The Life Changing Magic of Tidying by Marie Kondo

I ordered this book on amazon.in last year. I watched a video on youtube on the efforts put into Tidying Up in Japan and this was one of the books that featured in the video. I found the concept, described briefly in the video, to be very interesting and, placed an order for this book.

As the name suggests, this is a self-help guide to tidying. Though the title of the book states, "tidying", it mainly focuses on decluttering and, organizing to an extent. Also, it focuses only on certain categories of items such as- Clothes, books, old photographs etc. However, the concept described in the book should be applicable to other categories as well.

The writing in the book is quite simple and clearly indicates the author's fanaticism, obsession and passion about decluttering and organizing things. The main selling point of the book is that one has to follow the steps she has  mentioned, only once in a life time and would never have to worry again about tidying, for the rest of their lives. She refers to the method described in the book as KonMarie method- obviously derived from her name. 

The book describes about how one can go about decluttering and organizing in a step-wise manner. She has also included some real life experiences while dealing with her clients on decluttering- some of the which are quite hilarious. She has tried her best to inspire and encourage people to tidy up. Sometimes, it does get too repetitive but in my view, she really wanted to drive the message home. Her passion for tidiness is quite evident throughout the book. 

The other thing about the book is- the author personifies all her belongings and treats them like humans. She also encourages people to have conversations with inanimate objects. One can either view this superficially and think of this as something crazy or look deeper and view it as act of gratitude- being thankful for a home, as an example. Several shades of the Japanese mindset are evident throughout the book- mindfulness, gratitude, respect etc. While it looks like I am defending the book, my genuine intention is to highlight that certain writings need to be looked into deeper. 

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and did feel motivated for days while reading, and also after. This being said, I am a procrastinator when it comes to decluttering and organizing my belongings and I have not yet implemented KonMarie or any other methodology for decluttering or organizing (I am not to disorganized). I hope I will be able to at least give KonMarie a try some day.

I did search for people who have actually implemented what they thought about the effectiveness of the method described in the book. Click here to read more from another blog, which I absolutely loved. I wish I could style my blog that well.

I rate this book a 4/5 for inspiring me, specially in a time in my life when I as a little low on motivation.