Contents

Cover

About the Book

About the Author

Title Page

Preface

Introduction: The KonMari Method

The six basic rules of tidying

Part I KonMari master tips

1 Honing your sensitivity to joy

Tidying is the act of confronting yourself; cleaning is the act of confronting nature

If you don’t know what brings you joy, start with things close to your heart

‘It might come in handy’ is taboo

For essential things that don’t bring joy, look at what they do for you

Save your ‘cosplay’ for indoors

Don’t confuse temporary clutter with rebound

When you feel like quitting

The clutter-photo shock treatment

No matter how cluttered it looks, don’t pause, don’t stop, don’t quit

If you’re terrible at tidying, you’ll experience the most dramatic change

2 How to fill your home with joy

Imagine your perfect lifestyle from a single photograph

Keep items in the grey zone with confidence

A joy-filled home is like your own personal art museum

Add colour to your life

How to make the most of ‘useless’ things that still spark joy

Make your own personal power spot

3 Everything you need to know about storing joyfully

During the tidying process, storage is temporary

Store by material

Pack drawers like a Japanese bento box

The four principles of storage

Fold clothes like origami

Everything you need to know about the KonMari folding method

Plan storage with the idea of getting rid of furniture used for storing

Ideal storage weaves a rainbow in your home

Part II The tidying encyclopaedia

4 Tidying clothes

Tops

Bottoms

Dresses and skirts

Clothes that hang

Socks and stockings

Underwear

A clothes wardrobe that sparks joy

Bags

Clothing accessories

Shoes

Tips for packing a suitcase

5 Tidying books

Advice for those who think they can’t part with books

Series

Magazines and coffee-table books

Storing books attractively

6 Tidying papers

The basic rule for papers: Discard everything

Make a pending box

Course materials

Credit card statements

Warranties

Manuals

Greeting cards

Clippings

Assign a day to attend to pending items

7 Tidying komono

CDs and DVDs

Stationery supplies

Electrical komono

Skincare products and cosmetics

Relaxation goods

Medicines

Valuables

Sewing kits

Tools

Hobby komono

Collectibles

Things you kept ‘just because’

Linen and bedding

Towels

Stuffed toys

Recreational items

Seasonal items

Emergency supplies

Rain gear

Kitchen komono

Cleaning supplies

Laundry supplies

Bathroom komono

8 Tidying sentimental items

Tidying sentimental items means putting the past in order

Putting school memories in order

Putting memories of past lovers in order

Sentimental recordings

Your children’s creations

Life records

Letters

Tidying your photos as the final step in your campaign

Part III Life-changing magic

9 A home that sparks joy

An entranceway that sparks joy

A living room that sparks joy

A kitchen that sparks joy

An office that sparks joy

A bedroom that sparks joy

A bathroom that sparks joy

10 The changes that come when you’re done

Tidy up and put your love life in order

Tidying brings relationships into focus

If your family’s stuff bothers you, be like the sun

Don’t force people to tidy if they don’t want to

Teach your children how to fold

Even if you fail, don’t worry – your house won’t blow up

Things that spark joy soak up precious memories

Epilogue

Afterword: Preparing for the next stage of your life

Index

Acknowledgements

Copyright

MARIE KONDO started reading housewives’ magazines from the age of five and loved the order and beauty of the well-organized spaces she saw in them. Then, from the age of 15 she started studying tidying seriously. She started with her own bedroom and then moved on to her siblings’. Today she runs a highly successful business in Tokyo helping clients transform their cluttered homes into spaces of beauty, peace and inspiration. Her internationally bestselling publishing phenomenon The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying was first published in English in 2014. She lives in Tokyo with her husband and daughter.

About the Book

When you surround yourself with possessions that spark joy, you’ll create a home and life that you love.

The secret to MARIE KONDO’s internationally renowned KonMari tidying method is to focus on what you want to keep, not what you want to get rid of. Spark Joy is an in-depth, illustrated, room-by-room guide to decluttering and organising your home. It covers every room in the house from bedrooms and kitchens to bathrooms and living rooms as well as a wide range of items in different categories, including clothes, shoes, photographs, books, cutlery, cosmetics and valuables. Illustrations throughout explain how to fold clothes using Ms Kondo’s unique folding method as well as organise drawers, wardrobes and cabinets. This is a unique and inspiring guide that will not just transform your home but also change your life.

Preface

LIFE TRULY BEGINS only after you have put your house in order. That’s why I’ve devoted most of my life to the study of tidying. I want to help as many people as possible tidy up once and for all.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you should just dump anything and everything. Far from it. Only when you know how to choose those things that spark joy can you attain your ideal lifestyle.

