The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (6 page)

Are you happy wearing clothes that don’t give you pleasure?

Do you feel joy when surrounded by piles of unread books that don’t touch your heart?

Do you think that owning accessories you know you’ll never use will ever bring you happiness?

The answer to these questions should be no.

Now imagine yourself living in a space that contains only things that spark joy. Isn’t this the lifestyle you dream of?

Keep only those things that speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest
. By doing this, you can reset your life and embark on a new lifestyle.

Deciding what to keep on the basis of what sparks joy in your heart is the most important step in tidying. But what concrete steps are needed to efficiently eliminate excess?

Let me begin by telling you what not to do. Don’t start selecting and discarding by location. Don’t think “I’ll tidy the bedroom first and then move on to the living room” or “I’ll go through my drawers one by one starting from
the top down.” This approach is fatal. Why? Because most people don’t bother to store similar items in the same place.

In the majority of households, items that fall into the same category are stored in two or more places scattered around the house. Say, for example, you start with the bedroom closet. After you have finished sorting and discarding everything in it, you are bound to come across clothes you kept in a different closet or a coat draped over a living room chair. You will then have to repeat the whole process of choosing and storing, wasting time and effort, and you cannot make an accurate assessment of what you want to keep and discard under such conditions. Repetition and wasted effort can kill motivation, and therefore it must be avoided.

For this reason, I recommend that you
always think in terms of category, not place
. Before choosing what to keep, collect everything that falls within the same category at one time. Take every last item out and lay everything in one spot. To demonstrate the steps involved, let’s go back to the example of clothing above. You start by deciding that you are going to organize and put away your clothes. The next step is to search every room of the house. Bring every piece of clothing you find to the same place, and spread them out on the floor. Then pick up each outfit and see if it sparks joy. Those and only those are the ones to keep. Follow this procedure for every category. If you have too many clothes, you can make subcategories such as tops, bottoms, socks, and so on, and examine your clothes, one subcategory at a time.

Gathering every item in one place is essential to this process because it gives you an accurate grasp of how much you have. Most people are shocked at the sheer volume, which is often at least twice what they imagined. By collecting things in one spot, you can also compare items that are similar in design, making it easier to decide whether you want to keep them.

I have another good reason for removing all items in the same category from drawers, closets, and cupboards and spreading them out on the floor. Things stored out of sight are dormant. This makes it much harder to decide whether they inspire joy or not. By exposing them to the light of day and jolting them alive, so to speak, you’ll find it’s surprisingly easy to judge whether they touch your heart.

Dealing with just one category within a single time frame speeds up the tidying process. So be sure to gather every item in the category you are working on. Don’t let any slip by unnoticed.

You launch into your day all fired up to tidy, but before you know it the sun is setting and you’ve barely made a dent in your belongings. Noticing the time with a start, you feel yourself sinking into self-reproach and
despair. And what are you holding in your hands? More often than not, it’s one of your favorite comic books, an album, or some other item that brings back fond memories.

My advice to begin tidying not by room but by category does not mean that you should start with any category you like. The degree of difficulty involved in selecting what to keep and what to discard differs greatly depending on the category. People who get stuck halfway usually do so because they start with the things that are hardest to make decisions about. Things that bring back memories, such as photos, are not the place for beginners to start. Not only is the sheer volume of items in this category usually greater than that of any other, but it is also far harder to make a decision about whether or not to keep them.

In addition to the physical value of things, there are three other factors that add value to our belongings: function, information, and emotional attachment. When the element of rarity is added, the difficulty in choosing what to discard multiplies.
People have trouble discarding things that they could still use (functional value), that contain helpful information (informational value), and that have sentimental ties (emotional value). When these things are hard to obtain or replace (rarity), they become even harder to part with
.

The process of deciding what to keep and what to discard will go much more smoothly if you begin with items that are easier to make decisions about. As you
gradually work toward the harder categories, you will be honing your decision-making skills. Clothes are the easiest because their rarity value is extremely low. Photographs and letters, on the other hand, not only have a high sentimental value but also are one of a kind; therefore, they should be left until last. This is true for photographs, in particular, because they tend to turn up at random while sorting through other categories and in the most unexpected places, such as between books and papers.
The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers
,
komono
(miscellany), and lastly, mementos
. This order has also proven to be the most efficient in terms of the level of difficulty for the subsequent task of storing. Finally, sticking to this sequence sharpens our intuitive sense of what items spark joy inside us. If you can dramatically accelerate the speed of the decision-making process just by changing the order in which you discard, don’t you think it’s worth a try?

Marathon tidying produces a heap of garbage. At this stage, the one disaster that can wreak more havoc than an earthquake is the entrance of that recycling expert who goes by the alias of “mother.”

One of my clients, whom I’ll call “M,” lived with her parents and one sibling. They had moved to the house
fifteen years earlier when M was still in grade school. Not only did she love buying clothes, but she also saved those that had sentimental value, such as school uniforms and T-shirts made for various events. She stored these in boxes and stacked them on the floor until the floorboards were completely obscured from view. It took five hours to sort and clean. By the end of that day, she had fifteen bags to get rid of, including eight bags of clothes, two hundred books, various stuffed toys, and crafts she had made at school. We had stacked everything neatly beside the door on the floor, which was now finally visible, and I was just about to explain a very important point.

“There’s one secret you should know about getting rid of this garbage,” I began, when the door opened and in came her mother bearing a tray of iced tea.
Oh dear
, I thought.

