Konmari, Round 3: Books (partial) and papers

When last we left off, I had finished the bathroom and hallway, which was the beginning of expanding beyond just my clothes, and tipped us off to the idea that the Marie Kondo method really could have far-reaching effects on the way we saw and used our entire space.

The next stage of the Konmari method is to books and papers. When I purchased my Kindle a few years ago, I got rid of most of my books. I know that is horribly painful for bookworms to hear -- and it was hard to do at the time -- but it also cut down on so much busy clutter and dust in the living room I was pleased with the results. If I find that I want to re-read an old book, I re-buy it on the Kindle; so far that's only been about 5 books. I did keep one box of books in the basement, the most beloved of my favorites that I could not part with --so those came upstairs for a fresh review.



The ones that remained were my favorite authors, and surprisingly mostly non-fiction: Florence King, Molly Ivins and Calvin Trillin, all wonderfully wry and passionate storytellers. And two childhood series, the Bobbsey Twins and Anne of Green Gables. The Bobbsey Twins were my first foray into mystery series, which is the preferred format for stories for me even to this day, although I watch more on TV than I do read. Cop shows, murder mystery shows, I don't love all of them but I do watch many of them! (I still miss Law & Order.)



I also reviewed our DVD collection, which is pretty lean to begin with. Got rid of a few things but not much -- Hubby asked to keep many. But I neatened them up at least.







I am calling this a "partial" review because I discovered when I did my husband's office yesterday that he had a whole treasure trove of books and more movie DVDs squirreled away there. One of the main tenets of the Konmari method -- which I have found has solved SO MANY organization issues it is now my iron-clad rule -- is that you must collect all like items together, and then cull them all at the same time. Finding a new batch of stuff means that we will need to bring them all together and do the process again.

Weirdly, I haven't actually been happy with the end result above; it felt unfinished to me. Maybe my organization antenna knew there were secretly more to do!

Next was papers. Again, this is something I thought I had a handle on -- I had done a big purge a while ago and reduce everything down to 4 skinny boxes and a large basket for ongoing stuff. I only saved the important items -- mortgage papers, taxes, big ticket purchases, vitals etc. Bank statements and bills had long ago either converted to electronic billing or had been tossed -- the basics were taken care of!



But in reading the book, I realized that I was violating the main rule of "Like with Like" -- the boxes were upstairs in hard-to-get-to shelves in my husband's office, and the on-going basket was downstairs in the kitchen. So I never filed anything away -- it just kept piling up in the on-going basket, and then of course I kept putting off doing ANYTHING to the papers in that basket. It was a clutter magnet!

Everything came upstairs and got reviewed. Turns out I wasn't just keeping 7 years of taxes returns, I still had them from the 1980s! When I moved out to Chicago after college, my father sent me a package of all the returns he had done for me in college (since I was working enough to have to pay taxes) with strict instructions to keep them. I then kept every one I did myself after that as well.

I love you Dad, but it was time to let go of some of the past. But I listened! (His advice below is still good.)



That knocked out one box -- in the end I got it down to 3, after cleaning out some warranties and insurance books we didn't need anymore.

When it came time for putting it all away, I decided that I needed to change the flow -- my goal with the bedroom had been to make that my first stop when I got home; instead of dropping my purse and shoes by the door or on the kitchen table, I changed my daily habit it so I walk upstairs first and put everything away there, getting changed and petting the dog and leaving my purse on my dresser (where is it easier to swap out or take stuff out of it that builds up) as my new ritual. So it made more sense to bring the in-basket upstairs too. Now my nightstand holds a much smaller in-basket and one box that stores the filed items; I'm still not great about filing or completing the paper items daily, but I do go through it every 1-2 weeks. This is much improved over my 6-month lag time before, LOL!

The last paper I had to conquer was cards. I am a terrible, terrible correspondent, and I am even worse at sending cards. I have the best intentions, and I keep buying cards to send  -- for birthdays, anniversaries, funerals, holidays -- and then they fall into the quagmire of my in-basket that I forget to do, and they don't get mailed out in time. I kid myself that it would be easier if I lived closer to my family because then I could just hand it to them instead of mail, but I have just as many cards for my husband in my bulging folder of un-sent cards as I do for everyone else! I have nearly given up on sending Christmas cards -- it's been about 5 years since I tried. I don't even have stamps.



