Marie Kondo is an eccentric genius
Marie Kondo is really odd. She writes about talking to her possessions and is obsessed with tidying up. As a child she tidied up her family’s stuff too, taking it upon herself to rid them of ‘useless’ objects. Now she wants to do the same with your stuff.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a charming book. Considering that it is about how to clean up your house, it is remarkeably readable and interesting.
Kondo has her own proprietary method of culling and organizing posessions, called the KonMari Method. She was already popular in Japan and ran a successful consulting business helping people deal with their accumulated crap when the world discovered her book.
She’s lucky as she came along just in time to hit the ‘minimalist, experiences not things, purposeful living’ wave.
So what is the KonMari Method? I think it can be broken down into the following:
- Organise everything at once. Don’t try and do one shelf at a time.
- Get rid of everything that doesn’t ‘spark joy‘
- Keep similar things together
- Designate a place for everything
- Fold/organize things efficiently
Of course that list won’t actually help you do these things, whereas The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up leads you though each step gently, easing you along with way with interesting anecdotes and strange little asides.
I have to admit that even though I enjoyed the book and tried a few aspects of Kondo’s ideas, I did not do a full clear/organize as she recommends and my home and office are just as messy as ever.
How about you? Have you read TLCMoTU? Were you able to implement Kondo’s ideas?
Being an absolute neat freak, I never realized that I was following the KonMari method until her book became widely publicized.
The first point, doing everything at once, is especially important. So much so that I cannot recommend it more than enough =)
It results in a prolonged period of continuous physical activity around once a week, but the moment that work is completed, it is very relaxing to know that the rest of the day can be spent on stuff that we would rather do, or even just lazing around.
I think you might’ve applied her ideas/strategies to a person’s (or family’s) finances in some way–e.g., clutter among investments, such as over diversification when something simple would work; or collecting a shelf-full of individual stocks when one ETF does the same thing (better?).
Maybe something about budgeting, use of bank accounts…?
Nice twist! The peace of mind of only having one global stock ETF as opposed to the dozens of individual investments I have managed to acquire over the years 😉
I found that what she recommends to do would work very well for me if I didn’t have to share my household with a wife and 3 kids.
I have thrown away a lot of crap, and we still have mountains of garbage. The reality is that I never was the one in the house who owns a bunch a things that need to be thrown away, and I can’t throw things away on their behalf (I have tried).
The exercise was frustrating, when I realized that all of my belongings probably fit in a backpack, and there’s really nothing much I can throw away anymore, and yet we still live in a house full of clutter.
But I do fold my t-shirts with her method, and I have to admit it makes me feel happy to look at my drawer of tshirts 🙂
I read this book. Absolutely hated it.
I can just see you coming home and saying hello to your socks 😉