If you are confident that something brings you joy, keep it, regardless of what anyone else might say. Even if it isn’t perfect, no matter how mundane it might be, when you use it with care and respect, you transform it into something priceless. As you repeat this selection process, you increase your sensitivity to joy. This not only accelerates your tidying pace but also hones your decision-making capacity in all areas of life. Taking good care of your things leads to taking good care of yourself.

What sparks joy for you personally? And what doesn’t?

The answers to these questions represent a major clue for getting to know yourself as a recipient of the gift of life. And I am convinced that the perspective we gain through this process represents the driving force that can make not only our lifestyle, but our very lives, shine.

Some people have told me that they had almost nothing left after discarding those things that didn’t spark joy and, at first, didn’t know what to do. This reaction seems particularly common when people finish tidying their clothes. If it happens to you, don’t be discouraged. The important thing is that you have noticed. The real tragedy is to live your entire life without anything that brings you joy and never even realize it. From the moment you finish tidying, you can begin to add a new zest to your home and to your life.

Only two skills are necessary to successfully put your house in order: the ability to keep what sparks joy and chuck the rest, and the ability to decide where to keep each thing you choose and always put it back in its place.

The important thing in tidying is not deciding what to discard but rather what you want to keep in your life. It is my hope that the magic of tidying will help you create a bright and joyful future.

Introduction: The KonMari Method

‘KONMARI, IS THERE an illustrated guide that explains your tidying methods the same way you do in your lessons?’

I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked this question. My response has always been the same. ‘But you don’t need one, because success depends 90 per cent on your mind-set.’ I know that no matter how much knowledge you may gather, if you don’t change your way of thinking, you’ll rebound. What I’m trying to share as a tidying consultant is not a mere tidying method but rather an approach that will enable you to become capable of tidying. And I believe that to achieve this, something similar to shock treatment is necessary.

At the same time, however, it’s true that once people have committed themselves to tidying up, they may want more detailed instructions. For people in the middle of the tidying process, then, what could be more helpful than an illustrated guide? For people who have not yet committed themselves, however, such a book could actually make things worse. In that sense, publishing this illustrated guide could be likened to sharing a book of forbidden knowledge.

So, let me ask you point-blank: are you committed to completing the once-in-a-lifetime special event of tidying up? If you answered yes, then please go ahead and read this book. Even if you have already finished your tidying campaign, the tips for making your home spark joy are bound to be of use. If you answered no, however, please start by reading my first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying. If you have already read it but still aren’t committed, please read it again, because something, and probably something quite small, has kept you from tidying up so far.

This illustrated guide is a comprehensive compilation of KonMari Method know-how. For people who have made the commitment to tidy up once and for all, it should be extremely helpful, like a hand scratching your back right where you feel itchy, and I hope that you will read it from cover to cover. For those of you who have tidied up to some extent but want more details, this guide will serve as an ‘Encyclopaedia of Tidying’. Feel free to skip to the relevant sections whenever you need to confirm how specific tasks are done. I’ve also included answers to many of the questions I received from readers of the first volume. And for those of you who want to skip all my personal stories and are impatient to get to the nitty-gritty of tidying, this book alone may be enough.

Now, are you ready? Don’t forget that the ‘god of tidying’ is always on your side as long as you are committed to getting it done.

The six basic rules of tidying

THE TIDYING PROCESS you are about to embark on is not about decluttering your house or making it look neat on the spur of the moment for visitors. Rather, you are about to tidy up in a way that will spark joy in your life and change it forever.

When you tidy the KonMari way, you will experience several changes. For one thing, when you have finished cleaning up once and for all, you will never again relapse into clutter. You also will have clearly identified your values and what you want to do. You will be able to take good care of your possessions and will experience, every day, a feeling of contentment. The key to success is to tidy up quickly and completely, all in one go.

Once you have experienced what your house feels like when it is completely tidy in the true sense of the term, you will never want to return to clutter, and the strength of that feeling will empower you to keep it tidy.

1. Commit yourself to tidying up

THE KONMARI METHOD may seem a little hard. It does require time and effort. But, having picked up this book with the intention of at least making a good stab at seriously tidying up, please keep reading. And believe in yourself. Once you have made up your mind, all you need to do is to apply the right method.

2. Imagine your ideal lifestyle

THINK ABOUT WHAT kind of house you want to live in and how you want to live in it. In other words, describe your ideal lifestyle. If you like drawing, sketch out what it looks like. If you prefer to write, describe it in a notebook. You can also cut out photos from magazines.

