Instaread - A 15-minute Summary & Analysis of Marie Kondos The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

A 15-minute Key Takeaways & Analysis

of

Marie Kondos

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

By Instaread

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This is a key takeaways and analysis.

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Contents

OVERVIEW 4

IMPORTANT PEOPLE 14

ANALYSIS 16

Key Takeaway 1 18

Key Takeaway 2 20

Key Takeaway 3 23

Key Takeaway 4 25

Key Takeaway 5 27

Key Takeaway 6 29

Key Takeaway 7 31

Key Takeaway 8 34

Key Takeaway 9 36

Key Takeaway 10 38

Style Analysis 40

Perspective 42

Marie Kondo is a Japanese consultant specializing in tidying. In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, Kondo shares her simple method of tidying along with a wealth of insights into clutter, including what causes it and what types exist. Kondo also shares her own personal history and how that history led her to develop and refine her tidying method, referred to throughout the book as the KonMari Method.

People are not formally taught how to tidy, and many have difficulty learning as adults, resulting in homes that are cluttered. The KonMari Method substitutes for the class on tidying never offered at school that many could have benefited from.

Tidying has benefits that go beyond the pleasure a person takes in an ordered household. In fact, tidying can be life-changing as it gives a person skills that are transferrable to other life realms, such as occupation and relationships. The connection between mental health and the condition of a persons home is strong. As a person tidies, they learn more about their own mind and life.

The foundation of the KonMari Method is a thorough sorting of all items in the home, followed by discarding to reduce clutter, and concluding by choosing a place in the home for every item to be returned to. This one-time special event tidying is purposefully extreme so that it will shock and please a person so much that they will never return to their old clutter patterns. As Kondo puts it, concentrate your efforts on eliminating clutter thoroughly and completely within a short span of time, you will see instant results that will empower you to keep your space in order ever after (ch 1, EPUB).

Simplicity in all things is promoted throughout the book. Readers are advised to forgo mixing and matching with other methods, such as feng shui, flow planning, or tidying techniques tailored to different personality types. These are not necessary if one follows the KonMari Method. All people with tidying issues have either an inability to throw possessions out, an inability to put things back where they belong, or a combination of the two. Since there is not a complex set of causes, there is no need for a complex set of solutions.

On the psychological level, the human being who attracts clutter is often over-attached to the past or the future. The reluctance to let go of items because they might be needed someday is seen as coming out of anxiety about the future. Sentimental items are seen as clinging to the past. Both attachments must be overcome. A clean home environment allows a person to examine their state of mind, no longer distracted by the clutter around them. Ultimately, a tidying up gives a person the mental space to figure out what they truly want out of life. Many who have followed the method have gone on to change their lives in major ways.

Before beginning the process of discarding, a person should visualize their ideal apartment or home, asking themselves what they would like to see there. They should also ask themselves how they would like to feel in the home. It is not necessary to have a blueprint of how a person wants their home to end up, but the exercise will help prime them for the process of discarding, which hinges upon selecting which objects to keep and which to discard based on whether the object sparks joy. A visualization of the ideal apartment necessitates getting in touch with that feeling of joy.

A person starts tidying by gathering all items in one category in a central location. The best results occur in the early morning and when the environment is quiet. The categories of items to be sorted through are clothing first, second are books, third are papers, fourth is komono or small items, such as DVDs and beauty products, and fifth are sentimental items such as photographs and love letters.

The first move would be to gather all clothing from everywhere in the dwelling and put them in the same spot. Clothing also has a specific order of sorting. It should be gone through starting with tops, then moving to bottoms, clothes that should be hung, socks, underwear, bags, accessories, clothes for specific events, and finally, shoes.

The fundamental decision-making question should center around the question of whether the item causes a spark of joy. Joy is a quick feeling of unmistakable happiness upon handling the article. If it does not spark joy, discard it. There are several other tips about how to make the discarding process easy. A person should consider starting with off-season clothing that they feel less attached to. If a person is having trouble deciding, they might want to reframe their thinking so that they emphasize that they are choosing what to keep, not what to give away.

Next are books. A person should spread all books out on the floor of the chosen location. Again, a person should try to focus on books that cause a spark of joy. Eventually, a person should be able to pare their book collection down to their Hall of Fame books.

Now it is time for the third category, papers. The paper category does not include sentimental papers. A person should be left with only papers that need to be acted upon or kept permanently, like a birth certificate. Different classifications are mentioned in the book, such as warranties and lecture materials.

Sentimental items are saved for last because it is important to have honed a persons instinct for joy-sparking detection before tackling these long-treasured, but often dust-gathering, objects. It can be difficult for tidiers to imagine getting rid of cherished love letters, but keeping them only ensures that they are weighed down by their past.

In fact, letters of any kind fulfill their purpose the moment they are read. There is no real reason to keep them lying around. The letter writer has probably forgotten they mailed it and moved on. Photographs in particular become cumbersome in huge numbers, and a person must learn to sort the special photographs from the ones that are forgettable. In fact, too many pictures might make a trip or special occasion seem more boring and ordinary than it actually was.

If an object is broken or out of date, it should definitely be discarded. The joy-sparking question is the cornerstone of the KonMari Method and what makes it into a permanent solution. Once tidiers are surrounded only by objects that give them joy, they will learn to discard anything else automatically and never keep any object out of attachment to past or future again.