The Ultimate Guide to Home Organization
7:00:00 AM
Hi there! Thank you for dropping by. I’ve been into organizing lately and I’m happy to find the
ultimate guide. I’ve read tons of articles on how to organize, how to
declutter, how to stay tidy and more, still I end up in the cycle of purging,
accumulating, and purging again! I felt like something was not right.
Until, I finally read this book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up:
The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo. I can say, this is the ultimate
guide to declutter your home. After reading this and applying the principle in
my life, I’m happy to announce that it yields great results. So here, I want to
give you a little bit of a book review and how you can apply it to your life
too.
To begin, I personally
haven’t seen a hard copy of this in the bookstore here in the Philippines. I
purchased mine in Google Play for around PHP 500+. The book is an easy read;
it’s like talking to Marie Kondo in person. However, since she is Japanese, you
will hint a Janapese-English tone as you read. She use the same word “tidy”
over and over again, just don’t mind it. Overall, it's an easy read and useful as long as you apply it in your life.
Now let’s talk about the content. In a nutshell, her tips
sum up to two things: Discard and Declutter. You may say, “That’s common
knowledge and everybody has taught about that too”. But you'll never
know how to discard and declutter the right way until you read this book.
Marie Kondo’s principle on discarding is to focused on what to keep than what to discard. She suggests, to look on the things around your house per category (i.e clothes, books, miscellaneous) and select items that “brings you Joy”. This seems to be a subjective approach, but as you go through the book, Marie Kondo will help you select your stuffs that “brings Joy” objectively. Then in the end, everything that does not sparks joy will be discarded or give away (just make sure you don’t burden the person who receives your things to use it. If they don’t like it, give them the freedom to throw it away too). And at the end of the day, it’s lovely to be surrounded by the things that you love. In my next post, I will share to you how I personally do the discarding part.
Marie Kondo’s principle on discarding is to focused on what to keep than what to discard. She suggests, to look on the things around your house per category (i.e clothes, books, miscellaneous) and select items that “brings you Joy”. This seems to be a subjective approach, but as you go through the book, Marie Kondo will help you select your stuffs that “brings Joy” objectively. Then in the end, everything that does not sparks joy will be discarded or give away (just make sure you don’t burden the person who receives your things to use it. If they don’t like it, give them the freedom to throw it away too). And at the end of the day, it’s lovely to be surrounded by the things that you love. In my next post, I will share to you how I personally do the discarding part.
To declutter, Marie Kondo suggests to have a
place for everything. This is true, because the reason why
our houses get so messed up because people in the house don’t know where to put things. If
everything has a proper storage, everything got a place to return to. Now, she suggests
also not making storage too complicated as it may discourages people we live with,
to put the things to its place. For example, if you will asked your husband to
returned the phone charger in the drawer and make sure to put the Velcro wrap
back, expect that he will leave the charger in the plug because putting it back
to the drawer with the velcro wrap is complicated. So there, make
storage easy for everyone. No need for color coding, specific sorting, specialized
storage box whatsoever. The key is to have a place for everything. Another great
tip you get from Marie Kondo is the way she folds clothes. She will teach you
how to fold your clothes and store them in your closet.
Cleaning up your house the “Konmari” way has great results. By
the way, Marie Kondo suggests to treat tidying as a project, a once in a
lifetime event when you get rid of everything that doesn’t spark joy and
chooses a place for everything as a storage. After that, you don’t need to tidy
anymore for the rest of your life. One of the great result is after being surrounded
by things that “Sparks Joy”, you’ll end up seeing things that really makes you
happy. One certain testimony in the book is that after doing the Konmari
Project, seeing all the books that were left in the bookshelf, she realizes
that she’s into public service. What happened is that she quit her 9 to 5
office life and put up a foundation. Another great result is that you don’t need
to tidy your house ever again. Ofcourse you still need to do the routine
cleaning but the point is you don’t need to have an occasional purging and
once a year Spring Cleaning. That, I personally enjoy! My routine is at
the end of the day, before I sleep I will return all stuffs to their storage place and I will be able to wake up to a clutter free
home. Doing so influences the family members and they are doing the same thing,
and that’s a great result!
So there, if you are interested to read the book, I’m sure
you are, go ahead to google play and check out the book. I’m not sure if this
is being sold in hard copy, but personally I enjoy having digital book so I don’t have to worry about storage after
reading this.
If you read the book, let me know your thoughts
in the comment below! See you again in my next post on how I do the KonMari
Project in my own life.
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