the Japanese art of decluttering, how it works in real life

Three million copies of this little book have sold. Three million!

Marie Kondo shares her Japanese perspective on the art of decluttering. Its a simple concept and a simple book. Perhaps that's what makes it so appealing.

Here's her pitch: a messy home or office leads to a messy mind and messy work.

Get rid of everything you do not love. Declutter your life! And do it all in one day. Do not try to tidy up bit by bit.

There's a lot of truth to this. I always feel better after getting rid of stuff I don't need. I love this concept of decluttering your whole life too in one fell swoop, but in real life, this won't work for me.

I simply cannot go through my house and get rid of everything I do not love. For example, I do not love the 10 or 12 boxes of my daughter's books that we are keeping for her. But I can't throw them away either. As a parent, I feel an obligation to keep them for a certain period of time until she has a home of her own that is large enough to take them.

Here's another example. We once went on a safari to Africa. We bought lightweight cotton khaki clothes for the hot Africa sun. I do not love those clothes. Not even a little bit. But, there might come a day when I need them again and they were not cheap. So they sit in a drawer.

These are practical decisions. They're also economical and emotional decisions

Decluttering the Closet

That said though, I have been slowly decluttering small areas of my home, studio and work area. I know this goes against the "do it all in one day" thing... but this is how it works in real life. At least for me.

Here's one whole shelf cleaned up. The clutter is gone. Cleaned up. Dealt with!

Decluttering the Desk

I am also on a mission to try to go paperless at my desk.

Here's a stack of business cards. These cards just pile up and end up in stacks in drawers. Hard to make the time to organize them.

I've upgraded to a new app (we used to call these things "software") called Evernote.

This is an amazing tool that clips web pages and articles, holds my files and lots of other cool tools for my research. Plus it syncs across all my devices instantly. So if I am sitting on my couch at night with my tablet, and read something interesting, I can clip it and it'll appear on my desktop or phone.

With my Evernote upgrade, now there's a function to take a photo of a business card and Evernote actually READS the card and stores all the info for you. You don't have to enter all that data anymore! It also keeps the photo of the card associated with the contact so if I've written notes on the card I can still see them. This technology has been around for a while, but the beauty of this is the integration of the business cards with all my other notes and files!

Beautiful way to declutter the desk!

Decluttering the Studio

For months I've been working to declutter my studio. There was a complete remodel, which helped a lot. But it feels a bit like my studio went from this...

to this!

I love the art of decluttering. It feels good. And I plan to continue, my way... bit by bit... cuz that's how it works in real life.