I want to review two books. One of which I read before beginning my travels and the other, I just finished reading yesterday. If ever there was a book that really helped to prepare my husband and I for setting out to travel the world, it is the book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” .

Like a lot of people, I had moved into a new apartment with my husband and at first, we were buying household things like furniture, kitchen appliances, towels, etc., because we needed them. We spent a lot of money acquiring these things and after we had all we needed, we started accumulating things to decorate the apartment with or for our various hobbies.

This went on for about 3 years. And this is easy to do since we live not far from the largest open-air shopping center in America. Ala Moana Center is a place not just for tourists to do all of their gift and souvenir shopping, but a place that fills a social need (like a church or community center) where people gather regularly after work or on weekends to meet with friends, have a nice meal, grab a drink or an ice cream cone, prepare for that party they got invited to by going makeup or clothes shopping, or just to window shop and listen to the live music that wafts throughout from one of the open-air bars.

Ala Moana has really become the temple of social gathering. Especially on a rainy day when the locals aren’t apt to “weather” the unpredictable weather at the beach.

So, Grant and I began to accumulate many things, and our apartment started to reflect this. It was great for a while, but it never seemed to satisfy us for long. And we soon discovered that doing the household chores to clean the apartment, do laundry, and tidy our stuff began to eat up an entire day of the weekend. This was especially noticeable since Grant and I, in our work schedules, only had one day of the week off together. And we began to dread having to spend that day cleaning and going grocery shopping. Funny, how we always had time to go to the mall.

Life began to feel like a real rat race. Granted, it was our fault, but it did seem like we fell into the pattern that a lot of people find themselves in.

Then somewhere around January of this year, Grant’s mom told us about a book she was reading called “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, by Mari Kondo. We nodded our heads and listened to his mom go on about it on speaker phone. The next time we were at the very same mall mentioned above, we happened to walk into the bookstore and browse the “new non-fiction books” arrival section. Grant recognized the book his mom spoke so enthusiastically about, and so we picked it up.

We brought it home and I began to read it. Now, something special happened at this point. Normally, with any kind of self-improvement book, I’d read the book and swear I’d get to the exercises listed once it had been read, which many times culminated in my having never gone back to actually doing them. But this time, I was so inspired and feeling the weight of all the stuff in my apartment, and no leisure time to spare, that I got right down to it and did all the recommendations listed, and in the order they came up, while reading the book! Starting with my closet. As I started to fill trash bags and trash bags full of clothes that I hadn’t worn in a long time, Grant saw this and started to do the same with his clothes.

The premise of “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” is that most people have way more things than they actually need or can enjoy. And this book isn’t about living frugally, it’s about living with joy and being surrounded by the things that support well-being or the goals you want to achieve. Everything else is a distraction and can weigh you down. There is also a spiritual aspect to it. Basically, our physical things are tied energetically to our mind set. Clearing out the things that don’t bring us joy, and keeping the things that do, will open up the space in our lives for attracting things that would truly bring us happiness and joy, both as physical items or as experiences. It’s a way to reflect on your life, going within to discover what truly motivates or inspires you, and bringing that out to shape your physical surroundings.

To achieve this, the author explains a process whereby you are to hold everything you own in your hands, or to your chest, and ask yourself the simple question, “does this bring me joy?” . If it doesn’t, then it goes out; if it does, we keep it and cherish it. Now this may seem overwhelming, but there is an actual order in which she recommends doing this, starting with things that aren’t as emotionally charged (like socks) and then moving on to sentimental items such as books, mementos, or photographs. So by the time you are ready to tackle these harder items, you already have the experience and confidence to sift through them.

I really liked that she didn’t emphasize keeping the things you need just because you need them. It was truly about whether something brought you joy, with the exception of certain documents that you legally need to keep (the book mentions how to deal with these also). So, while going through that junk drawer, you come across scotch tape, you are to hold it in your hand and ask the same question, “does this bring me joy?”. And it probably won’t… unless it’s placed in some fancy tape dispenser that belonged to your late and dear Grandma. So like with the rest of it, it gets tossed.

This initial process with the book took about 2 and half months. It probably wouldn’t have taken as long but we still had our full work and social schedules to contend with. After 16 bags of clothes and numerous trips to Goodwill, our apartment became a clean and relaxed sanctuary in which we could look forward to coming home from work. We donated all the items we could and gave away particular things that our friends and family wanted. My mom grew up with the type of philosophy that the book espouses about possessions, so she seemed to be sympathetic and understanding to what we were going through.

I’m not going to lie, this process was at times hard and a little stressful, especially when it looked like we had dumped the contents of our living room on the living room floor and a Tasmanian devil, here illegally, had zipped through the place. I say “illegally” since most exotic animals are not allowed to be brought into Hawai’i due to strict quarantine laws.

But among this process of lightening the possessions in our apartment, something magical did happen; just like the book mentioned would most likely happen as a side effect. Grant and I began to really define what it was we wanted out of life, and we started to come up with an actual plan to set these goals in motion. Not only did going through our possessions and discarding a lot of them open up space for the truly valuable things to come to us, but in doing so, it made stagnant energy move to allow for what we really wanted out of life to flow within reach.

Grant and I realized that what we wanted most was to travel and see the world, and that being in Hawai’i was great, but it was hard and expensive to travel off the island. And even though I really enjoyed teaching music, I also wanted to work more on my own music and share it with the world.

By about the middle of March, when we had completed reading the book and getting our apartment to a comfortable state, our new life goals were defined and it was at this point that we realized, we needed to go much further in this purging process than the book recommended. This involved selling all our furniture, putting our most precious possessions into storage, and letting go of our apartment. This whole process became known as the “The Purge”. But because that sounds ominous, I always followed it up by saying, “and it’s NOT a disease!” just in case the phrase conjured up images of Grant and I slouched on the couch with red, exploding pustules all over our bodies as the excuse of why we couldn’t attend certain social functions. “Sorry we can’t go to your BBQ on Sunday, we’re still dealing with The Purge. And in case you were wondering, it’s NOT a disease!”

The Purge lasted from when we got the book until we were ready to leave, about 6 months in all (1st phase = 2.5 months, then furniture and appliance sell-off phase = 3.5 months). This was a long and arduous process, and one I hope I won’t have to repeat in its entirety for the rest of my life. What got us through was the thought of the wonderful adventure that awaited us at the end of this process.

And just like how fresh energy was starting to move in the direction of our dreams, the planning had started to fall into place. Obstacles seemed to fall away and in their wake, things worked out to our benefit.

One example of this serendipity is when we had our airline tickets in hand and our departure date was fast approaching, but we still hadn’t sold our car even though we’d been trying for the last two months. It was the last thing we needed to sell, and we NEEDED to sell it as we still had a loan that equalled the value of the car. Just in the nick of time, someone who appreciates volkswagons and was enthusiastic about German cars (translation: the right owner), showed up, test-drove it, and bought it. We had 2 days to spare before we boarded our plane. Whew!

So that’s the beginning of our adventure, and I have this book to thank for helping us to get there. Even if we had not found “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”, and had the idea to embark on our world travel, we would have definitely been overwhelmed by having to take an apartment filled with unnecessary stuff, to living out of a suitcase and two backpacks. So much so, that knowing us, we may have become paralyzed with inaction at the surmounting challenge. But because we had started the process of paring down before having to liquidate our furniture and the rest of our belongings, I feel this book is the reason that traveling became possible.

In Part 2, I will be reviewing the book “The More of Less: Finding the Life You Want Under Everything You Own”  as a follow-up to the purging process started by this book. Spoiler alert: It deals with consumerism relapse on our travels.

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