KonMari - Category 1 - Clothes

It has begun!

This weekend I began my project based on Marie Kondo's book, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up.  My goal was to get through at least one category - amassing all of the stuff in one location in the house, going through it item-by-item, touching each thing, keeping everything that "sparked joy," discarding the rest, and finally figuring out how to organize it all, and put it all away.

This past week I worked on a project spreadsheet to keep me organized.  Each tab of my spreadsheet is a category of items containing a list of the things in that category.  My categories are specific to my belongings, but they follow Kondo's order and guidelines of clothes, then books, papers, other stuff, and sentimental items.  This weekend, the task was clothes.

My goal for this project is to follow Kondo's methods as closely as possible.  I outlined those in my previous post.  One key thing I did differently was not work on the project alone, but with my husband.  To make this even possible, before we got to work we talked about what was going to happen, why the process is about one person making decisions about his or her belongings, and what his role in would be.

1. He would not offer opinions, and I would try to not ask for his opinion, but decide for myself if something stayed or went, how to arrange the drawers and closets, etc.  
2. He was not there to make the process harder by making suggestions of how I should get rid of things, unless I asked him.  No, "oh you should try and give this to so and so."  No.  That just piles more work on me and makes me cranky.  If I give things away, though in a perfect world, I want them to go to just the right person or charity, chiefly, I want that part to be easy and I want the stuff out as fast as possible.   
3. He was there to support me by doing what I asked.  When he goes through his things, I will do the same for him.  

Except for some lapses on both of our parts, this worked pretty well.  He fetched and carried and gave me hugs and encouragement at regular intervals.

 

So, clothes.  I thought about the clothes I have, and where they were in the house, and naively assumed that going through them all would take a couple of hours, max.  Then we began pulling all of them out of closets, drawers, shelves and bins and piled them all in the front room.  Just that part of the process daunting and tiring.  I didn't want to stop working, but I was taken aback at the size of my wardrobe.  I know where it all came from.  It's the product of 20 years, with only sporadic weeding.  But seeing it all together like that was a little alarming.  Below are 4 of the 7 closets that held my clothes, and part of my shoe collection (note:  a bunch of those shoes are not mine, but you get the idea...) just to give you a taste of what we were up against.

3rd Floor Side guest room

Ball Gown closet

Office wardrobe

Craft Room closet

 

Shoes in the entryway

When we piled everything up, here's what it looked like.  It was crazy.

I hardly knew where to begin.  I needed to work on something discrete and manageable. That turned out to be shoes.  I looked at them all.  I touched them all. I didn't even realize that I had so many pairs of shoes.  I mean, I sort of knew, but not really.  In the end, I got rid of 14 pairs and kept 13, including 3 pairs of dance shoes.

Saying goodbye to my beloved bunny slippers...

Next I was ready to tackle socks and underwear.  It turned out that I had 14 pairs of brand new stripey socks in a plastic bin in my craft room!  The perfect place to forget about them!  Staying true to Kondo's method, we took the tags off of them put them in with all of the rest of the items so I can't continue putting off wearing new items just because they are new.  This was also my first opportunity to try out Kondo's folding techniques.  Sure enough, not only did all of the socks and underwear I was keeping, including the new socks, fit into one dresser drawer, so did my bathing suit and the undergarments I have for formal dresses, which were always hiding elsewhere.  Here's a before and after: 

Sock drawer - before...

...and after

Shirts were next.  I did refold all of them, and sort them partly by color and partly by use.  I will try and keep them this way.  I love the amount of space in my re-done drawer.  I breathe better every time I see it.

Before...

...after

I went on to do pants, work tops, bottoms and dresses, scarves, formal dresses, dance clothes, hats, jewelry, tights/stockings, sweaters, coats, and bags.  In the end I amassed 8 contractor bags of clothes for charity, 3 bags of clothes and accessories for my dance group to pick through, at least 3 bags of trash, some specific items for specific people, and, many thousands of the item that must grow in my house, hangers!  Because I was getting rid of so much hanging stuff, I took the opportunity to change as many of the hangers as possible to the ones I like and get rid of the rest.  My very patient husband not only helped me with this, but bundled up all of the like hangers in hopes they will be useful to some thrift store.

At the end of the day on Saturday, when I was finished going through all of the clothes, but not some of the other stuff, I didn't have a great sense of calm or relief.  I felt mixed - pleased that I had done so much, unsure if I had gotten rid of enough, and really unsure that I had truly used the "spark joy" methodology in keeping what I did.  Also, although the dresser drawers were in place, the rest of the clothes were all jumbled up in the wrong closets.  All of this was unsettling.

On Sunday the first thing I did was reorganize all of the closets - re-hanger everything, and take another look at all of it.  I am now only occupying 4 closets!  I only have to remember where things ended up!  Here are two closet "after" shots.

By mid-afternoon on Sunday, I had gone through everything in the clothes category, and I felt great about it.  Nothing is hiding in a bag on a closet shelf where I forget about it.  All of my jewelry is in one place that makes sense to me.  My closet choices take into account where the cat likes to hide and shed all over my long dresses.  Everything has a place!  I'm excited!  My mixed feelings from Saturday were gone, which was a relief.