Reader, I threw them all away.

I followed Kondo's method -- I thanked them for humbling and shaming me into realizing I am unreliable regarding this form of social communication and celebration -- and I let them go. I let go of the idea that I will ever be good at sending cards -- I won't. But I send texts, calls, emails, online messages, and I send gifts to my family. That's good enough.

It was so unbelievably freeing.

It's OK not be a card person. I don't have to try to catch up or keep up. And I'm OK with that.

++++++

At this point, it was mid-May, and I went on a weeklong trip back to Connecticut for a visit with family, seeing a lot of old friends, and my 25th college reunion at Yale. (I should probably do a post of pictures of that; it was gorgeous and so much fun.)

But when I came back, in June I did my kitchen. It was mind-blowing. So that will definitely be coming next.

How about you guys? Anyone trying the Konmari method?

Konmari, Round 2: Bathroom and Linen Closet

You guys, I am experiencing some cognitive dissonance in posting these Konmari entries; I did the first few rounds way back in May, and now that we have been living with the results, and continuing on with other parts of the project, it's a little tough for me to remember what happened during each step. But I want to get caught up so I can do them real-time going forward, so off we go!

The first step of Konmari is cleaning and re-organizing your closet. A lot of people end there, but we had clutter that had built up EVERYWHERE, so I made myself a list of areas I wanted to tackle, using the methods Marie Kondo suggests in her book. (Read the book; it's worth the time.)

Marie Kondo has a recommended order. It made a lot of sense; she does not recommend doing one room at a time, she suggests doing "like" items together. Most of my rooms have only one category in them, so I did end up doing by room, but I also collected like items together to do as a batch. For example, we had small electronics stored in all kinds of corners of the house -- I have been moving them into one area and once I finish all the rooms I will tackle them as a group. Same thing for photographs -- all loose ones are moving into the boxes with the others, and will be my last Konmari project (probably this fall/winter).

Once I completed the bedroom, in order to keep going on my personal items, I had to tackle the bathroom next. I will spare you a ton of photos, but the main problem was that I had so much stuff crammed everywhere we were never able to have a clean countertop.



There are only two drawers and the underspace in the vanity, and a small medicine cabinet on the wall. Originally when I set up the bathroom, I had thought since the underspace was so big, it would be best to put a couple of plastic drawers down there and store all the "little items".



Once I pulled everything out of the space and laid it out on the floor (and top of the vanity, and on top of the toilet, and every surface space I could find) I realized my mistake. Several of my mistakes.

Medicine was the first one; by putting it under the sink we never knew what we had, so we kept buying more and not realizing when it had expired. A trash bag of expired allergy meds, cough meds, Nyquil, Netipots, ibuprofin, and antibiotic salves later, I knew we had to store it IN the medicine cabinet from now on.

I had made the same mistake with "extra" paper/supplies, like cotton balls and shampoo and q-tips; we couldn't see what we had so we kept buying more. And I was even worse about toiletry/travel bags and supplies!

So the (remaining) medicine got moved to the medicine cabinet, the extra supplies sit in the underspace, plainly visible, and the makeup and hair accessory drawers got Konmari'ed down to the items I actually USE and LIKE.  We did end up with his-and-hers plastic caddies on the toilet top to hold the products we use daily, but anything dusty, expired or unliked hit the road. I think it was about 4 bags of pure garbage that got tossed, including the stained and ragged rugs.

I even made a spot in the underspace to easily store my hair dryer. Did you guys know it doesn't have to live on the counter? I didn't!

Here is photographic evidence of the best part of Konmari; it's not the purging that matters, it's the re-organization and re-evaluation of what you KEEP -- and WHERE you keep it -- that makes this entire project worth it.

I cleaned out the bathroom in early May. This is what it looks like in August; I didn't even have to clean anything up to take these photos. I just walked in -- this is what it looks like all the time now.



(Emily is hiding on the rug; I store a special cat-comb in here to brush her so when I walked in she was hoping that's why I was there. LOL!)



