A Tidying Up Method That Promises To Change Your Life

Marie Kondo has built a career and brand around helping people live in tidy homes. After reading a review of her book (The Life Changing Magic Of Tidying Up) on The Guardian, I got curious. Why is there a book on tidying up? This is one of those areas you think we’ve figured out already and don’t need books about. How wrong I was.

In this simply written book, Marie Kondo introduces her tidying philosophy “The Konmari” method.  I was done with the book in a weekend, it all sounded really cute and neat, then resolved to Konmari my house “someday”.

This was about a month ago.

I had a couple hurdles that were keeping me away from “Konmari’ng” my life:

1. She recommends a very specific folding method that keeps your clothes upright, such that you can see them all if you open your drawer, and it minimizes creasing which is caused by piling clothes on top of one another. As much as it is described in the book in great detail and I could see pics like the one below and I had not taken time to search for videos to see how to get socks to stand at attention 😀 
2. I worried about my storage space. I only have two drawers in my bedroom, I store my tops and tees by folding them and piling them on top of the drawers. No space for them to stand upright like little soldiers as Kondo recommends
3. Where was I going to take the clothes that do not “spark joy”?What? Yes, Kondo recommends that we sort through our clothes, and throw out anything that does not spark joy within us. I did not want to sort through stuff and pile the unwanted stuff in a random cabinet (where there’s two other piles of  unwanted stuff).
4. Time. She recommends going through your possessions by category in the order of clothes, books,then documents etc, as opposed to tidying up by room. She also writes that we should do each category at a go, not in bits  Going through my clothes would probably take 1 full day, I did not have that much time available.

Yesterday, I decided to break a few of Kondo’s rules and just Konmari one section of my wadrobe, the relatively neat pile of tee shirts, running gear, shorts and tops.

1. First, I spent an hour watching videos on how to make my tee shirts and shorts stand upright. As much as I was skeptical to start with, it was pretty neat!
2. I dumped everything from that section of the wardrobe on my bed, and started the “spark joy” test. It actually works! I got rid of a whole lot of old faded tees, leggings whose waist bands have gotten loose, thermal pants that for some reason made me itch but I kept around, a top I really hated but was still new etc. All these non-joyful items were relegated to the floor. Here, I broke one more rule: Marie says that we dump everything on the floor, then pick up each item, if it sparks joy place it on the bed, if it does not, thank it for serving you well and place it on the side. I didn’t thank any of them 😀
3. I started folding. This was the fun part. It actually works! The clothes do stand upright, save for that gray running tee that just wouldn’t. May be if I thanked it and gave it a hug it would have obeyed.
   

   This was the trial run

4. After folding, I then arranged the tops in the space.I like that I don’t have to arrange the items by type anymore because I can see each item and can immediately tell if it’s a top, a tee or a running bottom, before, I had to have 4 individual piles (sleeved tops, sleevless tops, running gear, sleeping clothes). I instead arranged them by size.
   

   We do not have a “before” picture, because it was a pile of folded tees. Not untidy, but nothing you want to look at.

Will I Konmari the rest of my house?

Well, her method feels a bit too touchy-feely for me: I can’t imagine myself speaking to my socks, and I have items that do not spark joy (my hiking rain poncho comes to mind), but are extremely functional to me, but I really love the results. At around 11pm when I finished folding the last of the tees, I actually felt lighter in spirit and happier, I didn’t feel like I just finished my least favorite chore.

This morning, I opened my wardrobe, saw all that color and smiled. I frankly didn’t know I wear this many colours.

In conclusion, I recommend the book if you’re looking for a light, no-pressure read, and if you like minimalism and a tidy house. I however felt she missed out certain bits:

1. How to tidy up if you are sharing a space with a spouse if he/she’s not on board with the Konmari madness.Foxy Wine Pocket’s hilarious account of how her marriage survived the Konmari method involved her almost buldgeoning her husband into tidying up, but I guess that’s what it takes.
2. Tidying up for a child. My daughter’s heap of broken bits and appropriated bits of toys do not spark joy in me at all. They do the reverse actually. However, I cannot get rid of them because they spark joy in her. Everything sparks joy in her.
3. She tells us how to fold stuff in great detail, I wish she did the same for other areas of the house, for example the kitchen. I am thinking of my drawers and heaps of plastic food containers. How do I Konmari these??!!

She has an illustrated version of her book which I might buy should my attempts at Konmari’ng my whole house fail.