'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying' - Marie Kondo

[FrancesHB]

Has anyone else read this? I did a search but couldn't find any previous threads.

Marie Kondo is a Japanese expert in tidying and decluttering and her book has been translated into English and is best selling. It's wonderfully eccentric and inspiring and in some ways rather a breath of fresh air compared to other books on the subject (have read 'em all and my house is still messy...).

She asks us to ask if an item brings us joy and if it doesn't we thank it and out it goes. A bit like fly lady 'you can't organise clutter', but in a less annoying and at times quite endearing way.

I wondered if any MNers had used her technique and if it helped them 'get their house in order'.

I keep wrapping paper in one of these from IKEA, in our large cupboard:

www.ikea.com/gb/en/catalog/products/80010222/

It fits just enough paper in it, though once current paper is used up I will only have one roll at a time, suitable for all pressies - silver or something. But I also keep brown parcel paper and the large roll of kids art paper in there.

I think she will have a different perspective if/when she has children and sees how different life is then.

I suspect that it might be life changing but old habits will creep in and a lot of the day to day child mess definitely wouldn't be eliminated by this method. If the idea is that you start respecting your things more and hence want to put them away, that doesn't apply to your average child, and a frazzled new parent or working parent or parent of multiple children has enough real people to worry about feeling lonely or misplaced or whatever and not usually the headspace to register that a pen isn't with its "friends". And not to mention all of the other mess - they eat messily, they drop bits of craft projects everywhere, they have irrational attachments to old, scruffy or pointless things, they like to wander around and brush their teeth in 3 places of the house, they're not skilled at using the toilet hygienically.

It very much reads in the perspective of somebody who can go to work and when they come home everything is exactly as they left it.

I have just done my clothes. I've still got underwear and accessories to go, but argh!!! I have virtually nothing left. Rather oddly, although I have chucked out several practical but dull garments, I have kept three things which I will hardly ever wear.

I now have:

1 brown vest top
3 black vest tops
2 black thermal vests
Heat teach tops in cream, grey, taupe and purple
1 grey fitted shirt
1 fair isle jumper
1 oatmeal cable knit jumper
1 teal cardigan
1 grey and taupe cardigan
1 pair of jeans
1 pair of leggings
1 reversible black/patterned skirt
1 tweed skirt
2 grey dresses
1 black net swirly goth skirt
1 medieval dress
1 pair black boots
1 pair brown boots
1 pair converse
1 pair snow boots
1 nightie
1 dressing gown
1 swimsuit
1 set exercise clothes
2 wool coat (one which is a bit too small)
1 raincoat
1 ski jacket

And that is the lot. I will have to start hunting things down in charity shops to fill the gaps, and I will definitely need 2 new bras.

Although I don't have a lot of things left, I hardly ever wear the other things.

Books - I'm always culling these as we have limited shelf space, but have looked again this week and realised that there are quite a few classics that are available free or next to free on Kindle, so I've put them out for the charity shop and downloaded them instead. The category thing does come into effect too, I realised I have several French dictionaries and phrase books and umpteen atlases, so a few of those can go (DS is a geography fiend though, so need to have a few atlases).

Just got rid of a bunch of mismatched earrings and old crappy jewellery. And chucked out my jewellery box as I really hated it and it was falling apart but felt obliged to keep it as it was just for keeping jewellery if that makes sense!

I am going to buy a new box to keep my hair stuff and jewellery in, but getting exactly the right thing seems so much important now!

I use one of these for jewellery & treasure:

www.muji.eu/pages/online.asp?Sec=9&Sub=39&PID=6000

Hi everyone, I've been lurking on the thread and bought the book on kindle yesterday. I've got about as far as visualising what the house will look like when neater/why I want it neater... and I'm stuck!

I'm rubbish at visualising - about as bad as I am at tidying and decluttering, so is there any hope for me? How did you all go about visualising it? I can't get past the amount of stuff we have - mainly toys, vast swathes of toys, but nearly all usable and 'quality' ones IYSWIM - nothing thats obviously tat... well apart from the Octonauts collection, but then that gets used regularly so can't go either. :(

Also I cheated and when I was putting washing away this morning I thought I'd tidy the trousers drawers and rolled all the trousers (it seemed easier than folding them). It looks tidier and there's more space in the drawers, and they're easier to see/get at... but I failed as I didn't do the discarding bit.