We are also looking at new vanities as a fall/winter project; this one has been falling apart for years but since it was covered in crap we pretended not to notice. Can't do that anymore! :)

But even as it is, it is again wholly functional and attractive. The clutter is gone!

Right outside the bathroom is the upstairs landing and linen closet; since the closet is so "small" (I thought) we installed a bureau at the top of the stairs to hold the extra sheets and linens.



Every drawer and shelf was full, of course, and even the top of the bureau with the photos had become a landing space/permanent home for cleaning products (for animal messes). It was time for Konmari.

First, everything came out of hiding. (My helpers on the corners of the bed. They both had to be there for EVERYTHING.)





Using the like-with-like method, this went pretty quickly. Towels were refolded into the same size, oddball items (like a pillow sham that matched a bedspread I had not had in twelve years) or tablecloths I never liked were discarded, and best of all, sheet sets and pillowcases were sorted and stored together. We had never done this before, which had resulted in all kinds of mismatched pillowcase combinations every time we stripped the bed.  No more!





When I was done, not only did everything look tidy and easy to find in the closet, I no longer had to use the bureau for storage! But I did want to use it for decoration...

Which brought me back to the bedroom.

Previously I had decorated the bedroom in sort of an eclectic, found-art style; we had gold gilt frames up against the blank wall, and inside two of them I hung my dried bouquet from my wedding, and the small bouquet I had caught at my sister's wedding the year before mine (1995 and 1996). The dog had chewed a couple of holes in the melon-orange comforter we had so my husband started covering it with a sheet, which unfortunately led to the room looking like this too often for my comfort.



Blah.

I cannot tell you how much I HATED those brown sheets. HAAAAAAAAAAATE. They did not survive the linen closet purge, as they sparked the opposite of joy. (Not Sadness. Disgust.)

Another great Marie Kondo suggestion is that you think about what your goal/vision is for your space, and you organize the room to fit that. I wrote down:

"Want clean and bright. Don't like dark colors in my bedroom. Want to be able to find everything quickly and create outfits easily. Need to be able to see all the components of the outfit at once including accessories and shoes. Want to come home and unload everything in one place."

The closet cleaning I had done the weekend before took care of being able to see everything in the same place, and to find and see it all easily. Now I needed to work on clean and bright.

Enter the Keith Haring print.



My husband has had this since we met, probably since Haring was still alive. It's hung on many walls in our homes, and I even took it to work for a couple of years. It makes me happy every time I look at it. How can it not?

Once I knew it had to go up in the bedroom, the gilt frames and dried bouquets had to come down. but I couldn't throw them away -- not only did they have significant sentimental value, my wedding one had retained a lot of its color, eighteen-and-a-half years later.



I think you know where this is going, right?





The bouquet in its original state is in the photo frame on the wall, too. I love every part of this display. It's about love and family and marriage, and now also it's about keeping things fresh and seeing them in different ways. It sparks so much joy!

The bedroom is still in progress; eventually it will be painted a lovely ghost gray and then I can hang the rest of the pictures, but before that my husband needs to do his clothes and I want to find new bureaus for both of us. More fall projects! In the meantime, I am making smaller improvements to the space one by one.  I've found a new duvet cover from West Elm and the perfect throw pillow (from Amazon, of all places), and we all love the bed so much more now. The dog isn't allowed in the room during the day anymore to prevent further chewing, but she loves laying on it when we are there.







Next time: how moving a box and a basket upstairs changed how paperwork flows through our house.

Konmari, Round 1: My Clothes

As I wrote last week, I am in the process of "tidying" our house using the method developed by Marie Kondo in her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

She recommends by starting with your personal items, i.e., your clothes. The idea is that you do all of it at once -- every single item you own must be pulled out of drawers, off the hangers, out of storage. All of it, no matter the season or size.

Next you touch each piece, and you ask, "Does this spark joy? Does this piece make me happy?" If the answer is no, then you discard it. That seems simple, but of course it isn't. Sometimes even if you don't love an item, you don't want to let it go. Kondo advises that you then delve further, and ask yourself why you are hesitating. Is it because for a nostalgia factor, or does it still have the tags on it and you feel guilty, or did it used to fit a long time ago and never will again? Think about the specific reason, and thank it for bringing you whatever it brought you, and then...let it go.

