for an American audience. I even wonder if the preference for rolling clothes is cultural, since I have such a strong reaction against it and instead prefer folding and filing!
The examples in the book also tend toward the childless female. There is a lot of discussion of travel toiletries, but very little about kitchen utensils, toys, or other items found most often in a family home. The home workshop, which is a particular problem in my home, gets no mention at all. Don't Japanese people own countless drills, boxes of screws, and electrical tape?
But the reason for reading this book is not the specific advice about t-shirts and cupboards. It's about changing your relationship with the stuff you own. The tone of her book is so upbeat and positive, it's infectious. It's hard to keep reading it to the end, because you want to jump up and start using her methods immediately. I had little trouble adjusting her suggestions to match my own cultural perspective and physical home.
In the book she mentions that it'll take 6 months to fully tidy your home so that everything left inspires joy. I'm now a week in, and 6 months seems like hardly enough time to tackle all the junk in my house, but I can fully see how this can be a life-changing process.
By eb on October 27, 2014
2) Truly life changing - I rarely write reviews, but this book truly sparked something in me that I feel compelled to share. The basic concept is to only surround yourself with things that spark joy. Decide what you want to keep, not necessarily what you want to throw away. I have bought other organization or purging books in hopes of getting my cluttered home in order. This book was the only one that I read all the way through and actually put into practice. The anthropomorphism in this book spoke to me for some reason. While I don't believe socks are alive, her concept of freeing socks in their tight, little bundles and letting them rest because they work hard for you makes perfect sense to me. In other words, don't stretch out your socks because you want them to last as long as possible. Care for your items as if they were "real" and not only will your items last longer, but you will feel better having done so. The book really is about being happier. Cleaning out your clutter and the process she describes is truly life changing in ways I cannot explain. I am about 2 weeks into my de cluttering and I am much happier in my home. I have donated and discarded over 6 large bags of items. While I usually feel guilt over letting objects go, her process and explanations have freed me of that. She has wonderful folding and storage techniques as well. My children and husband love the work I have done thus far and it is causing them to start the process on their items. An unexpected surprise for me (and total joy to my husband) is my newfound frugality while shopping. I used to be a borderline shopaholic. But now, I truly just buy things I want around me. I think differently as I shop. I know it's a change that will last. It's strange but true. Marie Kondo is not only an expert on the art of de cluttering, but she is also an expert on human behavior and how to change it. I am a believer in her methods, and fan. She's amazing. The book is well worth it.
By Elsomalo on November 3, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment