衣替え (koromogae) is the seasonal change of clothing, switching out the warderobe from one season to the other. The beginning of October is the perfect time for koromogae.
Darjeeling as (un)helpful as always.
I was able to do some decluttering as well, but not as much as I would like. I still get stuck on the «I might need this» or «I might want to wear this again one day».
This time I left the pieces that I didn’t wear last year in with the summer clothes in the storage box, so if I don’t reach for them this season I can hopefully declutter them next spring.
Now my warderobe looks like this;
I realized I mainly use greys, blacks, whites, mustards, and a tiny splash of pink. At least it’s not all black. It feels calmer.
I hope to be able to do a 100% perfect konmari one day. Maybe next year.
Tomorrow the weather will be lovely so I plan to get all the laundry done and even hang out the futons.
Current tsundoku or TBR pile (I am currently reading the Murakami one though) of physical books
I have gotten better at not doing tsundoku. When I was younger I amassed hundreds of books but didn’t read them all. And even if I didn’t even plan on reading a book, I could not let go of it. That would be sacrilegious. It didn’t help that when I was studying at university, there was a £2 bookshop where every book was only £2. I dragged suitcases of books back home.
Enter the year 2016, I have finished university, and am planning on moving abroad (again). I’d read Marie Kondo’s book and cleaned out as best as I could the little room I was staying in. Now it was time to tackle my room at home.
I piled all my books on the bed.
(Not all, had already done a pre-konmari during a vacation so there was about 90 books atop my closet at the time)
I went from 304 to 124. It took a lot to get to that number. But it is as they say, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Last time I was home I got rid of even more books and have only about 40 left, but even now I look at the books left and think “I don’t need that one, nor that one…” so I am itching to go back and get rid of more.
Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t stopped loving books. But I just want to surround myself with my favorites, the ones that truly “spark joy”.
When I used to hoard books, I also was very reluctant not to finish a book, it felt wrong somehow. So even when I didn’t really like it, I had to stick it out. And then of course, not get rid of it, stick it back on the shelf so I would have to look at it every day. And my tsundoku pile (or mountain more like) would never get smaller. The pile would haunt me, taunt me. I would feel bad, stress would pile on and it was frankly, tiring.
Now I am more comfortable to not finish a book if I find that I am just not that into it, and even to get rid of it (not throwing it in the trash of course).
Thus, my books don’t pile up anymore in impossible-to-finish piles. I might buy many books in a short amount of time, but I won’t get suffocated by the unread amount.
I guess it also helps that I am living in Japan where Japanese books are cheap (to me) but they take longer to finish so I mostly don’t overbuy, and foreign books are expensive so I won’t buy one unless I truly want it on my shelf.
This went on a long tangent it feels like. And my tsundoku pile isn’t getting smaller by going on tangents so I better get back to reading.
Diary of a Norwegian in Japan 