The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1

by Marie Kondo

Hardcover, 231 pages

English language

Published Oct. 14, 2014 by Ten Speed Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-60774-730-7
OCLC Number:: 879469400

(153 reviews)

Despite constant efforts to declutter your home, do papers still accumulate like snowdrifts and clothes pile up like a tangled mess of noodles?

Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).

With detailed guidance for determining which items in your house “spark joy” (and which don’t), this international bestseller will help you clear your clutter and enjoy the unique magic of a tidy home—and the calm, motivated mindset it can inspire.

5 editions

Ika Makimaki reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I'm a bit messy. Don't judge me. I want to change, and this book seems really popular so I decided to check it out. It is definitely not enthralling reading material. But it does what it intends to do pretty clearly and in an effective manner: It explains a method to clean up your room/house and get rid of all the crap you have accumulated and don't really need.
I have finished the book but can't say I've finished the full experience until I do the actual cleaning up. That will be happening very soon. Then maybe I will update my score for this book.
I recommend reading it if you are wondering about how to go about organizing your space, and particularly if you feel you have too many things and want to simplify, de-clutter and minimize your lifestyle.
I know I need doing that. I thank this book …

Kibrika reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Kā jau self-help grāmatās, kaitinoši daudz "šis tiešām strādā" un tāda semi-misticisma, bet citādi, visādas noderīgas idejas, vēl redzēs, vai nostrādās praksē :D

Matthew Royal reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

This woman clearly has OCD. She manically cleaned every wire in a metal shower rack, and worked herself into tears over a slimy shampoo bottle. She's "sworn off" her addiction to storage solutions, insisting you should organize everything into shoeboxes instead. I think a lot of this book is her journey reconciling her tidying obsession with her yearning for tranquility.

Her subjective guidelines of what to trash and how much of something to keep are useful: there is no magic number of socks that's best for every person. Her insistence that you should get rid of momentous because if it was really that great, you wouldn't need something to remember it by is stupid, and I wish she'd spent more time thinking that part through: I've found that photos and trinkets I didn't care for in childhood spark joy in me now.

My takeaways from this book are: 1) get …

satyajit reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Gave me food for thought, especially regarding books. I would love to try her methods sometime soon.

Kattas reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Not normally the kind of book I would read, but I confess I have enjoyed reading this. I have also found it motivational; I am not sure I will follow her methods and advice completely, but she makes a strong case for eliminating clutter that creates stress and distracts from things that make one happy. I definitely skimmed some of the more new agey "this will fix all of your life problems" sections, but I commented to my wife at one point that I was a third of the way through the book and could not argue with a single point Kondo had made.

bedone reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Good advice on how to declutter.

YoursTrulee reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Is there a sixth star for this book ?

cherold reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Marie Kondo has a unique approach to decluttering one's home, and having begun the Konami process, I'm finding it going pretty well so far.

The idea of only having things in your household that give you joy, though, is a tricky one for a lot of us. Kondo works in Japan with people who can afford to hire someone to come over and help them get organized. So if they have blender they never liked that well, they can throw it away and buy a new blender. A lot of us have to hold onto things because they work and we need them, not because they give us joy.

You kind of have to translate Kondo's advice to your own way of life. Her system for going through books is insane, in that you're supposed to just hold a book and decide if it gives you joy, but you're not supposed to peek inside. This is fine for books you've read, but useless for those you haven't. But then, I think Kondo feels that you should only have one unread book; she doesn't see the point in a library.

Kondo's advice also reveals how she has incorporated personal quirks into the book. For example, her attitude is, if a button falls off you should toss the item because you'll never get around to sewing it back on (and because, in her odd estimation, if a button falls off it's a sign the item is wearing out; never mind I've had buttons fall off of new shirts). This both shows that she's a procrastinator and that she has enough money that she can toss out perfectly good things at the first sign of wear.

Kondo is a little nutty. Her stories of being obsessed with cleaning since she was a young child are perplexing to me, and as for saying thank you to her shoes, I don't see myself doing that. It makes me a bit skeptical of her, but then, it also makes the book more interesting than something less personal.

I've only Konami'd my clothes so far (books are next) and I did cheat a little on the "spark joy" concept because sometimes something that individually sparks no joy is the only good accessory for something that does, but overall I think her ideas - declutter by category rather than area, toss stuff you don't really like that much - are solid ones. I'd recommend taking a look.

SaraT reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

2.5 stars.

Wagburger reviewed The life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo (Thorndike Press large print peer picks)

Review of 'The life-changing magic of tidying up' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

relentless and meticulous thinking about stuff

Dennis A V Dittrich reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

pro-libertate.net/20150309/257-read-life-changing-magic-tidying

Patrick Armstrong reviewed The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, #1)

Review of 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This book is great. I liked the cheesiness, I'm going to talk to all of my possessions.

I think the idea that you need to be able to see al of your possessions and know where they are to appreciate them is the most important idea here.

I'm now going to re-read this and go through each step.