AfternoonTea & English

В следующий понедельник стартует новая неделя нашего разговорного курса, она будет посвящена теме Cosiness & Interior Design. Подробнее о клубе тут: https://www.afternoontea-english.inf o/speaking А сегодня почитаем о том как правильно убираться и избавляться от дорогих сердцу, но ненужных вещей:

The very personal stuff in our homes is the hardest to lose but unless it ‘sparks joy in your heart’, says Marie Kondo, you should get rid of it. Here she tells us seven ways to effectively deal with the detritus of family life

detritus - осколки

Marie Kondo reveals secrets to dealing effectively with the heartstring-tugging detritus of family life: the stuff we can’t bear to part with, but which we know we can’t keep stashing away.

stash away - припрятывать

1. Focus not on what to chuck, but on what to keep

Concentrate on what we’re going to keep. The reason is simple: there are so many items of sentimental value, from our own lives and from our children’s lives and from our parents’/grandparents’ lives that it’s too overwhelming task to think about what to jettison.

jettison - сбрасывать, выбрасывать за борт

2. Ask yourself of each object: does it spark joy in my heart?

This is the central message of Kondo’s creed: the litmus test to whether to keep it or not is to ask yourself, does this object (whatever it is) spark joy in my heart? To work this out, you have to touch the object, and see what response that elicits inside you.

elicit - выявлять

Once you are convinced of the spark of joy, you should be able to hold on to an item with confidence. You don’t need to make excuses for keeping it any more: you’ve proved to yourself that it’s important to you. But most objects in your life will not spark this joy – and these are the ones you should part with, again with confidence because you know they don’t mean enough to hold on to.

3. Make sure you’re properly committed to having a tidy-out

“Unless you are truly committed, you will most likely become discouraged or distracted before finishing your tidying journey,” she says. “train your tidying muscles by tidying in a specific order, and begin with the categories of items that are typically easier than sentimental items”

4. Never leave stuff in boxes at your parents’ home, or send it to them

Why not? Because, quite simply, you’re cluttering up your parents’ lives – and that’s unfair. Having tons of your stuff around your parents’ home makes it much more difficult for them to put their own house in order

clutter up - приводить в беспорядок

5. Make a plan for taking care of the precious early items from your children’s lives

Display them in some way that they will bring you pleasure as you go about your daily life – and they will bring pleasure to others who visit your home, too. 6. Say farewell to precious items that belonged to your dead parents or grandparents’

If an item no longer sparks joy, but it has a sentimental attachment connected to it, you should always bid it farewell in a way that respects what it has meant to someone in your family in the past. If it’s an item that you know was important and meaningful to a parent or grandparent, now dead, or if it represents them to you, Kondo says you should thank it for the service it has done and the role it has played in your family’s life. 7. Tidy photographs together as a family

collect all the photos you have around the house: remove them from their albums. Next, lay all the photos on the floor according to the year or period in which they were taken. The trick with photos is to be ready to let go of any that are similar, or are of scenes you don’t really remember. If you have several photos from the same day, choose only the best one. The basic approach to negatives, says Kondo, is simple: get rid of them all. Another good rule of thumb is: only hang on to pictures in which you, or the person you care about in them, is looking good.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/jan/14/how-to-declutter-your-life-marie-kondo-spark-joy