INDEX
The messiness of overflowing with things that are meant to make you happy.
Takano: By the way, did you always like tidying up?
Uki： Not at all. If anything, I am a sloppy person. When Mr. Takano came to visit me at my house in Canada, I think the house was clean, but usually it was a mess. Like everyone else who is not good at tidying up, I am the type of person who does my best to tidy up when people come to my house and then throw everything in the closet, which I was not good at all.
Celeina： What made you switch your mind to tidying up?
Uki：When I was 23 years old, I got divorced, my job wasn’t going well, and I got sick. I couldn’t go to work anymore, so I quit my job in Tokyo and was packing up to move back to my parents’ house in Fukushima. Then I found a lot of things I bought but didn’t use, and I wondered what this meant.
I thought, “If I read this book, I will be able to work better, if I wear this dress, I will be considered a nice person, if I eat with this dishware, I will be happy, etc.” My house was a mess of things that I had acquired to make myself happy. That’s exactly what I’m doing, in fact, I’m in an unhappy situation, divorced and not doing well at work. It’s a mess, so I thought I should think about it, and that’s when I started working on tidying up.
Takano: He says that by organizing things, you also organize yourself. For Uki-san, tidying up is an act of finding out what is important, and that is how he started his activities.
