The snow melts away and the first signs of living beings coming out of hibernation begin to appear. Even us humans will feel it as the heaviness of winter starts to lift and the hours of sunshine stretch a little past dinner time. Spring has come!
What better way to start spring than with a read on the life changing magic of tidying up!
In this easy read, Marie Kondo shares her ideas about decluttering and tidying the home. At the heart of these ideas is touching EACH and EVERY ONE of your things to see if they "spark joy". She breaks this down in a very particular order throughout the book, starting with categories easiest to part with and working ones way down those that are not (think: mementos). After, she shares her ideas about how to organize one's living space into categories so that things are easier to find, and each possession has a place to belong.
Good stuff.
I decided to give this a try. Surely decluttering is well overdue....
This experience was eye opening so here are the interesting nuggets of this exercise.
This took longer than expected. We started at 6am one Saturday and called it 95% done by 12 midnight. We took breaks to eat, and I'm sure if Marie Kondo was here encouraging us to quickly let go of those things that didn't spark joy we might've moved quicker.
There was a lot of stuff! Stories in the book explained some people that had homes where you couldn't see the floor. We do not have such a home, and yet when we moved all the things from one category to a single spot (e.g. clothes, papers, books) we would be surprised at the volume of things we had. For example, 20 medium bags of clothes were donated, and that didn't even include the rest!
It was very important for us to thank the possessions we owned for their service. At first it seemed ridiculous to talk to inanimate objects (shower thoughts and internal monologue aside). It was energizing to feel a sense of gratitude for the things that have supported daily life up until it was time to move on
One can survive without >50% of the possessions one currently owns, and without the desire to fill empty spaces! I was surprised at how much lighter home felt, how much of our drawers were emptied and how much stuff we didn't miss once we weren't attached to them.
Once each category had a home within a home, I lost/misplaced a lot of stuff less. As one of those "where are my keys?!" people, this is a major improvement. This seems like common sense, but used to be much harder in practice because organization was centred around convenience rather than category.
It's easy to get drawn in the daily wants and needs. As we were going through our mementos (pictures, letters, gifts) it put into perspective how rich our lives have been not just in the amount of clothes/toiletries/papers/books/housewares we were comfortably able to part with but in the vast array of memories we have shared with other people.
I'm curious if others have tried this method, and whether they have observed or experienced similar interesting nuggets.