Kondo thread 10

[SnozzberryMincePie]

Just noticed the old thread was full, so hope no one minds me starting the new one

OK, pre-kondo tidy up (mostly) done, can't wait till bin collection day! I have also made a list of subcategories to check off.

Last time I kondoed I just tackled vast swathes at once, but it's a bit trickier now with a baby who wants to eat every hour, and when I mostly want to nap!

One thing that she doesn't mention (kind of naturally, she wrote the book in her late 20s) is the fact that major life changes will probably mean you need to KonMari all over again.

I don't think it will take as much time this time around, but having a baby/moving house/changing job/any major life event means that the 'you' that you are now has changed, IYSWIM?

And so new you, while pretty similar to old you, needs to go through again and reassess.

I'm hoping that I'll be better at it the second time through...we shall see.

Had a second go at the garage last week. Had a visit from my son today, who volunteered to take the rubbish to the tip. 3 very very large plastic boxes, saved for 30 years in case I ever move. A manky washing-up bowl which has survived about 10 garage clearances, 3 large paint tins and a bag of miscellaneous crap.

Garage and a couple of outhouses are next on my list. It's tough as a lot of it is practical (half used pot of paint does not spark joy/ not having to redecorate whole room when walls get scuffed does. X3 manky old trikes does not spark joy/ not have youngest 3 having hiss fits and playing nicely together in the summer does).

It'll actually be my first run of those areas so I think i'll do one now and one at end of summer when I can review how much joy those things bring the kids as they were too young for some of them last year. At the moment though, the big slide is on my hit list: steps up dangerous for youngest , their 'joy' lasts all of 5 seconds, ugly as sin and takes up too much room!

Checking in and catching up with the thread. There is no time for me to make significant inroads into the Kondo routines during term time but I'd like to do some low hanging fruit this weekend. I think this will be winter clothes and accessories; I fogot to do coats, gloves, hats etc when I did clothes as they aren't kept in my wardrobe but lurk in the pit of despair understairs cupboard.

Has anyone who has read first book also read second? Is it worth getting? Asked on separate threads but not a single answer!

I've had a look on reviews and it seems to be a summary if the original with some illustrations on how to fold clothes. It isn't even clear whether she has written it or not

MadauntofA - I've just been watching Back in Time for the Weekend on catch up.

The bit where he pulls out the MK book

The presenter is really bullying them into throwing stuff into bin bags, even when they're clearly reluctant to part with stuff. "Do you get the principle? Everything goes. Everything."

That's really not the principle behind Marie Kondo's book.

I know stitches, it just made it sound like a ridiculous fad. I'm surprised he didn't mention the knicker folding

I enjoyed the second book more than the first, though more for the stories of how clients arranged their homes than anything else! It did fill in a few gaps for me, for instance, it addressed the issue of finding a place for everything. It's not a crucial read though, and the first one has all the info you need.

And telling people that 'everything goes' is ridiculous. The goal is not to be sitting in an empty house without any clothes to put on your back! He clearly didn't read the book!

I'm falling into the same traps though. I have 13 bags, and gave up 3. Realistically I'll only use 4 or 5 of what I kept. And I didn't go through my underwear drawers as thoroughly as I could have. I really can see myself instigating Round Three at some point! But I can neatly put all my clothes away now. Before (even after round one of Kondoing) I had two binbags of clothes under my bed because there was no space for them.

I'm taking a second bash at books from tomorrow. I got rid of over 100 on my first attempt, but still, I've got loads of books and a small house. I'm also in danger of buying duplicates because I can't keep track of what I own, so I think I'm going to make a list as I work.

Mind I join you folks?
I read a great article on the book and decided to give it a go I'm feeling very motivated about getting the house in order, but it is a long slog.
My main issue is what to do with the discarded items... With clothes I sent one bag to the tip (underwear and damaged/ overworn items), two big bags to the charity shop, but kept another big pile of hardly worn/expensive stuff with the thought of eBaying. A month on its still hanging about and the couple of items I did get round to putting on haven't sold, and the longer they hang around the more I'm tempted to keep some of them - should I just shop them?
Same with CDs... I've a massive pile that I need to put on to iTunes before binning/shopping.
Does anyone else get frustrated with the post-sorting stuff lingering?

Hi Nessalina I am only Ebaying things that will earn a certain amount. Ebaying takes time and I have decided to set a value on that time. They get one go on Ebay and if they don't sell I am giving them away.
I don't own any valuable clothes so they are going straight to charity but of course that doesn't apply to everyone.
With books and DVDs then I have ebayed in the past and for me it wasn't worth the effort. So now I am only keeping the ones that really spark and aren't available on Netflix etc. The rest are getting scanned with a selling app (Ziffit or Music Magpie etc) and getting sent to them or charity straight away.

Definitely frustrating but I think you have to look at what your time is worth and really think about whether you will listen to that music again or watch that DVD again, especially if it has been jammed in a cupboard for years

Clarence How are you storing your books?

I still have loads left after my first go at kondo-ing them (I'll probably have another go once I've finished a first pass through all the other categories) but the books remaining now all fit on the shelves. I've put all the fiction ones on the shelves in alphabetical order, and the non-fiction are grouped by subject. It did take a while, but now it's very easy for me to see what books I have.

How are people making £80 on ziffit?! I scanned a big pile of books, but only two were accepted, and achieved a total of 26p!!

I was quoted £80 on Ziffit but I am sure it will go down when they check for quality. They accepted about 60 books and with a few that were over five pounds it all adds up. You get more money for books that are unusual but still likely to sell. So they won't take Harry Potters because there are zillions of them for sale but a couple of sci-fi books were surprisingly valuable.

