The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up takes you through the process of simplifying, organizing and storing your belongings step by step, to make your home a place of peace and clarity.

What decluttering comes down to is examining your relationship with each and every single item in your home. Each relationship is different. Your history with your coffee maker has begun at a different point in time than your relationship with that postcard a friend sent you, and so on.

Do you know how thinking of some people instantly reminds you of the happy and exciting times you shared together? Possessions are the same, which makes some more worth keeping than others.

However, some relationships with things are more complicated than others. That’s why it’s best to start with easier categories of more functional items, like clothes, books, technology, documents, and other miscellaneous items. Most of these serve a clear purpose and don’t hold as many complex memories as your more sentimental items.

Save photos and memorabilia for the very end, because by then you’ll already be in decluttering mode and figure out what to do with these special memories a lot faster. Keep those where you distinctly remember creating or getting them – those are your longest lasting memories, which you can re-live over and over, and gratefully let go of the rest.

Most people don’t even get started on decluttering, simply because they think it’s a lifetime job. That couldn’t be further from the truth. Marie Kondo says you only have to tidy up once – if you do it right – to leave a lasting impact on your life. It takes her around six hours on average to clean a client’s house, and she’s a pro, so you should probably take a weekend to give yourself enough time. In fact, if you make it a special event, tidying up goes from tedious task to fun and life-changing experience. Once you’ve thrown a thorough cleaning party, you’ll not only have the biggest part behind you, but also emerge with a new mindset. Chances are, you’ll buy a lot less in the future, to keep your space neat and clean, which makes future clean ups simple and easy. For example, I threw out 75% of my clothes, all of my video games, DVDs and BluRays, some of my books and most of my old school supplies and notes in 2013. I felt so free afterward that the last thing I wanted was to fill up all those empty shelves again with the same clutter, so I’ve never had to do another big clean out since then. Now it’s mostly just tossing an item here and there, while my space…