The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

by Marie Kondo

Went home to clean the apartment and picked up one of the RA Favorite books: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up – The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo.  This ‘self-help’ book provides the reader with the steps to getting your house in order, which, in turn, will get your life in order as well.  The author explains why people have such a hard time keeping the home organized, suggesting that a little-by-little approach NEVER works.  You need to go full-out to accomplish the task, and the author extends this process to cleaning all aspects of your life (your relationships, your career, your priorities, etc.).  Some helpful hints include: NO storage units; sort by category, not by location; make tidying a special event, not a daily chore; and discard all things you need to get rid of before organizing.  She suggests keeping family away from this process as they usually serve as enablers for a messy life!  Here is the order in which to organize:

1.)    Clothing!  With a sub-order as follows:

a.       Tops (shirts, sweaters)

b.       Bottoms (pants, etc.)

c.       Clothes to be hung

d.       Socks

e.       Underwear

f.        Bags

g.       Accessories

h.       Shoes

2.)    Loungewear

3.)    Books (unread books means you’ll never read it!)

4.)    Sorting papers (get rid of old checkbooks and throw away those old electrical appliance manuals)

5.)    Miscellaneous items

Designate a place for each one.  And once you have this all taken care of, then you will be doing the daily work/maintenance!  She then shares how the ‘magic’ of a new life will appear.  Sound easy?  We will see how well the work I did last night based on the book turns out.  Pretty common-sense ideas done in a fairly quick read, one hour tops!  Excellent reading opportunity when waiting at the DMV…