For this assignment I decided to try Kondo’s “joy test” sorting system on some of the books, and papers that were on my shelf, among others small items.

I was fairly neutral about the state of this shelf, but I figured it would be a good place to start. When I took a step back and looked at the things that were on the shelf, I realized that I probably would be ok without a lot of it being out in the open.

The first thing that I immediately decided would have to stay was the rocks and minerals. I cleared out the middle section specifically for them, so I figured I could just arrange them in a neater way and be done with it. If there is anything in this assortment of stuff that really “sparks joy” its my collection. This is just a small portion that I acquired recently but they really hold a special meaning to me. I don’t really spend much on myself, but expanding my collection is one of the few exceptions, as such it is really important to me to keep these close to me and in a place where I can see them and appreciate them.

Next, I moved on to the pencils and pens and other supplies, these I simply moved into a box where I kept other things of that nature. This was the simplest move as I knew where they belonged and had simply neglected to place them in their proper location. The bag of and posters were easily dealt with as well.

The books and papers were the most difficult in my opinion, I usually tend to keep documents and papers for longer than most people as I have a sense they will come in handy down the line. That being said, I was sure that many of these documents were unnecessary, and some of the books I had were either never going to be read or had been read already.

Like the method suggests, I just put all the books and papers on the floor and sorted them vaguely into categories. I separated books from loose papers first, and then sorted the papers into a few sections: Reference material, old assignments, and exams, and miscellaneous. I quickly discarded the miscellaneous pile as It was mostly just junk. I looked through the remaining papers carefully; some of the old labs I have are from freshman year, but I use them as reference when I am doing my job as a teaching assistant. As such, these are important for me to keep on hand, so I put them in a folder for safekeeping. The old assignments and exams were tougher as I keep them to study from. That being said I decided I did not need them at the moments, and they didn’t have to be displayed so openly, so I put them in a separate folder in my closet.

After I had sorted through the papers, I was left with just the books. This proved to a more difficult task, so I started by sorting the books into categories as well. I arranged them based on their uses: books that I need for schoolwork, books that I don’t need for schoolwork at the moment, novels I have read already, and novels I have yet to read as well as miscellaneous. I took the one miscellaneous book and I put it on my piano stand, because I use that one quite frequently. As for the others: I realized that I haven’t referenced any of the older texts since my midterm and I likely won’t need them until my final exams. The notebooks and journals are mostly unused as well, so I relegated them to the bottom shelf, along with the novels I have read already. On my top shelf I basically only have the books that I will need actively continuing the semester.

Overall, this exercise was interesting as I was looking more objectively at these items. Right off the bat I removed the objects that sparked the “most joy”, being the rocks and minerals, I had. The bag of posters was also something I wanted to keep. The issue was mostly with the books and realizing that I probably wouldn’t reread any of the books I had. In this way I was able to separate out most of my materials and even dispose of a lot of stuff I didn’t realize I had. Spreading everything out made the process simpler mentally although more tedious physically, but I can understand where Kondo is coming from in this regard.