The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

Marie Kondo has become an international star and meme on the basis of her tidying philosophy.

The core of Kondo’s philosophy is an aggressive emotional minimalism. Your house should only contain things that bring you joy. The problem is that our homes are full of things which do not bring us joy. Clothes that we bought on impulse and never wore, gadgets for faddish hobbies, manuals for obsolete devices. As a participant in a consumer society, we just have too much stuff. The KonMari method is a way to enact a single, life-changing wave of tidying that gets you down to just the things you actually love, and then organizes the rest. It’s pretty simple. Hold an object in your hands, ask if it brings you joy, and if it does not, thank it and get rid of it. As a matter of best practice, Kondo suggests tackling objects of one type all at once, and in order: Clothes, books, documents, miscellaneous objects, and sentimental items.

Once you’re down to a manageable number of things, it’s easy to store things sensibly. Kondo is against complex organizational schemes. Beyond her style of folding clothes into neat rectangles, the advice is to store things vertically, like books on shelves, and never ever stack anything. Objects stored in plastic crates are basically lost forever.

I’m not going to say that KonMari is perfect, as someone moving and downsizing soon, I see a lot of fights over whether or not some dumb ornamental object actually brings us joy. But it’s a start.