About a month ago, after deciding we wanted to have a garage sale, I got a notification from the library that they had gotten in the copy of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up I had asked them to hold for me. Turns out, this is like the best book you could ever read a few weeks before having a garage sale.

Like, the best book.

Ever.

We’ve been thinking about having a garage sale for a long time. Our buddy Christina had recommended a documentary about minimalism she had watched on Netflix a few months ago… Before that, at Christmas time, we scaled really far back on gifts because we’re working through the steps of Dave Ramsey’s Finanical Peace University, and it was one of our best holidays because of it. We’re just really learning how to scale back and live better on less money, and I can’t tell you how much of a load off it is.

Something I discovered as we prepared for this garage sale… it’s not that we need more storage. It’s that we have too much stuff.

So The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

I breezed through reading it in about a day. It’s an easy read. 

It’s also another book I read because of Gilmore Girls. Just like Wild.

I’m pretty sure there’s probably a Gilmore Girls fan page out there that lists all the books ever mentioned in the tv show… And if I ever find that list I’ll probably start working on reading them all because they haven’t steered me wrong yet. They’re like Oprah Book Club that way.

Even though it’s an easy read, it’s not an easy or fast process. Full out tidying up is about a six month process. But at the end of it, if you commit yourself fully to the process, your house is clean, everything’s got a place, and you’re not in a constant cycle of trying to get a handle on clutter every day.

That’s something I can totally get behind.

Does This Bring Me Joy?

One of the big themes in The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo is the idea that everything in your home should bring you joy on some level. So as you’re going through all of your clothes (which is the first thing you’re supposed to sift through, by the way!) – you pick up each individual item of clothing and ask yourself if it brings you joy. Do you love it, or are you just hanging onto it because it was a gift from a family member? Maybe a friend said you look really good in it at the store, and you bought it even though you weren’t 100% sold on it? 

If the item you’re holding doesn’t spark any joy in your heart, thank it for your time together and let it go.

Yes I said to tell it thank you.

The author, Marie Kondo, is a little kooky in a way I really like. She talks to the items in her home, she thanks her shoes for a job well done. When she gets rid of something, she thanks it for the work it did. She gives things in drawers room to breathe, she treats everything in her life like a living breathing creature.

Don’t you think if you approached life like that… that you might be just a little kinder to everything in your life?

I like that.

So while I don’t talk to everything I own now… I did start thanking the things I put in the garage sale pile for our time together. And it was fun.

Incidentally, one thing I discovered about myself in going through my closet and getting rid of the things that don’t bring me joy… I’m a hard core tshirt and jeans farm girl.

And it makes me happy.

You can pick up your copy of the book here.

One thing about asking this question…

I don’t recommend asking “does this bring me joy” as you hold a tantrumming toddler. 

Your tantrumming toddler doesn’t belong in the garage sale pile.

But you already knew that.

I hope.

How This Book Helped our Garage Sale

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up absolutely helped us have a successful yard sale last weekend. We didn’t start “tidying up” the week before the sale – so don’t pick it up on Monday to get ready for this weekend. Read it about a month beforehand, and it’ll really help you purge a ton of stuff from your home before the big day.

It helped us unload things we’ve been hanging onto for months… years even. Just random stuff that we didn’t need, that was taking up closet space.

This book helped me as a creative, in that it made it okay for me to acknowledge even though I’m a highly creative person… there’s some crafts I’m not great at… and some that I don’t even enjoy. And I was able to thank those craft supplies for the educational opportunities they presented to me… and I let them go.

All of the supplies I’ve been hanging onto for someday… Marie Kondo gave me a really good phrase to say in those situations.

“Sometime means never.”

So now we’re in hard core “tidying up” mode in our house. We’ve had a successful garage sale, and our family has everything we’re letting go organized neatly in our shipping container storage shed. We’ve let our items go, but we’re gonna make those things work for us in the long haul. We’ll be setting up shop doing garage sale style type events over the next few months to fund a family vacation.

And thanks to The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, when we come home from Legoland our house will still be neat and tidy.

Don’t forget to pick up your copy of the book at your local library or via Amazon!