Howdy folks.
Some kind of crazy tidying and organising bug got me over the holidays, and even before the New Year bells rang, I began whittling away at the accumulations of things around me, those little drifts of stuff that collect here and there, in a drawer, on a window ledge, above a fire. Then when the rain stopped long enough for me to sprint across the garden to the shed, I tackled a stash.
[Side note: not The stash, but A stash - more specifically my stash of yarn.]
Last year, we remodelled our bedroom and substituted a gargantuan built-in wardrobe for something slightly smaller. While all of that was happening, my stash of yarn - organised into 4 clear plastic boxes - was sent to the shed to await repatriation. Over the summer my knitting mojo has been fairly elusive and not much has happened (see this if you don't believe me), but with Christmas and all, I picked up my needles again and the mojo was back.
Kondo's approach to tidying/decluttering is to discard first and then organise. She advocates gathering things into one place, and handling everything as you decide whether to keep or not. Her test involves asking yourself if something gives you joy. For the stash I used a 'do I want to knit with this?' test.
It was surprisingly easy to part with a lot of stuff: novelty bobbly yarns; squeaky acrylic; single balls of chunky yarn; half a pack of green wool yarn - I used the other half to knit a nice cardigan, but couldn't imagine making anything else in that colour; a whole pile of slubbed cotton yarn in bright pink, and something similar in black which I've had since the 1990s, Habu paper yarn which I've had for about 5 years but never worked out what I would do with...
I also let go of two very lovely handknit Aran sweaters that my maternal grandmother made. They were made for my dad, and I have had them for at least 10 years. I tried them on (again). They still made me look like a lumpy sausage. My husband tried them on too. They made him look like a badly dressed schoolboy, wearing a too small hand me down. I hope they find good new homes with people that they fit.
Other things were definitely on the keep pile - all of my nice hand dyed sock yarn, and plain 4 ply for baby things, small piles of nice DK yarn, some odds and ends of mohair, and some cones of grey and teal yarn that I have distant plans for. I managed to hunt out all the little project bags concealed around the house and gather them together.
The end result was a big pile of things
To
Go
Away.
We donated it to a local charity shop later that day (the Bethany Shop next to Summerhall in case you are interested).
And, the rest of the yarn was organised into 2 clear plastic boxes, and stowed without drama in the wardrobe. Tada!
One box is mostly DK or heavier weight yarn, and the other is 4 ply, sock yarn, lace weight and other special skeins.
It's nice having my yarn nearby again, so I can squish it whenever I want. It feels like a good to be clearing out and clarifying like this.
My next target is books, and then after that I will have to take on
the
fabric
stash.
Cue scary music.
I caught the Kondo bug a wee while ago, in the middle of a bedroom decorating/sorting project. The timing was perfect: I was already in the mood for getting rid of stuff, and I devoured her book (the magic art of tidying and decluttering) for insights, tips and know-how.
I wrote about my thoughts at the time, and I've been thinking about it all again - since I find myself on the brink of another purge. Did any of it make a difference? Was it just another clutter diet/decluttering recipe book to add to the pile and quickly forget?
First things first: I have not Kondoed the whole of my home/life in the way that she advocates. I live with 4 other people (one adult, three children) and they have their own stuff, only some of which I have influence over!
I have approached some things (e.g. clothes) fairly systematically in the way that Marie Kondo suggests. Most is hanging in my wardrobe, and the rest is folded - in the Kondo way - in drawers. I really like her approach - being able to see everything easily in one place. It makes it easier to see what you have got; it makes it harder to forget things; it makes it easier to rotate and vary your outfits.
One of the consequences of placing folded clothes on their edges (in drawers), rather than putting them in piles, is that it allows for effortless rotation. I already did this for my handknit socks, but I now also do it for underwear too: freshly laundered and folded items are added at the back of the drawer, while items to be worn are almost always taken from the front (I do make the occasional exception!) This means that each item is now being worn regularly. There are numerous advantages to this: less time needed for dressing in the mornings; everything is getting worn - so favourites are lasting longer, and old things don't languish for ages before they are discarded.
I have also been working on gathering things into single locations - another of Kondo's central tenets - everything together. I recently found myself looking holding a handbag and wondering where to put it. A wee whisper in my head told me to put it with the other bags - and so I did. I'm working on this with the children's toys too - but that's a rather steeper mountain to climb(!)
