We decided to sell our house.
We wanted to down size. My oldest son was now in college. The next one, only a few years away from leaving the nest and we simply had too much space and things.
I wanted magic fairy dust to make it happen—to get rid of all the stuff we no longer needed. Instead, my husband bought Marie Kondo’s book “The life-changing magic of tidying up” and I came to believe that it was the next best thing to real, sparkling magic fairy dust.
Talk about down-sizing—we were going from 5,000 square feet to 2,500 square feet—moving into a house literally half the size as before.
I don’t know how I would have done it without Marie Kondo and her KonMari Method. It was surprisingly easy and intuitive, but sometimes you just need a little guidance. As an example, I wanted to show you how I applied her KonMari Method to my book collection. Here we go—
KonMari Method Rules and Steps
Rule #1 – In order to downsize I needed to discard a lot of items. Marie’s selection criteria is simple: take each item in your hands and ask, “Does this spark joy?” If it does, keep it. If not, get rid of it.
That’s it.
The key is to touch each item. When you touch something your body reacts. Its response to each item is different.
By using this approach you focus on choosing what you want to keep, not what you want to get rid of.
To help you make the decision if the item should stay or go, ask these questions—
“Does this book bring me joy?”
“Do I feel joy when I am surrounded by piles of unread books?”
Can you imagine living in a place where you are surrounded only by the things that bring you joy?
Keep the things that make your heart sing. Discard everything else.
Rule #2–Sort by category not by location. Why? People often store the same type of items in more than one place. When you clean up one place separately, you fail to see that you are repeating the same work in many locations, thus continuing on the never-ending tidying treadmill.
A little confession—I started with books because starting with clothes (Marie’s recommended place to start) was too overwhelming for me.
I gathered all my books—from my nightstand, my dresser drawer, my office, storage (there were tons here), living room, and kitchen. This alone was a big eye opener. I had so many more books than I realized because they were spread out all over the house. I thought I had too many in my home office, but the reality was I had too many everywhere.
Step 1: Put all your books on the floor
Why? Because you can’t really know if a book brings you joy by leaving it on a shelf.
Step 2: Pick up each book and ask yourself, “Does this bring me joy?” Here’s the thing—my body did react differently to each of the books. I felt a slight shiver when I picked up the books that brought me joy.
The harder ones were those that were in the “sorta-bring-me-joy” category. I put them in a separate pile and did another pass. I eliminated half of them.
Step 3: Don’t start reading the book because it clouds your judgment.
Rule #3–For unread books (a big reason for not getting rid of a book), ‘Sometime’ means ‘Never’. The reason we tell ourselves: “because I might want to read it sometime.” Take this opportunity to let it go. This goes for half-finished books as well.
Marie’s statistics prove this – Of all her clients, only 15% put unread books to use.
My Results: I donated 81 books!
Here they are to your right!
Now, I think differently about buying and reading books. I use the public library as a way to see if I really love a book. Then I ask myself, “Does this book bring me joy?”
I’ve applied this to photos, clothes, memorabilia, and stuff I’ve been carting around since childhood and the results have been great across the board.
Before we put our house on the market, we got a small storage unit to help us de-clutter. The next task is to apply the KonMari Method to all of the clutter living in my storage unit and reclaim that $159 I’m spending every month.
If it’s not bringing you joy, really what’s the point.
If you are in need of a little de-clutter, I say hop on the KonMari train–it works!
The Life-changing magic of tidying up by Marie Kondo
#1 New York Times best-selling guide to decluttering your home from Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo. She takes readers step-by-step through her revolutionary KonMari Method.
