Have you ever had a really good cup of coffee? A really good cup? There’s really nothing like it. The smell, the warmth, the bitterness of the liquid as it hits your tongue. I really like coffee.

There are a lot of things that I like — watches, sunglasses, warm coats, and nice pens are just a few. Maybe I like these things just a little too much. I got in the habit of swinging by the Sunglass Hut on my way out of town on business trips. They seem to be one of the few stores that carry the smaller frames that fit my face. I’d splurge on a pair of nice glasses as a reward for traveling (because somehow I needed a reward to go to cool places?).

We end up with a lot of stuff. Whether it’s as a reward or just because. Clothes, shoes, and books are just some of the things we fill our lives with. But how much is too much?

• Do you ever lose something like the book you’re reading and spend hours searching for it under all the other stuff laying around?

• Do you stare at your packed closet unable to choose which outfit you’re going to wear?

• Do you ever just sweep the top of your desk into a box so you have room to work?

Last Christmas, I read Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing“. I looked around the house and realized that I had too much stuff. And what was worse, was that it was a lot of stuff that I didn’t like or care about (an alligator clip man for holding photos, anyone?).

The KonMari method of de-cluttering is unconventional at the very least. If you can get past the anthropomorphizing of socks, it is great. Here’s the method in a nutshell:

1. “Tidy” by type, not by location. That means you’ll be going through all of your clothes, all of your books, and then all of your miscellaneous stuff separately.

2. Put everything in a pile in the center of a room.

3. Hold each item and determine if it “sparks joy”. This was a bit difficult for me at first — what exactly does “sparking joy” mean?

4. Put the stuff that doesn’t make a spark in a box or a bag and don’t look back.

KonMari has you go through your belongings in a specific order so that you get the hang of it on the easy stuff (hint: books and photos are really hard). The cool part of this method is that you can keep your ratty old AC/DC t-shirt as long as it sparks joy!

I went through my house over the holiday break between Xmas and New Years. In the first round, I ended up with a pile of 20 boxes. The second round generated another ten, plus eleven boxes of books that went to the used book store and to the library.

That’s a lot of stuff that didn’t spark joy in our house. Hopefully, it’s off sparking joy for someone else.

Which brings me to my sunglass problem. I pulled ten pairs of sunglasses out of various drawers and pockets on Monday. And these weren’t the ten dollar variety that you get at a kiosk. Apparently, they all “sparked joy” last December. (Did I mention I had a hard time with the “spark joy” thing?).

All but three are now going to the Lions Club Eyeglass donation drive. Someone is going to be very lucky, and I’m going to try to be less of a glutton.