The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (3 page)

When I tell people that my profession is teaching others how to tidy, I am usually met with looks of astonishment. “Can you actually make money doing that?” is their first question. This is almost always followed by, “Do people need lessons in tidying?”

It’s true that while instructors and schools offer courses in everything from cooking and how to wear a kimono to yoga and Zen meditation, you’ll be hard-pressed to find classes on how to tidy. The general assumption, in Japan at least, is that tidying doesn’t need to be taught but rather is picked up naturally. Cooking skills and recipes are passed down as family traditions from grandmother to mother to daughter, yet one never hears of anyone passing on the family secrets of tidying, even within the same household.

Think back to your own childhood. I’m sure most of us have been scolded for not tidying up our rooms, but how many of our parents consciously taught us how to tidy as part of our upbringing? Our parents demanded that we clean up our rooms, but they, too, had never been trained in how to do that. When it comes to tidying, we are all self-taught.

Instruction in tidying is neglected not only in the home but also at school. When we think back to our home economics classes, most of us remember making
hamburgers or learning how to use a sewing machine to make an apron, but compared to cooking and sewing, surprisingly little time is devoted to the subject of tidying. Even if it is included in a textbook, that section is either just read in class, or worse, assigned for reading at home so that students can skip ahead to more popular topics, such as food and health. Consequently, even the extremely rare home economics graduates who have formally studied “tidying” can’t do it.

Food, clothing, and shelter are the most basic human needs, so you would think that where we live would be considered just as important as what we eat and what we wear. Yet in most societies tidying, the job that keeps a home livable, is completely disregarded because of the misconception that the ability to tidy is acquired through experience and therefore doesn’t require training.

Do people who have been tidying for more years than others tidy better? The answer is no. Twenty-five percent of my students are women in their fifties, and the majority of them have been homemakers for close to thirty years, which makes them veterans at this job. But do they tidy better than women in their twenties? The opposite is true. Many of them have spent so many years applying erroneous conventional approaches that their homes overflow with unnecessary items and they struggle to keep clutter under control with ineffective storage methods. How can they be expected to know how to tidy when they have never studied it properly?

If you, too, don’t know how to tidy, don’t be discouraged. Now is the time to learn. By studying and applying the KonMari Method presented in this book, you can escape the vicious cycle of clutter.

“I clean up when I realize how untidy my place is, but once I’m done, it’s not long before it’s a mess again.” This is a common complaint, and the standard response touted by magazine advice columns is, “Don’t try tidying your entire house all at once. You’ll just rebound. Make a habit of doing a little at a time.” I first stumbled across this refrain when I was five. As the middle child of three children, I was raised with a great deal of freedom. My mother was busy taking care of my newborn younger sister, and my brother, who was two years older than me, was always glued to the TV playing video games. Consequently, I spent most of my time at home on my own.

My favorite pastime was reading home and lifestyle magazines. My mother subscribed to
ESSE
—a magazine with features on interior decorating, cleaning tips, and product reviews. As soon as it was delivered, I would snatch it from the mailbox before my mother even knew it had arrived, rip open the envelope, and immerse myself
in the contents. On my way home from school, I liked to stop at the bookstore and browse through
Orange Page
, a popular Japanese food magazine. I wasn’t actually able to read all the words, but these magazines, with their photos of scrumptious dishes, amazing tips for removing stains and grease, and penny-saving ideas, were as fascinating for me as game guides were for my brother. I would fold the corner of a page that caught my interest and dream of trying out the tip described.

I also made up a variety of my own solitary “games.” For example, after reading a feature on saving money, I immediately launched into a “power-saving game” that involved roaming about the house and unplugging things that weren’t in use, even though I knew nothing about electric meters. In response to another feature, I filled plastic bottles with water and put them in the toilet tank in a solo “water-saving contest.” Articles on storage inspired me to convert milk cartons into dividers for my drawers and make a letter rack by stacking empty video cases between two pieces of furniture. At school, while other kids were playing dodge ball or skipping, I’d slip away to rearrange the bookshelves in our classroom, or check the contents of the mop cupboard, all the while muttering about the poor storage methods. “If only there were an S-hook, it would be so much easier to use.”

But there was one problem that seemed unsolvable. No matter how much I tidied, it wasn’t long before every space was a mess again. The milk carton dividers in my
desk drawer soon overflowed with pens. The rack made from video cases was soon so crammed with letters and papers that it crumpled to the floor. With cooking or sewing, practice makes perfect, but even though tidying is also housework, I never seemed to improve no matter how often I did it—nowhere stayed tidy for long.

“It can’t be helped,” I consoled myself. “Rebound comes with the territory. If I tackle the job all at once, I’ll just get discouraged.” I had read this in many articles about tidying and assumed it was true. If I had a time machine now, I’d go back and tell myself, “That’s wrong. If you use the right approach, you’ll never rebound.”

Most people associate the word “rebound” with dieting, but when they hear it used in the context of tidying, it still makes sense. It seems logical that a sudden, drastic reduction in clutter could have the same effect as a drastic cut in calories. But don’t be deceived. The moment you begin moving furniture around and getting rid of garbage, your room changes. It’s very simple. If you put your house in order in one fell swoop, you will have tidied up in one fell swoop. (In Japanese, the term is
ikki ni
, or “in one go.”) Rebound occurs because people mistakenly believe they have tidied thoroughly, when in fact they have only sorted and stored things halfway. If you put your house in order properly, you’ll be able to keep your room tidy, even if you are lazy or sloppy by nature.

