[Review] The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

"The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing" by Marie Kondo is at a first glance, yet another self-help book on tidying up and decluttering your space. However Kondo advocates an unconventional 'spark joy' method of deciding what to keep, rather than deciding what to throw. There are no hard and fast rules of "keep only five shirts" or "buy one item and throw two" in order to reduce one's belongings and this surprisingly helps to prevent rebounds in cluttering of one's space, according to her client's testimonies.

While I have not personally attended any of her seminars, tidying my wardrobe following the KonMari method did indeed bring about a positive effect. Just note that decluttering has to be done away from one's family members, especially mothers, as cautioned by Kondo, otherwise they would tend to pick up discarded items for keeping.

Here's a video of Marie Kondo's work with a client in New York:

If you are looking to declutter your house or life in general, I would recommend giving the KonMari's method a try. Who knows if it might be the last method you'll ever need?

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