I just finished the best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and it was life-changing. Not kidding. Mind blown.
This book describes the “konmari” method of tidying your space, and the main takeaway for me is to only keep the items that bring you joy. If an item doesn’t “spark joy” when you touch it, it has no business being in your home. Also, this whole “touching” part is very important. You should touch every single item when tidying, and not just look at it.
Another Takeaway is to tidy by category and not by location. Don’t decide to tackle your closet first. Instead, gather all clothes from every closet and drawer in your entire house and put them on the floor in the same place. It is very important to tidy in the correct order: clothes, books, papers, komono (miscellaneous), and lastly sentimental items. The order is very important. I have donated three trash bags so far and i am only through clothes. This is really rocking my world.
Also, storage. Store all similar items in the same place. Clothes should fit and be stored in your closet. If you only keep clothes that bring you joy, your clothes will fit in your closet and there is no need for a coat closet, under-bed storage, and a storage unit (which is exactly what we have going on in our place). She also gives a full tutorial on how to fold clothes. The focus is on “vertical storage” and not piling things on top of each other. See my konmari folding in action below!
Before: everything in piles, can’t see anything.
After: konmari perfection!
Can you believe this is the same drawer? Tony saw this and asked where all these t-shirts came from. These t-shirts were all in this drawer. You just couldn’t see them. Magic.