This post could also be called “I Got Rid of Three Trash Bag’s Wroth of Stuff and I’m Just Getting Started.”
A while back a stumbled upon a post on a friends site about the overwhelmingly wonderful transformation she was experiencing. All due to a book. About organizing. After reading about how much this book had impacted her life I clicked over to my local library’s site, searched for the book and quickly put myself on the wait list for it. I was somewhere around library patron #147 to place a hold on this book so I had to wait a while to get it. Over two months. Apparently, a lot of other people had also heard about this book.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, written by Marie Kondo, is a step-by-step book on organizing, tidying, and cleaning-up your home. The Marie Kondo calls her method the KonMari Method. At the start of the book Marie Kondo takes her time laying out why she is an authority on organizing. As someone who likes to get into the how-to part of how-tos right away this part of the book moved pretty slow. But, once Kondo moved on the the nitty-gritty things got good. Really good.
This last weekend I finally had a bit of time to put the book’s ideas into practice. In the book Kondo states time and again you cannot tidy other people’s things. You can only set the tone by tidying your own things. Following her specific order of organizing a home and method of culling possessions I set to work using the KonMari Method for clothing. Luke and I share a closet but I just worked on my clothing and shoes. I pulled every single item belonging to me from my closet, coats and scarves from the hall closet, and shoes from the entry way closet and piled it all in big piles all over my bedroom floor.
By the time I had gone through everything, put items set for donation into bags and items set for the trash into bags, and neatly folded or hung everything back in the closet I was left with less than half of what I started with. And it is amazing. It feels so good. We haven’t had the chance to drop off the donation items yet, but I haven’t given a second thought to a single thing in the bags. Luke came into the room as I was finishing up and was instantly so inspired by the results he pulled all of his things from the closet and asked me for the “rules.”
Our closet feels amazing. I just fell good when I walk into it. It’s filled with clothes that truly make us happy. It’s also filled with nearly 6 dozen empty hangers. empty shelf space, and clear floors. Not only do I feel like this method has given my closet a boost and made the space more usable, organized, and enjoyable, I also feel as though my shopping habits will be affected. When your closet holds only things that really bring you joy you’re less interested in buying items simply because “they’re a really good deal,” or “the style looked really good on someone else.”
Using the KonMari Method for clothing has me itching to get to work and tackle more of my house.
