Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Title Page
Preface
1 Why Can’t I Keep My House in Order?
You Can’t Tidy If You’ve Never Learnt How
Tidy Once and Properly
Tidy a Little a Day and You’ll Be Tidying Forever
Aim for Perfection
The Moment You Start You Reset Your Life
Storage Experts Are Hoarders
Sort by Category, Not by Location
Don’t Change the Method to Suit Your Personality
Make Tidying a Special Event
2 Discard First
Start by Discarding, All at Once
Before You Start, Visualise Your Destination
How to Choose: Does It Spark Joy?
One Category at a Time
Start Right
Don’t Let Your Family See
If You’re Mad at Your Family, Your Room May Be the Cause
What You Don’t Need, Your Family Doesn’t Either
Tidying Is a Dialogue with Oneself
What to Do When You Can’t Throw Something Away
3 How to Tidy By Category
Tidying Order: Follow the Correct Order of Categories
Clothing: Place Every Item of Clothing in the House on the Floor
Loungewear: Downgrading to ‘Loungewear’ Is Taboo
Clothing Storage: Fold It Right and Solve Your Storage Problems
How to Fold: The Best Way to Fold for Perfect Appearance
Arranging Clothes: The Secret to ‘Energising’ Your Wardrobe
Storing Socks: Treat Your Socks and Tights with Respect
Seasonal Clothes: No Need to Store Off-Season Clothes
Storing Books: Put All Of Your Books on the Floor
Unread Books: ‘Sometime’ Means ‘Never’
Books to Keep: Those That Belong in the Hall of Fame
Sorting Papers: Rule of Thumb: Discard Everything
All about Papers: How to Organise Troublesome Papers
Komono (Miscellaneous Items 1): Keep Things Because You Love Them – Not ‘Just Because’
Small Change: Make ‘Into My Wallet’ Your Motto
Komono (Miscellaneous Items 2): Disposables – Things You Kept ‘Just Because’
Sentimental Items: Your Parents’ Home Is Not a Haven for Your Keepsakes
Photos: Cherish Who You Are Now
Astounding Stockpiles I Have Seen
Reduce Until Something Clicks
Follow Your Intuition and All Will Be Well
4 Storing Your Things For An Exciting Life
Designate a Place for Each Thing
Discard First, Store Later
Storage: Pursue Ultimate Simplicity
Don’t Scatter Storage Spaces
Forget About ‘Flow Planning’ and ‘Frequency of Use’
Never Pile Things: Vertical Storage Is Key
No Need for Special Storage Items
The Best Way to Store Bags Is In Another Bag
Empty Your Bag Every Day
Items on the Floor Belong in the Cupboard
Keep the Bath and the Kitchen Sink Clear
Decorate Your Cupboard With Your Favourite Things
Unpack and De-Tag New Clothes Immediately
Don’t Underestimate the ‘Noise’ of Written Information
Appreciate Your Possessions
5 The Magic of Tidying Dramatically Transforms Your Life
Put Your House in Order and Discover What You Really Want to Do
The Magic Effect of Tidying Dramatically Transforms Our Lives
Gaining Confidence in Life Through the Magic of Tidying
An Attachment to the Past or Anxiety about the Future
Learning that You Can Do Without
Do You Greet Your House?
Your Possessions Want to Help You
Your Living Space Affects Your Body
Tidying Increases Good Fortune
How to Identify What Is Truly Precious
Being Surrounded by Things that Bring Joy Makes You Happy
Your Real Life Begins After Putting Your House in Order
Afterword
Index
Copyright
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9781473501706
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First published in the United Kingdom in 2014 by Vermilion,
an imprint of Ebury Publishing
A Random House Group company
First published in Japan in 2010 by Sunmark Publishing
Copyright © Marie Kondo 2014
Marie Kondo has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner
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HAVE YOU EVER tidied madly, only to find that all too soon your home or workspace is cluttered again? If so, let me share with you the secret of success. In this book, I have summed up how to put your space in order in a way that will change your life forever. Impossible? This is a common response and not surprising considering that almost everyone has experienced a ‘rebound effect’ at least once, if not many times, after tidying their home.
