The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying

I read this book years ago, but for whatever reason I'm seeing it pop up on a daily basis right now. Maybe it was featured on some prominent TV show or something. Anyway, it's a good excuse to tell the world why I didn't really like it. I don't mean other people shouldn't like it, only that I found this book roughly in the same category as The Secret or literally anything by Deepak Chopra.

Her advice has all of the efficacy of these New Age or self-help gurus. That is to say, it's pages of empty platitudes with not nearly enough meaty tips for actually decluttering. It would be like writing a book on changing careers and simply rephrasing “follow your passion” over and over. Or perhaps a diet book that tells you only to eat things that are green. I mean, yeah, that would probably work for enlightened beings on a different plane of spiritual awareness, but not for most of us.

If you are like me, you aren't a hoarder and have no actual problem letting go of legitimate clutter. However clutter happens and you need real strategies for mitigating the mild chaos it produces. You need helpful tips for how to not let a drawer full of dead pens and batteries accumulate. You want solid advice for container and shelving solutions or how best to manage recycling. You want to know helpful tactics for telling your spouse the thing they want to keep doesn't actually spark joy in your life.

This book is just not that. It is for people who strive to live in an empty room save for a single desk with a favorite pen and moleskine notebook full of things they want to throw out next. This is the kind of book that helps you for exactly one week and then it's right back to junk mail piling up on the coffee table the moment life becomes more hectic than the state of transcendence you were in while reading the book.

Decluttering is about regular trips to Goodwill, the recycling center, and the landfill. It's about having a place for everything, whether it sparks joy or not. It's about spending 15 minutes a day cleaning up rather than waiting to do a massive Spring cleaning that never comes. Much like getting in shape, it's about consistency and not freaking when there is a setback. This book offers little of that and offers far too much weird animism and advice for folks who already have their shit together.