"The Life Changing Magic of Tidying" continues to magically change lives (PT 2)

[BeCool]

Come fold your loved clothes, and feel the spark of joy in every object you own (or thereabouts).

Continuing our journey on from the Original thread: www.mumsnet.com/Talk/good_housekeeping/2178442-The-Life-Changing-Magic-of-Tidying-Marie-Kondo?msgid=50091328#50091328

I dont think thats morbid and is particularly relevant with the sentimental items. When i get to it Im going to be asking myself if, after I die, the DC are going to like this or are they just going to wonder why I was keeping it and bin it then. DH is terrible for keeping things for memorabilia. Airplane tickets, programs, all sorts of rubbish which then end up in a box in the loft taking up space we need for other things. And one day the DC will just bin the lot!

Wish me luck! Im going to tackle electricals today!

good point about the clutter when you are gone. mine will have to be small steps.

i have always been reasonable about tidying but i tend to leave things in my handbag

bathroom toiletries trying to put away.

fil brought something of my dhs from childhood. still on side in hall

I brought loads of almost new unread wonderful childrens books from charity shops with inscriptions from Nana, Aunty etc. They are often cheaper too!!!

Agree with getting rid of all this stuff before you're gone. I'm a great hoarder of sentimental items... Boxes and boxes of STUFF in the loft and I'm not ready for those yet, but seriously, what is the point of all these items? From now on I'm keeping only the things that bring joy and I'm slinging the rest.

When my dad died a few years ago my Mum couldn't manage their huge 6 bed house and had to move... It took her months and months to clear out all the things they'd kept. Every single school book my brothers and I ever wrote in, every toy, every item of clothing mum ever had (not ours, shed got rid of most of those over the years), all her parents' and grandparents' precious things... It went on and on and on. She took about 20 car loads to the recycling and still filled a skip. She did all of that when she was 70 so it can't have been easy. The punchline to all of that is that she "downsized" to a 4 bedroomed house and it's still completely FULL. It's going to be so hard to sort through all of that when she moves or dies and soooooo emotional to finally bin all the possessions she's been so carefully looking after (its all perfectly arranged and tidy, everything is loved) . The longer you hang on to this stuff the more meaning you assign it and the harder it becomes to let go.

I keep reminding myself that the freest and happiest I have ever been was when I lived for two weeks in a little hut on a beach in Malaysia. I had been on a round the world trip and had been robbed twice so didn't have a wallet or a phone, just a small bag of clothes and a few books. It felt great to have so little and yet have everything you need. Obviously, that's being on holiday, it's not real life but I think the principal stands. Once you have everything you need, anything else ultimately weighs you down.

In other news: paperwork done! I've condensed two large plastic boxes of files, a big pile of papers in the kitchen, a mini filing cabinet and a ringbinder rammed full of important documents to one smallish box (things we need to keep), one foolscap box file (for mine and DHs business records) and a small muji wallet with family stuff in it. Actually, I'm not totally convinced by the wallet. I think that could probably go!

Shocking I totally agree that the longer you have something the harder it is to let go, even with the stuff you never wanted in the first place.

I wish I had taken the plunge on my wedding dress straight after...instead it has been weighing me down for three years... Also received some lovely but unsuitable wedding gifts, should have been brutal at the time.. Cause now they have been hanging round and I've been looking at them feeling bad ever since that they are unused.

That 2 weeks in a beach hit with only the essentials sounds perfect. Why are our lives back home always so complicated!

Walked into the kitchen to find DS (3 yrs) quietly stringing beads at the table before breakfast. Said something to DH along the lines of, oh well done for getting him sorted out (as he was leaving earlier than usual so I'd been expecting a rushed morning) and are you finding it easier now I've got all the kids craft stuff in one place?

DH looked at me and said thanks but this is all DS's doing - he went into the craft area, chose his materials and sat down, I've just been getting ready!

In general I think the kids are feeling more calm and secure in their environment, I am excited to see the changes as project KonMari continues!

Agree that a good way to decide whether to keep sentimental items is to decide whether your DC would be interested in it when you are gone - if this makes me morbid, so be it.

For example I have hundreds of letters from the days before email which I have kept. I never look at them as it takes too long to read through the boring ones before I find something interesting. So I think the whole pile of them would be an annoying pile of junk for dd to sort through, whereas a couple of especially funny or sweet ones would make her smile.

I've also travelled the world living out of a rucksack and agree that it is so liberating to be able to carry all of your belongings on your back.

We did some travelling this summer. Everything a family of five needed for a month fitted into a car....

How are people storing chargers? I've put them in a drawer but they look untidy even though they're not in a tangle any more.

I've been a bit stop/start on my decluttering but KonMari has definitely got into my head. Even in shops if I pick something up I ask myself if it brings me joy. And usually the answer is nope.

I've been concentrating on some bigger things through the house that have been weighing me down. I've sold a few things on gumtree/facebook and thanked them on their way to new homes. Also sent some furniture to the hospice furniture place. I'm in the process of deepcleaning our bedroom in readiness of starting Konmari proper.

With our CDs we had them ripped onto a network storage device by Ripster. It was really worthwhile as we still have the music but no CDs. It's connected to our speaker system by wifi and accessed via the ipad.

Someone asked about leads and cables. I've rolled up my kindle charging cable and put it inside an empty loo roll tube and put it in the drawer with my kindle. It works great as a storage method. I have a huge basket of leads in another room and I've no idea what they are for so i'm going to recycle them. In the event that I throw away something crucial I'll just have to stump up for a new one.

