{"id":3981,"date":"2019-01-22T10:34:55","date_gmt":"2019-01-22T17:34:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.neighbor.com\/storage-blog\/?p=3981"},"modified":"2019-01-22T10:34:55","modified_gmt":"2019-01-22T17:34:55","slug":"marie-kondo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.neighbor.com\/storage-blog\/marie-kondo\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Takeaways from “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Have you ever heard of Marie Kondo? If you haven’t, maybe you’ve heard this decluttering advice: pick up the object and ask yourself if it “sparks joy”. If it does, keep it. If it doesn’t, toss it out.<\/p>\n

That entire idea started with Marie Kondo. She burst onto the scene in 2011 with her books, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying<\/em> and Spark Joy<\/em>. And now, thanks to Netflix, she’s the star of a new eight-part series<\/a> called “Tidying up with Marie Kondo.”<\/p>\n

As the show is a new cultural sensation, with everyone writing about it from the New Yorker<\/a> to Uproxx <\/a>to The Ringer<\/a>, I decided to binge watch the show and see what all the fuss was about.<\/p>\n

Each episode finds Marie in a new household struggling with their own forms of clutter. A young family can’t tidy up or stay organized thanks to young toddlers. An older couple bought too many clothes and had a stack of baseball cards as tall as the ceiling. By the end, each home is tidy, the people are smiling, and the audience can only hope they can maintain their new found lifestyle.<\/p>\n

\"Marie<\/p>\n

The show feels like a cross between Hoarders and an HGTV home show. There’s no real drama, except for a little bickering between couples, which cleanliness finally solves. Almost everyone in the show feels some sort of relief afterward. They are better parents, others are better couples, and some are more prepared for the life changes like death and birth that have affected their lives.<\/p>\n

Still, despite some of the cheesiness, I found myself inspired, entertained, and anxious to clean. Plus, Marie is like the cutest show host ever. I learned some interesting organization tips and new ways of thinking about the home. Here are my five biggest takeaways:<\/p>\n

1) Follow the KonMari Method<\/h2>\n

Marie Kondo follows the same order every time when she starts organizing a house. She calls it the KonMari method. The process is this: clothing, books, paper (as in documents, letters, etc), komono (kitchen, bathroom, garage, miscellaneous items), and finally sentimental items.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot of logic to this order. Clothes are generally the easiest to get rid of. Many people store ill-fitting or old clothes that they’re happy to get rid of. Once they’re comfortable with the process, then they can move to harder objects like books. Finally, by ending with sentimental items, the people are so good at understanding the principle of “sparking joy” that they have an easier time making those decisions.<\/p>\n

Having an order also makes it easier to get started. Have you ever looked at the clutter in your house and thought, how am I going to tackle this? It’s a lot easier to start knowing you can focus on clothing. The entire KonMari method took around 25-40 days, depending on the family. It’s not like Marie asked them to organize the entire house in a weekend.<\/p>\n

2) You Should Stack Clothes<\/h2>\n

There were a few moments in the show where I thought, wow, why haven’t I been doing this? The way Marie folded and stored clothes was one of these moments. I’ve always stacked jeans or t-shirts on top of each other. Marie stacks them upright like books.<\/p>\n

To do this, say with jeans, she folds them in half and then in thirds so they look like a square with a folded edge and an open edge. To see if you did a good job stacking, you can try standing the folded pants upright on the open edge.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Marie then stacks them upright in the drawer. When you look in, you see the folded edge of each pair. Then, instead of lifting up a pair of jeans to get to another, you can pull them out like books from a shelf.<\/p>\n

\"pants<\/p>\n

Marie folds shirts and socks this way as well. With the socks, this method keeps the elastic tight, whereas folding them into a ball might stretch the band.<\/p>\n

Throughout the show, Marie shows how to fold other clothing like hoodies, scarfs, and sheets. Another one of her best tips is to use small boxes inside drawers to keep things even more organized. This way, you can keep similar items together and avoid a jumbled dresser. She does the same with kitchen drawers.<\/p>\n

\n \r\n
\r\n
\r\n
\r\n

Earn $1,000s per year with your unused space<\/h2>\r\n