Follow-Up to Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up

I visited my doctor recently for a routine check-up and somehow we got on the subject of organizing and I asked her if she saw the Netflix show, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. She told me with great passion has she is following the MariKondo Method from Marie Kondo’s book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. She had read the book thoroughly and decided to implement some of the practices. I asked her to share what she had done.

Dr. K said that she did agree with Marie Kondo’s advice about starting out with smaller, less mentally challenging organizing projects. Dr. K needed to go through all her clothes, the lesschallenging project and all her books, the much bigger project. Books had always been a very important part of her life growing up and in raising her son. And she knew that it was going to be difficult letting some of the books go. So she started with her wardrobe. Dr. K found it relatively easy enough to let go of clothes that no longer fit her or her lifestyle. Done. In the process she gained confidence on her decision-making capacity as far as getting rid of stuff. This is phenomenon is significant and I have witnessed it with my clients as well. Organizing does get easier as one proceeds to continue with the process.

Next she was onto her treasure of books. She knew that she didn’t need to keep all of them. She followed Marie Kondo’s suggestion of gathering all the books in her home into one “staging” area. She and her son took days to methodically go through each one and decide which were really important to each and both of them. Dr. K describes it as a fairly challenging task but knew that she was up to it. And they did it. They donated all the unwanted books. (Helpful side tip: More Than Words is an excellent Boston area book charity that is run by teens at risk. I highly recommend them for your unwanted books.)

I congratulated Dr. K are her amazing accomplishment that she did basically on her own with the help of Marie Kondo’s advice. Kudos. I wrote last month about Marie Kondo and Tidying Up and continue to see its value. (see can find that blog post on my website.)

Not everyone has the wherewithal to do this sort of organizing project alone. Sometimes it is best to hire a professional. Yours truly is available.