Her mother set down the tray on a table. “Thank you so much for helping my daughter,” she said and turned to leave. At that moment, her eyes fell on the pile of garbage by the door. “Oh my, are you going to throw that away?” she said, pointing to a pink yoga mat on top of the pile.

“I haven’t used it in two years.”

“Really? Well, maybe I’ll use it then.” She began rummaging through the bags. “Oh, and maybe this, too.” When she left, she took not only the yoga mat but also three skirts, two blouses, two jackets, and some stationary.

When the room was quiet again, I sipped my iced tea and asked M, “So how often does your mother do yoga?”

“I’ve never seen her do any.”

What I had been about to say before her mother came in was this. “Don’t let your family see what’s here. If at all possible, take the bags out yourself. There’s no need to let your family know the details of what you throw out or donate.”

I especially recommend that my clients avoid showing their parents. It’s not that there is anything to be ashamed of. There’s nothing wrong with tidying. However,
it’s extremely stressful for parents to see what their children discard
. The sheer volume of the pile can make parents anxious about whether their children can survive on what’s left. In addition, despite knowing that they should rejoice at their child’s independence and maturity, parents can find it very painful to see clothes, toys, and mementos from the past on the rubbish heap, especially if they are things they gave to their child. Keeping your garbage out of sight is considerate. It also protects your family from acquiring more than they need or can enjoy. Up to this point, your family was perfectly content with what they had. When they see what you have chosen to discard, they may feel guilty at such blatant waste, but the items they retrieve from your pile just increase the burden of unnecessary items in their home. And we
should
be ashamed of forcing them to carry this burden.

In an overwhelming percentage of cases, it is the mother who retrieves things from her daughter, yet mothers rarely wear the clothes they take. The women
I work with who are in their fifties and sixties invariably end up discarding or donating their daughters’ hand-me-downs without ever wearing them. I think we should avoid creating situations like this where a mother’s affection for her daughter becomes a burden. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with other family members actually using the things you don’t need. If you live with your family, you could ask them, “Is there something you need that you were planning to buy?” before you start tidying, and then if you happen to come across exactly what they need, give it to them as a gift.

“Even if I tidy, the rest of my family just messes things up again.”

“My husband’s a packrat. How can I get him to throw things away?”

It can be very annoying when your family doesn’t cooperate with your attempts to achieve the “ideal” home. This is something I experienced many times in the past. At one time, I was so absorbed in tidying that cleaning my own room was not enough. I just had to tackle my siblings’ rooms and every other space in the house. And I was constantly frustrated by my untidy family. A major cause
of distress was the communal storage closet in the middle of the house. To me more than half of it seemed to be devoted to unused and unnecessary junk. The clothing rods were jammed with outfits I had never seen my mother wear and suits belonging to my father that were clearly obsolete. Boxes of manga belonging to my brother covered the floor.

I would wait until the timing was right and confront the owner with this question: “You don’t use this anymore, right?” But the response was either, “Yes, I do,” or, “I’ll get rid of it myself,” which they never did. Every time I looked in that closet I would sigh and complain, “Why does everyone keep accumulating things? Can’t they see how hard I’m working to keep the house tidy?”

Fully aware that I was an anomaly when it came to tidying, I was not going to let them defeat me. When my frustration reached the limit, I decided to adopt stealth tactics. I identified items that had not been used for many years, judging by their design, the amount of dust they had gathered, and the way they smelled. I would move those items to the very back of the closet and observe what happened. If no one noticed that they were missing, I disposed of them, one item at a time, just as if I were thinning plants. After three months of this strategy, I had managed to dispose of ten bags’ worth.

In most cases, no one noticed, and life went on as usual. But when the volume reached a certain point, people began to miss a thing or two. When they pointed
the finger at me, I responded quite shamelessly. My basic strategy was to play ignorant.

“Hey, do you know where my jacket went?”

“Nope.”

If they pressed me further, my next step was denial.

“Mari, are you sure you didn’t throw it out?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Oh. Well, I wonder where it could be, then.”

If they gave up at this point, my conclusion was that whatever the item had been, it hadn’t been worth saving. But if they were no longer fooled, I still wasn’t fazed.

“I know it was here, Mari. I saw it with my own eyes just two months ago.”

Far from apologizing for discarding their things without permission, I would retort, “I threw it out for you because you weren’t capable of doing it yourself.”

In retrospect, I must admit that I was pretty arrogant. Once exposed, I was met with a flood of reproach and protest, and, in the end, I was forbidden to tidy anywhere but my own room. If I could, I’d go back and give myself a good smack and make sure that I didn’t even consider such a ridiculous campaign. Getting rid of other people’s things without permission demonstrates a sad lack of common sense. Although such stealth tactics generally succeed and the items discarded are never missed, the risk of losing your family’s trust when you are caught is far too great. Besides, it just isn’t right. If you really want your family to tidy up, there is a much easier way to go about it.

After I was banned from tidying other people’s spaces and had nowhere to turn but my own room, I took a good look around it and was struck by a surprising fact. There were far more items that needed discarding than I had noticed before—a shirt in my closet that I had never worn along with an outdated skirt that I wouldn’t wear again, books on my shelves that I knew I didn’t need. I realized with a shock that I was guilty of exactly the same thing I had been so bitterly accusing my family of doing. Not being in a position to criticize others, I sat down with my garbage bags and focused on tidying my own space.