The KonMari Method is a simple, smart and effective way to banish clutter forever. Start by discarding. Then organise your space, thoroughly, completely, in one go. If you adopt this strategy, you’ll never revert to clutter again.
Although this approach contradicts conventional wisdom, everyone who completes the KonMari Method has successfully kept their house in order – with unexpected results. Putting their house in order positively affects all other aspects of their lives – including work and family. Having devoted over 80 per cent of my life to this subject, I know that tidying can transform your life too.
Does it still sound too good to be true? If your idea of tidying is getting rid of one unnecessary item a day or cleaning up your room a little at a time, then you are right. It won’t have much effect on your life. If you change your approach, however, tidying can have an immeasurable impact. In fact, that is what it means to put your house in order.
I started reading housewives’ magazines when I was five, and it was this that inspired me, from the age of 15, to undertake the serious study of decluttering and tidying that led to the KonMari Method (KonMari is my nickname, taken from my first and last names). I am now a consultant and spend most of my days visiting homes and offices, giving hands-on advice to people who find it difficult to tidy, who tidy but suffer rebound, or who want to tidy but don’t know where to start.
The amount of things my clients have discarded, from clothes and undergarments to photos, pens, magazine clippings and make-up samples, easily exceeds a million items. This is no exaggeration. I have assisted individual clients who have thrown out 200 45-litre bin bags in one go.
From my exploration of the art of organising and my vast experience of helping disorganised people to become tidy, there is one thing I can say with confidence: a dramatic reorganisation of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in your lifestyle and perspective. It is life-transforming. I mean it. Here are just a few of the testimonies I receive on a daily basis from former clients:
‘After your course, I quit my job and launched my own business doing something I had dreamed of doing ever since I was a child.’
‘Your course taught me to see what I really need and what I don’t. So I got a divorce. Now I feel much happier.’
‘Someone I have been wanting to get in touch with recently contacted me.’
‘I’m delighted to report that since cleaning up my apartment, I’ve been able to really increase my sales.’
‘My husband and I are getting along much better.’
‘I’m amazed to find that just throwing things away has changed me so much.’
‘I finally succeeded in losing three kilos.’
My clients always sound so happy and the results show that tidying has changed their way of thinking and their approach to life. In fact, it has changed their future. Why? This question is addressed in more detail throughout this book, but basically, when you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too. As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don’t, what you should and shouldn’t do.
I currently offer a course for clients in the home and for company owners in their offices. These are all private, one-on-one lessons, but I have yet to run out of clients. There is currently a three-month waiting list, and I receive enquiries daily from people who have been introduced by a former client or who have heard about the course from someone else. I travel from one end of Japan to the other and sometimes overseas. Tickets for one of my public talks for housewives and mothers sold out overnight. There was a waiting list not only for cancellations, but also just to get on the waiting list. Yet my repeater rate is zero. From a business perspective, this would appear to be a fatal flaw. But what if no repeaters were actually the secret to the popularity of my approach?
As I said at the beginning, people who use the KonMari Method never revert to clutter again. Because they can keep their space in order, they don’t need to come back for more lessons. I occasionally check in with graduates of my courses to see how they are doing. In almost every case, not only is their home or office still in order, but also they are continuing to improve their space. It is evident from the photographs they send that they have even fewer belongings than when they finished the course, and have acquired new curtains and furnishings. They are surrounded only by the things they love.
Why does my course transform people? Because my approach is not simply a technique. 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. This seems so simple that even a six-year-old should be able to do it. Yet most people can’t. A short time after tidying, their space is a disorganised mess. The cause is not lack of skills but rather lack of awareness and the inability to tidy effectively. In other words, the root of the problem lies in the mind. Success is 90 per cent dependent on our mindset. Excluding the fortunate few to whom organising comes naturally, if we do not address this aspect, rebound is inevitable no matter how much is discarded or how cleverly things are organised.
