The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying: A simple, effective way to banish clutter forever

Marie Kondo

Apr 2014 · Random House

About this ebook

Marie Kondo will help you declutter your life with her new major Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.

Transform your home into a permanently clear and clutter-free space with the incredible KonMari Method. Japan's expert declutterer and professional cleaner Marie Kondo will help you tidy your rooms once and for all with her inspirational step-by-step method.

The key to successful tidying is to tackle your home in the correct order, to keep only the things you really love and to do it all at once – and quickly. After that for the rest of your life you only need to choose what to keep and what to discard.

The KonMari Method will not just transform your space. Once you have your house in order you will find that your whole life will change. You can feel more confident, you can become more successful, and you can have the energy and motivation to create the life you want. You will also have the courage to move on from the negative aspects of your life: you can recognise and finish a bad relationship; you can stop feeling anxious; you can finally lose weight.

Marie Kondo's method is based on a 'once-cleaned, never-messy-again' approach. If you think that such a thing is impossible then you should definitely read this compelling book.

Ratings and reviews

Taken with a pinch of salt this book is an extremely valuable tool to help you get your house in order. Also a perfect example of turning OCD into a useful, profitable and fulfilling characteristic rather than a debilitating condition. Careful husband's gifting this book to hoarding wives. You may find yourselves "tidied" too.

..I would have saved myself a lot of headache later on & saved on moving costs. Now I've already thrown out a lot of books and am looking forward to tackling the rest. Plus I find myself using the 'spark of joy' technique in other areas of life than just the material.

I received a review copy from Penguin Random House India in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are entirely my own. I’m not what you would call a tidy person. I’m not a hoarder or a clutter-er either, but at any given point, my room which is where I spend most of my free time, is always a little messy. There’s no piles of clothes lying on the floor, nor junk trashed everywhere, but things do get messier than I would like and, on occasion, I find myself just going on a spree to clean everything up and then the whole process repeats itself. I wasn’t sure what this book was going to be about when a lovely publicist at Penguin Random House sent it my way, but it certainly seemed like something I could use in my life. MY THOUGHTS: 1. My first thought as I opened The Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up was about how BIZZARE it was that I was ACTUALLY reading a book that would teach me how to clean up. I was unsure if I would learn anything and a little weirded out that I was trying to. 2. One of the first things I noticed was how absolutely ADORABLE all the characters and illustrations were. It totally kept my attention through the entire book. 3. There was also a real story going on in the background, one with a girl who had a tendency to hoard and how a tidying instructor taught her not how to dump things and throw them away, but in finding the joy in small possessions and only keeping those. 4. The Life Changing Manga of Tidying Up definitely had some really interesting tops such as categorizing and tidying by OBJECT (like clothes) instead of by physical space, which actually helped me. 5. It also taught you the art of de-cluttering and how it isn’t about just throwing everything away, but instead finding the things that gave you JOY to keep around and only keeping those. 6. There were also a lot really well illustrated HOW TO parts to the book including how to fold different types of clothing that really MADE SENSE and isn’t how I would traditionally go it but definitely gave me the sense that I should try it out. Honestly, this book inspired me to go and clean up my own room. I only followed a few steps in this book but perhaps next time, I’ll actually declutter by finding joy as well. 3 stars.

About the author

MARIE KONDO started reading housewives’ magazines from the age of five and loved the order and beauty of the well-organised spaces she saw in them. Then, from the age of 15 she started studying tidying seriously. She started with her own bedroom and then moved onto her siblings’. Today she runs a highly successful business in Tokyo helping clients transform their cluttered homes into spaces of beauty, peace and inspiration.