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“Tidy a little every day and you’ll be tidying forever.”
Marie Kondo writes this in her book, The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up, and boy, is it true. The traditional western advice for decluttering, “fifteen minutes a day keeps the clutter away!” has not been working for me. Even though fifteen minutes a day is all I can manage most days, it hasn’t been enough to show any sort of noticeable improvement. Spending an entire day sorting through the Room of Crap has left me with… a Room Still Full of Crap. Everywhere I look in my house, there are surfaces covered in clutter. Even though I ruthlessly tackle the hot spots and stagnant spaces, it still manages to accumulate. Nearly every surface is littered with some form of homeless clutter.
Something has got to give. I can’t live like this! Every time I see clutter it makes my anxiety worse. It makes me see an endless to-do list. I need my home to be an anxiety-free oasis. Instead, I feel as though I can’t relax in my own home because everywhere I look I see stuff that needs to be put somewhere else. It’s driving me crazy.
I’m not even talking about the kids’ stuff necessarily. For the most part, we have places for all their things. I’m perfectly happy to let the girls make an epic mess with their toys, as long as it’s put away before bedtime. The problem is that the clutter is everywhere. Some of it is kids’ stuff, some of it is homeless clutter, some of it is stuff that just needs to be put back, and some of it has just got to go.
I need a nuclear decluttering option before I give up and drop a bomb on my house. I need a method to help me sort through absolutely everything without losing my mind.
I need a magic decluttering fairy to come in, wave her wand, and tell me it’s okay to let go of things that make me feel guilty, or that I hold on to for misplaced reasons. I need her to teach me how to part with things while releasing my emotion burden that’s tied to my stuff.
I’ve been hearing about the Konmari method for years, but I held out on trying it myself. After all, I was doing just fine with a little decluttering here, a little organizing there. (Was I though?) Gathering all my crap by category and doing one big discard seemed like a really daunting task. Do I really want to hold every single thing I own and ask if it sparks joy? Do I really want to do the folding thing with my clothes?
You’re probably reading this and thinking, what in the world are you talking about, crazy Room of Crap lady? What is the Konmari method?
Pour yourself a cup of coffee, sit down, and relax, because I am going to explain everything.
The Konmari Method is named for Japanese tidying expert Marie Kondo, the author of The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up.
I loved this book. Her entire outlook on tidying up is completely different from any of the conventional decluttering advice I’m used to. Marie Kondo was a Shinto shrine maiden, and a lot of her philosophy is influenced from her experiences.
Instead of tidying by room or space, she has you tidy by category, and in a very specific order. Clothes, books, paper, komono (miscellany), and then finally sentimental items. She has you gather everything of that category you have together (probably mostly to shock you when you see just how much you actually have), and then choose, not what to discard, but what to keep. The criteria for keeping something is to hold it and ask, does this spark joy? (Joy in happiness, joy in usefulness.) If you discard something, she advises you to thank it for serving you.
With this method you go through everything you own in one big sweep. The objective at the end is to surround yourself with only things that bring you joy.
Marie Kondo has much more specific and helpful information in her book and lots of good advice for how to organize your remaining things in her companion book, Spark Joy.
I’m going to use the Konmari method to tackle my entire house. I think it will be interesting to see what actually sparks joy for me and what I’m able to discard. My hope is to make a drastic change in my home and see where things go from there.
In the coming weeks I will be showing step by step how I work through the process. I hope this encourages and motivates you in your own decluttering.
Are you decluttering your own home? Have you tried the Konmari method? Have you read The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up, and if so, what did you think of it? Leave a comment below and let me know!
Resources:
The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo
Spark Joy by Marie Kondo
The Lifechanging Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story by Marie Kondo
I’m actually reading this right now in a book club, of sorts. I like the idea of it! Hopefully, I can start employing it once the kids go back to school.
Wow, what a coincidence! I hope you are enjoying the book. I highly recommend trying the method once you get time. So far I’m having good success with it.
It’s so overwhelming, but I think I need to do this with my clothes. I have so much that doesn’t fit right, but I need to be free of it!
You definitely should. It can be really daunting and time consuming to go through it all, but it’s worth it!