Book review: The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, by Marie Kondo
If you haven't communed with your socks lately, thanked your shoes for their hard work, or bowed (at least mentally) to your home in appreciation, maybe it's time to consider doing so.
by Marie Kondo
Ten Speed Press
If you haven't communed with your socks lately, thanked your shoes for their hard work, or bowed (at least mentally) to your home in appreciation, maybe it's time to consider doing so.
"It is very natural for me to say thank you to the goods that support us," says Marie Kondo, whose method of lovingly connecting with belongings that "spark joy" and bidding a fond but firm farewell to the rest is popular in Japan and now catching on elsewhere.
Kondo has been the subject of a movie in Japan, and the waiting list for her services is now so extensive she has temporarily stopped accepting more clients. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing is also a bestseller in Germany and Britain.
Her "KonMari Method", as she calls it in this illustration-free volume, encourages a rapid and transformative one-time organising event that is completed in six months: it's not an ongoing battle against clutter.
Kondo sees "tidying" as a cheerful conversation in which anything that doesn't "spark joy" is thanked and ceremonially sent on its way. The result can be life-changing, she says. Clients find themselves surrounded by things that provide clarity, unencumbered by belongings that carry past baggage (unwanted gifts, clothes that no longer fit) or anxieties about the future (does anyone need that many cotton swabs?). Even her book, she says, should be discarded when it's no longer needed.