So how can you acquire the right kind of mindset? There is just one way and, paradoxically, it is by acquiring the right technique. Remember: The KonMari Method I describe in this book is not a mere set of rules on how to sort, organise and put things away. It is a guide to acquiring the right mindset for creating order and becoming a tidy person.
Of course, I can’t claim that all of my students have perfected the art of tidying. Unfortunately, some had to stop for one reason or another before completing the course. And some quit because they expected me to do the work for them. As an organising fanatic and professional, I can tell you right now that no matter how hard I try to organise another’s space, no matter how perfect a storage system I devise, I can never put someone else’s house in order in the true sense of the term. Why? Because a person’s awareness of and perspective on his or her own lifestyle are far more important than any skill at sorting, storing or whatever. Order is dependent on the extremely personal values of how a person wants to live.
Most people would prefer to live in a clean and tidy space. Anyone who has managed to tidy even once will have wished to keep it that way. But many don’t believe it’s possible. They try out various approaches to tidying only to find that things soon return to ‘normal’. I am absolutely convinced, however, that everyone can keep his or her space in order.
To do that, it is essential to thoroughly reassess your habits and assumptions about tidying. That may sound like far too much work, but don’t worry. By the time you finish reading this book, you will be ready and willing. People often tell me, ‘I’m disorganised by nature. I can’t do it,’ or ‘I don’t have time,’ but being messy is not hereditary nor is it related to lack of time. It has far more to do with the accumulation of mistaken notions about tidying, such as ‘it’s best to tackle one room at a time’ or ‘it’s better to do a little each day’ or ‘storage should follow the flow plan’.
In Japan, people believe that things like cleaning your room and keeping your toilet spic and span bring good luck, but if your house is cluttered, the effect of polishing the toilet bowl is going to be limited. The same is true for the practice of feng shui. It is only when you put your house in order that your furniture and decorations come to life.
When you’ve finished putting your house in order, your life will change dramatically. 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. And the effects are stupendous. Not only will you never be messy again, you’ll have a new start in life. This is the magic I want to share with as many people as possible.
WHEN I TELL people that my job is teaching others how to tidy, I am usually met with looks of amazement. ‘Can you actually make money doing that?’ is their first question. This is almost always followed by, ‘Do people need lessons in tidying?’
It’s true that, while instructors and schools offer courses in everything from cooking and gardening to yoga and meditation, you’ll be hard put to find classes on how to tidy. The general assumption is that tidying doesn’t need to be taught but rather is picked up naturally. Cooking skills and recipes are passed on as family traditions from grandmother to mother to daughter, yet one never hears of anyone passing on the family secrets of tidying, even within the same household.
Think back to your own childhood. I’m sure most of us have been scolded for not tidying up our rooms, but how many of our parents consciously taught us how to tidy as part of our upbringing? In one study on this subject, less than 0.5 per cent responded affirmatively to the question ‘Have you ever studied tidying formally?’ Our parents demanded that we clean up our rooms, but they, too, had never been trained in how to do that. When it comes to tidying, we are all self-taught.
Instruction in tidying is not only neglected in the home, but also at school. Home economics courses in Japan and around the world might teach children how to make hamburgers in cooking class or how to use a sewing machine to make an apron, but compared to cooking and sewing, no time is devoted to the subject of tidying.
Food, clothing and shelter are the most basic human needs, so you would think that where we live would be considered just as important as what we eat and what we wear. Yet in most societies tidying, the job that keeps a home livable, is completely disregarded because of the misconception that the basic ability to tidy is acquired through experience and therefore doesn’t require training.
