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librarysarie 's review for:
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
by Marie Kondo
Self-help books don't tend to do much for me in general, because I don't believe their general premise: that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to whatever issue they mean to tackle. And this one, while it had some good nuggets...well, my overall feeling upon finishing it is, quite simply, that this woman is, well, kind of crazy.
I'll admit to talking to inanimate objects, but this is all just above and beyond. Emptying my purse each night to give it a rest? Thanking my socks for a job well done? Introducing myself ("including name, address, and occupation") to a friend's house upon entering? Visiting my off-season clothes and telling them how much I'm looking forward to wearing them again? Um, not so much. (And I'm sorry, but I think that the detergent I use has more to do with my clothes' vibrancy than the nice words I say to them.) But possibly the wackiest line of all is the one where she says that she doesn't keep anything on her kitchen counters, but prefers to hang her sponge to dry "on the veranda." (And she doesn't own a dish rack, either, as she also puts her dishes out to dry on the veranda.) If you see any sponges on my veranda, please send help.
All that said, there were a couple of takeaways - I do like the idea of choosing what to keep rather than choosing what to discard (that's exactly the kind of little mental shift that tends to help me through things), and in theory I like the idea of collecting everything of a single type (all your tools, for example) in one place before deciding what to discard -- though it's difficult to imagine that particular method working for me (at least for all my possessions) due to constraints of space and time.
I don't quite get just WHY this book, of all the books on decluttering out there, has taken off the way it has. It's just so weird.
I'll admit to talking to inanimate objects, but this is all just above and beyond. Emptying my purse each night to give it a rest? Thanking my socks for a job well done? Introducing myself ("including name, address, and occupation") to a friend's house upon entering? Visiting my off-season clothes and telling them how much I'm looking forward to wearing them again? Um, not so much. (And I'm sorry, but I think that the detergent I use has more to do with my clothes' vibrancy than the nice words I say to them.) But possibly the wackiest line of all is the one where she says that she doesn't keep anything on her kitchen counters, but prefers to hang her sponge to dry "on the veranda." (And she doesn't own a dish rack, either, as she also puts her dishes out to dry on the veranda.) If you see any sponges on my veranda, please send help.
All that said, there were a couple of takeaways - I do like the idea of choosing what to keep rather than choosing what to discard (that's exactly the kind of little mental shift that tends to help me through things), and in theory I like the idea of collecting everything of a single type (all your tools, for example) in one place before deciding what to discard -- though it's difficult to imagine that particular method working for me (at least for all my possessions) due to constraints of space and time.
I don't quite get just WHY this book, of all the books on decluttering out there, has taken off the way it has. It's just so weird.