I felt so foolish doing this, but in the end it helped more than I can describe. Thanking my t-shirt for teaching me that pale blue is not my color felt stupid but it was also freeing. I was able to let go of old tights that I wore a million times that are now out of fashion, of scarves I loved and haven't worn in years, of a pile of too-small t-shirts I bought in a frenzy from Old Navy and never wore a single one. And it was FUN to remember great outfits and blog posts I had done on some of them. I've had some killer outfits over the years!

Anyway, this is how it looked when I started.

The closet. (The top shelf and top rack are my husband's. I left those as they were -- Kondo strongly recommends you only organize YOUR stuff. It's up to the other people in your house to take care of their own. I honored that.)

 


The top of my bureau



On my side of my bed. The drawers in the bedstand were also full of clothes.



Between the bureau and the bed. The hampers are just our weekly laundry hampers, but the hatboxes were also full of clothes.


The whole bedroom. The two other bureaus are my husband's, as are all the shoes and clothes at the foot of the bed. I have to ignore those until he is ready. (Spoiler alert: two months into watching me revel in my new tidied space, he's ready. He actually broke down this weekend and asked me to help him. WOOHOOO!!)




Then it was time to gather all my clothes together. Kondo recommends you pull everything at once but I didn't have the space, so I conquered one type of clothing at a time.

First it was tops. This included sweaters, casual t shirts, pajamas/loungewear, blouses, camisoles, everything I wear on the top half of my body.





I touched each piece. I asked myself if it sparked joy. If the answer was no, I thanked it for what it brought me, and I let it go.

I left go of 8 bags of clothes. Tops were definitely the hardest, but once I got through it I understood the concept and was able to keep pushing on.

Bottoms (Pants and skirts)


Shoes (yes, that is my dog on the other side of Shoe Mountain.)



I thought shoes would be harder, but since my fallen arches have irreversibly changed what shoes I can wear, it was pretty quick work letting go of the ones that hurt me.



Stockings. (Abby was pretty over this project by then. My clothes were in her spot!)



The scarves that still spark joy.



The scarves that don't.




Bags. (MY PURSES NO OMG WHAT AM I DOING STOP THE MADNESS.)



I ended up getting rid of (i.e., selling) these Coach bags, and trimmed down my collection to an impressive set -- I love every single bag I kept. I may have been a little overzealous in getting rid of some of the wristlets, in hindsight, but now I can wait and buy just the right ones to replace what is gone. I look at the picture above and realize while I wish I had a good wristlet, none of the ones I had were The One.)



(Plus underwear, socks and bras, but I am not going to show you any of that. LOL!)

Then the culling was over, and it was time to put things away. This is where it is important to keep reading the book -- Kondo has a lot of great ideas about storage and organization, all of which can be done without buying any new contraptions. It's about re-thinking and maximizing your space, keeping your like items together, and taking the time to put things away neatly the first time.

Or, if you Google the YouTube videos, it's about folding your clothes and standing them on their ends. Which looks great, and really works.




Workout clothes and pajamas. Kondo's excellent advice is that you never "downgrade" clothes to sleepwear/loungewear. Once I freed myself of an embarrassing number of shirts where I done just that, I was left with loungewear I *like* wearing, and don't feel like a schlump in. What a concept!



More tops



Doing this helped me compact from a big bureau to a smaller one, plus helped me see I have WAY TOO MUCH PINK in my wardrobe. I've done some more culling and replacing since. This was a huge eye opener!

Kondo also recommends you store "like" items together, which I cannot stress enough. This has also been a big help -- all my jeans and pants are now hung in the closet, and there are no more extra piles of clothes in other drawers or under the bed for another season. The only exception I made to this are the other sizes that I have stored in the basement, but these were already culled down to only the best pieces a few years ago. I've brought up the tops in the next size already, and they are hanging in the closet. (Blouses and cardigans go in the closet; everything else gets folded in the bureau.)