Do people who have been tidying for more years than others tidy better? The answer is ‘No’. Twenty-five per cent of my students are women in their fifties, and the majority of these have been homemakers for close to 30 years, which makes them veterans at this job. But do they tidy better than women in their twenties? The opposite is true. Many of them have spent so many years applying conventional approaches that don’t work that their homes overflow with unnecessary items and they struggle to keep clutter under control with ineffective storage methods. How can they be expected to know how to tidy when they have never studied it properly?
If you, too, don’t know how to effectively tidy, don’t be discouraged. Now is the time to learn. By studying and applying the KonMari Method presented in this book, you can escape the vicious circle of clutter.
‘I CLEAN UP when I realise how untidy my place is, but once I’m done, it’s not long before it’s a mess again.’ This is a common complaint and the standard response touted by magazine advice columns is: ‘Don’t try tidying your entire house all at once. You’ll just rebound. Make a habit of doing a little at a time.’ I first stumbled across this refrain when I was five. As the middle child of three children, I was raised with a great deal of freedom. My mother was busy taking care of my newborn younger sister, and my brother, who was two years older than me, was always glued to the TV playing video games. Consequently, I spent most of my time at home on my own.
As I grew up, my favourite pastime was reading lifestyle magazines for housewives. My mother subscribed to ESSE – a lifestyle magazine filled with articles on interior decorating, how to make housework easier and product reviews. As soon as it was delivered, I would snatch it from the mailbox before my mother even knew it had arrived, rip open the envelope and immerse myself in the contents. On my way home from school, I liked to stop at the bookshop and browse through Orange Page, a popular Japanese cooking magazine. I wasn’t able to read all the words, but these magazines, with their photos of delicious foods, amazing tips for removing stains and grease and penny-saving ideas, were as fascinating for me as gaming guides were for my brother. I would fold down the corner of a page that caught my interest and dream of trying out the advice.
I also made up a variety of my own solitary ‘games’. For example, one day after reading a feature about saving money, I immediately launched into a ‘power-saving game’ that involved roaming about the house and unplugging things that weren’t in use, even though I knew nothing about electricity meters. After reading another feature, I filled plastic bottles with water and put them in the toilet tank in a ‘solo water-saving contest’. Articles on storage inspired me to turn milk cartons into dividers for my desk drawers and to make a letter rack by stacking empty video cases between two pieces of furniture. At school, while other kids were playing chase or skipping, I’d slip away to rearrange the bookshelves in our classroom, or check the content of the mop cupboard, all the while muttering about the poor storage methods. ‘If only there was an S-hook, it would be so much easier to use.’
But there was one problem that seemed unsolvable: no matter how much I tidied, it wasn’t long before every space was a mess again. The milk carton dividers in my desk drawer soon overflowed with pens. The letter rack made from video cases was soon so crammed with letters and papers that it crumpled to the floor. With cooking or sewing, practice makes perfect, but even though tidying is also housework, I never seemed to improve no matter how often I did it – nowhere stayed tidy for long.
‘It can’t be helped,’ I consoled myself. ‘Rebound is just what happens. If I tackle the job all at once, I’ll just get discouraged.’ I had read this in many articles about tidying and assumed it was true. If I had a time machine now, I’d go back and tell myself, ‘That’s wrong. If you use the right approach, you’ll never rebound.’
Most people associate the word ‘rebound’ with dieting, but when they hear it used in the context of tidying, it still makes sense. It seems logical that a sudden, drastic reduction in clutter could have the same effect as a drastic cut in calories – there might be a short-term improvement but it would not be sustainable for long. But don’t be deceived. The moment you begin moving furniture around and getting rid of things, your room changes. It’s very simple. If you put your house in order in one mammoth effort, you will have tidied up completely. Rebound occurs because people mistakenly believe they have tidied thoroughly when in fact they have only partially sorted and stored things. If you put your house in order properly, you’ll be able to keep your room tidy always, even if you are lazy or messy by nature.
HOW ABOUT THE suggestion that we should do a little each day? Although it sounds convincing, don’t be fooled. The reason you never seem to finish is precisely because you tidy just a little at a time.
