One for the books

I've kept pretty quiet about this Marie Kondo deal going around, up until now.

Marie is a Japanese woman who goes around promoting the value of getting things all tidied up. She wrote a book in 2011 called "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing."

And I can understand why the Japanese have to be decluttered. They live on an island of 145,936 square miles, as opposed to, say, Texas, where the stars at night are big and bright over 268,597 square miles.  So yes, they don't have a lot of extra space in Japan.

But as I say, up until now, I have humored her efforts at having every fold their fitted sheets (as if!) and organizing their spice racks. It's fine. It's her life. She seems to be dealing with some sort of emotional block where the topic of organization is concerned, as witness her words about how much Young Marie preferred staying in the classroom to organize the bookshelves rather than go outside for phys ed:

 "I was obsessed with what I could throw away. One day, I had a kind of nervous breakdown and fainted. I was unconscious for two hours. When I came to, I heard a mysterious voice, like some god of tidying telling me to look at my things more closely. And I realized my mistake: I was only looking for things to throw out. What I should be doing is finding the things I want to keep. Identifying the things that make you happy: that is the work of tidying."

Therein lies the diffy-diff 'twixt Marie and me. She looks for things to get RID of and I look for things to treasure and have forever. But until this latest of her pronouncements, I didn't bother to comment.  But now this...



I couldn't cut down to having fewer than 30 books for every wall in this house! Between me and Peggy, we have hundreds upon hundreds of books, and I am hard pressed to give up any of them.  And if I do give them away, it's only because they are duplicate copies or contain redundant information. I would NEVER cut down on the amount of books we own just to satisfy someone's idea of getting rid of clutter.

Not for nothing, I will point out that Marie Kondo has written four books (none of which I own), so if you have them all, and follow her insane guidelines, you can only have 25 others.

How do you say, "Forget it," in Japanese?