Marie Kondo, a Japanese tidying-up guru, is now so bloody popular from her channel on Netflix. Even her name is now a verb for "tidying up". I don't know what she was doing there but she was even at The Oscars. Clearly she's one of the few Japanese people who are famous abroad along with Haruki Murakami or Hayao Miyazaki.
I have known her for many years but had zero interest. But I happened to know that what she says is NOT "chuck everything in the garbage bin and become a monk" but "once you start living with only the stuff you love (spark joy), your life also starts sparking joy".
When I researched more, I thought, 'hmmm this kinda makes sense. Why not experiment myself?'
So you'll see how my guy and I "Kondo-ed" and what we felt, what happened to us. Sounds fun?
Oh, if any of you have already done her "Konmari Method", please do share us about your experience (in Comments below)!
What Is Konmari Method Like?
So the purpose of Konmari Method is to select things you want to live with and get rid of other things. But it is NOT like replacing old things with new things. I'd hate such consumeristic idea since I am one of those Japanese oldsters with "Mottainai" spirit who can't throw away things unless they're all torn and damaged.
According to Konmari Method, tidying-up completes in just one time. And surprisingly "rebound" (having junks again) would not happen, or your house would become even tidier. You wouldn't buy unnecessary stuff and wouldn't waste things.
Furthermore, not only "things" but many people tidied up their toxic relationships or challenged new things in life.
She says, to consider "what you want to be surrounded by" is to consider how you want to live your life.
Can I break new ground, too?
After watching a lot of videos both in Japanese and English, I showed this video to my buy. He got caught up with it gradually and watched it on the edge of his seat. He was very excited and radiant with the hunch that he can change his life.
Let's Start!
And Sunday came, the first day of our tidying up.
In Konmari Method, tidying-up is a festival and not an everyday routine, because doing it little by little doesn't cause consciousness-reforming and never completes properly.
But for most people, one day is not enough to tidy up everything. So people set the shortest deadlines like "one whole week using a holiday" or "in three months using every weekend".
We planned to complete in three Sundays to tidy up our flat of two persons.
Tidying-up should be done not room-wise but strictly category-wise, and in the order:
1. Clothes
2. Books
3. Documents
4. Miscellaneous things
5. Things with sentiments
So on our first day, we decided to do No.1, clothes.
In Konmari Method, you need to pile up everything of the target category in one place first. The purpose is to see the total amount of things by yourself and get "shocked".
The clothes of me and my guy had been stocked in this almira, this three-tiered rack and the drawer under it, and under the bed (forgot to take photos there).
And here we put everything on the bed.
Not exactly all the clothes are in these pics because we forgot to take out the winter & festive clothes under the bed.
Now we start sorting out. The point here is to touch each and everything. According to Marie Kondo, whether the stuff "sparks joy" or not can be told by your body when you touch/hold it.
There is no limit like "within XX pieces of tops" in Konmari Method because the total quantity of the things one needs in life is different in each person.
While sorting out, we also sorted the going-away clothes into two categories; "trash" and "donation".
For the clothes we keep, there is a famous way in Konmari Method to fold clothes. It was easy for us since we had been doing a pretty similar way.
Also, you need to store everything of the category in one place, not dispersing like "winter clothes there, everyday clothes here", so that you can always see what you own.
After Tidying Up Our Clothes
We've finished sorting out!
Almira: All my clothes, the shirts and jackets of my guy
Three-tiered rack: My guy's T-shirts, pants, and undies
Drawer: My guy's winter/festive clothes
There are some awkwardly vacant spaces. We'll consider how to do about them after doing other categories.
Maybe you can't really see the difference in the photos. I'd like to consider that's because our clothes were not scattered here and there ;)
But the total quantity has been clearly decreased a lot.
We got rid of the clothes of 1.5 huge suitcases for donation and 2 small plastic bags of trash.
(Oh, I know I'm ecologically incorrect, but I can't just throw away my old stock of plastic bags...)
We completed the clothes, the first category, in around three hours.
I highly doubt that my guy was not checking "spark joy" for each and every clothes but was selecting by thinking "useful or not useful". But Marie Kondo tells people to tidy up your things before poking your nose into the family members' tidying-up. So I tried not to question him anything.
My guy was anyway happy, saying 'I definitely feel light!'
I was... I was not sure if my sorting out was done right or not. Got rid of enough things to make new me? I don't know. I might go through clothes once more before the second Sunday...
And I was scared to re-visit the "for donation" clothes. I tried not to cast my eyes on them so that I don't start taking things back!
So this is the report from the first day of our "Kondo-ing". I think the most challenging day would be that of "miscellaneous things" which we have a lot and many of which belong to both (i.e. I'm sure we'll argue!).
You will see the whole reports in the coming episodes. I hope you enjoy them!
Bonus Video
If you're interested, please directly read/listen to Marie Kondo.
There are many videos on Youtube in English. I recommend the long videos from which you can learn the idea than the short videos only with the tips.
Here I share you a video on the funny tweets and memes about Marie Kondo. Everyone is at least enjoying talking about her.