"Goodbye, Things," by Fumio Sasaki

This work is a treatise on minimalism that includes tips, tricks, and a few personal anecdotes as well. In my mind, the most obvious book to compare this one to is, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Does it step out of that work’s shadow, though? Read on to find out.

Pros:

This work offers more tips than Tidying Up. As a result, I found more of the suggestions “landing,” or really making sense to me.
– The book is short, coming in under 5 hours. As such, it is easy to get through the book and start applying the lessons contained therein.
The book includes a “summary” of the principles of minimalism at the end. I found it useful because it sparked my memory of the author’s larger points. In the end, this summary helped me retain what was discussed throughout the book.

Cons:

The audiobook of this work has WAY TOO MANY chapters (188, to be precise).
I found this book to be less organized than Tidying Up, changing more freely and more often from principle to personal anecdote, to philosophical musing.
[nit-pick] I was surprised when the author suggested to discard even things that “spark joy,” (a phrase Marie Kondo uses to decide what to keep). I suppose this could make sense in the framework of minimalism the author describes (to keep only what you need, not what you want), but I just didn’t buy it. To be fair, this was a single principle out of nearly 100, but it also struck me as a bit odd.
[nit-pick] I wasn’t sold on some of the “accents,” the audiobook performer used. For example, the voice of Einstein was a bit hard for me to understand at times.

Conclusion:

Ultimately, I think this work slots in well next to Tidying Up; it is different enough that it easily steps out of the shadow of Marie Kondo.

Check it out here.