In The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, the author, Marie Kondo, advises that we follow two rules when we are deciding what to keep and what to discard:
- Discard by category: Collect everything in a particular category and put them in one place (for example, all my coffee mugs)
- Criteria for deciding what to keep: For item in the category, handle it and ask, “does this spark joy?” Only keep the things that spark joy.
My initial reaction was a feeling of relief and excitement. I felt these two simple rules would finally get me off my proverbial “should I or shouldn’t I?” fence when it came to trying to decide whether or not to keep stuff.
But then the doubt monsters crept in.
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