Review:
I haven't read Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I assume that this manga includes the same tips and principles as the book, just in a different format, with some edutainment aspects. Here, Marie Kondo has been hired by a new client, Chiaki, a 29-year-old sales rep in Tokyo, to learn how to clean up her fantastically messy apartment.
Kondo's method requires you to divide the contents of your home up into categories: she recommends Clothes, then Books, then Paper, then Miscellaneous Items, and finally Sentimental Things. First, though she wants you to think about the kind of life you'd like to live in your home - it's a way to focus your priorities and then start to gear your living space towards those priorities.
Rather than starting by helping Chiaki find new ways to store her stuff, Kondo asks her to focus on particular categories and discard things. For example, she has Chiaki collect all her clothes from her closet and wherever else they might be located, put it all in one giant pile (a good way to truly understand just how much stuff she has), and then individually consider each item. Although Chiaki is discarding things, she's supposed to focus on choosing what she wants to keep, the items that "spark joy." Everything that no longer sparks joy should be individually thanked and discarded. Kondo tells Chiaki (and readers) that this process may be more difficult and emotional than you expect - in some instances, you're essentially saying goodbye to moments in your life that are now firmly in your past.
I know a lot of folks made fun of the whole "spark joy" thing back when Kondo's book was enormously popular, but the advice in this manga actually did seem really helpful. The problem: I'm not sure I'm committed enough to cleaning up to go through Kondo's whole method. In a way, it makes me think of a less time-sensitive version of the cleanup I did when I was packing everything up to move to a new place, and even then I couldn't bring myself to individually go through all of my books.
Also, Kondo never really says how to tackle strictly utilitarian items - they're subcategories under "Miscellaneous," sure, but a plate doesn't necessarily need to spark joy in me in order to be worth keeping. Then again, I just have a little stack of plates that fits easily in my kitchen cabinets. Kondo's method seems to best apply to those things a person has so much of that they can't figure out how to deal with it all.
Even if you, like me, are too chicken to go through Kondo's whole cleaning process, this is still a motivating read, and the images of Kondo's recommendations for ways to use what you have in order to sort and store the things you plan to keep (rather than buying new storage containers) are helpful. There are also some nice diagrams explaining how to fold and hang various clothing items neatly.
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