The KonMari Method Summarized in 3 Parts
/If you’ve been tuning in, Tidy Closet has been sharing many of Marie Kondo’s hacks for organizing your home for a while now. However, you may find yourself wondering what the bird’s eye view of her method is. If so, this is the article for you. Marie Kondo’s method, the KonMari Method™ to be exact, has taken the world by storm because it’s giving people the pathway to truly loving where they live.
There are three big ideas that the KonMari Method™ encompasses: mindset, a two-step method and the amount of time in which you finish tidying up. Let’s dive in.
1. Get your mind right. One of the biggest differences with the KonMari Method™ is how much emphasis this particular style of “tidying up” your home places on your mindset. This may seem hokey, but then again it may not when you consider that research has shown clutter affects your attention span, performance and even increases mental anxiety. So, it’s already affecting us mentally, we just need to change our mindset which will help us get to work.
We start by acknowledging that we don’t know what we don’t know. That is, we’ve been taught reading, writing, math and science. If we’re lucky, we may have been to a cooking class or had Grandma’s mentorship in the kitchen. If we’re really ahead of the game, we were taught things like laundry and balancing a checkbook as a young person. But tidying up your home? Most of us have never specifically learned this skill. And it is a skill. You know that because you got in trouble for not doing it well as a young person, didn’t you?
After we prepare ourselves mentally that we have to study and grow as a person to get our homes in order, there’s more mental work to do! Now it’s time to visualize the end result of tidying up before we start.
When you’ve gone through and applied the KonMari Method™ to your home, what do you want it to look like? How do you want to feel? How do you want to be able to function in your space? In fact, when we work through this method, we’re going to tie this end result to your ideal lifestyle. Your organized and joy-sparking home should help you live your life in the way you truly desire. That’s the goal.
Speaking of sparking joy, that’s the last piece of the mental work we’re going to do. Rather than being purely transactional with items as you go through them in your home, we’re going to connect with each and every item. It may seem a little overwhelming, but it is this particular step that is going to help you end up with a home where you are surrounded by things that make you happy and that is easy to maintain.
You’ll physically handle each item and determine if it sparks joy. The items that spark joy start to stack up and create that exact emotion throughout your home. Here’s the real game changer: if an item doesn’t spark joy you will then thank it before discarding it. It seems crazy, but this process really helps you learn about yourself, about the purchasing habits you have and, most importantly, about the items you truly want and use in your life. It’s a great opportunity for self-reflection and self-improvement.
Related: The Biggest Misconceptions regarding the Konmari Method™
“This process really helps you learn about yourself, about the purchasing habits you have and most importantly, about the items you truly want and use in your life. It’s a great opportunity for self-reflection and self-improvement.”
2. Strict two-part method. When it comes to the actual process, you might find it relieving that there are only two “steps” of the KonMari Method™: discarding and organizing. But it’s not quite that simple.
Discarding is the first and most difficult step. With this method, we start by going category by category. Yes, we are going to discard by category rather than by room, by drawer or by closet. We want to be able to look at every single item in a category before making decisions about what to keep. This can’t be accomplished without going category by category because certain types of items are often stored in many different locations around the house. Going category by category is very important in order to avoid a “rebound” where all of the clutter and problems come back!
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Within this rule of category by category, we have an order to go in. The order is very important as it is specifically crafted to help you grow in skill and determination with discarding as you move from relatively easy decisions about, say, clothing to more emotional and complicated items like baby items. The order to go through items in your home category by category is:
Clothes
Books
Papers
Komono (Miscellaneous items)
Sentimental items
Once you’re done discarding, you will organize by giving every single item a home. The definition of clutter is stuff that hasn’t been put away, so you’re going to be very thoughtful about storage. Ensure everything has a home that makes sense, is with like-items and that is easy to put away. Ensuring items are easy to put away is a key secret in the KonMari Method™ because it helps to ensure your home stays tidy.
Another key component of the KonMari Method™ is the vertical fold. Imagine opening your drawers to an array of perfectly folded and filed clothes arranged in color from darkest to lightest. The vertical fold allows clothes to be stored “standing” rather than flat, one on top of each other. This means, when you’re picturing opening your well-arranged drawers, you’re able to see all of your clothes at once and you’re able to fit more in your drawers. The vertical fold helps use space better, which can solve a lot of storage issues. Some folks report being able to fit 50 percent more clothing in drawers when using the KonMari Method™ of folding and filing. How to do the vertical fold is not complicated, it is simply a matter of folding items in thirds, then in half, then again in thirds. See next month’s post for a lesson on different clothing items.
3. Do it all at once. One of the most important elements of the KonMari Method™ is to do all of this work at once. Instead of doing a little bit at once and risking the clutter creeping back just as quickly, we are going to change our homes and our lives all at once and once and for all. Doing all of this work in one fell swoop will allow you to have a fresh start so you can then create habits that allow you to maintain your new lifestyle.
Going through every item in your home will take forever if you allow it. Going through every item in your home will take a few months, however, if you make a plan, stay focused and use this method.
It’s also important to consider how refreshed you’ll be when you give yourself quick, serious and dramatic results. Compare that to slow, seemingly never-ending, work that results in slow, gradual, hardly noticeable changes. It’ll be so much better to do the hard work all at once so you get the pay off quickly. You’ll feel better and truly be able to change your mindset and lifestyle. And, after all, that is the entire goal of tidying your home in the first place.
Related: How to organize your kitchen step by step
Copyright © 2020 by Janine Morales, Professional Home and Business Organizer and Certified KonMari™ Consultant in San Diego and surrounding areas.