If you’ve ever looked around your home and noticed it is a debris field of clutter, then The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is THE book for you.

The book provides a unique, step-by-step roadmap to making your home into the place of joy it should be, furnished only by the things that give you joy and fully de-cluttered.

Once you commit to her system, Kondo writes, “there’s no rebound… that’s the life-changing magic of tidying up.” The book, which is mainly a Manga cartoon, shows Kondo helping a young woman declutter her apartment.

The book recommends that you should start by “visualizing your ideal lifestyle,” even drawing a picture of how you want your home to look. Start, the book recommends, by discarding, which “really means choosing what to keep… keep only what sparks joy.”

A key tip is to never tidy up by place, but by category. Don’t go through your clothes in a closet, remove ALL your clothes from all closets, take them to a central spot, and sort them out into piles of keep (clothes you love and that spark joy) and to get rid of (those that don’t spark joy). Then, put them away in the empty closets and drawers.

There’s a chapter on how to save space by carefully folding your clothes – everything doesn’t need to be on a hanger, the book advises.   Books are treated in a similar way, although Kondo advises that once you have taken all books to a central sorting spot, you should clap your hands to wake the “dormant” books, so that when you sort them, you will be able to feel the joy sparked by the ones you want to keep.

With paper and miscellaneous (komono), you recycle things like newspapers and magazines first, and then use three categories for all paperwork – “needs attention, save (contractual), and save (other).” As Kondo says, “the rule of thumb for papers is to discard them all. Keep only those you will be certain you need in the future.”

Once all the tidying is done, the chapter on storage basically instructs the reader to “put things where they belong,” and to store everything by the same categories you used to tidy – clothing, books, paper and miscellaneous, and sentimental items.

Once you have succeeded, your home “is your joyful space,” and is “linked to your body.”

This book is a great read and a totally different way to look at how we deal with all of our possessions. We tend to keep things that don’t work, don’t fit, or that we think might be of value; the book urges liberation from this retentive state of mind and liberating the open space that’s in our homes.

From a saver’s perspective, there is always cash for getting rid of things with value that no longer give you joy, and money to be saved by staying where you are rather than moving to a bigger place with all your clutter. It’s a great read, a sort of spiritual view of aligning your environment with your inner happiness.

And if you are able to save a bit on housing or cash in some unwanted collectibles, a wonderful extra thing you can do is make a contribution to your Saskatchewan Pension Plan account. Tidying away some money today will bring joy in a future tomorrow!

Written by Martin Biefer
	Martin Biefer is Senior Pension Writer at Avery & Kerr Communications in Nepean, Ontario. A veteran reporter, editor and pension communicator, he’s now a freelancer. Interests include golf, line dancing and classic rock. He and his wife live with their Shelties, Duncan and Phoebe, and cat, Toobins. You can follow him on Twitter – his handle is @AveryKerr22