Changing lifestyle habits acquired over a span of many years is often extremely difficult. If you have never succeeded in staying tidy to date, then you will find it next to impossible to develop the habit of tidying a little at a time. People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking. And that’s not easy! After all, it’s quite hard to control what we think. There is, however, one way to drastically transform the way we think about tidying.
The subject of tidying first caught my attention when I was in junior high school. I came across a book called The Art of Discarding by Nagisa Tatsumi (Takarajimasha, Inc.), which explained the importance of throwing things away. I picked the book up on my way home from school, intrigued to see a topic I had never encountered before, and I can still remember the thrill I felt as I read it on the train. I became so absorbed that I almost missed my stop. Once home, I went straight to my room with a handful of bin bags and closeted myself away for several hours. Although my room was small, by the time I had finished I had eight bags full of stuff – clothes I never wore, textbooks from elementary school, toys I had not played with in years, my eraser and seal collections. I had forgotten that most of these things even existed. I sat motionless on the floor for about an hour afterwards staring at the pile of bags and wondering, ‘Why on earth did I bother keeping all this stuff?’
What shocked me most, however, was how different my room looked. After only a few hours, I could see parts of the floor that had never been clear before. My room seemed to have been transformed and the air inside felt so much fresher and brighter that even my mind felt clearer. Tidying, I realised, could have far more impact than I had ever imagined. Astonished by the extent of the change, from that day on I turned my attention from cooking and sewing, which I had thought were the essentials of homemaking, to the art of tidying.
Tidying brings visible results. Tidying never lies. The ultimate secret of success is this: if you tidy up in one go, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mindset. This brings about a change so profound that it touches your emotions and will irresistibly affect your way of thinking and your lifestyle habits. My clients do not develop the habit of tidying gradually. Every one of them has been clutter-free since they began their tidying marathon. This approach is the key to preventing rebound.
When people return to clutter no matter how much they tidy, it is not their room or their belongings but their way of thinking that is at fault. Even if they are initially inspired, they struggle to stay motivated and their efforts peter out. The root cause lies in the fact that they can’t see the results or feel the effects. This is precisely why success depends on experiencing tangible results immediately. 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. Anyone who experiences this process, no matter who they are, will vow never to revert to clutter again.
‘DON’T AIM FOR perfection. Start off slowly and discard just one item a day.’ What lovely words to ease the hearts of those who lack confidence in their ability to tidy or believe that they don’t have enough time to complete the task properly. I came across this advice when I was devouring every book about tidying that had ever been published in Japan, and I fell for it – hook, line and sinker. The momentum sparked by my epiphany about the power of tidying was beginning to wear off, and I was starting to feel jaded by the lack of solid results. These words seemed to make sense. It seems daunting to aim for perfection from the beginning. Besides, perfection is supposedly unattainable. By throwing away one thing a day, I could get rid of 365 things by the end of the year.
Convinced that I had discovered a very practical method, I immediately followed the book’s instructions. I opened my wardrobe in the morning wondering what to throw away that day. Seeing a T-shirt that I no longer wore, I put it in a bin bag. Before going to bed the next night, I opened my desk drawer and discovered a notebook that seemed too childish for me. I put it in the bag. Noticing a memo pad in the same drawer, I thought to myself, ‘Oh, I don’t need that anymore’, but as I reached out to pick it up and throw it away, I paused at a new thought. ‘I can save that to discard tomorrow.’ And I waited until the next morning to throw it away. The day after that, I forgot completely so I threw out two items on the following day …
To be honest, I did not last two weeks. I am not the type of person who likes to plug away at something, one step at a time. For people like me, who do their assignments on the very last day right before the deadline, this approach just doesn’t work. Besides, throwing away one object a day did not compensate for the fact that when I shop, I buy several items at a time. In the end, the pace at which I reduced items could not keep up with the pace at which I acquired new things and I faced the discouraging fact that my space was still cluttered. It wasn’t long before I had completely forgotten to follow the rule of throwing away one item per day.