Several months ago, my dear friend Annie texted me pictures of her neatly organized drawers and told me to stop what I was doing and read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing.

When Annie says, “Read this book. Do it now.” I do it.

I have been battling with my stuff for a long time. A few years back I announced a massive project in which I was going to declutter and inventory my entire house. Never happened. I tried going room by room and intensely declutter. Never happened. 

I would walk around my house and feel like the piles of stuff were mocking me. I would spend weekends purging and organizing but never feeling like I got anywhere.

I was exactly what I didn’t want to be. I was a stuff manager. 

The problem was I thought I already knew everything there was to know about organizing. What could Marie Kondo possibly teach me?

Turns out. A LOT.