Episode 1, KonMari Kick-off: Clothes

This year Kate embarked on a super cleaning journey.  Hopefully you've already seen her post about five-weeks-to-less-cluttered-house. It's a great place to start if you want to feel better about your house and see results right away.

At the same time she was jumping in and forging her own path to quickly de-clutter her home, I was toying with joining the Marie Kondo craze.

Kate and I have slightly different family configurations at the moment, so different approaches seemed practical. Kate still has young kids at home, and needs quick results. My kids are in school all day, so I can put in more hours over a longer period of time without needing immediate results (basically I can turn a room into a giant mess, leave it for three days, and not worry that a toddler is going to destroy my progress).

So with that lengthy introduction, I'd like to formally announce that I am officially on the KonMari bandwagon. Does it work? I don't know yet, I'm still in the middle of the ride. But I do know I have enjoyed the progress so far. So if you're ready to make a change, come with me as I air all my dirty laundry, literally.

Today's task simplified:

Sometimes I just want someone to tell me quickly what I should do. So here is your one sentence instruction for the week: CLEAN OUT YOUR CLOTHES.

Take every pant, shirt, dress, scarf, shoe, hat, etc. that you own and put it in one room. Then seriously consider what you actually enjoy wearing, and dump the rest.

Ready? GO!


Okay, if you're like me, and you need more direction and motivation, here is the long version:

Background on me:  I was raised by a hoarder. For reals. It's as bad as you imagine. Don't get me wrong, my mom is a great person. She's very generous and loves helping people. But she also loves things, and our house was full of them. Really, really FULL. So I definitely don't come by tidiness naturally.

Background on Mari Kondo: If you're thinking about getting her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, do it. It's cheap, and it's good.  I can tell you all the steps here, but her writing is fun and inspiring and very helpful in understanding the logic behind her methods.   If you haven't read the book, here is the short version: Only own things that bring you joy (which is not the same as things that you love, more on that later). Choose what to keep, and let go of the rest. When you only own what you love, you'll take better care of it and have room to store it in a tidy manner. Sounds simple right?

Ready to jump in?  Okay, here goes.



Step one in the KonMari method is clothes. Sorting clothes is done first because it is the easiest way to practice deciding what actually brings you joy. Here's what that looks like. Take all the clothes you own, from your closet and your dresser, and anywhere else you hide them, and pile them all in one spot. Your pants and shirts, underwear and socks, dresses and coats, shoes and hat and gloves and purses, everything. EVERYTHING. All in one spot. Now walk through your house again and see what you missed. Bring it all in.

This is my pile of all the clothes I own in the world.

Now look at your pile.  Can you honestly say that everything in that pile gives you joy? Probably not.  So start picking up clothes one at a time (it must be one at a time) and look at them, really look at them. Do they bring you joy? Do you feel happy holding them? Would you buy it today if you saw it in the store? I had a lot of clothes that I loved, but they no longer made me happy (didn't fit, out of style, stained or torn). As I held those clothes up and really looked at them, I thought "I love you, but it's time for you to move on." I gave them a big hug, thanked them for the wonderful times we had together, then folded them gently into my give away bag.  Goodbye. Sound corny? It is. Did it work? Yes! Here are a handful of before and after pictures.

my closet floor (clearly those things don't look loved)

my closet floor after

my t-shirt drawer was so full I could barely get it open or closed

my t-shirt drawer after

my undies before (how embarrassing!) 

my undies after, and with room for my socks and tank tops too

I gave away so many clothes, I couldn't believe it! I am not a clothes person. I am a jeans and tee shirt kind of gal, and I felt like I didn't have too many clothes.  But I have a small closet and a small dresser that are always bursting at the seems. Clearly the problem was the size of my space and not the size of my clothes collection right? Wrong.  I started sorting and gave away three full garbage bags (about a third of my wardrobe) of just my own clothes.  (Warning, only give away your own stuff, don't give away other people's things, everyone must be responsible for sorting their own things).

every bag I fill goes strait out to my trunk, so I don't have time to look at it and second guess myself

Now all my clothes fit in my dresser and I've actually got an empty drawer left that I don't know what to put in it yet.

The best part? I love getting dressed now!  Seriously. You know that depressing feeling when you go to your closet and you have to sort past all the clothes that don't fit right in order to get to something you actually want to wear?  I don't have that anymore. I could literally walk into my closet with my eyes closed and grab anything off the rack and be happy about it. Every outfit I own makes me happy.  Every dress, every pair of pajamas, every pair of socks feel good. It's awesome!

I'd rather wear the same dress I love for three weeks in a row, than alternate it with clothes I don't like to wear.

Even if you do nothing else, I totally recommend doing your closet. It makes every day start off feeling great.

Good luck!

Marcia

P.S.  Confessions of failure. I didn't follow everything perfectly, and here are a few examples of where I strayed from the path:
1. I did keep an extra closet full of old coats. I just feel like coats are expensive and you never know when a zipper will break and you'll need a new one, so I keep a stash of a few extra coats. But they are hung up and contained to one small rack, so they don't overwhelm the living space of my house. And maybe I will feel up to parting with some of them in the future as I get deeper into this process. Or maybe they will one day create a secret portal to Narnia! Anything's possible.
2. I didn't sort hats and gloves and scarves. It's the middle of winter her, and everyone shares these supplies, and it was just too daunting to tackle right now, so I put it off.
3. Socks. *sigh* Six out of seven people in my family wear the same size socks. So sorting socks is a complicated mess in my house. We have a basket that has literally 300+ unmatched socks in it. Everyone just goes to the basket and pulls out two random socks to wear each day.  It's not a great system, but it is the system my kids have all agreed to. Consequently I can't find and match most of my socks, and I don't know which socks need thrown away yet because half matches are living all over my house. So I expect socks will never be properly sorted until after my kids have all grown up and moved away and I can finally be the boss of socks again.

So. Many. Socks.