Apart from these rather practical things, one of the more personal changes has been about joy and enjoyment. Although asking yourself whether a particular book or vase or thing brings you joy seems rather, um, pretentious, I have come back to the idea of joy several times when trying to decide what to do with something. Using joy as a benchmark is good because it cuts through the 'I should keep it because...' dialogues; it's a high hurdle - and it gives me permission to get rid of things. And, you know, I can't think of anything (so far) that I have regretted giving away.
Another by-product of Kondo, has been an appreciation for the fit between space and stuff. I realise (maybe I'm just late to the party here?) that it is possible - to make stuff fit into the space allocated. If it doesn't fit, then the strategy should be to make it fit, not accommodate the overflow somewhere else. I am slowly coming to the conclusion - thanks to Marie Kondo - that my next step is to deal with my stash. It no longer fits into its hidey holes, and is starting to encroach on and into all sorts of places where it doesn't belong. I have to make it fit into the space allocated. Nibbling away at the edges with a project here and project there is unlikely to do it, and I need to do something a lot more radical. I'm not sure what, but it's going to be my priority for 2016. If you've got any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!
Has Marie Kondo's book changed my life? Yes, and no. My home is far from clutter free, and far from tidy, but some of it is more organised, and the transformation is gradual rather than radical. Readers might also like to know that my husband now folds and arranges his drawers in the same way as Kondo. That's life changing!
Last weekend I gave in, powered up the kindle and downloaded *that* book about tidying and read it in two or three sessions.
It's an easy read, with lots of nice stories about clients/former clients, and some clear thoughts and advice about how to declutter and tidy your home (and life). I did gobble it up pretty quickly, indicating that I was quite eager to absorb all the life-tidying advice/principles on offer.
It certainly made me think, and I have been tidying a lot since I finished reading it (but I haven't done it all, and I haven't done it in any particular order - I am a Konmari rebel). I realised that I already *knew* some of the things Kondo recommends. Like the thing about folding and storing things on edge, rather than in piles. I have got one drawer that stays tidy, where you can see the contents in one glance and, don't you know, the contents are folded Kondo style and lined up on their edges.
Anyway, I like some of her ideas, and I have been using them to good effect. Drawers are being reorganised, and clothes refolded in the Kondo way. It's nice to open a drawer and see everything that's inside - rather than see the tops of piles, or - more usually in my house - a random jumble of stuff.
An amazing thing happened when I organised the bean's drawers in the Kondo style. I put most of the clothes away, but hadn't quite finished folding and stashing his shorts. Later, he folded and put them away himself, which was good. But, when I opened the drawer I realised that he had spontaneously folded and placed them in the drawer in the same way as I had.
Totally brilliant.
I hadn't asked him to do it that way. I hadn't explained how to do it, or shown him how I was folding his things. He just did it.
So, it's good then? Well, yes, but no. Some of the advice just doesn't work for me. Do it all (declutter and tidy) in one 6 month period - okay. But never again?
Really?
You don't have children do you Marie?
Children grow and develop, and as part of that process families have to go through a regular cycle of acquiring new things and disposing of old ones. If you have children in a range of sizes/ages then it is patently absurd not to hand some items (clothes/books/toys) from one child to the next. Add to that the constant flow of paper and objects that come into the home with children, and the tidy 'once' rule soon breaks down.
I am happy to throw things away - the broken toys, the beads dropped on the floor, the dog-eared card/certificate/picture that has been in the bottom of someone's bag for a fortnight. But I can't and don't police all of the trinkets and favourite sticks/stones/shells that my children collect. These are regularly cleaned up, but it can't be a one-time event, it has to be done over and over and over again. Not very Konmari.
For me, there is a lot missing from Marie Kondo's book about living with children, about coping with the daily onslaught of stuff that comes through the door, about making decisions about what to keep/chuck, when it's not actually your stuff, but your children's. Although I would love to declutter and tidy my home in a one-off event, I suspect that I will have to keep a permanent donate pile somewhere around the house, for the grown out of clothes, the grown out of books and toys, and the other stuff which no longer fills me/them/us with joy.
Maybe I'm wrong, and once I've Kondo'd my own stuff, my children will also embrace the 'focus on joy - tidy once' philosophy?
I also suspect that despite failing the joy test, I will continue to keep paint-spattered and old clothes for activities that involve spattering paint and digging the garden. Practicality and pragmatism doesn't feature in Kondo's worldview, and her advice doesn't really help much when you need to sort out the garden shed.
I like Marie Kondo's ideas a lot, but can see that they work best for households with grown ups. Maybe her next book will be about tidying for/with kids (or maybe I should write that one?!)
