"The key to success in tidying is to keep only those items that bring you joy." This is one of the basic tenets from a professional Japanese organizing consultant on how to de-clutter your home and ultimately transform your life.
In her new book, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," self-proclaimed organizing "fanatic" Marie Kondo shares her method on how to pare down your belongings and re-organize your home for good. She鈥檚 named the method the "KonMari" method.
Kondo is a bestselling author on the topic of tidiness, having sold more than 2 million copies of her books. Her latest offering hit North American bookshelves in October.
Kondo, who works in Japan as a highly sought-after organizational consultant, believes that the key to keeping a neat and orderly home is to follow a couple of simple philosophies and guiding principles:
1. Only keep items that bring you joy (except for paper)
In a video trailer for her book, the 30-year-old author says that this is the key "lesson" she works to instill in her clients.
"By 'lesson' I mean helping my clients to look at each and every item they own and to decide whether or not they really need it, whether or not it brings them joy," she says in the trailer.
This task is often an enormous one, she writes, requiring individuals to examine every single item they own.
Kondo said she's probably helped her clients discard more than a million items in total, including everything from clothes to photos to makeup samples.
"This is no exaggeration," she writes in the introduction to her book. "I have assisted individual clients who have thrown out two hundred 45-litre garbage bags in one go."
While it is ultimately up to the homeowner to decide which items bring them joy, Kondo insists there are some items that should always be thrown out, like paper.
"After all, they will never spark joy, no matter how carefully you keep them," she writes.
2. Organize your space, 'thoroughly, completely, in one go'
Once an individual has determined what they will keep and what they will discard, they should tidy and re-organize their space in one complete shot, designating a space for each item and maintaining that space.
Kondo says people who do a little bit of tidying at a time will never be successful in maintaining a neat home.
"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," she writes. "In fact, that is what it means to put your house in order."
But organizing the items that bring you joy using the "KonMari Method" is not a simple task. Take for example, Kondo's technique for folding long-sleeve shirts.
Folding a long sleeve shirt into a compact square, the way of Japanese tidiness expert Marie Kondo.
According to her method, an individual should fold the shirt in nine different steps to end up with a "perfect clean and crisp folded long-sleeve shirt."
'Life transforming'
Kondo subscribes to the principle that having a clean, organized home can not only improve your house, it can improve all aspects of your life.
"From my exploration of the art of organizing and my experience helping messy people become tidy, there is one thing I can say with confidence: A dramatic reorganization of the home causes correspondingly dramatic changes in lifestyle and perspective. It is life transforming," she writes.
She says that by learning how to be tidy, many of her clients have changed their way of thinking and their approach to life for the better.
"When you put your house in order, you put your affairs and your past in order, too," she says. "As a result, you can see quite clearly what you need in life and what you don't, and what you should and shouldn't do."
She added that she occasionally revisits her old clients to see if they have reverted to their former messy ways. But in almost every case, their homes are still in order and most are continuing to improve their living spaces.
"It is evident from the photographs they send that they have even fewer belongings than when they finished the course," she writes. "They are surrounded only by the things they love."
