'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying' - Marie Kondo

[FrancesHB]

Has anyone else read this? I did a search but couldn't find any previous threads.

Marie Kondo is a Japanese expert in tidying and decluttering and her book has been translated into English and is best selling. It's wonderfully eccentric and inspiring and in some ways rather a breath of fresh air compared to other books on the subject (have read 'em all and my house is still messy...).

She asks us to ask if an item brings us joy and if it doesn't we thank it and out it goes. A bit like fly lady 'you can't organise clutter', but in a less annoying and at times quite endearing way.

I wondered if any MNers had used her technique and if it helped them 'get their house in order'.

Also DH and I are talking about what we want & how we want to feel when extension is done.
we have decided to put staircase in to lead into loft permanently as it will give us a more options later on for converting part of loft into play are or an office or a play den or a sleepover party space or whatever.

So I decided that the best thing to do is to cull our crap as much as possible now. that way we will take less back into house in the future and will be storing less & less now.

I feel really good about that decision, I'm so glad I came across this thread!

BabyZing is definitely our last one and it will be interesting to sort and get rid of maternity clothes, baby clothes, toys and paraphernalia this time round instead of box them up for next baby!

Zing, if with such a busy household you don't have time to declutter properly, you know what you have to do - gather those 7 small people in 1 place and decide which ones really bring you joy & the others you'll have to say goodbye and they'll just have to go!

Books done, can't believe I had 10 unread books! I'm banning myself from the library (well apart from returning the stack of unread ones I've borrowed from them) and downloading any onto my kindle (which will be hard with bday coming up and I always get amazon vouchers) until they have left the house, read or unread. Even ds1 has managed to clear a stack of books and he reads every single day without fail (oh how I miss those days), is it quite sad I am now wanting to borrow his books as I loved them as a kid? He's 10!

Are we not at the new thread limit yet?

leeloo

Leeloo

I almost posted that as an AIBU question!

:) It would solve several problems at once I imagine, Zing, but having a big family must be great really. :)

I've pretty much finished this year's photobook, so am hoping to be back at the tidying this week - hurray!

... Gruffalo!!

Sorry ohhelp if I hadn't said it, it would have kept going round and round in my head. Now I can get back to folding my socks

I've been stalled a bit but I'm enjoying all the messages :)

STILL have to do 2 undie drawers and then that's all the clothes done. Only our bedroom is still a mess because of all the ahem komono (polite Japanese word for 'random shit') scattered all over the place.

So, my cunning plan: Move on to books. Free up huge room in my study. Move random bedroom crap down to fold out bed in sofa so I can sort it there and at least have one calm, orderly room of wonderfulness.

The clothes thing has been brill, agree with everyone about that :) My problem at the minute is that unless I have clear access to the wardrobes and drawers to put stuff away I end up dumping it in a pile which is UNFORGIVEABLE since it all has a lovely home to go to. So, the bedroom crap must go! Also then I can buy more knickers. Mine are just embarrassing

leeloo / zing :o I only have one and am occasionally tempted to post a gumtree ad especially in the middle of the night just sleep kid, just sleep!. Only then she does something incredibly cute like running about in the hall making her funny noises and I decide to keep her after all :o

need to do jewellery tomorrow. Should be interesting to see how many actual pairs of earrings I have! I suspect I have about 20 singles. Will report back! Funny how many people up thread have said their actual jewellery box doesn't bring them joy. I'm the same, but because I've never sorted my jewllers properly I have never felt able to replace it!

On the clothes note I suddenly feel like I have so much more to wear AND I am wearing things that I loved but I've had for a few years and just got pushed back into the dark spaces. I wore a skirt and top the other day which DH said I wore on one of our early dates :o Still in lovely condition as they were 'good clothes' then rather than runarounds. Now they are getting a chance to be seen again :)

Sorry: one confession, I ordered a slow cooker. I also bought a book when I have a million to read BUT I got it on the kindle and it's The Happiness Project which seems to fit in with our general worldview on this thread. Also ordered a food / health diary thing because I want one pretty book to keep track of food, drinking water, taking vitamins etc. I've been feeling really tired and blah recently (yes toddler, if you would just sleep, things would be better!) so I need to focus on health for a bit.

For jewellery I can recommend wardrobe hangers like this one: black dress. I just have a bog standard white double-sided one I got from one of those book clubs and it's brilliant.

Mine is like this and it's great as it's in the wardrobe with all my outfits and is double sided so you can see everything in the plastic wallets with loads of space.

OneSkinnyChip The Happiness Project is a great read and if memory serves, she starts by decluttering! Re jewellery - I have that exact pocket hangy thing and it's great.

