As I told you at the end of November, I’m going to be going through the book titled “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing”. You can find a link to the book at the bottom of this post.
When you’re going through this one of the first things you’re supposed to do is define your “WHY?”
Why are you wanting to tidy?
My short answer: Plain and simple; I want fewer choices so I can open more time in my day.
The slightly more detailed answer: We have so many choices here; one trip to a Super Target or a Dollar Tree and you can clearly see we aren’t hurting for options. It gives me so much mind clutter. I want to be able to think quicker, and more effectively, so I can move on to the next thing. I want my children to be able to make choices quicker. I want to clear out the physical and the mental clutter so we can enjoy more time together. I’m looking forward to spending less time cleaning up things that don’t spark joy for us, but that we merely own. When I look around, I want to see only things we genuinely LOVE and not just things that are kind of pretty or useful.
I love how the author highlights not just the why, but also the how. You can read more about that in the book.
She suggests that there are 3 things you need to remember to use her method effectively:
1. Touch everything, don’t just look at what you’re sorting, actually touch it.
2. Sort by what you want to keep, not what you want to throw. This is opposite from how I usually sort/tidy/declutter/clean
3. MOVE QUICKLY; don’t spend too much time over analyzing.
Today we are tackling the BOOKS! We’re homeschoolers, and we LOVE books. Without a doubt I know we have way too many though, and that many of them don’t spark joy. Some of them I paid way too much for and they actually spark regret, and guilt.
It isn’t about getting down to a certain number of books, but about only keeping the ones we genuinely LOVE.
My challenges:
1. I buy too many books because they’re cheap at second-hand stores.
2. I write everything off in the name of homeschooling.
3. I run an unofficial neighborhood Little Library, so I keep extra books on hand for swapping out to both boys and girls of all ages from toddlers to teens.
4. I have children of both genders, and with a fair age gap between them, so I feel like I should hang on to books from my oldest to pass onto my youngest. That may mean I’m storing so-so books for 10 years just waiting for them to be read!
5. We have books stored all around the house, so the biggest challenge right now is getting them all into one place. Bless my sweet little kiddos for being excited about doing this and hauling baskets of books to the living room for sorting!
I’ll post a very raw honest looking before and after once we’ve completed this task!
Something you should know: We just “sorted” our books this summer and I gave away easily a hundred children’s books. I didn’t use this method though, so I am curious to see if I feel differently by tackling our shelves this way.
If you’re interested in grabbing a book and joining me you can find this title on Amazon.
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