The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

[pony mom]

For those of you curious about it, or, like me, are somewhere on the waiting list at the library, here is a full-length audio download:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxES7EDFyt4

[Gardenarian]

Thanks! I'm number 51 on the library wait list

[larknm]

Same here, thanks, I had a note to myself to see if our library had it yet. This is better.

[beckyliz]

I ordered from www.bn.com There is a facebook group called konmarie adventures that I joined, also. I felt like I'd done a pretty good job of decluttering several years ago, but just from the bits and pieces I've gotten from others about this book, I'm already seeing a LOT more that is ready to go.

[pony mom]

I finished listening to the book and will still read it when I borrow my copy. There are a few notes I'd like to take. At the end she goes on about how to look at the things you bought in the past---pretty interesting. Not sure how much i'm ready to get rid of but I'll start with my clothes when I do my seasonal switch. We really do deserve to be surrounded by things we truly love.

[pinkytoe]

After waiting two months, I hate to turn it back into the library...
The two points in this book that inspired me (well there were many actually) were:
Declutter by category - so amazing to see how much you have of one category when you lay them all out in one area.
Too many books - the experience you enjoyed by reading the book is in the past (will you really ever read it again); let someone else enjoy it.
I need to read the photo section again as that is one to tackle at our house.

[pony mom]

Not long ago I went through a few boxes of photos (all were filed and labelled neatly). I had found a site called My Green and Tidy Life and she suggested flipping through all your photos very quickly and discarding those that are fuzzy, boring, not of interest anymore, etc. without thinking too much about each one. I ended up with a pretty huge pile to get rid of. http://mygreenandtidylife.co.uk/blog/page/2/ It was quick and painless.

[pony mom]

Just saw that I'm #1 in the queue!!! I should be receiving notice of it being in for me early next week. After all this waiting, I'd better do some actual decluttering. And I just started listening to the audio version again.

[CP1970]

Thanks for that link, pony mom. I like what I've seen so far. I will go more into it when I have more time. I need to declutter. I have too many hobbies and things for those hobbies have gotten a little out of hand. I'm not a hoarder, but I do have too many things that I just don't use anymore.

[kib]

I'm listening to it now, thank you for the link! So far I have two reactions: pleasure with her concept and some of her descriptions which strike a chord with me, and the sense that this Marie Kondo is a very young and privileged young lady with OCD. I like her concept of seeking an inspiring reason for wanting to "tidy", a visual and practical vision of what might be possible if the clutter were gone.

The categories - which we must follow in order - are clothes, books (or books and papers), kimonos, miscellany and mementos, which makes me think of the possessions of a Japanese 10 year old. I think 95% of what I own and need to organize and sort falls under "miscellany". There seems to be no room in her philosophy for cleaning products, cooking utensils, tools, electronics, appliances, or the big things that are REALLY hard to make decisions over like real estate, autos etc. The concept that new things must be purchased, with money that can be hard to come by, appears totally foreign to her. She is married, but the idea that one's things to be sorted are in "her own room", the childhood concept, seems prevalent, the issue of keeping shared spaces organized hasn't come up.

I'm now descending into the madness of how to properly fold clothes and to organize closets so the hemlines "point upward" to the right. I can already promise that I will never be a person squatting down to be sure I have my hemlines in proper order.