In many ways, it's hard to justify Spark Joy's existence as a separate book. It follows the same KonMari method, just with more detailed instructions and diagrams for each step, information that one could make a strong argument should have been included in the original book. It's easy to imagine a single volume, with fewer anecdotes about the author's childhood tidying obsession and fewer illustrations of how to fold things. Is there really that much difference between folding a shirt and a jacket? No, no, there's not. They have the same shape, and I could safely have extrapolated from the illustration of one how to fold the other.
I don't feel completely taken by having bought this book, however, as it really is information that should have been the first book and so I'm glad to have access to it. I suppose now is a good time to update the gentle reader on my own progress, such as it is. I made it through clothes and books, yielding several boxes of books to be sold at Half Price Books for a distressingly small percentage of what I paid for them. I have presently stalled out on papers, because I have so many of them and it takes so long to go through all of them. The KonMarie rule of thumb on papers is "toss everything," which admittedly isn't bad advice. There's a vanishingly small number of the drifts of paper that collect everywhere that you will ever look at again, or want to if you could find it, or, frankly, that you even remember you had kept and would miss if you just dumped it all en masse in the recycling bin. And, yes, that includes all the drawings the kids did as toddlers that I kept, have nowhere to put, but feel guilty about tossing if I have them in my hand: so much easier to make a clean sweep! But I'm not yet brave enough for that, for fear that I'll get rid of something really important. Which isn't likely, but I did run across a $25 Amazon gift certificate that I hadn't used, so there's that.
Even if I've hit an impasse, there it value in having gotten as far as I have. For the categories I've completed, I've achieved a sort of closure so that new clothing or books that pass through my hands are much easier to get rid of. I've gone from feeling that everything I touch is like a pet brought home from the shelter which I've committed to keep for life or be a bad person to feeling free to use it and then let it go without regret. I read it; I'm done; someone else can read it. Or I used to love this shirt, but it's gotten stretched out; let it go to Goodwill, and I'll pick up another shirt I love to take its place.
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