Cleaning and organizing our homes can bring a big impact on our cheerfulness and performance. Marie Kondo introduces to the public how the Japanese use art for decluttering. Alongside focusing on the philosophical side of tidying up, it is also offering practical advice.

There are a lot of testimonials about how much the KonMari Method changed their lives strictly. They said, it's more than just organizing, it's life-changing. What can we learn from Tidying Up with Marie Kondo?

Don’t rush when you’re tidying up

For many people, the goal is to get everything organized at once and as quickly as possible, so you don't have to keep looking at all the stuff. However, as Marie Kondo said, “we are actually setting ourselves up for a rebound. It occurs because people mistakenly believe they have tidied thoroughly, in fact, they have only sorted and stored things halfway." In other words, rushing the process just to "get it done" is actually giving you more work because you'll be back at the starting line again in a week. To pass the finish line, you have to run the tidying race, even if it takes a little longer.

Tackle Categories, Not Rooms

We always tackled clutter by room. Instead, Kondo’s first rule is to tidy by category, for example, deal with every single one of your books at once, otherwise, they’ll continue to creep from room to room, and you’ll never rein in the clutter. She advises beginning with clothing, since it’s the least emotionally loaded of one’s things (books come next, old photographs are much later), so as soon as we found a free afternoon, that’s exactly what we did.

Choose what you want to keep, not what you want to toss

Instead of focusing on what you want to throw away, of course, naturally brings unhappiness, Marie encourages us to focus, instead, on the things we want to keep. To do so, hold each item and ask yourself whether or not it sparks joy. "If it does," she says, "keep it. If not, dispose of it." It's that simple. The final step? Take the items you wish to get rid of and say goodbye with a ceremony.

Respect your belongings

Everything had succumbed to a mixed-up messiness. Kondo asks that you consider your clothing’s feelings: Are they happy being squashed in a corner shelf or crowded onto hangers? Are your hardworking socks really thrilled to be balled up? It had sounded out there when I read it, but suddenly my clothes looked totally miserable.

The goal should be to organize the contents so that you can see where every item is at a glance. When each clothing item is stacked on top of another, it becomes impossible to see what's in your drawer without lifting and shifting the contents inside to find the right piece. Instead, it's important to make sure your items are standing up. The key is to fold each item compactly into a smooth rectangle.