The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing

Let me share a secret. Putting your house in order is fun!

The best sequence is this: clothes first, then books, papers, komono (miscellany), and lastly, mementos

Free them from the prison to which you have relegated them.

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

Effective tidying involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. Of the two, discarding must come first.

To escape this negative spiral, tidy by category, not by place.

When we disperse storage of a particular item throughout the house and tidy one place at a time, we can never grasp the overall volume and therefore can never finish

instead of deciding that today you’ll tidy a particular room, set goals like “clothes today, books tomorrow.”

This is why tidying must start with discarding

We need to exercise self-control and resist storing our belongings until we have finished identifying what we really want and need to keep.