More Konmari

Since my last post, I have become just a little obsessed with the idea of tidying. For the record, I hate that word: tidying. It just sounds so weird and quaint, when really, it means tearing my house apart nearly to the beams, till it is in tornado form, and then trying to wrangle it all back into some form of organized home. There has to be a better word than tidying...but that's what Marie Kondo uses so that's what I'm using.

I have made it through about 75% of my clothes. It has taken DAYS, but it is feeling quite fulfilling. Not only is my closet breathing again, but I have also donated 25+ bags to charity. The idea I've tried to keep in mind as I go through my things is: What do I want to keep? I'm trying to not focus on the purged items as much as the kept items. I have taken the Konmari approach to heart, asking myself about each item, "Does it bring me joy?" and if it does, it stays. If not, it goes into a bag so it can bring joy to someone else.

As I have paired things down (by such a huge margin, you would not even believe), I've been trying to get them back into drawers and closets, at least temporarily. Konmari says that you go through every piece before you start storing, but that ain't working for me. I have SO much stuff - I can't just leave it on the floor for weeks till I have time to get through it all. So I started the folding process.

Ah yes, even folding is a specific process in Konmari. You don't do the old retail store folding method, with each shirt folded on top of the rest. When you do that, you can't see the shirts below and then they don't get worn and that's a waste. So you fold your shirts into little rectangular cubes and place them in your drawers so you can see each one.

Not my drawer, but this is representative of what my drawers are looking these days.

 The weirdest thing happened as I started watching YouTube videos of how to fold according to this method and then trying it myself. I was enjoying folding my clothes. I actually stayed up about an hour later than I planned to, just so I could fold some more. Part of the joy was in seeing the finished product (a wonderfully organized drawer of my tshirts, all showing their spines so I could easily choose), and part was just the folding itself. Please know that this has never happened to me. I have a huge closet and a large dresser with big, deep drawer, and yet I still keep my daily wear clothes on the chair in my bedroom because I hate folding clothes. But here I was, folding and enjoying.

I hope to finish off my clothes by the end of the week and tackle shoes this weekend. I've got a superbusy weekend coming up and my shoes are going to take some time (and tears, I am sure), so if I feel like I can't finish the shoes during the weekend I will do my bags. I feel like bags will be easier for me to make decisions on (Louis Vuitton? Sashay, you stay. Any fake bag I bought back in the day? Sashay away.).