In the fall of 2019, I had just finished reading Marie Kondo’s best sellers “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” and “Spark Joy” and decided to put my passion for organizing to the test by beginning my own “tidying festival”. Since then, many things have changed, including starting my own organizing business, but I still get asked about my experience with the Kon-Mari method fairly regularly, so I figured I should put some of my thoughts down to share.
As Gretchen Rubin says, “The best time to start a happiness project is 20 years ago, but the second-best time is now”. At the time I was a stay-at-home mom with a 1- and 3-year-old, so while I had a lot of time at home, I did not have a lot of “free” time. Little did I know that mere months after completing the process, I would be socially isolated in my newly tidied space, so it could not have happened at a better time. Skeptical of how much would really change, as organizing (and reorganizing) has always been a hobby of mine, I took on the challenge to see what I could learn and how to improve on what I thought of as my already tidy home.
Start to finish the process took me 6 weeks to complete. In that time, I turned my house inside out, removed 5 carloads of donations (I didn’t have any idea I had this much extra stuff ?!?!), trashed (way more than I would like to admit) expired items, and removed every single cardboard storage box.
My favorite lesson: When you no longer must worry about the clutter (literally anywhere), you can focus on the little things that annoy you. For me it was a missing knob, a few dents in the wall—hello little boys, and a lamp that just wasn’t quite the right height.
How I have changed: While I probably hang more clothing than Marie would, the many items I do fold are her way, I haven’t bought things that I didn’t really need or love, and as much as it pains my thrifty soul, I started saying “no” to free things I wouldn’t actually use. Now that I have trained myself to see what “sparks joy” for me, I also do not have as hard of a time letting go of things that have outlived their useful life. Last, but not least, my boys see where their things belong, and even at 5 and 7, they know how to tidy up their own toys and rooms (mom win)!
How do I incorporate her methods into my work with clients? I think the most important part of her method is to go category by category instead of room by room. Most people are shocked by the shear number of items (clothes for instance) once they have brought it all together into one space. It is easy to forget you have things and buy multiple of nearly identical items, so sorting through it all once and for all can really make the decluttering process easier.
Along those lines, taking time to think about your most favorite items and how you feel about them can put your mind in the right place to make the more difficult decisions. Holding your most favorite shirt, for example, and then judging each future shirt by how that favorite one makes you feel will make it easy to turn many “maybes” into definite “nos”.
Nearly 5 years have passed for me, and overall things have stayed where they belong! When things have a home and space to breath everything is calmer, and it is easy to keep that way. A few things have been moved to where they “make sense” For instance, someone in my house is very insistent that a screwdriver belongs in the kitchen (it does not, but I will concede that point if it’s really that important). However, I am pleased to say that even on the worst day, and with two still little boys there are days in that category, I would be proud to give Ms. Kondo a tour of my house.
Comments