SOH’s Book Club: Spring – The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

Season of Heather Marie Kondo Magic of Tidying Up

Today I’m really excited to start a new seasonal series with you: Season of Heather’s Book Club! I’ll be sharing a book I love with you every season, a little bit about it and why I love it. This spring I’m sharing a long time favorite of mine, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo.

This was an easy decision for me to share this book with you first. If you know me well, you’ve probably heard me reference this book once or twice, because I’m obsessed with its message. Also, I thought this would be the perfect spring book, because maybe you’re like me and you’ve been feeling the urge to do a little spring cleaning lately.

So what is the book about?

Simply, it’s a guide to decluttering your house, but really it’s so much more.

The book gives practical approaches to tidying your entire house. And I know you might be thinking why would I want to read a book about cleaning, that sounds incredibly boring! But I promise this book is far from just a dull cleaning guide. It has the best stories and basically secrets to happiness tucked between the practical decluttering examples. Also, Marie Kondo is absolutely the cutest. Seriously this book and her are gems.

What Makes this book unique?

Marie Kondo has a simple yet unique method (the konmari method) to decluttering your home that makes her approach different from many other cleaning/organizing books or guides.

Marie Kondo Categories

First, most cleaning methods recommend to go room by room, but Kondo states that “tidying up by location is a fatal mistake.” Instead she recommends tidying by categories and in a specific order. When you declutter room by room, you aren’t as thorough and you tend to keep things you wouldn’t always keep if you looked at them by category.

The categories (and order) for tidying are:

Clothes
Books
Papers
Komodo (miscellaneous items)
Sentimental items

There is one other key thing about her tidying process that makes the decluttering process effective. While going through each item and trying to decide whether or not to keep an item, you ask yourself a specific question….

Does it Spark Joy?

This isn’t a minimalistic cleaning process focused on getting rid of everything, rather its focused on keeping the things that truly bring you joy. It helps you make decisions about your clutter from a place of abundance rather than scarcity.

So how does it work exactly?

Let’s use clothes (the first category) as an example.

Bring all of your clothes to one location.

One more time… just incase you thought I wasn’t serious… bring ALL of your clothes to one location.

Once you’ve collected all of the clothes, begin to go through them by physically picking up each piece of clothing. Marie Kondo recommends to start off by picking up a piece of clothing that you absolutely love and that without a doubt sparks joy.

Do this with a few items you know for certain spark joy. Once you’ve gotten a sense of items that spark joy and what that feels like, move onto the other items, piece by piece, physically picking up each item and asking yourself “Does this spark joy?”

A practice of Gratitude

I think I love this process so much because at it’s heart it is truly a gratitude practice.

Surrounding yourself with belongings that only “spark joy” makes you feel immense respect and gratitude for your belongings.

When we keep things that don’t spark joy they almost distract us from our items that do spark joy. We can’t appreciate them the same when they are all mixed together.

Even though the goal is not to decrease the amount of items you have, you inevitably will and Marie Kondo states that “by pairing down to the volume that you can properly handle, you revitalize your relationship with your belongings.“

“Thank you for…”

But this isn’t the only way Marie Kondo encourages you to practice gratitude during this process. When you come across something that doesn’t spark joy for you, thank the item for the purpose it served.

This might sound silly at first, but I find it to be a meaningful part of the process. It also personally helped me to discard items that I know don’t spark joy, but either did at one time or were a gift.

Also, it’s easy to feel guilty during this process when we see large piles of things we have accumulated that we’ve forgotten we have. Thanking the items, even if thats just thanking them for showing us what doesn’t spark joy so we can make more conscious decisions in the future, can alleviate that guilt.

A few examples of how I’ve put into practice some of her practical tips

Marie Kondo’s Unique Method for Folding Clothes

She encourages clothes to be folded in a way so that they can be stacked upright rather than on top of each other. This helps you clearly see all of your clothes and not forget about the clothes at the bottom. I’ll never fold my clothes any other way!

Storing Sentimental Items and Mementos

I used to keep piles of photos and mementos in drawers and closets. The only time I would look at them is when I was cleaning that location out (by location like a naughty girl!). I’d get distracted and forget I was “cleaning” and go oh I love these and then I’d pile them right back on top of each other and tuck them into a drawer and forget about them until I got into another cleaning mood 6 months later, only to repeat the process all over again.

Marie Kondo encourages you to find a way to display these items. If they are special to you they shouldn’t be hidden away in a drawer piled underneath things.

Adopting this thought process has helped me to create a much more meaningful home, surrounded by sentimental items that bring me joy. I’ve been more intentional about framing things, scrapbooking things, and displaying things that fill me up.

For smaller mementos, photos and cards, I tape them up on the inside of cabinets with washi tape. I find myself looking at these things all the time now unlike how I did when they were hidden away piled on top of eachother other in a drawer.

Approaching Necessities

I’m sure some of you may be thinking well my phone bill doesn’t bring me joy so should I just get rid of that? Probs not. Does your phone bring you joy? Does being able to call and text friends and family bring you joy? Yes, then maybe your phone bill does bring you joy. Marie Kondo talks more in depth how to approach these items that seem boring/annoying, but are also somewhat of a necessity.

Basically, Marie Kondo is a sneaky gratitude queen because she’s got me over here appreciating and feeling grateful for all my bills. She’s magic and I love her.

Final Thoughts

A lot of magical things happen when you thoroughly declutter your entire house. When we keep things that bring us joy and remove the things that don’t we physically, emotionally and energetically make space for things that do bring us joy.

At first this seems like its just about things, but it’s not.

Somewhere along the way between clothes and sentimental items, I realized that this isn’t just about keeping/discarding objects.

It’s basically a philosophy to life.

Are we filling our lives with things, people, food, hobbies, careers and moments that spark joy? Because we should be. And somehow when we fully declutter our homes we make room, space and time for the things that make us our best selves. See there really is magic in tidying up! This isn’t just about having a clutter-free home. It’s about living a life every day that brings us joy.

I hope you all fill your life with things and moments that “spark joy” for you and I hope you read this book because as the title might imply, it’s life-changing.

Cheers and happy decluttering,