The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up

Who would have thought you could change your life by tidying? Marie Kondo teaches you how tidying can benefit your life in far more ways than you would expect.

Highlights

• we should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.
• Gathering every item in one place is essential to this process because it gives you an accurate grasp of how much you have.
• The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos.
• The urge to point out someone else’s [[Failure]] to tidy is usually a sign that you are neglecting to take care of your own space.
• If sweatpants are your everyday attire, you’ll end up looking like you belong in them, which is not very attractive. What you wear in the house does impact your self-image.
• By category, coats would be on the far left, followed by dresses, jackets, pants, skirts, and blouses.
• Papers are organized into only three categories: needs attention, should be saved (contractual documents), and should be saved (others).
• No matter how wonderful things used to be, we cannot live in the past. The joy and excitement we feel here and now are more important.
• It is not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure.
• The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.
• The secret to maintaining an uncluttered room is to pursue ultimate simplicity in storage so that you can tell at a glance how much you have.
• I have only two rules: store all items of the same type in the same place and don’t scatter storage space.
• There are only two ways of categorizing belongings: by type of item and by person.
• Clutter is caused by a [[Failure]] to return things to where they belong. Therefore, storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away, not the effort needed to get them out.
• Transform your closet into your own private space, one that gives you a thrill of pleasure.
• The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.
• There are three approaches we can take toward our possessions: face them now, face them sometime, or avoid them until the day we die.L
• Life becomes far easier once you know that things will still work out even if you are lacking something.