“The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”

Marie Kondo

There’s a chance that this post may be longer than usual, it may be that I have more thoughts than usual or more precisely tangible thoughts. In general I likely overthink to begin with but the thoughts tend to be wandering and hard to pin down, this time that’s not the case. Right now my thoughts relate to this pervasive feeling of being in the midsts of a sort of quarter life crisis and the personal desire to follow Marie Kondo’s advice to: “organize [my] space, thoroughly, completely, in one go”.

I started this journey before but never saw it to completion, Marie Kondo’s method worked, perhaps, a little too well for me, if that’s even logical to say. It seems nonsensical to say that I went through the process without completing it and yet had it work too well for me. I’ll explain what I mean by this… In the book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” Marie Kondo makes some rather big claims of how her method of organizing has correspondingly changed other aspects of people’s lives from careers to relationships, etc, etc. While reading about this I had my reservations in my mind and thought, “Hey, if anything extra comes of this cool, if not my main concern is to simply have a neat and clean space, anything else is extra,” but no there was extra, in the middle of this process I ended up getting the first job I applied to out of nursing school in the area that I was most interested in working and hence my attentions were redirected from there. So here I am again trying to revisit the process I had abandoned a good while ago.

On my new journey I’m giving myself a six month time frame, it’s more or less Marie Kondo’s suggestion regarding the time frame and I quite agree with it, it’s ample time to put in the tidying work necessary to get the work done and yet is short enough to not feel like it’s a lifetime of tidying. I’ve also recognized papers as one of my greatest foes on this journey. Going through papers is boring, monotonous, time consuming, and so many other different assortments of annoying to me-hence I’ve allotted myself a whole three month stretch to dedicate to this category alone and I’m nearing the end of my first month on this journey.

In going through my papers I’ve decided to utilize this blog in some of my organizing, I intend to transfer some of my scattered thoughts on scattered papers here in this one single simple space, the first of which is some of the notes I made on the Marie Kondo book that I read.

The premise of Marie Kondo’s method of discarding can be summed up to holding each item in your hands and asking the question, “Does this spark joy?” If it does then you keep the item and if not you get rid of it.

I’ll just list or write the rest of the meat of the notes I made (many of these points are likely quoted, but these were notes so I don’t actually remember which are and which aren’t):

• Keep only what speak to your heart. Then take the plunge and discard all the rest.
• Sorting papers: Rule of thumb-discard everything.
• Lecture materials: “It’s paradoxical, but I believe that precisely because we hang on to such materials, we fail to put what we learn into practice.”
• To truly cherish the things the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose.
• When you’re choosing what to keep, ask your heart; when you are choosing where to store something, ask your house.
• When we really delve into the reasons for why we can’t let something go, there are only two: an attachment to the past or fear for the future.
• People have trouble discarding things that they could still use (functional value), that contain helpful information (informational value), and what have sentimental ties (sentimental value). When these things are hard to obtain or replace (rarity), they become even harder to part with.

Notes on the role of family:

• It’s extremely stressful for parents to see what their children discard.
• To quietly work away disposing of your own excess is actually the best way of dealing with a family that doesn’t tidy.
• The urge to point out someone else’s failure is usually a sign that you are neglecting to take care of your own space.
• If you live with your family, first clearly define separate storage spaces for each family member.

I might add more if I feel like it to this post, but for now I feel tired and so I’ll stop here.

“The question of what you want to own is actually the question of how you want to live your life.”

Marie Kondo