The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up

The New York Times bestseller advocates a method for tidying up that ensures that "once you try it, you will never mess up your room again". The method sounds attractive, especially when you consider the claim of Japanese writer, Marie Kondo, that it will solve your psychological problems in the process.

Kondo started reading lifestyle magazines targeted at housewives at age 5. By 15, she started to study the methodology behind the art of tidying up. With her help, customers have thrown more than 1 million useless items away, including clothes, underwear, photos, ballpoint pens, newspaper clippings and samples of cosmetics.

The key is about keeping only the things that you actually care about while discarding everything else. Once people are surrounded only by things they love, Kondo argues, they will feel happy and cherished, and this in turn will change the way they look at themselves.

So, summertime might not only be a good time to get reading, but also the perfect time to tidy up your room and your soul, and help you make a new start in the coming semester.