On the Relationship between Tidying and Diarrhea 
 Quick, think of your purse or wallet. How many times a day do you thank it for its devoted service to you? If the answer in a positive number, you're Mari Kondo's kind of person. 
 My house desperately needs tidying. My cell phone got lost in my stack of occult tomes the other day, snuggled between a Necronomicon and the Book of Dzyan. I'd heard about this little book and snagged it from the library. It promised a straightforward philosophy of tidying, so I delved right in. 
 Now I understand how my thrown-out clothes reincarnate. 
 The entire premise is based on feeling a rapport with your clutter. Keep things that give you joy when you hold them. Think about how your purse feels at the end of the day if not cleaned out. Thank your clothes when you throw them out and release them from their devoted service! I was amused, but only started to understand it all in the last third. 
 Two facts are needed to make sense of this treatise on tidying. 
 First, it is Japanese. I mean really, really Japanese. Sure, there's a section on feng shui, but I think that's to be expected from a book on tidying hailing from the Land of the Rising Sun. What I really mean is that this book was translated but not localized. Inside the book, you'll find sections and anecdotes about shrine charms and train passes, recycling shops and class representatives. I expected a Japanese flavor, but a lot of this just isn't applicable to a reader in any other country. 
 Secondly, Mari was a Shinto shrine maiden. This is actually the most important thing needed to understand the book. The Shinto faith is based on revering the nameless million kami (spirits/gods, depending on your translation) of the Japanese islands. That's the key. Mari comes from a background where rocks and rivers, roads and rubble-piles have spirits. That's why she bows to houses before entering. When viewed in this light, her story about accepting a cell phone's resignation makes a lot more sense. 
 It's cute, and that philosophy may well appeal to some. For me, I mostly found two useful things inside. 
 1) Assume everything in your house is getting thrown away. Instead of finding reasons to discard stuff, find reasons to keep things. 
 2) When going through your possession by category (clothes, DVDs, etc.) dump everything on the floor to take in the enormity of your collection. Okay, I thought. I'm in for this. That sounds like funs. When my spouses see the enormity of my horror movie collection in one pile, the reaction will be worth it. 
 This is a book which makes a lot of bold declarations. I mean that literally; every section has its important mantra bolded for reference. Mari's philosophy of animistic tidying is front and center, and it wasn't quite my style. Still, I'm rating this three stars if just for those two pieces of advice I quoted. I think they might help, or at least make the vein on my spouse's forehead throb. If communing with your coat hangers gives you an anticipatory smile, add on another star. Bonus points if you live in Japan. 
 Just be warned, Mari notes that detoxing your house my give you diarrhea or acne. That probably should have been a warning label.