The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up)

Because we should be choosing what we want to keep, not what we want to get rid of.

Before you start getting rid of things, take the time to think this through carefully. This means visualizing the ideal lifestyle you dream of.

The things we own are real. They exist here and now as a result of choices made in the past by no one other than ourselves. It is dangerous to ignore them or to discard them indiscriminately as if denying the choices we made. This is why I am against both letting things pile up and dumping things indiscriminately. It is only when we face the things

inability to decide demonstrates a certain degree of attachment to a particular object. Nor can all decisions be made on intuition alone. But this is precisely why we need to consider each object with care and not be distracted by thoughts of being wasteful. When you come across something that’s hard to discard, consider carefully why you have that

Objects can be counted. All you need to do is look at each item, one at a time, and decide whether or not to keep it and where to put it. That’s all you need to do

This applies to papers and documents as well. As soon as another document is placed on top, the first document recedes a little further from our awareness, and before we know it, we put off dealing with it or even forget about it altogether. So for these reasons, I recommend storing vertically anything that can be stood up. Try taking a pile you al

Getting back to warranties: the filing method I recommend is to put them all in a single clear file, without separating them into categories. Warranties are only used once a year if at all. What point is there in carefully sorting and separating them when the odds that they will be needed are so low?

When you tidy your space completely, you transform the scenery. The change is so profound that you feel as if you are living in a totally different world. This deeply affects your mind and inspires a strong aversion to reverting to your previously cluttered state. The key is to make the change so sudden that you experience a complete change of hear

Do not even think of putting your things away until you have finished the process of discarding. Failure to follow this order is one reason many people never make permanent progress. In the middle of discarding, they start thinking about where to put things. As soon as they think, “I wonder if it will fit in this drawer,” the work of discarding com