After reading The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up, I decided that I needed to go on a Tidying spree of my own. This...hasn't happened yet, but it will... eventually. Just to be sure that this method is one I want to pursue, I checked out Kondo's follow-up book, Spark Joy.
After the first book became a massive multi-country hit, Kondo wrote a follow-up book meant to clarify and expand on some of her points in The Life-changing Magic.... Spark Joy is more of a manual on how to do specific things mentioned in her first book. For instance, if you were baffled by the written description of how to fold your shirts to better organize them in your drawers, Spark Joy provides cute little diagrams (there are bunnies, and they are adorable) to show you what she means. There are also videos on YouTube if you are more of a visual learner (or don't like bunnies, in which case you are probably some kind of monster).
This book doesn't really cover a lot of new ground. There are some more tips about kitchen and bathroom cleaning, but some of them are a little incompatible with Western lifestyles and home-design. She does acknowledge some of this, but it's still a book primarily written for a Japanese audience. There are also references to Feng Shui with regards to how thing are grouped, which is a practice taken a little less seriously in the West.
That's not to say that there aren't any useful tips in this book for Western audiences. I did like her point about how kitchens should be organized with emphasis on ease-of-cleaning. Sure, your pots and pans might not be stacked in the most harmonious way in the cabinets, but if you can at least easily clean up potentially dangerous oil residue from around your cooking surfaces, your organization works. As always, she still emphasizes that your kitchen should be an area that "sparks joy", or makes you feel good in that space. However, minimalism isn't really a principle that can be as readily applied to the kitchen as to other areas in the house.
As in the first, Kondo gives you some anecdotes about some of her clients - one of whom is her own father. Although some readers complain about the anecdotes, I actually enjoy them. I feel like it gives the tidying a personal touch and makes it less...cold and distant. Most how-to-organize books are so impersonal and cold, but Kondo's feels more like a conversation rather than a how-to. Her method is based on experience, and as in the first, she also gives examples of previous failures in her method as she was developing it to show how it has evolved over time.
Overall, this book isn't really essential reading unless you want to get more information on the KonMarie method of cleaning, or just want to see what else she's written. It's not a method, or writing style, for everybody (like any organizing book), but it's nice to get insight into how other cultures might approach decluttering. If you're one of those people who would feel weird talking to your possessions or sniffing something to decide if it should be classified as wood, metal, or water, then this book is probably not one that you'll enjoy, and you won't get much out of it. If you're someone who is open to trying different things (from totally logical to "so crazy it just might work"), then you might enjoy this book and its methods.
As for me, I would like to apply some of the concepts of this book to my own living space. Even if you can't 100% buy into what she's saying, there are still some good takeaways from her method.
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