“If you tidy your house all at once, you’ll rebound. It’s better to make it a habit to do a little at a time.” Although this advice sounds very tempting, we’ve already seen that the first part is wrong. How about the suggestion that we should do only a little a day? Although it sounds convincing, don’t be fooled. The reason you never seem to finish is precisely because you tidy a little at a time.

Changing lifestyle habits acquired over a span of many years is generally extremely difficult. If you have never succeeded in staying tidy to date, you will find it next to impossible to develop the habit of tidying a little at a time.
People cannot change their habits without first changing their way of thinking
. And that’s not easy! After all, it’s quite hard to control what we think. There is, however, one way to drastically transform the way we think about tidying.

The subject of tidying first caught my attention when I was in junior high school. The catalyst was a book called
The Art of Discarding
by Nagisa Tatsumi (Takarajimasha, Inc.), which explained the importance of getting rid of unnecessary things. I picked the book up on my way home from school, intrigued to see a topic I had never encountered before, and I can still remember the shock of surprise I felt as I read it on the train. I became so
absorbed that I almost missed my stop. Once home, I went straight to my room with a handful of garbage bags and stayed closeted for several hours. Although my room was small, by the time I finished I had eight bags full of stuff—clothes I never wore, textbooks from elementary school, toys I had not played with in years, my eraser and seal collection. I had forgotten that most of these things even existed. I sat motionless on the floor for about an hour afterward staring at the pile of bags and wondering, “Why on earth did I bother keeping all this stuff?”

What shocked me most, however, was how different my room looked. After only a few hours, I could see parts of the floor that had never been revealed before. My room seemed to have been transformed, and the air inside seemed so much fresher and brighter that even my mind felt clearer. Tidying, I realized, could have far more impact than I had ever imagined. Thunderstruck by the extent of the change, from that day on I turned my attention from cooking and sewing, which I had thought were the essentials of a well-kept home, to the art of tidying.

Tidying brings visible results. Tidying never lies. The ultimate secret of success is this:
If you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mind-set
. A change so profound that it touches your emotions will irresistibly affect your way of thinking and your lifestyle habits. My clients do not develop the habit of tidying gradually. Every one of them
has been clutter-free since they undertook their tidying marathon. This approach is the key to preventing rebound.

When people revert to clutter no matter how much they tidy, it is not their room or their belongings but their way of thinking that is at fault. Even if they are initially inspired, they can’t stay motivated and their efforts peter out. The root cause lies in the fact that they can’t see the results or feel the effects. This is precisely why success depends on experiencing tangible results immediately.
If you use the right method and concentrate your efforts on eliminating clutter thoroughly and completely within a short span of time, you’ll see instant results that will empower you to keep your space in order ever after
. Anyone who experiences this process, no matter who they are, will vow never to revert to clutter again.

“Don’t aim for perfection. Start off slowly and discard just one item a day.” What lovely words to ease the hearts of those who lack confidence in their ability to tidy. I came across this advice when I was devouring every book about tidying that had ever been published in Japan, and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. The momentum sparked by my epiphany concerning the power of tidying was beginning to wear off, and I was starting to feel jaded by the
lack of solid results. These words seemed to make sense. It seems daunting to aim for perfection from the beginning. Besides, perfection is supposedly unattainable. By discarding one thing a day, I could get rid of 365 things by the end of the year.

Convinced that I had discovered a very practical method, I immediately followed the book’s instructions. I opened my closet in the morning wondering what to dispose of that day. Seeing a T-shirt that I no longer wore, I put it in the garbage bag. Before going to bed the next night, I opened my desk drawer and discovered a notebook that seemed too childish for me. I put it in the bag. Noticing a memo pad in the same drawer, I thought to myself, “Oh, I don’t need that anymore,” but as I reached out to pick it up, I paused at a new thought. “I can save that to discard tomorrow.” And I waited until the next morning to throw it away. The day after that, I forgot completely, so I got rid of two items on the following day.

To be honest, I did not last two weeks. I am not the type of person who likes to plug away at something, one step at a time. For people like me, who do their assignments on the very last day right before the deadline, this approach just doesn’t work. Besides, casting off one object a day did not compensate for the fact that when I shop, I buy several items at one time. In the end, the pace at which I reduced could not keep up with the pace at which I acquired new things, and I was confronted with the discouraging fact that my space was still cluttered. It wasn’t
long before I had completely forgotten to follow the rule of discarding one item per day.

So I can tell you from experience that you will never get your house in order if you only clean up half-heartedly. If, like me, you are not the diligent, persevering type, then I recommend aiming for perfection just once. Many people may protest when I use the word “perfection,” insisting that it’s an impossible goal. But don’t worry. Tidying in the end is just a physical act. The work involved can be broadly divided into two kinds: deciding whether or not to dispose of something and deciding where to put it. If you can do these two things, you can achieve perfection. 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 to complete this job. It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop. In fact, anyone can do it. And if you want to avoid rebound, this is the only way to do it.

Have you ever found yourself unable to study the night before an exam and begun frantically tidying? I confess, I have. In fact, for me it was a regular event. I would take
the piles of handouts covering my desk and throw them in the garbage. Then, unable to stop, I’d tackle the textbooks and papers littering the floor and begin arranging them in my bookcase. Finally, I’d open my desk drawer and start organizing my pens and pencils. Before I knew it, it would be two-thirty in the morning. Overcome by sleep, I’d jolt awake again at five and only then, in a complete panic, would I open my textbook and buckle down to study.