HI Readers! Today’s post is going to focus on my 50% reduction stuff. G man is doing great and I’ll post an update about him soon but today is all about TIDYING UP.

I love that my journey into purging and organizing our house has inspired others. I love that I often get posts on my facebook feed or personal notes asking my opinion on something or sharing a great article, book or tip.

I started hearing about Marie Kondo’s book “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up” around Christmas last year. (Her Method is called KonMari Method). I read several articles about her approach and was intrigued.   At first, my biggest take away was instead of deciding what to get rid of, decide what to keep. ONLY keep things that spark JOY. It has been interesting to see the things that I have let go because they don’t spark joy for me. Several practical items that I’ve kept in case we needed them, have now moved on! It feels great!

My own perspective on things has changed so much. I no longer look around my house wide-eyed thinking “what can we purge, what can we purge, what can we get rid of”. I see things as …”Yes, that sparks joy. We should keep it. Or Nope–we don’t need it, we don’t use it, it doesn’t spark joy. Time for it to move on.”

I employed several of the tips I had gleened from articles or other’s descriptions of the KonMari Method before purchasing the book. I finally purchased the book (in audio version) several weeks ago. I am very glad I did, it has helped me understand the why behind how methods.

At first I was kind of turned off by the book. Kondo’s writing style is very direct and precise. She uses words like “Never” and “always” a lot.  I am personally turned offed by the use of such absolute terms. (the book is a translation from Japanese, so there maybe some things lost in translation). She also personifies items giving examples of what our stuff would say.  Kondo write things like “Your items want to be of service to you. If they aren’t they want to be somewhere they can be used”, or “NEVER ball your socks, the only time they get to rest is when you are not wearing them”. This was a little out there for me personally. However, I have to admit that now I will look at something and think “humm, I wonder if that is best used here or if it could serve it’s purposed better outside of our home.”

So long story short. This book is totally worth checking out.

You can purchase her book almost anywhere including Amazon. I got the audio version through audible.com. (Audible is an amazon company, if you aren’t a member of audible you can join and get a book for free–which you can keep after you cancel your free membership. Often times either living social or groupon have codes for 2 audio books for joining audible.)