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by
Marie Kondō
Start by discarding. Then organize your space, thoroughly, completely, in one go.
A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective. It is life transforming.
basically, when you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too.
you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t, and what you should and shouldn’t do.
They are surrounded only by the things they love.
The act of tidying is a series of simple actions in which objects are moved from one place to another. It involves putting things away where they belong.
The cause is not lack of skills but rather lack of awareness and the inability to make tidying a regular habit.
root of the problem lies in the mind.
Success is 90 percent dependent on ...
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Remember: the KonMari Method I describe in this book is not a mere set of rules on how to sort, organize, and put things away. It is a guide to acquiring the right mind-set for creating order and becoming a tidy person.
Order is dependent on the extremely personal values of what a person wants to live with.
being messy is not hereditary nor is it related to lack of time.
Once you have experienced what it’s like to have a truly ordered house, you’ll feel your whole world brighten. Never again will you revert to clutter. This is what I call the magic of tidying.
When it comes to tidying, we are all self-taught.
in most societies tidying, the job that keeps a home livable, is completely disregarded because of the misconception that the ability to tidy is acquired through experience and therefore doesn’t require training.
If you use the right approach, you’ll never rebound.”
Rebound occurs because people mistakenly believe they have tidied thoroughly, when in fact they have only sorted and stored things halfway. If you put your house in order properly, you’ll be able to keep your room tidy, even if you are lazy or sloppy by nature.
People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking.
The catalyst was a book called The Art of Discarding by Nagisa Tatsumi (Takarajimasha, Inc.), which explained the importance of getting rid of unnecessary things.
If you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mind-set.
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.
the pace at which I reduced could not keep up with the pace at which I acquired new things, and I was confronted with the discouraging fact that my space was still cluttered. It wasn’t long before I had completely forgotten to follow the rule of discarding one item per day.
The work involved can be broadly divided into two kinds: deciding whether or not to dispose
of something and deciding where to put it.
All you need to do is look at each item, one at a time, and decide whether or not to keep it and where to put it. That’s all you need to do to complete this job. It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop. In fact, anyone can do ...
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Many people get the urge to clean up when under pressure,
It occurs because they need to put “something else” in order. Their brain is actually clamoring to study, but when it notices the cluttered space, the focus switches to “I need to clean up my room.”
the relief won’t last because you haven’t addressed the true cause of your anxiety.
There is a saying that “a messy room equals a messy mind.” I look at it this way. When a room becomes cluttered, the cause is more than just physical. Visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder. The act of cluttering is really an instinctive reflex that draws our attention away
from the heart of an issue.
When your room is clean and uncluttered, you have no choice but to examine your inner state. You can see any issues you have been avoiding and are forced to deal with them.
That’s why the task of putting your house in order should be done quickly. It allows you to confront the issues that are really important. Tidying is just a tool, not the final destination. The true goal should be to establish the lifestyle you want most once your house has been put in order.
A booby trap lies within the term “storage.”
storage methods do not solve the problem of how to get rid of clutter. In the end, they are only a superficial answer.
flash of revelation. I didn’t need most of the things that were in them!
Putting things away creates the illusion that the clutter problem has been solved.
tidying must start with discarding.
We need to exercise self-control and resist storing our belongings until we have finished identifying what we really want and need to keep.
Tidying up by location is a fatal mistake.
The root of the problem lies in the fact that people often store the same type of item in more than one place.
I recommend tidying by category.
When we disperse storage of a particular item throughout the house and tidy one place at a time, we can never grasp the overall
volume and therefore can never finish. To escape this negative spiral, tidy by category, not by place.
I came to the conclusion that it makes far more sense to categorize people by their actions rather than by some generalized personality trait.
people who can’t stay tidy can be categorized into just three types: the “can’t-throw-it-away” type, the “can’t-put-it-back” type, and the “first-two-combined” type.
90 percent fall into the third category—the “can’t-throw-it-away, can’t-put-it-back” type—while the remaining 10 percent fall...
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tidying must begin with discarding regardless of personality type.
Effective tidying involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. Of the two, discarding must come first.
Tidying is a special event. Don’t do it every day.
There are two types of tidying—“daily tidying” and “special event tidying.” Daily tidying, which consists of using something and putting it back in its place, will always be part of our lives