One of the barriers to me decluttering in the past has been me thinking that I could sell the item but inertia has meant I haven't sold them and they're just lying there occupying space and sapping energy. My plan now is to only sell items I know will sell quickly and locally. Recycle/donate/freecycle the rest. In her book, MK says something like, you lose the monetary value of the item when you buy it so don't bother trying to sell it.

My DS has Konmari'd his books and most of the stuff in his bedroom by using the does it spark joy question. He has a pile of about half the stuff in his room. He's 10. DD is 6 and claims every single piece of plastic brings her joy. So I need to do some more work with DD.

I folded DHs socks Konmari style and I'm staggered at how many pairs he has. If asked I would have said 10 but I counted 20 and that's not including the ones in the laundry process.

I'm enjoying reading about everyone's progress.

I need to do the kitchen but I am really unsure how to store things when I'm done. It's the room I always seem to be tidying. I really Struggle to find a logical place for things. Is it just me?!

Help!

asheth at the mo my cables are in sandwich bags with their purpose written on, hoping someone has a better method though.

ashesth currently my cables are 'stored' plugged into the walls . i haven't konmari'd them yet.

We have a massive box of cables in the loft but these are dp's domain. I suspect most of them belong to items he owned in the 1990's...

I am supposed to be working but got lured away by the pile of 'papers' which I've brought down from the loft and are currently sitting in the living room. I just went and had a look at my old stamp collection, which I haven't looked at for years. I was planning to get rid of it, but flicking through the pages brought back happy memories (saddo) and reminded me of how much I loved, and learnt from stamp collecting when I was little - the countries of the world, what their people and animals looked like, what their written languages were like. So I have decided to keep them after all. Maybe dd will like them when she is bigger, but even if she doesn't I will keep them for myself.

However if it wasn't for the konmari project it would still be sitting in the loft gathering dust surrounded by ten year old bills.

Tip for incoming cables - label them the moment they enter the house. I use a silver sharpie pen.

I also have a box of unlabelled cables (from before getting my stuff together ) and despite what we tell ourselves chances are we won't remember what they are.

Forgive me if this has been covered upthread but what are people doing about pregnancy and.baby stuff if planning more babies? I dont want to have to buy maternity clothes, breastpump etc again but its a huge stash!

to add my bit to the "get rid of stuff before you are gone" conversation I'll say this:

when our dear NDN died her sons didn't have time to sift through her things so they had to hire a skip to chuck most of her things.
Some stuff we took to charity shop and we got Red Cross to come & take her furniture. Her sons obviously took valuable items (money & sentimental POV) and some friends were offered to pick anything they liked (I got her Singer sewing machine which I treasure and a few more things) - but everything else had to be thrown away.
It was shocking to see just how much stuff she accumulated. it was a heartbreaking sight, her things, her whole life's objects in a skip.
it was really hard for her sons to have to throw most things away. they really struggled, having to throw away so much so quickly as she hadn't even been buried yet.

I vowed I will try to spare my kids this extra pain if I can.

strange this came up today. I have been thinking about loss because it was 6 years ago today that I had a MC (my 5th pg).
I lit some candles in her memory. it will be a difficult weekend. it always is

Am jumping on board with this thread after reading (most of) the other one. My H bought this book, told me how great it was, and honestly I could have quite cheerfully throttled him. I was incandescent with rage that I had been telling him for years that we needed to throw things out, and to tidy up, and suddenly he had bought a BOOK and was telling me how great it would be if we lived in a tidier house.
Today, I am somewhat eating my words as I have read the book myself, am mildly convinced by its overall message (if not perhaps all of its stark and slightly bonkers extremism) ... and today I estimate that H got rid of 3/4 of all the clothes he owns. He took a car full to the charity shop, and we both feel lighter and happier as a result. And as if to prove Konmari's theory that tidying is catching, as soon as he started to pile up his clothes, I then threw out a load of old magazines (god! They were depressing me! I cancelled my subscription and felt better immediately) and then cleared out my drawers of toiletries and cosmetics and ditched loads of stuff.
So I am open-minded. Hoping to get rid of lots more things. Finding the 'sparking joy' threshold a high one, but a useful one. Sadly realising that my addiction to buying storage is perhaps not a useful one. And hoping our house will get better, and life might be more peaceful and less cluttered.

That's what I'm thinking about zing. I don't want my dc to have o go through that. I'm also trying to teach them how to declutter. They're very good at it now and will say when a cuddly or other toy isn't wanted.

:( zing

zing

Still making progress here (if a little more slowly than I would like!). Found more paperwork in the loft so going to do that this morning. Then in the afternoon moving on to toiletries and makeup (which will take me ages as I love a bargain!).

I think I am going to sell my wedding dress, it was quite expensive new and I love the thought of someone else getting as much joy out of it as I did. My only question is, do I have to dry clean it first or do you think whoever buys it will get it done as part of altering it?!

Going to light a wee candle for Zing be kind to yourself this weekend.

Thinking of you today Zing xxx

I have all our soft toys in a big pile in the sitting room. I'm goin to ask the DC to choose the ones that bring them joy (shant phrase it quite like that!) and put the rest in a sack for sale. If anyone hears loud squealing it means that they're all fighting over the same ones!

I think the more space you have the more you fill. it's hard when your parents are hoarders and make you feel you shouldn't be wasteful.