The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up Novels & Stories

she whispered. Flipping over a third one, she shook her head. “What is up with these cards today?” she whispered. By the end of the reading, she tapped her finger against her lips. “Well, there were some good cards, but it also had some not-so-good cards,” she said. She grabbed her notebook and opened it to a blank page. Looking over the reading, she wrote down the cards and their meanings. Closing the notebook, she gathered up her cards and put them back in their box.

But now it became my comfort. Since I don't have work today, I decided to clean my unit. I can't do this during weekdays because of my busy schedule. I changed the curtains and the pillow suitcase. I just spent the whole day cleaning and making my house more organize and aesthetic. I demolished those things I don't need because that's only taking up space.

The quiet I had earned became the workshop for finding myself and building my stable life. The silence allowed me to hear my own thoughts clearly for the first time in years. I started by getting rid of old things. I cleaned out closets and drawers, throwing away clothes and old junk that reminded me of my painful past. I deleted thousands of old messages to clear the past out of my present. I rearranged my whole room to create a clean, safe space that was completely mine. I was making space instinctively, preparing for a future I couldn't see yet.

Elijah, by contrast, was creative with the concept of tidiness. This was the phrase he used for it in his own head: creative. What it meant in practice was that tidiness for him was a state he moved through rather than maintained. Things would be tidy—the kitchen clean, the desk organized, the bedroom picked up—and then would be in the process of something, and then would be tidy again. The process being: project. Culinary school projects specifically. The mise en place of a new technique, which required counter space and bowls and ingredients spread out in a way that looked chaotic but was actually highly organized in its chaos. The spread of the reading material when he was working through

, I chuckled. I was moving around his room and everything looked so organised, so well placed I was actually surprised at his organizing skills, to an organiser like who love to plan her entire year on the new year’s eve. I was moving around when I saw a table next to his bookshelf, it was the only place in the entire room which was messy so my OCD have everything in place rally started bothering me and I just couldn’t resist to help those poor things on the table to give them a better vision so I tied my long hair in a ponytail to get ready for the ultimate deal cracker that is to fix this poor table.

Sebastian leaves early, saying he needs to pack things from his rented cabin. I don’t even like cleaning. But suddenly, everything looks wrong. The bookshelf? Too cluttered. The fridge? A disgrace. The couch pillows? Are they always that crooked?! I fix them. Then fix them again. Then tell myself I need a hobby. By the time I’m done, the place looks borderline staged. Like one of those model homes where no one actually lives, just pretends to. I frown. Maybe I went too far. Maybe I should—

A little too bright for a place like this. I didn’t want to think about Sammy or the cafeteria or the slap that echoed around the world, so I dropped my bag on the floor and decided to do the one thing that always kept me sane. I unpacked. I cleaned. I moved things around until the room felt like it belonged to me instead of to whoever lived here before. I emptied my clothes into the tiny wardrobe. Straightened my books on the desk. Smoothed the sheets like I could smooth out the mess of my life too. I even found myself humming under my breath while I wiped down the table and sprayed the corners like I was chasing out bad vibes.

It would make it that much easier for her to control me. Now, I understood that I couldn't rely on anyone else if I wanted to change my fate. I could only depend on myself. I wanted to tell Lila that the Lawson family was nothing but a cage. Still, I could only hope that she wouldn't regret the path she'd chosen. Meanwhile, I needed to return to the original path I'd chosen for myself. I wanted to change my future through education. I would sit for the SATs and change my life! As Lila had done in her past life, I saved a regular middle-aged man named George Stone from the rubble. He was gravely injured and immediately taken to the hospital. A few days later, I bought some fruit and visited h

It was now part of my daily routine. His room was always neat but I liked to fluff the pillows and smooth the sheets just right. There was an inner happiness that doing these small things and keeping everything sparkling gave me, almost as if I was cleaning out the troubles in my life, and getting rid of any unprecedented disaster that could could in the future.

Zara cleaned the house on Sunday morning. Not obsessively. Not out of guilt, or not only out of guilt. The house just needed cleaning after two days of being entirely theirs and she moved through it with the calm efficiency of someone doing a necessary thing. She changed the sheets in her room. She wiped the kitchen counter and the hob and straightened the chairs around the table that had gotten pushed into different positions over the weekend. She ran the hoover over the living room carpet. She did all of these ordinary things with her hands while her mind did something else entirely.