You would rather start tidying right away, would you? That is precisely why so many people suffer rebound after tidying up. When you imagine your ideal lifestyle, you are actually clarifying why you want to tidy and identifying the kind of life you want to live once you have finished. The tidying process thus represents a huge turning point in a person’s life. So seriously consider the ideal lifestyle to which you aspire.

3. Finish discarding first

ONE CHARACTERISTIC OF people who never seem to finish tidying up is that they attempt to store everything without getting rid of anything. When things are put away, a home will look neat on the surface, but if the storage units are filled with unnecessary items, it will be impossible to keep them organized, and this will inevitably lead to a relapse.

The key to success in tidying is to finish discarding first. You can only plan where to store your things and what to store them in once you’ve decided what to keep and what to discard, because only then will you have an accurate grasp of how much actually needs to be stored.

Thinking about where to store things, or worrying about whether you can fit everything in, will only distract you from the job of discarding, and you will never finish. That would be a terrible waste; so instead, consider any storage solutions made during the discarding process as temporary and focus all your attention on sorting the next category. This is the secret to getting the job done quickly.

4. Tidy by category, not by location

ONE OF THE most common mistakes people make is to tidy room by room. This approach doesn’t work because people think they have tidied up when in fact they have only shuffled their things around from one location to another or scattered items in the same category around the house, making it impossible to get an accurate grasp of the volume of things they actually own.

The correct approach is to tidy by category. This means tidying up all the things in the same category in one go. For example, when tidying the clothes category, the first step is to gather every item of clothing from the entire house in one spot. This allows you to see objectively exactly how much you have. Confronted with an enormous mound of clothes, you will also be forced to acknowledge how poorly you have been treating your possessions. It’s very important to get an accurate grasp of the sheer volume for each category.

5. Follow the right order

IT IS CRUCIAL not only to tidy by category but also to follow the correct order, which is clothes, books, papers, komono (miscellany), and finally, sentimental items.

Have you ever run across old photos while tidying and found that hours have passed while you were looking at them? This is a very common blunder, and it clearly illustrates the point of tidying in the proper order, which is designed specifically to help you hone your ability to distinguish what sparks joy. Clothes are ideal for practising this skill, while photos and other sentimental items are the epitome of what you should not touch until you have perfected it.

6. Ask yourself if it sparks joy

THE CRITERION FOR deciding what to keep and what to discard is whether or not something sparks joy. When deciding, it’s important to touch it, and by that, I mean holding it firmly in both hands as if communing with it. Pay close attention to how your body responds when you do this. When something sparks joy, you should feel a little thrill, as if the cells in your body are slowly rising. When you hold something that doesn’t bring you joy, however, you will notice that your body feels heavier.

Remember that you are not choosing what to discard but rather what to keep. Keep only those things that bring you joy. And when you discard anything that doesn’t, don’t forget to thank it before saying goodbye. By letting go of the things that have been in your life with a feeling of gratitude, you foster appreciation for, and a desire to take better care of, the things in your life.

1

Honing your sensitivity to joy

Tidying is the act of confronting yourself; cleaning is the act of confronting nature

‘THIS TIME I’M going to do it! I’m launching a year-end tidying marathon!’

In Japan, the year-end is traditionally the time to clean the whole house in preparation for the New Year (it’s like ‘spring cleaning’ in some other countries). Every December, television programmes and magazine articles feature cleaning tips, and cleansers and other goods are prominently displayed in stores. People throw themselves into this year-end cleaning spree as if it were a national event, so that sometimes I think it must be programmed into the Japanese DNA.

When it is all over, however, it is amazing how many people say, ‘I really tidied up at the end of the year, but I didn’t manage to finish by New Year’s.’ When I ask them what they did, it becomes clear that almost all of them tidied as they cleaned. In other words, they randomly threw away whatever unnecessary items happened to catch their eye, wiped the floors and walls as they emerged beneath piles of stuff, donated boxes of books, wiped down the shelves on which those books had been sitting . . .

Let me be very clear. With this approach, you will spend the rest of your life tidying. It is only natural that such ‘year-end cleaning’ ends up half done. I will be honest. For years, my family and I used exactly the same approach, and we never once succeeded in making our house spick-and-span before the New Year.

The words tidying and cleaning are often used synonymously, but they are two completely different things. If you don’t recognize this important truth, then your home will never be truly clean. First, the focus is different. Tidying deals with objects; cleaning deals with dirt. Both are aimed at making a room look clean, but tidying means moving objects and putting them away, while cleaning means wiping and sweeping away dirt.

