I have to admit, when I first started Marie Kondo's book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up; The Japanese Art of Decluttering & Organizing, I was pretty skeptical. Thanks to Pinterest, I'm always seeing tips for cleaning your house, schedules to follow, suggestions for becoming the most organized person on the planet etc. What could Marie offer that isn't already out there? Well, her methods ARE different & I can attest to it.
The biggest concept you need to grasp is to organize your belongings by category & not by space. Kondo has a very specific order in which categories to organize. Category #1 is clothing. She further breaks it down into:
Tops (Shirts, Sweaters, etc.)
Bottoms (Pants, Skirts, Shorts, etc.)
Clothes that should be hung (Dresses, Jackets, Suits, etc.)
Socks
Underwear
Bags (Handbags, messenger bags, backpacks etc.)
Accessories (Scarves, Belts, Hats, etc.)
Clothes for specific events (swimsuits, uniforms, kimonos - remember, she lives in Japan)
Shoes
Now, Kondo suggests you literally take EVERYTHING from this category & place it all on the floor. She believes it isn't until you see everything you own (in said category) that you can truly determine what to keep & not. This means getting out all the laundry, collecting all coats from anywhere they might be, gathering ALL your shoes from the car, the closet, the front entry way...every item of clothing you own must be on the floor. OK well, I don't have floor space large enough to do this, so I cheated a bit & did it by the subcategories.
Here's what my closet/drawers looked like before. (My apologies for only giving you a tiny sliver of a glance at my closet. It was just so bad I couldn't handle taking more pictures. Also to be fair, one of my closet doors got stuck & I couldn't open it without a ton of shit falling out)
(Disclaimer...all photos were taken on my iPhone at various times of the day...so the lighting/quality ain't the greatest. Please forgive.)
So I started with Tops, specifically T-shirts. This includes casual tees, tanks & actual t-shirts.
Then, I literally held every single piece of item in my hands & asked myself if it "sparked joy"(seriously, don't laugh at it) ...the result? 2 30 gallon trash bags filled with shirts to donate. Once you decide what to keep, then you must learn to fold the KonMari way. Instead of trying to explain, see a video tutorial by Marie Kondo here.
My drawers went from this:
To this:
Now, I did fold them only slightly different. Instead of having the front of the shirt facing up & flipping the sleeves in, I flipped the shirt so the back of the shirt is tucked in. This way I can see the front of the shirt once it's folded so I know what shirt it is. I have so many that are similar colors, this was the easiest way for me to still be able to see my shirts.
Up next, nice tops. Now, Marie also believes more tops should be folder & kept in drawers. I personally have too many tops that wrinkle easily, so folding them just makes more work for myself & ironing is NOT something I enjoy doing.
All my tops/sweaters that require hanging:
Oscar was very into this.
This
That entire bar was STUFFED. Now, I did spread my tops out so they aren't all squished, but I got rid of almost 1/2 my tops. Clearly, I've been hanging on to clothes I just don't need/wear.
I continued with the rest of the list & after 9 30 gallon bags of clothes/shoes/purses...
Here's the final product:
So, I'd say this clean out was a MAJOR success! Now, it's been a week since I actually cleaned out my closet & I'm proud to say it still looks that way! I know maintaining is going to be my biggest challenge, but Kondo says it shouldn't be hard...we'll see!
Note: I already had the shoe racks, dresser & storage bags in my closet. Kondo doesn't believe in a ton of storage mechanisms, but she also hasn't seen how impractical my closet is. Now, if you're REAL observant, I didn't take a picture of one side of my closet. My jewelry is kept in my closet in another dresser & I haven't tackled that yet. Project for this weekend!
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