A Home That Stays Tidy

A Home That Stays Tidy is a home-organizing guide for Chinese families by architect and organizing consultant Li Yuan. The author graduated from the Department of Architecture at Tsinghua University, earned a master's degree in urban architecture from Tohoku University in Japan, and holds Japan's first-class interior designer and organizing consultant certificates; she has long worked in residential design and organizing consulting. The book does not dwell on petty tips like "tidy up a little every day"; instead it treats organizing as a systematic project to be completed once and for all: first sort and organize all the items in the home, then diagnose storage capacity at four levels—family, items, space, and dimensions—and finally adjust the layout so that every item has a fixed "home." The book has four chapters. Chapter One explains why organizing matters and proposes a three-step method: "sort items → diagnose storage capacity → adjust storage layout." Chapter Two gives sorting orders and keep-or-discard criteria for clothing, books and documents, miscellaneous items, and keepsakes, warning readers not to hoard storage products blindly. Chapter Three uses a fill-in diagnostic checklist to help readers find the root causes of recurring clutter and identify a space's "hard flaws." Chapter Four applies the method to specific areas—entryway, living and dining room, children's and elders' rooms, walk-in closet, kitchen, and bathroom—explaining dimensions and circulation with floor plans and hand-drawn illustrations. An appendix provides a storage-capacity diagnostic booklet and nearly a hundred hand-drawn illustrations, so readers can fill them in as they read. At about 40,000 Chinese characters, the book suits readers who want lasting tidiness with the smallest possible changes in limited living space.