The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Marie Kondo
I’m not usually one for self-help books and such, and pretty much only read this because I had a reading challenge prompt of reading something in the genre. That said, at least I picked something useful; to a great extent I agree with Marie Kondo’s ideas about minimalism and only owning objects you really love. The suggestions for how to tackle your space are great, and the reminders about not just shipping it off to a parent’s house and so on are important. (That isn’t tidying, it’s cluttering up someone else’s house.) Some of her suggestions about understanding that an object has already fulfilled its purpose were interesting too — I like the idea that a gift has achieved its purpose as soon as you’ve received it, for example.
Some of it gets a little too… woo, for me. I’m not knocking a view of the world that imbues everything with spirit, but it doesn’t work for me, and it sometimes just stretched my credulity too far. If you’re strongly opposed to the idea of talking to your belongings and thanking them for their service, this might not be a good book for you at all — you’d spend too much time scoffing.
I do like the ideas and methods to a great extent, though, and I’ll be keeping that central question in mind as I clean out my wardrobes and such: “Does this spark joy?”
I did stick my fingers metaphorically in my ears and la-la-la through the bit about throwing books away. There were some reasonable points, actually — no matter how excited I was to receive a book back in 2011, if I haven’t even touched it since then, am I really likely to read it? But. But. Books.
I’ve kept many books for years before reading them and considering them excellent…
It happens, but I am finding that with some, the window in which I would really have appreciated them is gone…
Well, I’ve had a small number of books I’ve given away unread and I can think of one or two more that might go the same way, so I do know what you mean. I also get rid of any book I don’t believe I’ll ever read again and I should be firmer in my decision making about that.
I’m trying to do the same, especially with my collection spread between two countries…
Most of mine is stuck in a shipping container!
I liked the ideas this presented such as the fact that you can’t have a clean house without de-cluttering first. And I liked her method of handling the clutter too! But I can not envision myself emptying my purse every day, putting every single item in its place and talking to my purse to thank it for the day…
AND YES, that part about books! It horrified me.
Jolien @ The Fictional Reader recently posted…My (Late) Review of The Queen of the Tearling
Ugh, sorry I missed this comment! It went into spam for some reason. And yeah, no, she goes… a bit too far.
Books are, I think, different from other objects: they are repositories of thoughts and emotions, reliquaries containing mental telescopes and microscopes to view the world around us, treasures chests that house concepts that are potentially different each time we take them out to examine them. They differ from clothes, furniture and gadgets which, to be honest, would we miss if a fire took them all away? The only other objects I’d miss if there was a house fire would be photographs and the memories they represent.
Chris Lovegrove recently posted…In darkest New England
I’d miss my teddies! And some of my custom-made furniture; love went into that.
Agh, Nikki, I’m horrified! Did she mean really throw away, as distinct from give to a charity shop? (staggers off, recycling head reeling).
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No, she did advocate all the stuff going to new homes if it could!
…Or is that ‘recycled head’? It feels like it, sometimes…
Lucinda Elliot recently posted…WordPress.com in 2016: A Year in Review