I had a wonderful experience today. I decided to quickly sort through some tubs and shelves full of komono...

It went so fast! Because I've designated areas for many categories, I didn't stand there staring at each item wondering where to put it. It was like, oh random coins- they go in the coin pot. Oh, lightbulbs, they go in the lightbulbs box. Vaguely electronic looking items I can't identify - they go in the box on DH's desk labeled "please put this away or discard." Kids stickers, stamps, pencils - in the craft drawers.

It was SO EASY. I didn't have to engage my brain. I didn't have decision fatigue by the end! And I got through 3 shelves and 2 tubs and a few months ago the pikes would have just shifted elsewhere, now they're gone gone gone and they're never coming back tralala....

Piles, not pikes - got a lot of crap in my house but no pikes that I know of.

OneSkinnyChip that thing is brilliant! I will use this as motivation to KonMari the ass off my jewellery!

oneskinny

to keep track of water intake download free Hydro app on your phone.
it's really good

DECISION FATIGUE!!! Yes,that is what I have.

Coughle thank you for giving it a name.
I bought some storage for the kitchen a few weeks ago because of all the komono eating into already small space. it made a huge difference! I now have 16 drawers (4 drawers per "tower") and don't have to use brain power as to where to put things.

I have a drawer each for:

• stationery supplies for school (gluesticks,pens, pencils, erasers, sharpeners etc)
• permanent markers
• pens & pencils
• scissors/plug covers
• plastic bag clips
• plasters/earbuds/nail clippers
• self-seal bags
• sticky notes & shopping list paper
• plastic syringes and spoons for medicines

and so on

I agree that unused or unloved items must go, but some things we need and must store somewhere.
And being a big family I need to keep multiples of pretty much everything.
for example we have 4 potato peelers. seems excessive but we get our oldest four to peel potatoes and carrots all at the same time, that way the job gets done and it gets done quickly! so don't mind sacrificing a bit of space when I get efficiency in return.

3 more bags out the other day plus halved cd collection. Getting there slowly

I was sitting at my desk earlier looking at my spaghetti car full of coins thinking that I must sort it out and get the coins to the bank. Then i remembered the bit in the book about how men put change in the pocket/wallet and then spend it whereas women put it in a jar and leave it there.

So I took a handful of coins with me to the supermarket, went through the self checkout and chucked in all my coins first, then a note, and got three coins back in actual change.

Guess I'm not going to go to a checkout for the next while, till I use up all the coins . And I can then declutter the spaghetti jar which is nice, but I have no use for.

And I have some foreign notes round the inside of the jar which i can put in a clip frame on the wall next to the computer which will a. look nice and b. remind me of holidays we've had/places I'd like to go to (my DPs gave me a couple of nepalese notes which are for peculiar amounts which make me smile).

underwear drawers are now Konmari-ed as well, although my socks prefer being smoothly balled (folded with just the top flipped over), but my new cashmere tights prefer folded . Tops are folded and stacked (open shelves), and jumpers and trousers/jersey skirts are rolled (again open shelves). Most of my hanging stuff has gone, kept a few things I love (but probably won't wear again, so they may not last - I do think clothes are an ongoing project, despite what she says).

Bathroom had been pretty much decluttered before, but I'm now standing spare shampoos etc in the drawer unit rather than lying them flat, which makes it easier to see what I have and what I need - why did that not occur to me before???

Need to make a proper start on household stuff next as [smug mode] all my books fit in the bookshelves already. I only kept actual books if I was sure I would read them again and I couldn't get them on my kindle.

I have two large coffee jars of coins and have started a third. I keep meaning to bag them up. But my bank won't acceipt more than three bags of coins at a time unless the account is a charity or childrens account!

Clothes I declutter twice a year anyway. Don't have many oranments and the ones I have bring me joy. Masses of books, but they are on a feature bookcase the length of one wall in the sitting rooom made lovingly by my DH twenty years ago.

I did the dreaded cupboard under the kitchen sink as I was looking for something. I binned a carrier bag of stuff. I also resorted the shoe polish box, I had four cans of waterproofing spray as every winter the kids would say that we needed more. I never thought to check the box first :(. I ditched the ones that were nearly empty and kept the full ones.There was quite a lot of dried out polish in there as well ...
My big project will be sorting the loft, but that I am going to do in stages. I have already got rid of lots of things from there but I still have more to do. My big discovery has been the amount of cleaning stuff I have all over the house. Now it is all in one place and I can see that I don't need anymore for a while.

I put loose change in my purse and try and use it up when I go shopping. I just keep on adding more to my purse as I use it up.