Category: life-changing magic

All the energy I was putting into finding a new house (and worrying about it) is now getting redirected to improving everything about the existing house that’s even vaguely bothered me before. Such as the kitchen drawers:

The knives never had a home in the silverware drawer and the baking drawer was a “chuck it in and hope it opens again” situation. NOT ANYMORE!

The “pantry” (the cold storage in the basement) also got organized:That also used to be a “chuck it in and hope you find it again” situation but I even broke out the label maker so it should STAY organized this time.

I feel a little manic doing all of this but, as I told Doc, “We would have had to go through it all anyway if we were moving and I’d have had to organize the new house.”

To which he said, “If you haven’t made your bed, throw it away!!”

I decided to organize and re-do all the fabric storage in the house, which involved opening up bins and boxes in three different places, consolidating/throwing away, and moving the boxes up and down two flights of stairs. (It also involved wondering why I kept tiny scraps of garment fabrics…what was I thinking?)

It’s mostly done now (I have to re-fold the fabric in open storage) and it’s always satisfying to go from looking like the room threw up…

…to being able to see the closet floor (!).

Monday I had the MS Society truck come and pick up the last handful of items that got Kon Mari-ed, which means I’m done with most of it (there’s still two boxes of old letters and papers in the closet I need to deal with, but those won’t get donated).

I have had a couple moments where I thought, “I wish I still had that,” but it’s only been with clothes–and then I remember that said clothes were too small/ill-fitting and didn’t get worn anyway. Thinking hard about “will this bring me joy?” has really helped me not buy impulse sale items, and my drawers are still all sorted like filing cabinets. I think it was pretty clear I was an initial convert, but nine months later I’m still a believer.

And now that I’ve done the bulk of “uncluttering,” I think this quote from the book really resonates:

I spent most of Saturday Kon Mari cleaning the sewing and knitting supplies. There isn’t as much of a dramatic reveal with this room as there was with the closet because the majority of the craft detritus was stuffed in boxes–notions I’d inherited from friends, fabric scraps from projects ten years ago, patterns that aren’t my measurements anymore, yarn that only had a few yards left in the ball, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. 

So I went through all the boxes and bins and got those sorted. And I folded all the fabric to sit on the shelf vertically (except for the knits on the top shelf), which is one of my favorite Magic Tidying ideas.

I even got all the thread out of a box and onto a thread rack, which of course has to go in rainbow order.

(That’s not really a Kon Mari rule, though; that’s just me.)

It was only a matter of time before people started making fun of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The book’s a translation from Japanese, so there’s a bit of a stiff cadence to it, and the concepts have a high “woo” factor for people not inclined to like a lot of woo with their organizing. Trust The Toast to create a hilarious parody of it. Some high points:

“Have you ever owned anything? This is why you cannot forgive any of your former lovers. Things like ‘having chairs’ is preventing you from living your best life, and also you should throw away any item of clothing you’re not currently wearing. If it’s not on your skin, you don’t really love it, do you?”

“Possessions are 100% fatal. Turtles don’t keep anything they can’t use, and they helped Charles Darwin discover the Galápagos Islands. Throw away all of your grandmother’s jewelry. Now she can sleep in peace.”

“Place every cloth napkin you own in a sacred circle on the cleanest table you own (tables should be either a rock from the sea or a book that is enchanted by one or fewer spells). If the napkin does not rise up of its own volition and perform a flawless Japanese tea ceremony for you, you were not meant to be. You should burn it, along with all of your professional regrets.”

It’s ok, Magic Tidying Book. I still believe in you, even if I can laugh at your parody.

Over the weekend, I did more Magic Tidying! Thrill to this picture of my organized linen closet!

I only wish I had remembered to take a “before” picture. It would have made this twice as thrilling.

Doc was working over the weekend, so instead of hiking, I decided to plow through and finish sorting all the clothes according to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

SO. MANY. CLOTHES.

Here is a before of the closet. Bless my heart, I thought it was pretty good. I could get everything out! I could see what was in there!  But I didn’t really like anything in there. And it was perhaps a little…overwhelming:

So everything came out. And I took everything out of storage and the other closets that also had filled up (ahem) and the all got sorted based on what made me happy. This was the “dresses” category, a particularly deep pile:

And this is what 60 pairs of shoes look like, if you’re wondering. At that point on Sunday I felt like a hoarder. But it was also empowering to finally go through it and see what’s there and decide what needed to move on.

When it was all done, this is what the closet looked like. Fresh! Open! Sorted! Filled with things that I knew fit me and that I wanted to wear!

The dresser drawers all got the KonMari treatment, too–folded and “filed” and arranged in color order:

I know I sound like I’m pushing Scientology–“It will all make sense if you just read the book!”–but Marie Kondo’s advice is really and truly life-changing. I’d been hanging on to dresses I made eight years ago, shoes I wore in college, things I didn’t like or that didn’t fit just because I thought I “should” keep them–because I spent money or time on them or because I might need them again. They were a psychological and literal weight.

As I keep trying to explain to my family (who think I have joined Scientology), this approach isn’t about just getting rid of  “x”% of your things or only keeping an arbitrary number of clothes. It’s just about making sure you know what’s in your house and that you like having it in there. Life-changing, I tell you.