I'm not sure this book is for me. :(

leeloo1 I always read self help books once without doing anything/much of what they suggest. Just to get the concepts in my mind. Take your time.

As for the visualising - lie on the floor/sofa/bed and look at your ceiling. It's the same footprint as your floor so you can imagine placing your furniture there. What would you put up there, what do you leave on the messy floor? I used to do this as a kid when I was meant to be tidying my room!

Thanks Jimmy thats a clever idea. Can it just be me up there in the clean space and I'll leave all the crap on the floor behind?

I am so guilty of buying new storage systems every time I want to tidy/declutter, so perhaps if the book can cure me of that then it'll be a good thing.

I didn't visualise room layout, or anything like that. I pictured scenes from my life - doing art and baking in the kitchen with the children and knowing it would be easy to clean up afterwards, curling up on the sofa with a cup of mint tea, a book and a cat, having friends over for a meal, coming in from a run or a muddy walk, snuggling up with DP in a peaceful bedroom...

I now have two empty drawers in my chest of drawers and no seasonally stored clothes, which feels good. I can use the drawers to store other things once I've finished deciding what to keep.

I think if you have been living with clutter/crap/poor layout etc for a long time (in my case all my life) reading a book isn't going to give you the answers and magically change your life on reading it.

It is a process of change, not just of your home but your possessions and yourself. It needs time. Marie talks about this process a lot and I found that a really interesting element of her book

IME decluttering/minimalsing was a process (and still is). When my kitchen was sorted, the rest of the place was still a mess. I still couldn't see how I could let go of all the boxes of crap in my living room, or 100's of items of clothing I didn't wear but couldn't let go. I could feel the wonder effect of my kitchen but I couldn't visualise at all the rest of my flat without crap.

So while I had some "ta dah!" moments, they weren't magical fixes.

Keep reading inspiring books and blogs etc - keep thinking about and engaging with the process. A massive part for me was an acceptance that "things had to change and that was that" - from there I could let stuff go.

BeCool, appreciating your sharing here. The storage of rolls of wrapping paper in the ikea thing is a brilliant solution.

Good advice Molly and BeCool - I think I do want a magic wand book... I guess that'd cost a bit more than £4.68 - or whatever this was on Kindle.

Mindsets are harder to change though, aren't they? I saw the Muji link above, clicked on it, then started browsing - thinking 'oooh that looks nice'.

I think the problem is that Muji/Futon Company/Ikea sell an image and thats what I want. I want the streamlined, everything neat and beautiful, spacious and functional roomsets/photos that they show...

... sadly I bring home whatever I've bought that looked lovely in the store and in my house, squashed in amongst the rest of the rubbish, it just looks like more tat. I can't work out how to achieve the image that they have in the shop.

Sorry, I seem to be going off on a whingefest and suspect I'm not being very positive/uplifting for the tone of the thread.

I shall take myself off and keep reading the book and hope I'm inspired! :)

I spent ages thinking about decluttering it and not doing it. The things that are different now are that all my children are at school and I haven't got a job yet, so I actually have time to do it, I am in the middle of getting an extension built, so have a skip outside and have to keep taking stuff out of cupboards anyway, and I've spent the past two years reading minimalism and frugality blogs so I have actually been imagining my house all bare for ages. I am in the middle of making other big changes, so that makes it a lot easier to ditch the stuff I don't need any more.

I bought the kindle book a couple of days ago so I have only just started reading it. Following the arrival of DD in the summer I am in the process of going through DS's old clothes that had been kept in case DD was a boy. The book is making me think carefully about what I pass on to other people and to ask myself if they would pay for the stuff, and not just off loading stuff on to them that they don't really want or need.

I'm loving the concept of deciding if something brings me joy. In particular I'm thinking of the toys that DS has that really irritate me. They will definitely go when I do toys! Plus the joy thing gives me an excuse to keep things that haven't been used since DS was born recently, but that I get joy from thinking how wonderful it will be to use them when I have time.

leeloo be a bit kinder to yourself. You haven't 'failed' by tidying trousers - you've just tidied the trousers!

Don't worry about the toys just yet. Start with your own possessions - then you only need to consider your own needs and feeling and not anyone else's. Tops seem like quite a good category to start with...

... sadly I bring home whatever I've bought that looked lovely in the store and in my house, squashed in amongst the rest of the rubbish, it just looks like more tat. I can't work out how to achieve the image that they have in the shop.

