Book Review: The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up

Just in time for the new year, a review about a decluttering book!

I’ll admit that when Marie Kondo first became a sensation, I was pretty skeptical. I tried to read her book but it was one of those that I ended up skimming over, going “meh this isn’t for me” and then returning it to the library. I had a laugh when I found this while perusing some graphic novels, and I figured why not? Maybe I’ll learn something.

This manga presents itself as a sweet story about a girl who has an out of control apartment and a fairly out of control life. She doesn’t know what she wants and her whole place is cluttered with items from old hobbies that she only took up to get closer to someone she was in love with at the time. I feel like a lot of people can relate to this, but over time, she discovers what’s important to her while having KonMari’s help with learning how to tidy her place.

I didn’t think that a graphic novel would be a good place to go learn something, but I should have known better, really. This manga presents KonMari’s methods of tidying in an easy to understand, fun format. I actually ended up enjoying it very much! I’m not sure I’ll be going through my clutter anytime soon, but I probably should.