The responsibility for mess and clutter lies 100 per cent with the individual. Things do not multiply of their own accord, but only if you buy them or receive them from someone else. Clutter accumulates when you fail to return objects to their designated place. If a room becomes cluttered ‘before you know it’, it is entirely your own doing. In other words, tidying up means confronting yourself.

In contrast, dirt does accumulate of its own accord. It is a law of nature that dust and dirt pile up. Therefore, cleaning means confronting nature. Cleaning must be done regularly to remove naturally accumulated dirt. This is precisely why Japan’s year-end event is not called a ‘tidying’ spree but rather a ‘cleaning’ spree. If you want to succeed at year-end cleaning, the secret is to finish your tidying marathon beforehand.

In my previous book, I explain that a ‘tidying marathon’ means completing the process of discarding, thoroughly and quickly, and deciding where to store everything that you have chosen to keep. You only need to do this once. If you make up your mind and just get it done, you’ll be able to truly concentrate on year-end cleaning. More often than not, people who think that they are not good at cleaning actually don’t know how to tidy. My clients who have finished tidying up frequently say that cleaning now takes them no time at all. In fact, they like doing it, whereas before it made them feel totally incompetent.

Cleaning the temple is part of Buddhist training, but tidying the temple is not. With cleaning, we can let our minds empty while our hands keep moving, but tidying requires us to think – about what to discard, what to keep, and where to put it. You could say that tidying orders the mind while cleaning purifies it. If you want to clean your house for the New Year, then start with a tidying marathon. No matter how hard you try, your house will never be truly clean if you don’t finish tidying first.

If you don’t know what brings you joy, start with things close to your heart

‘I FEEL . . . UHM . . . joy . . . I, uh, I think I feel . . . joy . . . I feel . . . something between joy and . . . no joy.’

At her first lesson, my client sits frozen before a mountain of clothing. A white T-shirt is clutched in her hand, and a garbage bag lies ready to one side. She puts the T-shirt back on the pile and picks up the grey cardigan beside it. After staring at it for ten seconds, she slowly raises her eyes. ‘I don’t know what “joy” feels like,’ she says finally.

As you know by now, the key to my approach is to keep only those things that spark joy and to discard the rest. Does it spark joy when you touch it? While some people find this criterion easy to grasp, many wonder what it actually means, and my clients are no exception. When that happens, I give them this exercise.

Pick the top three items in this pile that give you joy. You have three minutes to decide.

In the case described above, my client paused for a moment to think. ‘The top three . . .’ she muttered. Then she rummaged through the pile, pulled out five items, and spread them in a row. After rearranging them several times, she returned two of them to the pile, and, just when her time was up, announced firmly, ‘These are the top three from right to left!’ Before her lay a white dress with a green flower print, a beige mohair jumper and a blue flowered skirt.

‘That’s it!’ I told her. ‘That’s joy!’

I was quite serious. The best way to identify what does or doesn’t bring you joy is to compare. In the beginning, unless your feelings are very black-and-white, it’s hard to decide if something brings joy when you look at it by itself. When you compare it with a bunch of other things, however, your feelings become clear. This is why it’s so important to sort only one category at a time, starting with clothing.

This ‘top-three’ joy ranking method can be used for other categories as well. If you’re stuck on books or hobby items, give it a try. As long as you stick to the same category, you’ll find that you not only can identify the best three but will also be able to clearly rank everything. Of course, giving every individual item a rank would take a long time, but by the time you have chosen the top ten or twenty, you will see that anything below a certain rank has finished its usefulness. Discovering your personal ‘joy line’ is a fascinating process.

Let me share another special trick for identifying what gives you joy when you are just beginning to sort your clothes: start with the ones that you wear close to your heart. Can you guess why? Because that’s where you feel joy – in your heart, not in your head. The closer your clothing is to your heart, the easier it is to choose. For example, bottoms, such as trousers and skirts, are easier than socks; tops, such as blouses and shirts, are easier than bottoms. Technically, lingerie, such as brassieres and camisoles, are worn closest to the heart, but most people don’t have enough to make a proper comparison. Therefore, my rule of thumb is to start with your tops.

If you feel unsure about any piece of clothing, don’t just touch it; hug it. The difference in how your body responds when you press it against your heart can help you recognize if it sparks joy. Try touching, hugging and gazing closely at any items about which you are not certain. As a last resort, you can even try them on. If you have many outfits you want to try on, it’s more effective to put these in a separate pile and try them on in one go when you’ve finished sorting your other clothes.

