KonMari: The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
The KonMari Method
I had heard of the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo before, so when my Mom offered to lend me the book to read while she visited me, I immediately took her up on it.
I find the method very intriguing. Having moved four times in the past five years and knowing that there is a high probability that I will have to move some time in the future (I’m only 26 after all!), I have developed an aversion to my things. Especially the things that I have packed and unpacked during each move and have still not used in all of the places that I have lived.
My main takeaways from the book:
- One of the reasons that we keep things is because we feel guilty about them for some reason: they are still good quality, but we just don’t like them; we think we might use them someday so we don’t want to get rid of them… etc. If this is the only reason that we are keeping them, we should get rid of them. These items can help teach us something about ourselves (why don’t I like to wear that thing?) but at that point the item has served its purpose in our life and we can say ‘Thank you’ and get rid of it.
- It’s possible to store things vertically. If you fold clothes correctly, they actually will stand up. The book doesn’t illustrate this as well as this YouTube video.
I had to return the book to my mother, so before I gave it back to her I make some sketchnotes of the main points that I wanted to remember. Here they are:
In case you are interested in a version that works offline, I converted these to a pdf which you could download. The content, as with all of my sketchnotes, does not belong to me but rather to the author, Marie Kondo.
My Progress
I’ve been able to apply the KonMari method to three categories at this point: Clothes, Electronics, and Books.
My overall impression of the results has been very positive. My main surprise was that in picking up and touching all of my clothes, the clothes that I actually love the most are some of the ones that I wear the least. I pretty much always wear jeans and T-Shirts, but when going through my clothes I realized that the clothes I love the most are the pretty dresses and blouses that I own. But I don’t wear them that often, because I feel too fancy. But when I forced myself to get out of my comfort zone a little bit, I found I really appreciated wearing things that were just a little bit nicer than my usual casual attire.
I’ve posted the ‘After’ pictures from the categories that I have already finished. If you are curious about the rest of the categories, you can follow me on instagram. I will probably be posting updates there.