I didn't do everything the KonMari way.  Two things in particular:  I didn't arrange the items in a given closet by color, but instead grouped things by type.  Almost everything is black, purple, or red to begin with, so arranging from light to dark is kind of a non-starter for me.  Also, I didn't automatically assume that "maybe" means it has to go.  There are things that I really do like, and wanted to keep and commit to wearing that I forgot I had.  If I wear them and decide I don't like how they look any more, I'll get rid of them then.

I feel like I now have a better sense of my wardrobe and finite choices about what to wear.  This really just makes my like easier.  And I love that feeling of not discovering a pair of earrings in a drawer that I love and have forgotten about, or dislike, but yet trip over every time I'm looking for something else and find them taking up drawer space.  The key will be to see if I can keep up this organization system, and keep things tidy, not add things unless I'm filling a particular gap, and commit to using new things right away.  Overall, I feel more mindful about my clothes, and not over-burdened by that pile I had at the beginning.  As soon as I can get to the thrift shop and get rid of all of the discards, it will be even better.

I am eager to move on to the next category:  books.  I have part of next weekend to do this, but after that, weekends are a bit scarce, so I envision my tidy-everything-in-the-whole-house-all-at-once will easily expand to fill at least the next 6 months!

Tea party readiness...

Okay, this post has very little to do with tea...

A couple of weekends ago, I hosted my first tea party of the year.  It wasn't really an on-purpose tea party, but a get-together in the guise of a meeting that just happened to occur at teatime.  I needed no more of an excuse to make tea sandwiches and cinnamon chip scones for three.

I love having people over and tea parties and hosting parties in general, and, in fact, any excuse to use all of my tea and entertaining things, of which I seem to have quite a bit.  But other than not having enough time to do it, which is always true, there are a couple of things that make having people over more of a challenge for me:

1)  My house is not in good enough shape.  I know, I know, most people, and friends in particular don't care what your house looks like (except for the ones that do).  But I care.  In my dreams, my house would be neat and clutter-free, which makes cleaning easier in the first place, so that when someone is coming over, it would only require a quick going over to be my standard of ready.  Instead, I either depend on my friends not noticing  (or not saying anything, or not being visibly uncomfortable) or go through a cleaning frenzy which is effective, but exhausting, before I even get to the fun part of making food or setting the table.

2)  I have so many serving pieces, tea pots, sets of china, napkin rings, and on, and on, carefully stored away that I don't remember what I have, where it is, and so don't remember to use it.  Or, I have things I consider to be "good" that go untouched, just as my mother and my grandmother before me never used them ever.

This jumble of thoughts coincided with a book coming to the top of my Hold list at the library that I'd been eager to read for some time:  the best selling book by Japanese author and de-cluttering expert Marie Kondo, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up.  

If you look on the internet you'll find that people have feelings about this book.  Some have found it transformational, some think it's nonsense, and every opinion in-between.  On a first read, I think it provides a good framework for a task I've been wanting to do anyway.  Here are some of the key points (with some of my opinions sprinkled in):

-Be committed to tidying.  Have a reason why you want to have a tidy house and keep it that way, whether you more time in your life to do other things other than de-cluttering all the time, or you need the mental energy for something else.  Whatever it is, know what it is and why you are doing this.
-Tidy the whole house all at once, not piecemeal, not for an hour at a time, but as an on-going, marathon project until you are done.
-De-clutter by category, not by room - you don't know where duplicates are hiding until you see them all together, and if you tidy by room, chances are you are mainly moving things around, instead of truly sorting through them, and then finding a permanent home for the things you are keeping
-Discard first, and then find storage for everything.  Most likely you already have more than enough bookcases, plastic bins, etc.

-Tidy in the right order:  clothes, books, miscellany, and sentimental items.  You can create sub-categories for each of these broad categories, but follow this order which takes you from the easiest to the hardest things to deal with.
-Keep the things that "spark joy."  That phrase is a bit much for me, but my take on it is a non-judgmental one:  Keep the things you love.  Get rid of the rest.  Don't fall prey to the idea that you'll use it or wear it someday.  Likely you won't.  If you need to have multiples of things, fine, but be purposeful about it, not random.  Kondo wants you to actually pile up all of the things in one category in one place, and pick up each item to help you decide whether or not to keep it.
-It's not only beautiful things that can spark joy.  You may choose to keep things that make your life easier, have a high degree of functionality, or are useful everyday.  Be reasonable - household cleaning products are not going to spark joy, but you still need them.
-Tidying and cleaning are different things.  Tidying has to do with objects; cleaning has to do with dirt. 
-Don't keep things because someone else wants you to, because they had sentimental value at one kind, or out of obligation because someone gave it to you.  Instead, appreciate the moment of acquisition, or the sentiment behind the gift, or the generosity of the giver, and let the item go.
-Tidying is an opportunity to assess your current preferences and tastes.  Focus not on getting rid of things, but instead on keeping only things that you love, use, and want near you.
-Don't tidy/discard things that are not yours - that's rude.  Don't let others sway you to keep things you can let go of because they might want them, or for other sentimental reasons.

So, the project begins this weekend - perfect for the predicted snow accumulation.  As Kondo demands, I'll start with my clothes, including my shoes, which I have scattered in closets, bins, and drawers all over the house (I just remembered that I have two pairs of shoes at the office.  Home they come).

I'll use this space to document my progress.  I expect it to take the better part of the year.  But when it's all done, I hope to have more time and more head space to work on crafts, write tea book reviews, and have you all over for a party...