KonMari® Category Two ~ Books

Find the books you own

Every category starts in the same way. Our first step is to locate all of your books and put them all in one place. Books can be found in several locations: the bookcase, on your coffee table, next to your bed, in the kitchen and bathroom, or in your bag. Make sure your school textbooks, exercise books and university books are included too. Katrina will help you to organise your books into subcategories before you start your spark joy checks. 

Decide which books you want to keep ~ those which spark joy

Then you take each book in your hands and decide whether it sparks joy. Books can remind us of our past and therefore are all too easy to keep. A previous client was adamant that his legal textbooks would remain and insisted they sparked joy despite the fact he hadn’t practiced law for five years. It became clear to him however that he was holding on to them as proof of his achievements and the knowledge he had attained. No longer owning these books would not change this. Understanding why you own a book long term is vital in determining whether it truly sparks joy and therefore our decision to keep it.

Books can be a difficult category for some; Bear in mind: ‘You read books for the experience of reading. Books you have read have already been ‘experienced’ and their content is inside you, even if you don’t remember.’ (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, pg. 105). If a book remains in your collection as a mere reminder of the experience, then it’s probably the contents of the book that sparked joy and not the physical book itself. So, why hold on if the contents are already inside you?

Katrina can guide you through this process before supporting you in your next step of storing your books in a beautiful yet effective way.

Common Questions

What if I own a book that I’ve never read?

The most common reason people keep a book they have never read is because they might want to one day. Often “one day” never comes. In our home if the book isn’t read within six months, we now recognise we’re unlikely to ever read it and we allow the book to move on.

What about a book I’ve only read halfway?

Ask yourself: why didn’t you finish it? Thank it for what it’s taught you and move on. It’s ok to let go of any guilt for not finishing it.

Storing 

You do not need to feel pressure to fill all the space on a bookcase, shelf or any other area you store books. Katrina will work with on how you would like to display your books ~ this could be alphabetical order, by height or thickness or rainbow order. We try to follow the 90% or less rule for storage, which means not filling all of the available space with just books. You may want to display a favourite book with its whole cover on show or fill the available space with a vase, photograph, plant or bunch of flowers. Katrina likes to call these spaces ‘little pockets of happiness’ ~ small spaces in your home that spark joy.