megdanielle

I downloaded Marie Kondo’s Spark Joy on my Kindle the other day and read through the chapters in a matter of hours. The new year is full of resolutions and while tidying wasn’t on the forefront of mine, seeing my friends engage in their first reading of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up inspired me to check out her second book.

I read the first book in 2016 and at the time, I didn’t quite see the impact that I expected.  I donated a lot of things. I recycled a lot of things. I got rid of a lot of things. But most of the clutter I let go of was already craftily hidden away behind closed doors so it didn’t feel all that different in my house when I looked around.

But things often change beneath the surface before those things manifest in plain sight, don’t they?

I reminded Freddy this afternoon that he was unimpressed with my first run at the KonMari method of tidying and he scoffed, saying, “Really?!”

Today he says since reading that book we’ve changed the way we buy. We’ve changed the filter through which we evaluated what we need or need to keep. We have a home for things in our house.

That’s not to say that we’ve kept things in the same locations I chose in 2016 for those things we keep. I’ve moved objects around quite a bit since first choosing homes for them but I’ve refined locations. It helps to have open spaces where items will fit.

Reading Spark Joy prompted me to take another look around our house. I sifted through some of the categories I had put aside. I revisited categories I had gone through already. And I realized that I have come a long way in understanding the things that give me joy and the things that I am ready to let go.

If you haven’t had a chance to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I highly encourage you to do so.

It changed my life. And with a little grit and commitment, it can change yours too.