Fall cleaning is the new spring cleaning. With the change in the season, now is a great time to reorganize and clean your home. But what if you could clean your home just once more and then never have to clean it again? Japanese organizational consultant, Marie Kondo, makes that claim in her international bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.
The KonMari method is comprised of two deceptively simple tenets: keep only what inspires joy in your heart and organize by category instead of space.
- Keep what you love: In short, if you don’t love it, get rid of it. Decluttering the KonMari way is not about how much stuff you can get rid of, but simply keeping the items that truly make you happy. Kondo instructs people to physically pick up each item and ask, “Does this spark joy?” if yes, keep it and find a home for it. If the answer is no, it goes away. This is probably the most difficult part of her method as it forces you to remove the sentimental values placed on particular items. There’s no room for ‘somedays’ with this method, you know, “maybe-I’ll-wear/use-this-someday.”
- Sort by category or type, not by room: Our first instinct when organizing is to tackle the challenge room by room. In contrast, Kondo recommends organizing by category. For example, instead of clearing out your master bedroom closet, she recommends tackling ALL the clothes in every closet and drawer in the house. Begin with tops, then bottoms and work from there. She also instructs readers in the fine art of the KonMari folding method, which frees up a lot of space in your drawers.
Kondo recommends tidying in the following order: clothes, books, papers and then everything else. In order to take the next step to living a clutter-free life without relapsing is to store all of the items of the same type in the same place so things do not become scattered and ultimately lead to more accumulation.
Whether you’re hoping to streamline your possession prior to moving or if you’re attempting to reorganize your new home, this is a method worth exploring. Have you tried the KonMari method for decluttering? Tell us about your experience.