The KonMari Method: One Year Later
Last year, I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and Corey and I went through the KonMari method to get our home all organized. I blogged the entire process, and had so much fun chatting with you guys about it. I still get tons of questions and emails about how it went, how we’re doing now, and if our home is still clean.
So, how are we holding up?
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Well, if my guest room is any indication, we’ve totally relapsed. But, it’s really just unorganized – not full of things we don’t need. Some of it is waiting to get returned to various places, and some of it is waiting for a new home elsewhere in the house, or to be needed again (for example, Jackson’s crib). So, while it’s a total disaster zone (bad enough that I won’t even show you a photo!), it’s organized chaos.
Or, at least, that’s what I’m telling myself. It’s probably a lie. But that’s okay.
Other than the guest room, however, I think we’ve done a surprisingly good job of keeping up with what we learned from reading through The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. There are a few key things that I’ve noticed we’re doing differently, and so I thought I’d share what has changed over the last year and how it’s affecting our lives.
- We don’t buy things we don’t need. (Usually.) I’ve noticed that since we went through the process of decluttering our entire home, we’re both a lot more conscious of what we’re bringing into our home and whether or not we truly love it. I used to be the type to buy home decor or clothing that I only kind of liked because it was on sale or I was in the mood to shop. But now, I’m much more thoughtful about the choices that I make, and unless I feel like a piece will really bring value to my home or life, I don’t waste my money (or my storage space!) on it. I still make the occasional mistake, but in general, I’m a lot better about avoiding purchases that I don’t need.
- We’re quick to donate things we haven’t used in a while. It used to be like pulling teeth to get Corey to agree to donate anything. He likes to hold onto stuff forever and ever amen, just in case we need it someday. Me? I’d rather get rid of it and replace it down the line if we end up missing it. We’ve learned to strike a balance between our two attitudes – if we have a logical place to store something and a reasonable expectation that we’ll need it in the future, it stays. If we don’t have a place to keep it or we have absolutely zero indication that we’ll never need it again, it goes. It’s a simple (and pretty obvious) system, but it works for us and has helped us purge a lot of unnecessary clutter!
- Everything has a place. Everything! This is the number one thing that has helped us stay on top of the clutter in our home since we got it all organized. It can be so easy to just shove something in a drawer and say that it belongs there, but if you don’t take the time to actually think about what makes sense for that item, and if it doesn’t have a particular place to go within the drawer, the whole system will fall apart pretty quickly. I’ve learned that for me, I stay way more organized if everything I access on a regular basis has a very specific spot. For example, my scissors go in a very specific spot in the drawer in the kitchen. Not just tossed in there. And my washi tape goes into a specific little basket inside a drawer in my desk. Once I started taking the time to find little “mico-spots” for things in my house (is that a thing? I just made it up.) and stopped trying to just call a drawer or a shelf good enough, I discovered it was a million times easier to find everything I needed, and it was so much less painful to put it away. The little things make a big difference, y’all.
- We’ve realized how few toys Jackson actually needs. Once we really did a good purge of the things in our home, I started to pay more attention to the toys Jackson actually plays with. And guess what? It was about a quarter of the toys we own. As soon as I realized this, I went through and cleared out any toys he hadn’t touched in a while, and not only did he not notice, he began playing with what was left way more often. Since then, I’ve been sure to do a quick perusal every few months and either donate or put away things he’s not really using. It has made a huge difference in his ability to play independently (less overwhelm means he can make a decision easier about what to play with!) and it helps my home feel way less cluttered.
- The KonMari method of folding is legit. You guys. It’s worth reading the dang book just to learn how to fold your clothes. I don’t know what it is about the method she teaches, but I swear it’s some sort of voodoo magic that lets me store three times as many clothes in a single drawer. It’s absolutely amazing and everyone should be doing it.
Obviously, some of these lessons are things we probably would have learned on our own, and I’m sure many of you are wondering why it took me so long to get my act together.
Good question. I like stuff?
Looking back over the last year and our experience with reading and implementing the things we learned in this book, I can pretty confidently say that it did change our life – albeit, in really subtle ways. I definitely feel like my house is significantly more organized (though I’ll never reach actual KonMari levels of greatness), and I find it much easier to get back on track if I fall off the wagon for a while.
One thing I have noticed, though, is that this will be an ongoing process. I feel like one year in, we’ve reached a point where it’s time for another mini-purge, and within the next few months I plan on going through our home category by category again and see what I can do to reduce our clutter even further.
Plus, I’ve got to get that guest room under control.
I’d love to hear your experiences with getting your home organized! Have you ever gone through the KonMari method?
I love the KonMari method!! I’ve always been organized, but this process brings you to a new level. Especially folding the clothing. Living in Alaska, we have a ton of clothing for work, weather, exercise, outdoor activities, etc. All stored in two small closets, two small dressers and a couple of baskets under the bed. We’ve chosen to downsize from a 3200 sqft home to a 700 sqft studio and my husband and I enjoy it so much! Our organized, little cozy space is perfect and we haven’t missed anything we’ve parted with so far.
Yes! The folding method is HUGE!
