[MUSIC PLAYING] [APPLAUSE] MARIE KONDO: Hello, everybody. My name is Marie Kondo. Call me KonMari. I am a Japanese organizing consultant. I usually visit client’s home and give her one-to-one organizing lessons.

SPEAKER: So first of all, let me start with how I usually work with my clients. So she is– the lady who lives in this room, she’s in her 20s. You already see in this picture that she has full of stuff from her bed. That’s her bed, but you might not see it. And she also had a lot of stuff on the floor.

And she first told me that, don’t you think the bedroom is just like storage? So when she comes home after work, she never feels relaxing in her room. MARIE KONDO: But after my lesson– voila. It looks so neat and clean. Of course, nothing is on the floor.

SPEAKER: So my job is to consult how to organize. I’ve been doing this job for more than 10 years. MARIE KONDO: My client never goes back to the mess because they have been transformed into organized people Today I’m going to tell you how to make your house in order in a way that will change your life forever.

SPEAKER: But before I start telling you what to do, let me tell you how I start my job, how I discovered this method.

I was only five years old when I got very interested in how to organize things. So I was always picking up every single issue of the magazine that my mother was subscribing to, and the magazine was about how to organize the house. So when I turned 15 years old, I start with a serious consultation on how to organize things. There was a bestseller book in Japan– a technique to get rid of things. And I read the book and I discovered the method.

You would probably wonder what I started– how I started researching and organizing things. First, I started reading every single book published in Japan on organizing, and I also keep organizing things. I worked every single day organizing things. MARIE KONDO: Today my room. The next day, was my brother’s room.

Next, the next day, my sister’s room. Followed by the kitchen, living room, bathroom, my friend’s room, friend’s room, friend’s room, my classroom, classroom, and classroom over the school. And again, return to my room. So safe to assume that I am a crazy, tidy fanatic.

[JAPANESE] SPEAKER: So you were perfect to think that I’m a fanatic organizer.

MARIE KONDO: Tidy in one shot, as quickly and completely as possible. SPEAKER: If you think you have to tidy around you every day, gradually, little by little, that’s completely wrong. Because you need a shock that changes your mind into tidying your thing. So you want to finish it in a very short period. So the first important thing is to set the deadline for organizing.

Of course, you can set the deadline in one week, assuming that you’re going to do that every day, or you decide to do it every weekend and set the deadline in three months.

MARIE KONDO: [SPEAKING JAPANESE] SPEAKER: So the number two item in the KonMari method is how you’re going to do it. MARIE KONDO: Sort by category, not by location. SPEAKER: It’s very common to make this mistake if you try to organize things in a specific location. It never ends if you try to tidy up just one portion of the closet or one portion of the living room.

The right way to do this is to organize by category and do it quickly.

Highlights: Marie Kondo | The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up | Talks at Google

For example, if you decide to organize your clothes first, take out all of the clothes in your house in one spot. Make a big pile of all the clothes you have in your house. So just in the same way, if you decide to organize your books, take out all your books from your bookcase and pile them up in one location in the house. I know it looks hard.

It’s messy. I’ll tell you why you need to do this. If you bring out all your stuff– books, clothes in one location, you visually realize how many books, how many clothes, how many clothes, how many books you have. In daily life, we rarely understand how much stuff we have around us. So it is a great opportunity, if you bring out everything in one spot, realize how much stuff you have, how many books you have, so that you can decide which one you want to keep, which one you need to keep, and which one you can get rid of.

MARIE KONDO: [SPEAKING JAPANESE] SPEAKER: So from this point, the next step you have to take is to sort them or separate them between the things you need and the things you don’t. The criteria I recommend in my method are a little bit unique. That’s number three of the KonMari method. MARIE KONDO: Selection criterion– does it spark joy? SPEAKER: Does it spark joy?

This is the key word. MARIE KONDO: [SPEAKING JAPANESE] SPEAKER: I know I feel weird air in this room right now. MARIE KONDO: Don’t worry. I am used to the reaction of the audience. SPEAKER: This is a really common reaction in my seminar.

What I mean by saying spark joy, I can explain exactly what it is. So if you look at one thing, you should question yourself if that thing makes you happy. Does it make you impressed? Many people always think first about which one to get rid of, but it is much more important to think about which one to keep, which one you want to keep and live together from now on. So I will tell you how to make a decision.

Make sure you touch it. Take every single item you can think of in your hand. Imagine how your body reacts to that moment, how you feel when you touch the item. So spark joy– this is the reaction from your body, the reaction you feel from your body when you touch the item you should keep. MARIE KONDO: [SPEAKING JAPANESE] [LAUGHTER] SPEAKER: Just like that.

MARIE KONDO: [SPEAKING JAPANESE] SPEAKER: So if you feel every single part of your body faces up when you touch the item, that’s the right feeling. So on the other hand, if the item doesn’t give you any inspiration– for example, this one. MARIE KONDO: Zzz. SPEAKER: You started feeling down. I know you are sceptical, but if you try to do this, you realize how your body reacts.

After the seminar, when you go home tonight, try part of it. So let me go over my three basic methods. Do it quickly in a short amount of time, and sort by category. And find the item– if the item sparks joy. So this is my book, and if you need to know more about it, if you’d like to know more about it, please pick up this book.

The post MARIE KONDO appeared first on Transformation!.