Organize

It is not too difficult in life to learn to buy stuff. I think what so many of us want to learn is how not to. And added to that, how to deal with all those things we already bought. How to keep our life in order.

Every time I hear someone dashing Marie Kondo’s bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, I am curious to learn, whether that person actually read the book, not just the first pages and the back cover.

While my home is no Konmari haven, and will not be, I really liked the logic behind Kondo’s tidying up method.

What she writes about is simple.

Keeping your home uncluttered involves three actions: discarding what you do not want or need, deciding where to store things, and putting things back to where they belong after use.

If you take care of the above, you should spend very little time cleaning. The house stays tidy.

When you have decided where you store things, it is actually just as easy to put things back there that to put them somewhere that they do not belong. It actually gives you pleasure to put things back because your brain likes order.

It is the not knowing that causes the unorganized thoughts and actions.

While it sounds silly that someone cannot decide where to put a cup or a stack of drawing paper, our lives, even a minimalistic life, involves so many material objects that it takes a lot of headspace not to know where you should put an object, and where you will find it when you want to use it the next time.

That is why everyone should organize their stuff themselves.

In families with children, a simple and effective way to improve tidiness is to teach your children to make their beds and fold their clothes. Beds, bedlinen and clothes are large in size, hence very visible, and we use them every day.