I received this book at no cost, to facilitate my review. However, as always, all opinions expressed here are entirely my own.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up caught my eye when it appeared as a Blogging for Books selection. There’s a lot of great stuff here; there’s also a lot of…junk? My thoughts on this are all over the place, so please bear with me. I’ll try to make it as coherent as possible!
The Good
[Tweet “Cleaning and tidying are not the same thing!”]
The first thing that captured my attention was the simple fact that this refers to “tidying.” We have a tendency to use “clean” and “tidy” interchangeably, but they are not the same thing! I know it seems like a silly detail, but the fact that the author referred to tidying as tidying stood out to me.
The general principles the author espouses are not new. (At least, they weren’t completely new to me.) It is true that, for the most part, they’re not the most common recommendations, but they are recommendations that have been seen before in organization/decluttering resources. They still bear repeating, though, and there are a lot of good principles here. Some of them she words in a new and different way that can help them “click.” Others she’s simply compiled in a manner that’s helpful to have all together. Mostly she emphasizes certain things as being important, that we might previously have relegated to details.
Some key principles in the book that I find notable, practical, and sound:
- Don’t try to organize your clutter. “Start by discarding. Then organize your space…” Get rid of all the excess first, and organize what’s left. And while you’re weeding out, don’t get distracted by trying to organize the remainder.
- Organize everything at once. This is the key premise of the whole book. Don’t do it in bits and pieces, but all at one shot. I think this is a lot harder to do than she makes it out to be, but my experience also tells me she’s right about this being the way to go. When you organize one little piece and everything else is still out of order, it’s never really organized.
- In order to keep things tidy, tidying has to become a habit. Doing it right will produce positive feelings that inspire you to repeat those same actions. (This is a big part of the reason she advocates tidying all in one shot. As she points out, “tidying brings visible results.” So when you see the results of a full-house tidy, it is profoundly satisfying.)
- “The work involved can be broadly divided into two kinds: deciding whether or not to dispose of something and deciding where to put it.”
- Tidy by category, not by location. Think about it. When you tidy up your kitchen, you’re left with items that belong in other parts of the house, right? And how about the items you own? Do you have scissors or tape in more than one location? One space interconnects with another. So if you tidy or organize by location, not only will you miss things or have a hard time getting completely finished (because maybe the place that thing goes isn’t taken care of yet); you also will have a hard time knowing how many or how much of something you have. How do you know what to get rid of if you don’t know what you have?!
- When deciding what to keep, ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?” And whenever possible, actually touch or hold the item while doing this, because you will instinctively react with delight or not. If you’re just looking at a thing from across the room, it stays more “in your head.”
- Choose what you want to keep, not what you want to get rid of. This seems subtle, but it’s actually pretty huge. There are all kinds of reasons not to get rid of something: it still works, it’s valuable, etc. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you need it. There’s a subtle, but significant, shift, when you start to think in the positive (What do I want?) rather than the negative (What do I not want?).
- Begin with items that are easier to make decisions about (clothes? shoes?) and leave more difficult, emotional decisions (like sentimental items) for last.
- When you do get to the organizing stage, “storage should reduce the effort needed to put things away, not the effort needed to get them out.”
- When you’re struggling to let go of something you really don’t need, it’s typically a result of either an attachment to the past or a fear of the future. Is there a pattern to your clinging?
She also points out that tidying is, generally speaking, not a skill that’s ever taught. It’s just expected that we’ll learn it by living. But most of us never really do. This is an especially important observation for us moms! The skills involved in tidying need to be part of our children’s training.
There are a number of mindset-shifting comments that can produce “aha!” moments and make it easier to let go of things. For instance, that a present is made to be received. If it has been received with gratitude, it has already served its purpose as a gift. If you’re not using it now, it doesn’t diminish the gift to pass it on to someone who can use it.
And don’t just pass your junk on to someone else. If you’re giving something to someone who genuinely likes and will use it, that’s wonderful! But don’t just dump it on a friend or family member because you’d rather defer the thinking to them.
The Bad
I don’t know just how different life is or isn’t in modern-day Japan. So it may be that the whole of this book is more relevant to those in Japan — the book’s original audience. But for those of us living in middle-class America (probably the bulk of this edition’s readers), I found much of the book highly impractical.
Early in the book, I wasn’t even sure if she was dealing with whole homes. Her list of categories only included the sorts of things you’d expect to find in a teenager’s bedroom or a college dorm room — an individual space, not a whole-family living space. Apparently practically all of the “household items” are considered miscellany, so they didn’t appear on the initial list except under the catchall term “komono.”
The single decision-making criterion seems unreasonably narrow, too (unless my idea of “sparking joy” and her idea of “sparking joy” are very different). As she says, “if you have read this far, you have probably noticed that in my method your feelings are the standard for decision making.” But feelings alone are an unreliable indicator and not the only thing in life.
I absolutely believe that the question, “does this spark joy?” (or, as I might be more inclined to put it, “does this delight me?” is important. Too often, I think we surround ourselves with “stuff,” none of which really speaks to our hearts, and that doesn’t make for an environment conducive to vivacious living. You have to wear a shirt, so it might as well be a shirt you love and feel good in, y’know?” But is that really the only question?
I can’t imagine holding up my toothbrush and thinking, “Yes, this sparks joy.” Or a roll of toilet paper, “This brings me great delight.” But I’m not planning to toss my toothbrush or throw out the toilet paper anytime soon. (Or ever.) Some things you just have because you need them, and that’s not an invalid reason for keeping them.
