marie kondo derail / decluttering chatter!

I think a lot of the problem people are having with her is that they're seeing minimalism and clutter as black and white, either you live a perfectly normal lifestyle of having too much stuff and are just fine with it, or you're one of those people who has one plate, one cup, one bowl, and apparently infinite free time to wash them every time they get dirty. They don't see the cases like me where I was very nearly living in a hoarder house because people keep giving me gifts and I make a lot of impulse buys, and I don't have a good scale of when a shirt is too worn to be part of my wardrobe anymore. I had 66 short sleeve t shirts. I'm not joking. I counted.

The KonMari method is so centrist and so personal that it's perfect for nearly every situation. If it makes you happy to hold onto the fifty Hard Rock Cafe shirts you've gotten in your travels, that's part of the method and Marie Kondo supports you. There was a story I heard about a woman who chose to fill her room with antique pinball machines because that's what sparked joy for her. That definitely doesn't fit with the western idea of minimalism, but it's perfectly in line with Tidying Up.

 

I also want to tell my decluttering story! I started in my kitchen, thinking it would take about an hour to get the trash off of my counters and out of my fridge. Four hours later I had seven bags of trash, three from my counters, two from my cupboards, two from my fridge. It was seriously gross in there. Now my cupboards/fridge/freezer are nearly empty, just because there's no more expired food taking up space and I actually know what I have to eat. It makes making food a lot easier.

 

yeah!!!!!
for me it was definitely books papers and clothes and i was able to donate or recycle so many things....and this was a year or two ago, i wasnt very thorough then so i might give things another run-through this spring, hmm

 

I'm probably going to be decluttering a bit, come spring, because Reasons (which...folks who've been following along my bijou blogette or my ITA thread will know about, but I'd rather not go into right here), but the reasons I dig my feet in about it is 1) it takes some effort for me to figure out when I no longer really need a thing in my life any more, if it's a thing I enjoyed having previously, 2) a lot of the stuff I have is either stuff I like, or stuff that I figure I'll still need six months from now, and 3) a lot of what I'm usually being urged to get rid of is...stuff that I really like having. (For example: my yarn stash. Which yes, I'm not using All of it right now, but it takes up less room than the board games that my roommates have - which take up three whole bookshelves, requiring additional bookshelves to be purchased so that there would be space to put things that aren't board games.)

 

Huh. I'll have to check this whole thing out--my room is an Amethyst-tier disaster and I do have a bunch of shit I never use and don't care about...

 

Funny enough I discovered the show though tumblr and it came at just the right time because I’m starting on the process of paring down for when I move in with my bf later in the year.

I’m one of those people that feels like objects have feelings but like people if you don’t get along it’s better for all involved to move on. It can be hard at the moment but you feel a lot better in the long run. So far I’ve donated two big boxes of books and clothes that I was keeping because they were gifts but didn’t really like.

That’s just my way of interpreting her teachings. It works for me but might not for others so to each their own.

 

My wife and I just started on our clothes today - she has a week off work, and apparently what we wanted to do for fun was... this. I'm definitely having a "what the fuck has adulthood done to my brain" moment, but on the other hand, I was definitely One Of Those Kids like Marie talks about in her first book (always fascinated by organizing things).

 

Clothes discarded yesterday (altho the discard pile is currently still an ameoba in the corner of our bedroom), and today we started sorting/folding/storing. My half of the dresser is done as of a few minutes ago! We still gotta come up with something smart for shawls, though :/ bc we are Shawl People and our collection is only likely to grow.

Also: folding clothes like this is actual witchcraft

 

Arrange them on clothes hangers, maybe? So that they're hanging from the inside of the triangle, and you can probably get at least two (maybe more) shawls on the same hanger that way.

 

We've got a mix of shapes and sizes (from little decorative crescents to a full circle shawl 5' in diameter), and I'm honestly a bit worried abt some of the fibers stretching under their own weight, or the more delicate ones catching on rough spots on hangers :/ I'm thinking maybe carefully roll or fold them and then put them in one of the cubbies of my closet-bar-shelf thingie.

 

Final shawl solution: big triangles & circle got folded into approximate rectangles and then folded up to stand, crescents & wings just got rolled from tip to tip. They all fit, mostly, in two cubbies.

 

Kon-maried my linen closet. It turns out I actually have four sets of sheets, not three, and the extra set got buried under the towels enough years ago that the rumples in it wouldn’t come out until I washed them.

I’m not even getting rid of stuff right now, just finding everything and finding places for it. Also the tri-fold method is legit magic and I know how many towels I have now.

 

Nice!!! I'm gonna be getting a shelf so i actually have enough storage space for my room and doing the same sometime in the next week :3 I just need to measure the little dip in the wall I want to put something it to make sure the one I want the most will actually fit.. problem being I don't hae a tape measure cx

 

konmaried our closet, partially! we don't have a dresser, so everything (literally everything) gets hung up right now except for pajamas and underwear. but i went through our clothes, and pulled out like... 25% of it that's just stuff that we never do wear and are never going to. gonna have lebesgue look through the donation pile today, to make sure i'm not throwing out anything of theirs that's sentimental (i think i saved all of the sentimental stuff, but i could totally be wrong).

 

i started my first forreal clean out yesterday bc im on spring break this week and hoo boy
it wasnt too bad because i have done mini declutterings in the past but ive never had the time to do it all......But I Do Now

 

so yesterday was clothing; ive done books already, so today is my Many Miscellaneous and Papers

Spoiler: checklist

1. inside desk cabinet (papers, notebooks)
2. countertops
3. inside non-clothing drawers
4. closet floor
5. closet top shelf
6. jewelry box (big)
7. jewelry box (small)

after this i can put my frequently used art supplies inside desk cabinet
put candles and other decorative things that arent used as frequently inside the shelf cabinet