5 Tips to Declutter and Tidy Up Your Home

“Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15).

Ever since she was a child, Marie Kondo has had a passion for organizing. Today, she is best known as the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing and her books have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide. While change is never an easy thing to do, here are five tips from Marie Kondo that could make a huge difference in your homeschool.

Trust the Process
Effective tidying involves only two essential actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. Of the two, tidying must start with discarding. We need to exercise self-control and resist storing our belongings until we have finished identifying what we really want and need to keep

Take Everything Out
Before choosing what to keep, collect everything that falls within the same category at one time. Take every last item out and lay everything in one spot. As soon as you think, “I wonder if it will fit in this drawer,” the work of discarding comes to a halt. You can think about where to put things when you’ve finished getting rid of everything you don’t need.

Ask One Simple Question
The best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in your hand and ask: “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it. This is not only the simplest but also the most accurate yardstick by which to judge.

Start Easy
Start with clothes, then move to books, and finally things with sentimental value. If you reduce what you own in this order, your work will proceed with surprising ease. By starting with the easy things first and leaving the hardest for last, you can gradually hone your decision-making skills, so that by the end, it seems simple.

Avoid Stacking
Store things vertically and avoid stacking for two reasons. First, if you stack things, you end up with what seems like inexhaustible storage space. The other reason is this: stacking is very hard on the things at the bottom.

Source: Paul Minors