Beyond limiting the “keep it or can it” criteria, the author’s ideas of what is useful or what has the potential to bring people joy is — to me, bizarrely — limited. Maybe I’m just weird, but I like information and knowledge. Yes, I have lots of paperwork that’s either just boringly necessary (tax paperwork, anyone?) or junk that I probably just need to throw away. But the fact of the matter is that I have lots of books and lots of papers that do, indeed, bring me joy.
(Aside: Maybe I really am just weird, though, because this sounds hauntingly like my discussions of Pinterest. I have about twice as many Pinterest boards as anyone I know. Literally. But unlike most people I know, who are lamenting the time sink of Pinterest, where they’re pinning all this stuff they never see again, I get a lot of use out of Pinterest. I’ve made dozens of crafts, recipes, and tweaks based on Pinterest Pins. And I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone and quickly gone and pulled a bit of information I — or someone else close to me — needed, because I’d pinned it and knew I’d pinned it.)
An actual quote from the book: “My basic principle for sorting papers is to throw them all away.” Yes, really. All papers. My first question (in my head) was, “what about product manuals?” A few pages later she answers that: she throws them all away. What the heck? Am I honestly the only person in the world who has ever looked something up in a product manual? Maybe you don’t need to keep them all — the manual for your toaster is probably not of enormous use — but I have definitely had to look things up in product manuals. On more than one occasion.
And buttons. She believes that nobody ever uses spare buttons. I guess she’s never met anyone who sews. Her thinking is that if a button falls off of a garment, you’ll just stop wearing it and get rid of it. I find that a very wasteful mindset. It’s necessary to have balance. If the button has fallen off, and you are never going to sew it back on and wear the shirt again, quit holding onto it. But to assume that no one will ever exercise the stewardship to repair something they truly love so they can continue using it is naïve. (That’s is probably a notable statement. I get the impression the author is probably still very young, with lots of organizing experience, but still a lot of life ahead of her, too.)
She advocates emptying your bag (your purse, etc.) every day. Really?! I have four children. I carry a lot of stuff. It takes half an hour to get out of the house as it is. If I had to start by gathering up all of the things I need to stock a bag for me and children ranging from toddlerhood through tweenhood (tweendom? What would you call that?) we would never get out of here! I’m not looking at a wallet, bus pass, and keys. I’m looking at diapers (in multiple sizes), wipes, a cell phone, a wallet, an umbrella, spare clothing (in multiple sizes)…I could go on and on but I won’t. This just does not make sense for a lot of people.
Finally, she says that the traditional organizational concept of flow planning and frequency of use are irrelevant. I think she’s missing the point. Everything doesn’t need to be stored as close as possible to point of use, she says, because if you don’t have extra stuff and it all has a place, you can put it away regardless. But the fact is, many of us won’t. If I have to walk downstairs and then to the opposite end of the downstairs, just to put something back where it belongs, I am not going to be inclined to do that. Especially while I’ve got three children clamoring at me from three different directions for three different things, dinner on the stove, and a baby screaming about the diaper he needs to have changed. I’m much more likely to put that thing away if its place is in the room I’m standing in.
And my dinnertime scenario brings up another point: most of us live with someone. Even if I were willing to make that trek to the opposite end of a different floor to put something away, my children aren’t. Even assuming I’d done everything else she suggests perfectly, and that I were perfectly keeping up with putting everything away (both doubtful), by the time my children had left half a dozen things someplace they don’t belong, we’d be well on our way to having a disaster again.
The Ugly
Her worldview is clearly different from mine. Early in the book she talks about clients who have found that tidying their things has resulted in their tidying their lives. So far, so good. One of her examples was a woman who decluttered and organized her home, then decided her husband was one thing she didn’t need anymore and got a divorce. Since God hates divorce, I can’t get excited about someone’s ditching her spouse as a simple matter of “tidying up.” Spouses aren’t disposable.
The other big philosophical difference is the matter of religion. The book was originally written in Japanese. The author is Japanese. The religious “climate” of the book is Japanese. A lot of what I would consider slightly “weird” thinking pervades the book, like “greeting” your house (the physical building) when you come home, and an odd prayer ritual she does every time she prepares to organize a home.
The most obvious example of this, though, is a whole (small) section of the book about setting up a shrine in your home.
Now, as I said, the author is Japanese. Her beliefs are not mine, but she’s entitled to them. Had I picked this book up off the shelf, I probably wouldn’t have thought much of it. (I wholeheartedly believe in “seed-spitting” — gleaning what we can and spitting out the rest. I don’t expect unbelievers to think, talk, or act like believers.) But I got this book through Blogging for Books, which is a program run by a Christian imprint (‘though this book, specifically, is not from that imprint), so I have to say it caught me by surprise. Especially the shrine thing.
So What Do I Think About the Book?
I think it’s worth the read. I’m not a fan of the writing style. I think it reads a little arrogant (although maybe that’s partly the process of translation). I could do without the Shinto “flavoring.” And, ideally, I’d like to see all the fabulous principle wrapped up in “packaging” that’s more of a hands-on, practical workbook.
But there is a lot of good here to be gleaned. I have sentences and passages highlighted in my copy that I didn’t even mention here. Some of them have to be understood in context, even though a single sentence may be all you need to carry away with you to preserve them in your thinking. There just is enough value here — interspersed throughout the book — to make it worth at least a one-time read, in my opinion. It might be a good one to borrow first, though, to see if it’s a good fit before making a purchase.
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