Could I suggest you stop buying stuff as an initial step? Until you have sorted out what is at home make a deal with yourself to buy nothing. NO MORE IMCOMING.

No doubt this will be changing a habit of a lifetime and will make you feel VERY uncomfortable - but it is a discomfort that will be teaching you something. I'm getting pretty good at not buying stuff now, but I still feel the 'discomfort'. Though I have become a much much wiser shopper and rarely impulse shop now.

You can take photos of stuff that you want to buy/"need", make lists, fill online baskets but NEVER check out, never complete the purchase. Not until your house is sorted and you start to relearn what a real need/want/desire/style is?

The images presented in the shops re just that - images in shops designed to sell. They aren't real homes, real rooms. There are no people living there with all their imperfect stuff. Stop "believing" in them.

The other thing deeply flawed about buying something because you 'like' it is the shops are full of an endless amount of fantastic beautiful lovely stuff. It's not a winning solution for the shopper/wannabe lovely home maker. There will always be awesome beautiful wonderful stuff to buy.

Excellent advice BeCool. You cannot buy yourself out of having too much stuff.

I also totally agree with Molly about visualising the kind of life you want to live rather than the details of your house. I also share quite a lot of the same 'visions'. I'm going to need somewhere to keep art materials in some semblance of order. Hmm.

I should just note for the record that all my life I have brought stuff for a house/home I didn't own or live in. Because it was pretty or cheap or I liked it or it talked to me, or I wanted to buy something and 'feel good' - so I brought stuff I didn't need and I stored it in boxes, under the bed, in friends lofts etc.

It's all gone now - I feel like crying inside for my younger self. I know why she was desperate for that lovely home, but if I had just put the money in the bank instead of spending it on "what ifs" I would be a lot closer to actually having that home now.

I don't like to dwell on the past - but this scenario, this truth makes me feel so sad.

Leeloo congrats on your new trousers drawer! Re more stuff coming in, the trick with the room sets is there is nothing else there. It's not just the "stuff" in that picture, it's also the empty space where there isn't the pile of school paperwork, argos catalogue, kids' shoes and toys etc etc. A funky box on an otherwise empty bench is appealing. 15 of the same box in that same space, not so much. Part of the appeal is really (arguably) the empty space where the other 14 boxes are not. Buying one funky box will not create the 14 boxes' worth of empty space for you.

For everything you want to buy, balance it up against the empty space it would be filling. Most of the time, wouldn't the room (and your own sense of tranquility, or whatever you're aiming for) be more enhanced by the space than by the thing? That is the theory I'm working on anyway.

Likewise with toys, I try to buy only those whose play value really "earns" the space they take up. You can buy massive plastic castles, enormous toy hoovers etc - whatever you like - but only if you think they will be more played with and loved than some different toy you could put in that space. Do DC need 6 different happyland houses or would two, or even one and a couple of nesting cardboard boxes, do near enough the same job and take up 1/3 of the space? Think what else DC can do with the extra space created - space is such a valuable thing in play.

There you go leeloo! The stuff about streamlined space, clean lines etc is a great visual image. Pinterest is good for this kind of thing too. You could make a board for your "destination
I agree with thinking about activities too. You don't have to picture it but just think in your ideal lifestyle, what would you do when you woke up, when you're at home, at the weekends, in the evenings. Don't think about how, just think about what. Write all of this down and then look at the why, like she says.

I'll type mine up later if you like. I still don't have a visual image of what I want it to be like but I have a list which helps me imagine the feeling even if I don't know what it looks like.

Fancy that. Who knew I had 5 pairs of jeans in the drawer under my bed .

2 pairs will go out (too big, post pregnancy clothes). Am keeping the 2 for the allotment and the other is a new pair of light grey skinnies I forgot I had be perfect for autumn.

One of my problems is my "ideal life" doesnt fit with my house. I would like a large country cottage (wouldn't we all ;) ) as many in my extended family have. It would have fresh flowers, old furniture etc.

However I have a teeny tiny ex council house red box house. I've had to learn that it really really doesn't suit mismatched hand me down furniture as much as I'd like to make it. I really don't have the skills to make it look anything.

However, clean, decluttered and clear lines would be a nice second best.

Thinking about it my granny DID collect buttons, have a drawer for presents etc. The girl in the book has grown up in a very disposable age where everything is replaceable and so can be passed on as it could be easily replaced. My grans ethos is more of reuse.