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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Marie Kondō
Read between
August 7 - September 29, 2019
People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking
Tidying brings visible results. Tidying never lies. The ultimate secret of success is this: If you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mind-set. A change so profound that it touches your emotions will irresistibly affect your way of thinking and your lifestyle habits.
If you use the right method and concentrate your efforts on eliminating clutter thoroughly and completely within a short span of time, you’ll see instant results that will empower you to keep your space in order ever after.
Putting things away creates the illusion that the clutter problem has been solved.
Effective tidying involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. Of the two, discarding must come first.
My lifestyle brings me joy.
“What do you mean by a ‘feminine lifestyle’?” I asked. She thought for a long moment before finally responding. “Well, when I come home from work, the floor would be clear of clutter … and my room, as tidy as a hotel suite with nothing obstructing the line of sight. I’d have a pink bedspread and a white antique-style lamp. Before going to bed, I would have a bath, burn aromatherapy oils, and listen to classical piano or violin while doing yoga and drinking herbal tea. I would fall asleep with a feeling of unhurried spaciousness.”
In addition to the physical value of things, there are three other factors that add value to our belongings: function, information, and emotional attachment.
People have trouble discarding things that they could still use (functional value), that contain helpful information (informational value), and that have sentimental ties (emotional value). When these things are hard to obtain or replace (rarity), they become even harder to part with.
The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos.
To quietly work away at disposing of your own excess is actually the best way of dealing with a family that doesn’t tidy.
To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose.
I recommend you dispose of anything that does not fall into one of three categories: currently in use, needed for a limited period of time, or must be kept indefinitely.
It’s paradoxical, but I believe that precisely because we hang on to such materials, we fail to put what we learn into practice.
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.
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.
Clutter has only two possible causes: too much effort is required to put things away or it is unclear where things belong.
one of the magical effects of tidying is confidence in your decision-making capacity.
“Am I having trouble getting rid of this because of an attachment to the past or because of a fear for the future?”
The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.
In essence, tidying ought to be the act of restoring balance among people, their possessions, and the house they live in.
But I think the main reason tidying has this effect is because through this process people come to know contentment.
We amass material things for the same reason that we eat—to satisfy a craving. Buying on impulse and eating and drinking to excess are attempts to alleviate stress.
