Tips to Declutter your Life, by Gina Meyers
Aren’t we all a product of our environments? I believe so, if I didn’t I wouldn’t have written and published my first book, second book, third book, etc. If I didn’t truly believe so, I wouldn’t have gotten on a stage in a foreign land to accept an award for a fundraising cookbook concept that I called, Hope for Haiti. I wouldn’t have convinced my relatives during the Gulf War to purchase Patriotic Buttons emblazoned with, “I Support The Troops”. In high school, I wouldn’t have convinced my fellow students to help me “tye dye diapers” for our Senior Project, which was Designer Drypers. Within weeks of my “idea”, one of my journalisim friends Brendan showed me the article from the San Jose Mercury Newspaper about FAO Swartz aquiring a Designer Diaper business or the fact that the name DRYPERS wasn’t invented until after I said it.
Before that incident, at the age of sixteen, I had a brainstorm, why not make college campus videos for parents and students who couldn’t travel too far from home. Some butthead at the SBA of San Francisco took one look at me, pointed to his neck, (of which he had a chain) and said, “see my idea it makes sense”, not yours. No funding and within months, I cut out a magazine article which did my idea.
The hit Netflix series “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo” is inspiring people to keep possessions that "spark joy," and get rid of the rest.
So, maybe it's no surprise that the show may also be sparking an increase in thrift store donations around the country.
Lately, it seems like everyone has been talking about the new series from Kondo, the Japanese organizing expert who first came on the scene with her 2014 best-selling book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.”
The show follows Kondo as she helps people organize and clean out their homes using her unique “KonMari” method. Her approach to getting rid of possessions is elegant in its simplicity: Hold each item in your hands. If it “sparks joy,” keep it. If not, get rid of it.
The influencer here, of course, is Marie Kondo, a Japanese organizing consultant-turned-author whose book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, re-popularized the idea that the first step to achieving inner peace is to give away the useless piles of things you’ve accumulated over the years. (Per the KonMari method, you’re first encouraged to hold the stuff, think about the stuff, and thank the stuff for its service). The guru’s new Netflix show, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, has drawn people further down the anti-hoarding rabbit hole: Binge all eight episodes and you might find yourself purging your earthly belongings.
