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| the life-changing magic of tidying up by marie kondo |
As I was reading, I made several observations and a few of those were confirmed by Anita yesterday who has also read the book and implemented some of the ideas in her house.
1. this author has an OCD problem. At age five she came across a phrase about tidying and well - she became obsessed. She doesn't say that, but it is pretty evident as you go through the book. Read the book and see what I mean!
2. the examples she gives are based on living in Japan. She talks about bags of garbage in huge numbers like 30 bags from one small room. Keep in mind that garbage bags in Japan are way smaller than North America.
3. she references garbage on numerous occasions rather than recycling. Perhaps recycling isn't a big thing in Japan?
4. she talks to her clothes and things and thanks them for giving her a good day. She treats like each item is a living thing. Each to their own!
5. she is very wordy. Pages are written for something that could be said in two sentences. Which is interesting when she is talking about tidying up and yet she doesn't tidy her words!
6. she goes into detail about all the other organizing methods that don't work. If they don't work - don't mention them or mention them briefly. Ah - but that takes up more pages.
7. you MUST tidy each category at one time. Seriously? Oh yes - this is Japan and their houses are significantly smaller than North American houses.
8. strive for perfection. Seriously?? Doesn't exist!
9. she comes home from work and in five minutes, she has put away her things, changed her clothes and ready to relax. Seriously?? Five minutes (and that includes talking to her things) - I haven't even unpacked from the retreat and that was weeks ago. Why? Because I have a busy life and there isn't time to get everything done.
10. does she have a family or live alone? Makes a HUGE difference.
OK - so you get the gist. While the things above are things that I do NOT like about the book, there are some very good messages in the book.
1, Put "like" things together. I can't stress how important this is and I have been doing this with most of my stuff for years. Especially in the studio. And why??
- You can see how much you have (and we won't go there),
- Things are easier to find - you only have to remember one place for each item category
- Things have a home and are therefore easier to put away
- No buying duplicates
- and I am sure there are more ideas.
2. Before you can find storage for things, you must discard. Yes - you can't run out and buy new storage units when you don't even know how much you have to store. It is easy to fall victim to buying all those pretty storage boxes and storage units, but if you have nothing to put in them - then what was the point?
3. There are good tips for discarding. I like her order of things - clothes (they should be the easiest one to get rid of), then books (ah - not so easy), paper (my biggest issue), odds and ends and then sentimental items. But she is very rigid - it MUST be done in this order. It MUST be done all at once. In other words - deal with all the paper at ONE TIME. Seriously? That isn't going to happen. Again - the difference in quantity is huge!
4. Method of folding clothes. She has a very neat system for folding clothes which I think is brilliant for T-shirts. The rest of the stuff - not so much.
I grabbed one of the baskets that contains T-shirts. These are short sleeved T-shirts with NO logos on them. Hey - I have the luxury of that kind of space!
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| Basket of plain short sleeved T-shirts |
Normally T-shirts get folded like this. And then we stack them on top of each other and most of the time - we tend to pick the top one to wear which is usually the one we wore last week and once washed, got put back on top. Right? We all do that.
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| Folded T-shirt - almost a square |
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| T-shirt folded ONE more time |
I refolded all my T-shirts and put them in the basket. Hmmmmm...............
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| Refolded T-shirts in the basket (a LOT of black!) |
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| Except that they all don't fit now!!!!! |
By the way - there are 23 T-shirts in that basket, most of which I haven't worn in a LONG LONG time.
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| Ah - the basket is still full and looks awful! |
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| There are now 14 T-shirts in this basket |
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| And the give away pile - there are 9 T-shirts here |
Now in all fairness to marie kondo -there are times when I would call myself OCD as well.
Like the other morning, I was trying to deal with a bit of the aftermath of the last couple of days. I was attempting to clean up one set of work tables.
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| Work tables in a bit of a mess |
There was stuff from CreativFestival, there was stuff from the classes and demos and well - a bit messy.
One of the things I had to put away were my hour glass blocks. They go in this tin.
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| Tin (yes the lid doesn't fit any more) of hour glass blocks - trimmed and ready to do something with |
However these tins come with a paper that is GLUED to the lid and it is a pain because some of the stuff in the tin would stick to the glue. I got out the Goo-Gone and VOILA - no more sticking.
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| Goo-gone got rid of the glue! |
And how am I doing on the work tables???
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| Progress being made on the work tables! |
Now here is something that would drive marie kondo - CRAZY. And I will tell you the story of the basket and the wine in another post. But see what is nestled beside the bottle of wine???
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| What is nestled beside the bottle of wine??? |
Yes - that is my cordless phone. It was on the ironing board and fell off and into the basket a couple of days while I was prepping and didn't have time to pick it up! So it stayed there until the phone started to ring yesterday and OH YES - it is still in the basket beside the wine! The phone is now back in its holder!!!!!
I am issuing YOU a challenge. Start by assembling all your clothes in one spot. Sort them by categories and start purging!!!!! It really doesn't take that long. I think last year, I took a couple of hours. Be ruthless and if you need help - call me!!!! I'll come running to help you purge. Think about the numbers. If you have FIFTY t-shirts. That means you can wear a different one every day for almost two months. And if you are like me - well I get two wears out of a t-shirt so that is almost four months. That means I wear each one three times a year. Do I need 50 t-shirts??? Probably not!!!
On that note - I have a ton of stuff to do again today and I had better get myself organized and on with the day!!!!
Oh and here is an article about marie kondo and a LONG LONG list of comments. Sounds like people are so desperate - they will try anything to tidy up!
Have a great day!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Ciao!!!!!!!!!!
I read that book a while ago. . . . and I agree with all of your points!
ReplyDeleteThe wordiness was driving me batty. . . and I almost put down the book without finishing it. But I have become OCD in the fact that I have to finish every book I start, even if it takes me 5 years (well, that book was about the Federal Reserve and macro- and micro-economics and had lots and lots of formulas).
I did pick up some tips from her and have added them to the tips that I have picked up from other organizing books that I have read. My challenge is getting the basement cleared out. . . .I get frustrated because there is just so much to go through.
Happy stitching.
Do you realize that you have posted 132 times about organizing? You do have some good tips that you found in books but you also repeat yourself a lot. I think the key is to stop bringing in MORE STUFF. For everything you bring in, get rid of something else. How is your kitchen doing now that you reorganized and got rid of all the excess stuff? A lot better I'm sure!
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