It can be hard to recognize what brings you joy at first. One of my clients took as long as fifteen minutes to check the first piece of clothing she picked up. Even if you feel like it’s taking you a long time, there’s no need to worry. Differences in speed simply reflect differences in length of experience. If you take sufficient time to explore your own sense of joy at the beginning, the speed with which you make decisions will accelerate rapidly. So don’t give up. If you keep trying, you, too, will soon reach that stage.

‘It might come in handy’ is taboo

ONE OF MY clients’ top questions is ‘What should I do about things that I need even though they don’t spark joy?’ Many people feel perplexed when deciding what to do with clothing items that are purely practical, such as long winter thermals that are only worn on the coldest days of the year. The same is true when they are trying to select tools, such as scissors or screwdrivers.

‘This doesn’t particularly thrill me, but I need it, don’t I?’ This is a common refrain, and my response is always this: If it really doesn’t spark joy, go ahead and discard it! If, at that point, my client says, ‘Hmm, why not? Let me dispose of it,’ then that’s fine. More commonly, however, they’ll protest. ‘No, wait. I need it,’ or ‘But I use it sometimes.’ If so, I encourage them to keep it with confidence.

While this response may appear irresponsible, in fact, it’s based on many years of experience. I began seriously studying the art of tidying when I was in junior high. After going through a phase where I discarded everything as if I were a machine, I discovered the importance of keeping only those things that spark joy, an approach I’ve been practising ever since. I have bid farewell, at least temporarily, to countless things that didn’t bring me joy and, to be frank, the absence of a discarded item never caused a catastrophe. There was always something in the house that would serve as a substitute.

For example, one day I threw away a vase that was chipped, only to miss it the very next day. I made a perfect substitute, however, by covering a plastic bottle with a favourite piece of cloth. After discarding a hammer because the handle was worn out, I used my frying pan to pound in any nails. Since getting rid of my stereo speakers, which had sharp corners and simply didn’t bring me any joy, I’ve used my headphones as speakers.

Of course, if I need something badly, I will buy another, but having come this far, I can no longer buy something just to make do. Instead, I consider the design, the feel, the convenience and every other factor important to me extremely carefully until I find one that I really love. And that means that the one I choose is the very best, something that I will cherish all my life.

Tidying up is far more than deciding what to keep and what to discard. Rather, it’s a priceless opportunity for learning, one that allows you to reassess and fine-tune your relationship with your possessions and to create the lifestyle that brings you the most joy. Doesn’t that make tidying up even more fun?

It may seem rather drastic, but I’m convinced that letting go, at least once, of anything that doesn’t bring you joy is the ultimate way to experience what it’s like to surround yourself only with things that do bring you joy.

‘It might come in handy.’ Believe me, it never will. You can always manage without it. For those embarked upon a tidying marathon, this phrase is taboo.

For essential things that don’t bring joy, look at what they do for you

AS I JUST mentioned, I substituted a plastic bottle for a vase I threw out. It was light, unbreakable and required no storage space. I could simply recycle it when I no longer needed it. I could also cut it to the size I wanted and play with different designs by changing the cloth that covered it. Although I have since purchased a glass vase that I really like, I still use bottles when I have too many flowers for one vase.

Using my headphones as speakers was also a great solution for my simple lifestyle. I raised the volume loud enough to hear without wearing them. Music aficionados might shudder in horror, but for me the volume and sound quality were more than adequate for my room, and I was quite content. I cannot begin to count all the new pleasures I have discovered just by discarding.

Having said this, I must admit that there have been a few exceptions. Take, for example, my vacuum cleaner. I got rid of it because it was an outdated model, and instead diligently wiped the floor with paper towels and rags. But in the end it simply took too much time, and I had to buy a new vacuum.

And then there was my screwdriver. After throwing it away, I tried using a ruler to tighten a loose screw, but it snapped down the middle. This almost reduced me to tears as it was one I really liked.

All these incidents stemmed from youthful inexperience and thoughtlessness. They demonstrated that I had not yet honed my ability to discern what brings me joy. Deceived by their plainness, I failed to realize that I actually liked them. I had assumed that if something brought me joy, I would feel a thrill of excitement that made my heart beat faster. Now I see things differently.

Feelings of fascination, excitement, or attraction are not the only indications of joy. A simple design that puts you at ease, a high degree of functionality that makes life simpler, a sense of rightness, or the recognition that a possession is useful in our daily lives – these, too, indicate joy.