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Long story short, “The Life-changing magic of tidying up” changes the idea of how cleaning is traditionally viewed, as it can be a way to spark some joy in your life. Marie Kondo’s cleaning methods are organized and simplified in a way that brings positive energy to your environment.
Growing up, doing the chores always felt like a drag. Whether it came to washing the dishes, taking out the garbage, and especially TIDYING UP the house. The act of tidying the house in a certain order, only to have it rearrange into a tornado of objects moments later, felt very demotivating.
One of the main reasons why tidying up felt like a chore was the fact that it was often demanded by parents or family members rather than actually being taught how to do it.
After understanding the Japanese concept of decluttering and organizing, it shifted a perceptive of how the act of tidying up our environments can go from a mundane chore to a LIFE CHANGING event.
Kondo simplifies the tidying up process into a few simple steps:
- Finish Discarding First
- Organize by Category
- Store your belongings
- Sparking Joy
For those who don’t know
Marie Kondo is a lifestyle expert who specializes in mastering the art of decluttering and organizing. She helps transform lives by organizing and tidying up their homes. In addition, she is a bestselling author and is featured on Netflix’s hit shot “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.”
Marie Kondo is most known for popularizing the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing, specifically her patented “KonMari Method.”
By simplifying the process of cleaning up, she firmly believes that not only do we end up with an organized environment, but an improved lifestyle as well.
Finish DISCARDING First:
When organizing an environment, the idea is to separate the items into 2 separate categories: discarding and deciding where to place them.
Before you begin discarding or deciding where to place them, the first-step is to visualize the end result of what you envision the environment to look like. As you imagine your space to be a clutter-free zone, you will have better clarity deciding where items fit and which items can be disposed of.
After visualizing, the selection criteria of deciding which items do or do not belong comes down to a question of:
“Does it spark joy?”
This simple question answers if you feel excited about incorporating a specific item into the environment or space after the tidying up is complete. Kondo defines sparking joy by making you understand if you truly cherish the items you have.
If it does spark joy simply keep it, however if it doesn’t discard it. If you are in that awkward middle ground of “i don’t know” when it comes down to sparking joy, you likely don’t need it and should discard it.
Additional best practices in this step:
- DO NOT let family or significant others see the items you are discarding. Too much emotions and feelings can create a mess if they see you discard gifts or sentimental items that were deemed important to them
- Discard with an intensity to start of the tidying up process
Organize by CATEGORY:
The next step in the tidying up process involves organizing your belongings into categories. Kondo specifies a list of categories that she usually recommends to follow in order:
- Clothing:
- The most important aspect of your clothes, is to arrange them in your closet in a way that energizes the environment
- Eliminate the storage of off-season clothes
- Books:
- Discard any unread books or books that you personally did not enjoy reading
- Keep the books that belong in the “hall of fame” when it comes to personal enjoyment
- Paper or Documents:
- Any outdated statement such as credit card bills, registration forms and miscellaneous notes
- Keep documents that are important for personal information, banking and legal documents
- Komono:
- Keep personal symbols or miscellaneous items that spark joy
- What ever does not spark joy, remove
- Photos:
- Only keep milestone photos and keep it minimal
- It is important to realize that you must cherish your life in the moment, and your most important memories belong in your heart
Additional best practices in this step:
- While this is what Kondo recommends to organize these categories in this specific category, it is as important to follow your own intuition when tidying up your environment.
STORE your belongings:
After organizing by category, it’s time to store those belongings in the optimal places within the environment. Since most of the items were discarded earlier, the items left will be able to fit an appropriate space that best suits them.
The storage or organizers used to place the belongings must be simple and minimalistic.
This is to ensure that you can maintain the uncluttered space and see where certain items are meant to be place in the environment.
When it comes to actually storing your items, never pile them on top of each other. Instead, the best way to store items is to place them vertically so they can preserve as much storage space as possible. (see image above)
Additional best practices in this step:
- Remove any items in the sink or bath areas
- When it comes to your everyday bag or purse, empty it everyday as you can store the contents in your bag in the appropriate storage in the environment
SPARKING Joy:
The main point of tidying up your environment to the way you design and envision it, is to ultimately put your house in order so you can SPARK JOY.
As your house remains in order, you start to feel confident in your decision-making ability and clear your mind. Understanding what you need and what you don’t need, alters how you view materials when it comes to organizing your own home, shopping for new belongings, and even how it affects your body.
The idea of tidying up, creates a detoxing effect as you begin to cleanse your environment, you also cleanse your mind and body.
This has many similarities to the concept of fengshui, as your immediate environment and how your belongings are organized, has a direct correlation with how you feel in the moment.
Living in a home where you are surrounded by your belongings that you truly cherish and organized, in a way that suits you best can bring positive changes to your lifestyle.
As Kondo states
Being surrounded by things that spark joy makes you happy.
What can WE do from here?
Your real life begins after putting your house in order
As you continue to organize and tidy your environment, understand that it is a never-ending process.
The faster you commit to cleaning a certain space, as opposed to procrastinating and putting it off for later, the better you can help put your environment and LIFE in order.
If you would like to give Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up a read while supporting the blog feel free to click below:
Sources for this post:
#2: Kondō Marie. The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016.
