by Anis Zamani

Marie Kondo is a legend in her own right. The petite author took the world by storm with her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which was originally published in 2012. The #1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering one’s home takes the reader step-by-step through Kondo’s revolutionary KonMari method.

Not surprisingly, Kondo’s name was all over the Internet recently when Netflix launched her Tidying Up with Marie Kondo series earlier this year. The series has eight episodes, each featuring a different family that Kondo helps to clear out their clutter. Each one has a theme, such as empty nesters who need to reclaim their space and a couple struggling to keep their home tidy with two toddlers.

The KonMari method does not only apply to tidying your home though, because you can also apply it to other spaces in your life, such as your office.

In a Quartz article published last year, Kondo suggested co-workers to tidy up their workplace together. According to her, there are many benefits to organizing your desk space, including increasing your efficiency by spending less time looking for the things that you need, being able to quickly prioritize your workload, and even feeling better as a result of working in a clean environment.

As exemplified in the video above, the first thing you need to do is tidy items by category. Kondo suggests to lay them all out to know the entirety of your belongings.

Second, you need to touch everything and only keep items that spark joy to you! Only then will you be able to divide your possessions into subcategories (books, pens, papers, etc.)

You should begin tidying up after dividing your things. Kondo suggests you enjoy the physicality of your experience. You also must not forget to thank the items you part with.

You must then discard items in the “no” pile and organise your “keep” pile as desired. A useful tip from Kondo is that you can avoid clutter by lining up your items instead of stacking it.

Finally, you can repeat the process until your whole space is tidy. Good luck!