Unless you have been living under a rock for the last six months or so, then it’s pretty likely you will be more than aware of the recent spell that Marie Kondo has cast upon the world!

The self-styled home living guru’s ‘does it spark joy’ approach has revolutionized the decluttering game, but are there more broad messages and rules that you can take away from her body of work?

Here are the key takeaways from Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up.

The thing to remember is that your mindset is more important than anything else.

You can’t change your habits if you are still going around with the same mindset, so work on changing the way you think about things before making an attempt to overhaul your life.

It is clear to see that your home is your most sacred place. It is the place where you feel most safe and most secure, so it deserves to be in the best shape possible.

By eliminating all of the messy excess, you are making your sacred space a more enjoyable place to be.

When you are going through your things to see what sparks joy and what doesn’t, you realise that those possessions that do spark joy actually feel as though they are alive.

The things that bring back the memories vibrate with nostalgia and a good feeling, and that is when you know you should keep them.

Don’t treat decluttering as a chore and a separation;

treat it instead as a one-time celebration of all the things that matter the most to you, and a fond farewell to the items that you have enjoyed once upon a time, but no longer have a sentimental need for.

If you feel the need to keep something, then ask yourself why five times. If you can’t come up with five different answers to the question, then you know that your need to keep it isn’t based in any kind of fact.

Don’t see this method of decluttering as having to discard things that you want; see it instead as a process of only keeping things that you truly love. Life is too short to fill your life up with items that are just ‘okay’.

You only have so much room, so make sure that you fill that room with the true joy sparking things.

Decluttering is not the same as organizing; organizing is the step that comes afterward.

When you have made the tough decisions about what to keep and what to throw away, you then need to come up with suitable categories and systems to make sure that your remaining possessions are well kept and in places that aren’t going to impede further on your life.