Today I’ll muse over The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, written by Marie Kondo, a Japanese organization consultant who has risen to fame through her method of tidying. The book is considered a self-help piece and was a 376-page read through my Libby app.
Marie Kondo fell in love with tidying and organization while still a young girl, educating herself with the pages of her mother’s home & lifestyle magazines. Through many years of trial and error, she created her own method of organization and launched a business based on the KonMari Method. The KonMari Method is Kondo’s strategy of properly tidying up to avoid ever “rebounding” to an untidy home. While she admits that her process may seem strange, Kondo claims it truly works; her proof being that her “repeater rate is zero”.
Her method consists of discarding all the items that do not bring you joy, then putting the remaining joy-filled items in their appropriate place within your home. She has a precise method of how to do so, with a general rule of “sort by category, not location”. The categories are structured, and you must follow her order for each category (clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous items, and sentimental items).
I can relate to the author’s love for cleaning and organizing at an early age. As a child, I spent a lot of my time rearranging my room and putting things exactly where I thought they should be. I am now a stay-at-home-mom and feel like I do nothing but clean up a never-ending mountain of clutter. I cannot imagine that the KonMari method would eliminate my need to clean. I can, however, see how it would eliminate the clutter – and I really like that idea!
Marie Kondo’s mentality of getting rid of the material things that do not make us happy can also apply to different areas of our life, and she touches on that several times within the book. There are many instances where she tells a story of her clients and how they have come into success since tidying with her. Kondo’s willingness to write of her past, especially of her mistakes in organizing, helps me feel that I can trust what she has to say because she is not hiding the embarrassing.
“When you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too. As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t, and what you should and shouldn’t do.”
Marie Kondo
One struggle I had while reading this book was relating to the author. A lot of the writing made me scoff. I hate the idea of throwing things away when there are so many people going without in this world. I personally have been “purging” the house since the pandemic began and have been trying to sell and donate as much as I can. I find this method of “discarding” much more sustainable and economically friendly. We don’t all have it “like that”, Marie. She also hated on the common-folk method of throwing socks in a drawer, referring to them as “potato-like lumps” which I found hilarious yet absolutely…off the wall. Wait until you read why she says we should not ball up our socks in such a manner. Come back and let me know when you have so we can chuckle together.
Final Thoughts
I am giving this book 3 out of 5 stars. While there are many strategies that I intend on taking away from this book, I did not find the author’s writing or ideas relatable – nor did the book spark joy within me when I was reading it. I do not feel that her “does this spark joy?” approach would work for every item in my home. Most of my child’s toys spark joy for him but drive me up the wall. How do I approach that? How do I get my five-year-old to keep his toys all in one room as opposed to strewn throughout the house as if he’s leaving a trail to find his way back? I kept waiting for her to discuss a strategy for using her method with children, but it never came.
Because I am impressed with Marie’s track record and am not going to judge her by the book, I will be trying out the KonMari Method of tidying. I am already impressed with the progress I have made. After about 5 minutes of work, I have a whole stack of shirts to donate to a friend who works at a psychiatric hospital. It also cleared up half of my closet space and gave me more drawer space. I plan on following through with her strategy, making slight adjustments for sustainability and reselling reasons – Mercari y’all! Kondo says the process could take 6 months to fully “tidy up” so I look forward to seeing what the end result looks like.
Biblio Bee 
Well, all of her socks are on holiday, and all of mine are jealous of that, lol. Her method actually helped me keep more stuff because my way of cleaning is throwing stuff away. That sometimes (often) irritates my husband unfortunately.
LikeLike
My socks must hate me! I am definitely loving her method so far. I feel like the older I get, the more I keep! I’m too sentimental toward objects that serve me no use. So this has been really cool to let go of things that I cherish, but that can serve other people. I can relate to my spouse not loving my cleaning method – which is usually storing something somewhere and forgetting about it! Lol.
LikeLiked by 1 person