The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

First of all, I am actually not a person who often reads self-help books. However, I must say that I really like this book by Marie Kondo. The word ‘life-changing’ on its title is not an exaggeration I guess. Our mindset, our confidence, our motivation to work, and so on, somehow starts from our house condition. I’ve read another book titled ‘Happiness Project’ and it considers decluttering as the first step to happiness as well. And yes.. I agree.

I know.. the reviews here are quite polarized, from those who really like it to those who have no idea or just simply can not relate to what the author has written on the book. I totally understand. 😀 But here I want to summarize what I think about the book.

Marie Kondo categorizes two general stages in tidying up:
1) to throw away our (unnecessary) stuffs
2) to classify and organize the stuffs that we’ve decided to keep

I myself find it easier to ‘throw away’ the unnecessary stuffs I have after reading this book. Marie uses the term ‘sparks joy’ as an indicator whether to keep the stuffs or not. According to her method called Konmari, we should keep only those stuffs which spark joy to us. Sounds too abstract? Well.. it might be. But we can think about those stuffs who have been inside our drawers, closets, or probably just lie on the floor which we actually rarely use/wear. Those might not spark joy, or in my simple thought, I don’t use them anymore.

When we say, “Oh, I might use it sometime later.”
Konmari says, “Sometime later means never!”

I am ashamed but I have to admit that it is true. I keep too many stuffs that I don’t use anymore, or even worse, I don’t realize that those stuffs even exist in my house. It’s time to let them go. They might be thrown away.. or in some cases they might meet their new owners who value them better than I do.

Another important thing is that when we realize how many stuffs we have and when we keep only the valued stuffs, we will think twice when we want to buy some new ones. Do we really need it? Will it be only additional burden to our house? As for me, I at least can control my desire to shop.

So, that’s the first lesson learned.

Regarding to organizing stuffs, to be honest, I might not apply all of them just because some things are different here in my house. For instance, in Indonesia, most people don’t use drawers to keep clothes, so it is hard to put clothes vertically. I do want to do it, but probably later. Some other things like talking to our stuffs (really?), or put out all the stuffs from inside the bag every day, I just don’t find it practical. Why? Because I usually wear the same bag every day. I usually just check and throw away some papers or bills if necessary.

But overall, yes, this book is life-changing for me. 🙂