So now my closet has my pants, dresses, jackets and blouses. Which, amazingly, left plenty of room to hang my purses and scarves.







It's hard to show visually the impact of this, so here are some numbers too.

Tops: Kept 61, donated 60
Bottoms: Kept 37, donated 25
Jackets: Kept 12, donated 8
Shoes: Kept 19, donated 21
Accessories: Kept 31, donated 68 (scarves and belts mostly)

342 pieces total, donated 53% because they did not spark joy.

Two months later, I haven't missed anything. I've been able to find some real wardrobe holes, and have purchased a few new things. A few other items have stopped sparking joy, so they are in a new donate bag. It's a perpetual cycle, of course, but I feel so much freer and confident about my wardrobe now. I LIKE everything in it. When was the last time you were able to say that?


Next week: how cleaning out the linen closet and bathroom prompted me to redecorate the bedroom.

It IS Magical, and it IS Life-Changing

As everyone who follows me on Instagram or Facebook knows, this spring I embarked on the project of tidying my house, Konmari-style.

What is Konmari? It is the self-named tidying method developed by Marie Kondo. Her best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, explains it all. I have to tell you, if you are considering doing this, don't just read random people's blogs (like mine) -- buy the book yourself, and read it all the way through. It's a fast read, and there is just so much information in there you need to go through it all yourself. Some tidbit she mentions might inspire you differently than it did me -- you never know what that will be! I find myself going back through chapters even now to review and find new ideas.

As she recommends, I started with my personal items: my clothes. She very strongly suggests that you only do YOUR personal items, that you can't force other people in your home to organize themselves. That's been a big failure of mine -- my husband has a completely different thought process about tidying and organizing than I do, and all previous attempts at organizing have failed when I tried to do it for both of us.

So this time I informed him up-front that I was ONLY doing my own stuff; if he wanted to clean up his, he was welcome to do so, but I wasn't going to force the issue. And I have kept to that promise, even three months later! But you know what has happened? He has liked all the changes I have made so much that it has (slowly) inspired him to whittle down his crap too. I did some traveling in May and July, and both times he worked on cleaning out his bureaus and closets in my absence. We're getting there!

But the Konmari method isn't just about your closet, it's about your whole house. My husband and I agreed that I would also do the joint living spaces like the bathrooms, living room, and kitchen -- his office and basement spaces were off-limits. (Not a problem; he's a pack-rat and those rooms drive me nuts anyway. I was happy to steer clear of them! LOL!)

 So far I have tidied and re-organized:
-my entire bedroom, from bureaus to closet to hidden storage
-linen closet and hallway
-both bathrooms
-books and DVDs in the living room
-junk drawer
-kitchen, including the stored items in the basement
-car

I'm working my way slowly through other areas still, including:
-all small electronics
-photographs
-front closet of jackets and winter gear
-old items in the basement (selling those via online garage sales on Facebook)
-utility room in the basement

It's really been tremendously helpful. We've lived here twelve years, and I don't see us moving anytime soon. The clutter had really built up, in all sorts of unexpected places, and I realize now that I was not utilizing the storage space I had very well. We couldn't even fit our food in the kitchen cabinets, so most of it was living on the counter!

We've gone from this:



To this:



From this:






To this:



What's been most enlightening is that it has helped me see what is really left, and what needs updating. We're slowly redecorating the bedroom and bathroom now -- we purchased a new duvet and changed around the artwork, so now once my husband is done cleaning out his bureaus we will be purchasing a new set for both of us and painting the walls the dove grey I have wanted for years. We replaced the old stained rug in the bathroom, and I'm looking at new towel racks near the shower, and then it will get the same paint job as the bedroom. Each phase of tidying has opened up new possibilities for us; I don't WANT to move anymore, I want to continue making this house ours.

Best of all, by fixing the organization in the kitchen, I eliminated the growing need we had had to redo the cabinets. There's plenty of room now that I figured out the right place for everything to go! Instead, we can look at replacing our dying dishwasher... :)

I'll post detailed pictures for each completed section in upcoming posts; from the feedback I keep getting online and in real life, my journey has been inspiring many of my friends to try it out too. Maybe it will inspire you too!

(But seriously: buy the book.)