Stitches I have books in three large bookcases, two more small bookcases upstairs, and then just piled on surfaces. I'm addicted to BookTube and Goodreads which feed my habit. If I read a book by an author and love it I become obsessed with buying up their entire body of work. With prolific authors like Neil Gaiman that's bloody expensive! It occurred to me the other day that it would take the rest of the year just to read the books I have piled beside my bed...

I have got quite good though at discarding books I finish and didn't enjoy. Sometimes a book goes straight in the paper recycling bin because it was so disappointing I don't want to inflict it on anyone else! But yes, like with clothing, if I can just get everything off the floor, that would be a great start.

I used WeBuyBooks last time, but I won't use them again. What are the odds that the only high value item in each box would sustain "water damage" meaning they didn't have to pay out on it? And one of them had a deliberately distressed cover which they marked as damage and refused to pay me for! I'll try Ziffit this time around too. And Music Magpie were good for CDs and DVDs.

I sent two parcels to ziffit after recommendations on here. Did a bit more research and found plenty of complaints about books being rejected for dubious reasons (especially the higher value items) so have been waiting with interest to see the results.

Now had email to say everything was accepted and money now on its way. For the 26 items sent I've got £20 back so not hugely rewarding but enough to think about doing it again.

Interestingly the two items I got the most for were an old fitness dvd and a book on getting your children to sleep. I saw somewhere that textbooks can do well although mine predate barcodes . Cookbooks were very hit and miss.

Can I join in please? I read the book a few weeks ago and have so far done my clothes, books and paperwork. I'm pretty sure I could still get rid of a lot more clothes but I'm happy with how streamlined it is already. I thought books would be a sticking point as I thought I'd be emotionally attached to them, but actually found them very easy to get rid of. We took everything to an indoor car boot, made about £35 and then everything went to the charity shop, except for some books which went to WeBuyBooks and made another £11.05.

Paperwork on the other hand is proving to be a complete pain in the proverbial!! I am finding it incredibly hard to get rid of old bank statements, dating back nearly 20 years, which I know is ridiculous. I've got the other paperwork down to three lever arch files, which I'm okay with, as well as two further files which have all our appliance instructions etc in, which are still to go through with DH. I bought pretty files last year so I don't mind them all being on display.

Not sure what category to do next though, so have stalled a bit.

Just did coats with DH. Waterproofs spark joy purely for the joy of not getting soaked and cold when out of the house. My 20 year old school coat sparks joy at the thought of a warm wool coat that doesn't matter for muddy situations. Have also added to the mending and washing pile, binned and started a bag of textile recycling and have a pile of 5 skiing type jackets for charity. Next on my hitlist is doing my 7 mo's clothes properly - bin trashed stuff, sort too small stuff by size, check the stuff in her drawers actually still fits!

Hello again everyone! Have started on the kitchen:) still struggling with dh who seems more keen to hold on to things than me. Will take a few goes to do the kitchen I think. After that I want to tackle DVDs and CDs

Thanks, wulfy. I have made the decision to start kondoing from scratch yet again as when I opened my wardrobe this morning, I realised that a good proportion of the neatly hanging and organised clithes, did not spark joy in the least. I didn't really do books properly either, as I did cookbooks and kids' books but didn't factor in the shelves of books in my dumping ground study!! Maybe I'll find some books in there that ziffit will want!

I spoke too soon about the work shirts - DH decided to wear one on Friday! Still, I can't Kondo his stuff so I'll have to wait for him to do it.

DD is 4.5 weeks now and I'm trying to do bits of paperwork with one hand as I feed her as she can feed for 1.5 hours at a time so I'm currently ripping recipes out of a stack of SW magazines. I'm being brutal by asking myself 1. Will I buy those unusual ingredients (eg polenta to make my own breadcrumb coating)? NO and 2. Will I ever be arsed to spend over an hour cooking that? NO.

So its got to be quick and easy otherwise its never going to happen. This process has made me realise that there are 2 more cookbooks in the cupboard that can go!

DH is being sent into the Loft of Doom today to put a plastic box of maternity clothes ul there for my DSis. I still have a few stray bits in circulation so it makes sense to keep the box for now so I can add to it with the items I finish with.

When he's in the loft I'll get him to take a pot stand out. It belonged to my late GPs and I asked for it with the intention of putting it in my porch but I need to be honest with myself - I have 2 DC and a dog and I am never going to risk balancing a plant pot on it. I have many many more items up there which belonged to my GPs which need to be sorted out and which will bring more joy to eventually display.

Haven't read the whole thread as I only read the book last night & want to get started but holy fucking shit its daunting!!

Don't despair of your OH stiffstink. After doing my own for 6 months and a sneaky little bit of OH's stuff, he finally got rid of 47 years of paperwork.

As an accountant in a former life he kept everything. I was amazed, he just did it quite suddenly one day.

Do you guys really get the "spark" joy whole body feeling, like this video describes?

Most of my stuff is practical & I would be horrified to spend ££££ on new versions of stuff I still need just because the old stuff didn't "spark joy". And what if I can't find any new stuff that "sparks joy" either?

Bless her, she's so sweet! I know about the uplifting feeling of sparking joy, and it's more of a lip curling "naaaah" for me if it doesn't! Back to the clothes in my wardrobe, I made the mistake of thinking I might wear this or that, but my realisation was that I wouldn't. It was while I wasclooking for something to wear that day.

It has really really helped to see people's photos on the facebook group. I'm a very visual person!