For those of you who haven’t heard of the Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, I hope I can convince you to go and read it. Either that, or maybe binge watch a few videos on the steps to take. I’m not going to go into detail about what you are supposed to do and how to do. I just want to share how it was worth every minute to get rid of useless items and keep it that way.

It provided an organized system that I couldn’t think of myself

I’m particularly talking about clothes here. I have always folded my clothes the same and squished them into drawers and eventually every few months I would have to pull everything out and refold it all because it just became a huge mess. I had dozens of clothes I wore once, or never, but I couldn’t let myself get rid of them. There was a tremendous amount of guilt built up when I thought about the fact that I bought them with my own money, or they were a gift from someone else.

Only keeping the items that truly spark joy around was such a cool concept to me. Why would I want to keep looking at ugly or useless clothes and feel guilt every time I looked past them? I have so many clothes that I grew out of when I grew up and I’m sure I can only remember a couple of them that I actually liked and wore a lot. So why do I need to keep clothes around that I’ll never wear? This truly made sense to me, more so than other methods I’ve tried using such as “have you worn this in the past 6 months?” With that concept I would just think “no, but I might want to wear it 6 months from now.” This definitely didn’t work. Ever.

The new method of folding my clothes CHANGED MY LIFE. I can SEE everything in my drawer easily, and it all fits and is neat. However, it also probably fit better because I got rid of probably 35 articles of clothing. That’s besides the point… once you get used to folding your clothes a different way, it is easy and I have been using the same method for two years now. I still can’t believe how long I’ve been doing this for… usually new habits take forever to implement but this all just made so much sense to me and was what I’ve been looking for in order to keep a clean, organized living space.

I’m no longer attached to items

Growing up, my parents were able to provide us with almost everything we wanted. We would get birthday presents, Christmas presents, and were able to go on trips and buy souvenirs. I have always liked having a clean, organized space, but most of the time I would become overwhelmed with everything that was there and I just couldn’t bring myself to get rid of anything so I tidied as much as possible whilst having a ton of things around.

I would sometimes do some “spring cleaning” and donate clothes and items that didn’t mean much to me and that I didn’t use at all. This was usually very minor though. However, after I used this method to go through each category around the house and do it all in one day I was able to get rid of a TON of stuff. It’s true, once you start going with one category you just can’t stop! And it starts to feel GOOD! It’s a little weird to talk to your items before you get rid of them and thank them for what they provided you… but I can be a bit spiritual and appreciate doing it because it actually helped. I have found I can get an emotional attachment to things so talking to them as if they were human actually helped me out.

The result of becoming less attached to items is that I now think twice before I purchase something. I think to myself, do I actually need this? Where will I put it in my living space? Will it become clutter?We recently went to Mexico (before the pandemic was a thing of course) and all I bought was a hat. I only own two hats now, and I actually needed it in Mexico, and for when I play ball in the summer or am going to the beach here in Canada. I didn’t buy a sombrero, or poncho, or tequila, or a blanket, or anything that was being sold everywhere. No magnets, or cheap t-shirts or maracas. I feel so good about this decision because I not only saved money, but now I just have pictures to go back to instead of items that have no real place in my life.

The time to tidy up is now!

Like I said at the beginning, I highly encourage anyone who is feeling overwhelmed by clutter to go and learn about the KonMari Method. I truly think this is a well thought out strategy to keep your living space clutter-free. Turn on some music, start early in the morning on a Sunday (like she suggests), bring everything into your living room and change your life!