Magic of Decluttering - The KonMari method

I've taken to listening to audiobooks lately, and found a gem on Hoopla. Have you heard of the KonMari method of tidying? This book by Marie Kondo The Magic of Tidying is about decluttering and keeping only items that inspire and spark joy in you. Its a quick read or a quick listen, about four hours and you too will be motivated to declutter. The most important thing to figure out before you declutter is to determine your "Why?" by stating your reason you want to declutter and then asking Why. Do this three times to find the root cause of why you want to declutter. You will find it has nothing to do with getting rid of junk, but is probably a reason related to relationships or people or freedom or something.

For me, I stated to my DH that I wanted to declutter the pool table rec room so we could play billiards again. It is currently surrounded by excess stockpile bottles of shampoo and bounce and boxes of napkins and toilet paper. On top are piles of items we dug through boxes to find but then did nothing with. The room is a mess. Anyway, my second level Why question is Why do I want to play pool? Well, its a hobby both my DH and I enjoy and we never do it anymore. Why? Well we used to play pool with friends on Friday nights and party, but now we hang around the backyard by the firepit and listen to music or watch some sporting event on TV.  We have replaced billiards with hanging outside. Which is fine, but there are lots of times during the year when it is not very fun to hang around outside - like in July in Florida where we have gotten twenty inches of rain! Or in January when its near forty degrees which is cold even with the nice warm fire blazing.

Anyway, I've announced I'm going to declutter and follow the method in the book which states to start with the most non personal items which are clothes. Several years ago when we remodeled our bedrooms. living room, and family rooms we purged bags and bags of clothes, books, mimentos and papers. However, a good majority of them just ended up in boxes in the rec room and our spare guest room. Our guest room has become our stockpile room and it is too a mess. We probably have over a thousand rolls of TP and a 50 rolls of paper towels, over 100 toothbrushes, 100 shampoos, dozens of bottles of cleaning products and every other personal care item you could need or want. We undoubtedly will have to have a garage sale coming up in the fall to get rid of all the excess I plan to discard. And it will be a good one. Once its outside the house for a yard sale, it will not be coming back in - to the curb it will go.

my sock drawer before decluttering

So, the process of tidying will begin with my clothes, since DH has declined to participate even though he has dresser drawers of clothing which he has not touched since we moved to Florida over twenty four years ago! Literally, he has not opened the drawers on these dressers for many years. I have graciously agreed to leave his stuff alone, but I secretly hope that he will be motivated by seeing all the stuff I will discard. I personally have over two hundred tshirts alone. My drawers are overflowing with brand new pairs of socks, and underwear still in the cute little Victoria Secret package. That's another rule of the book, when you purchase something be sure to remove tags and packaging and properly fold it into the KonMari rectangle and find a place to vertically store it in a drawer or closet.


6 months later...
Wow, I need to get remotivated. I wrote this post 6 months ago and actually did a purge of clothing, we got rid of a dozen garbage bags of clothes. But I felt very little joy from my clothing. I actually threw out too much and didn't have any of those old grungy tshirts to do lawnwork, or painting in. So, I dug out some of my favorites that I had tossed and put some shirts on my shelf. I also didn't continue to other items beyond clothing. I'll have to start over and read the book again because I do have too much clutter.


If you're feeling to love and want to declutter, another blogger is having a challenge in January to declutter with a nifty calendar plan, check it out at Simply Stacie. The calendar is a printable pdf so you can print it out and hang it up to follow all month.

2013 No Spend Challenge - Clothing

Now that I've laid out what we spent last year, you can see that there are a few areas we can really cut back. Some of you might think our allowance of $6000 is excessive (which I think too - but DH won't cut back), but at least any of it that is not spent is sitting in a savings account. I usually only get $100/month in cash from my allowance and put the rest in my savings. DH does the same. So really we have a good chunk in extra savings accounts if the "household" ever needs it for an emergency.

 

But the one category I really want to cut back on is spending, specifically online shopping, and specifically clothing. We have a lot of clothes. Just this morning as I was getting dressed for work, I needed to select a pair of shoes to go with my khaki pants. And of course, there are several pairs of tan/khaki shoes in my closet to choose from, in addition to a few brown pairs too that I could wear. I really only need one pair of light colored shoes to wear with my light colored pants. I'm probably not going to throw out perfectly good shoes, but I can put my foot down and quit buying any more shoes. Or any more pants. Or any more shirts. And I certainly don't need another Tshirt in my entire life, with hundreds on hand already.

 

So our challenge this year is to not purchase any clothing. I'm debating whether that should include free clothing. I'm thinking it should include any clothing whether it was paid for, or free. I can just pass on those $10 GC for free clothes at Victoria's Secret, and not reach out my hand to get that free Tshirt at events.

 

In addition to stopping any more clothing from coming into our home, we need to continue to purge excess items we have but no longer wear. Part of our challenge is to empty every single closet in our home this year and only put back the stuff we use. We already did that to our front hall closet and now the floor is actually empty! Prior to the cleanout, we had a large bucket of stuff that took up four square feet of space. The stupid thing is, we didn't touch that bucket for over ten years. We didn't miss anything in it.

 

So this year, even though I know there will be items I'll want to get, I won't.