I LOVE it! I’ve been able to have the dressers leave my kids rooms. My oldest boys have totes under their beds, which means NOTHING gets thrown underneath and their small room looks bigger. My girls’ room is down to their bed and 1 piece of furniture. All their clothes are in their closet and they have a day bed with a trundle. Very minimal. The kids all love having less clothes to fold and the extra space AND having less toys to clean up. Who knew?! My husband isn’t on board completely but since I do the majority of everything only his clothes aren’t more minimal. We’ve been at it for a few months total but I started on my journey with her last year. It’s amazing how many thing have left our home! I’m about to go through everything again. The more leaves the better I understand “spark joy”.
It’s really so great, isn’t it?!
I LOVE the concept of this method, so I tried it while on the road of a 3 month trip to Iceland! I have five shirts and two of them are multi purpose…one is used for pools and the other is used as a nightgown.
Except for one of the shirts, I am really getting tired of these shirts! Believe me, they do NOT spark joy! But I need them! They are of great value to me, because without them things would get quite complicated. For instance, with the nightgown/lounge shirt, I can just slip it on after a long day of touring around the country! But joy???? NO!
SO, I am still a little stuck on the “joy” concept! Could it be that the idea of joy means something a little different in Japan than it does in the US?
Though she uses the term in California, I am still a little confused by the term “joy”….at least in this context!!! Does it include my nightgown/lounge shirt…even though the thing frustrates me no end?
THANK YOU‼️ Kate Florio
Hey, Kate! You’re actually absolutely right – there is actually no literal translation for “tokimeku”, which is the Japanese word that Marie Kondo actually uses in her book. “Spark joy” is a pretty accurate translation, according to the research I’ve done, but you have to remember that “sparking joy” can mean more than JUST something that makes you happy. For example, it makes your life easier to have those two shirts – as you said in your comment, your life would be more complicated without them. If you ask me, that’s something that sparks joy! Anything that makes your life easier or smoother is a great example of something that sparks joy. For example, my plunger doesn’t give me a thrill of happiness when I see it, but I would certainly be upset if I needed it and didn’t have one!
My suggestion in your specific scenario would be to keep the two shirts and begin to look for replacements that you find more exciting. When I have a piece of clothing that I need to keep that I don’t necessarily love, I keep it short term while I search for a replacement that TRULY makes me happy. You can see more about this concept in the updated post I recently wrote about the Konmari method for clothing – you can read it here: https://www.loveandrenovations.com/konmari-method-clothing/
I hope that’s helpful!
I HATE the KonMari folding method. I mean, it looks amazing and works well… when the drawer is full. If the drawer isn’t full, everything starts flopping and unfolding all over the place. Ugh.
Shoe boxes. Divides the drawer up into a smaller more supportive segments.
I have the book… I’ve read the book…. I’m totally on board with the book….my wonderful husband? ….not so much. I would absolutely LOVE to get on track with this method! We moved into our first home (Yay! Life Goals!) back before we were married in February of 2016. The home is a good size, 1,080 sq.ft, one story, 3 bedroom 3 bathroom kind of deal. Prior to our home purchase, we had been living in my parent’s upstairs bedroom for four years. FOUR. Everything we owned while we lived together prior to that (we lived in a two bedroom apartment) has been in boxes since then. We have no children yet, so two of the three bedrooms in our new home are currently FULL of those boxed belongings. There are things in there that I’ve completely forgotten about…all the more reason for me to get rid of it now instead of letting it sit in a box! I’m fine giving up/donating/selling things I no longer use, or have no intended use for, but my husband is not so much down with this idea.
He came from a single-parent family that moved quite often, and moreso abruptly in his later teenage years (homes abandoned due to his mother not paying rent), as well as a fire that had unfortunately destroyed most of their belongings in their last home. Since then his mother has passed away due to illness, and he is now alone. He carries a lot of the things she gave him while we lived on our own, so I have absolutely no say in those items. However, over the years he’s collected outdoor recreation, gun and car magazines that he holds on to to “reference later” (he’s a car enthusiast). We’re also gamers, so we have a collection of games ranging all the way from NES to PS4 – I play them once and get rid of them unless I know I’ll have a craving to play them again – but my husband will not sell/trade ANY. Whatsoever. Even if he doesn’t ever play them ever again.
I don’t know how to appropriately approach the idea of minimalizing or going by the glory of this wonderful book in decluttering without hurting his feelings or touching an area of his past that may be sensitive to him. Any suggestions on how to get your loved ones involved in this process if they’re not fully on board to begin with?
Congratulations on the new home! I understand what you mean, Corey wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of doing it either, haha. What I have done over the years is to focus on purging/organizing the things I do have some control over – things that are mine, things he doesn’t mind me purging, etc. Then, I’ve let him know that I have no problem with him keeping things that are sentimental to him, but he needs to figure out a way to store and organize it so that it doesn’t disrupt day-to-day life.
Once he saw how organized the rest of the house was getting and really began to notice a difference in how clean our home felt, it was really easy to get him on board with purging more! It took me many years to get him to a point where he’s comfortable with purging, but my biggest tips are not to push too hard and just do what you can without him – hopefully he’ll end up deciding to hop on board all on his own!