“The Art of Discarding - How to Get Rid of Clutter and Find Joy” by Nagisa Tatsumi (Hachette Books, 176 pages, $15.99)
Do you have too much stuff ? Some of us have more things than we need. I confess that I’m one of those people. I have difficulties throwing stuff away. Books, for one, many more than one. I have thousands.
I interview authors on the radio and I review books for this newspaper. This combination has resulted in a surplus of books. I have been called a pack rat and even a hoarder. Recently I began to take steps to reverse this situation.
A book called “The LifeChanging Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo has helped many people to reconsider their lifestyles. Her book was actually inspired by another best-selling self-help title, “The Art of Discarding — How to Get Rid of Clutter and Find Joy,” by Nagisa Tatsumi.
That original book was published 18 years ago in Japan. It has now been translated into English and released in the United States. Tatsumi takes an elegant and understated approach to what she describes as “the art of discarding.” She believes that getting rid of the stuff we don’t really need can make us happier, more contented, and help us have some renewed sense of control over our lives.
Tatsumi encourages us to discard things. She wrote, “It’s very simple: keep things you use and discard those you don’t. Things are given life by being used. Keeping something because it would be a waste to get rid of it is a kind of torture. Free yourself from the waste argument, and you’ll begin to see the value of things.”
She explains that the Japanese have a word, “mottainai,” which means “a sense of shame at wastefulness,” and that expression can be useful in instances when you might be encouraging a child to finish her supper, but it can also create “the delusion that just by having something — by not throwing it away — you are doing something positive.”
If you want to begin discarding things you’ll probably need to examine your relationships with those items. Readers can take her survey to evaluate our attitudes about having stuff we don’t really need. The author introduces us to 10 attitudes that can facilitate our ability to start discarding.
Here they are: 1. Don’t keep it “for now.” 2. Avoid “temporary” storagedecide now! 3. “Sometime” never comes. 4. “Really convenient!” to somebody else-irritating junk to me. 5. Nothing is sacred. 6. If you’ve got it, use it. 7. Storage and organization methods are not a solution. 8. “Maybe this could go…” 9. Don’t worry that you’ll get rid of something that you shouldn’t. 10. Don’t aim for perfection.
The second part of the book suggests 10 strategies for discarding things. The final portion of this inspiring book will help you to feel better about getting rid of things by offering some alternatives to simply throwing stuff out.
I have a long way to go. Last week I got rid of 100 books I didn’t need and 300 compact discs that I never played. This is one book I’ll keep. Fox Grisham Delaney Amor Towles Sparks Picoult Robbins O’Reilly/Dugard Clarke Jr. Nicholas Jodi Faye Kellerman
HARDCOVER NONFICTION
George W. Bush J.D. Robb Patterson/Raymond Jonathan Kellerman Patterson/ John Christina Baker Kline Colson Whitehead Joanne Fluke J.P. J.D. Vance David