What more could a man ask for from his wife on his birthday than a book entitled ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying’? If you are like me, very little. While I cannot confirm yet whether it is truly life-changing, I certainly loved it and it has given me new ideas and a motivational boost to reorganise my space and clear out some clutter.
The author is a Japanese tidying consultant called Marie Konmar. While she doesn’t explicitly link her ideas to human psychology, it strikes me that much of what she says would be supported by research.
Her most radical argument is that by far the best approach to tidying is as a single ‘big bang’, at least for a given category such as clothing or books. This is a direct contrast to the traditional advice that we ‘do a little everyday’. Even contemplating such a task is rather daunting, but it is probably pragmatic given what we know about building and maintaining habits: namely that it is very difficult to do.
Once the big tidy is done (about which she has many useful things to say), Marie claims that we simply need to designate a place for everything, and be sure to return things there once we’re done with them. This seems a good way to avoid decision-fatigue. Because taking decisions, however small, is tiring, we can become paralysed by indecision, or simply feel too tired to decide where something belongs. As a result, we end up with general piles of random clutter which makes it harder to find things and is pretty dispiriting to look at. By assigning a single place for everything, or everything of a particular type, we create a simple rule-of-thumb that can enable us to stay tidy without thinking.
I won’t say more about her KonMari method. OK, I can’t resist, here’s one more life-changing nugget: store your folded t-shirts vertically so that you can see them all like the book spines in a book case. The book will appeal to some while others will be horrified by the thought of spending their free time reading it. If you enjoyed David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done’, I expect you’ll love this.
Inner Game Theory 