I read her book (the first one - there's a sequel) and yes, with help from my son cleared the living-room-dining-room of books, trinkets, plus a bunch of stuff I didn't love and everything stored on the floor (months of back issues of the NY Review of Books and the Courrier International, books, papers, DVDs, charity letters, cartoon clippings, Christmas cards...)
I saw the light!
Now I can chill in the living-room and read a single book I've culled from a book-shelf (not in the living-room) and read a current article and feel, what--more objective? more intellectually fresh? undistracted? All of the above.
Now I love my living-room. I love reading in my living-room.
Thing is---there's a very small space allotted to books. Most of them are downstairs in the 'book room' which is books surrounded by wood panelling, keeping company with boots and shoes and a stack of rolled rugs.
Needless to say I haven't yet brought Kondo downstairs in the bookroom.
How to I handle it? When it comes to books.....what do you do?
Kondo wants us touch it, feel the vibe, feel the love - do you love it? do you get a buzz? Is your life enriched by this object, er sorry, book?
What do you do with Brainfood?
Here's an eloquent article I tripped over.
http://thepointmag.com/2015/criticism/the-magic-of-untidiness
There's still magic in them thar' books.
Maybe we need to inhabit our caves of chaos until the end.
Our mental riches, the heritage of our own lived and vicariously lived lives.
In retirement, I'm beginning to double back to odd tomes of yesteryear -- Love's Body by N.O.Brown, Give Sorrow Words by Maryse Holder, feminist works of the '70s, The Proud Tower by Barbara Tuchman...
So when it comes time to Kondo-izing the book room, I think I'll be standing at the door, gazing lovingly over dusty, long-neglected volumes and thinking:
An old book.
Yes, I could get back to that book.
I could hold it in my carpal-tunneled, freckled hands and see how it speaks to me fifty years after I first opened it.
