Life-changing book

I just finished reading the book, "The life-changing magic of tidying up".  And I can honestly say that it has been life changing (as the title promises).

Lately I've been feeling as if I was drowning under a pile of stuff.  It seems that every room in the house had more stuff than places to put said stuff.  And a lot of it felt like just stuff...that we didn't use regularly, were holding on to for a 'maybe someday' or simply felt neutral (vs. joyful) towards. I've never thought of myself as particularly neat and tidy but having a cluttered house was making me very grumpy.  Home was not a fun place to come home to.  And that made me sad.

So I became obsessed with the need to declutter and this book came along at just the right moment.

Before I was even halfway done with the book I started on the kids room, going through their toys and books and creating piles to throw out or donate.  The goal was to find a place to put everything.  The kids did really well...particularly K who was able to identify and donate those things that he didn't love, or in the words of KonMari "didn't bring him joy".  C was a much tougher customer (takes after J!).  She has about 90 million stuffed animals and was only willing to give away 5.  Same with her books.  But at least we were able to clean her room and donate what no longer fit and throw away old papers and lots of missing toy pieces or as I like to say "plastic crap".
Before:

After:

The biggest project so far was to go through all of J's clothes.  One of the author's rules is to take out categories of clothing (eg. all t-shirts at once, then sweaters, then pants etc.), from every location it lives in the house, and dump it all on your floor in one big pile.  I wish I took a picture of the J's mounds - we were both quite amazed at the stash.  It took us a whole afternoon to go through his clothes but we managed to get rid of a ton, either because they didn't fit or didn't look good.  He was still struggling to use "joy" as a measure to assess each item so we still need a few more sessions to whittle his wardrobe down some more. What I found astounding is that he struggled to donate things like ties when he's lucky to wear a suit 2 days a year.  I think I managed to convince him to donate half his ties....he still has about 15 left.  Like I said, more work needed in this space.

Part of the KonMari method is also putting as much as possible in drawers; folding everything into tight squares and placing the items vertically in the drawers.  This past weekend I tackled my underwear, jewelry, sweater and pants drawers using this approach .  I am SO SO happy to have everything folded and visible.  It's easy to pick out an outfit to wear each morning and at the end of the day, everything has a place to go back to.  Honestly it actually makes me smile opening the drawers and there is no stress or wasted time in the process.  Compare this to before where everything was jammed in the drawers; I often didn't know what was in the draw and more frustrating was when I couldn't find what I was looking for even though I knew it had to be in there.  Then when I found it and pulled it out and it was all wrinkled.  Never again.


KonMari suggests that it will take about 6 mos. to go through an entire house.  I'm realistic enough to know that since I'm only 1 of 4 people living in the house so it will probably never be as tidy as I would like.  However, I'm confident that we can at least get it to a more joyful level.