Does It Bring You Joy

In April of 2015, Time Magazine released their list of The 100 Most Influential People in the World, and a young Japanese woman by the name of Marie Kondo, made the list.  She’s not an actress, or an artist, or even a philanthapist. She’s a modern day Mary Poppins who wrote a book about how to become more tidy.

“Whaaa…?!”

That was my response, when I heard a Time Magazine executive giving an interview on television about the newly released list, and talking about her specifically, and the booked she wrote titled The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like things to be tidy; I just hate the process of getting there, so the idea of how her book could have ever become a best seller was totally beyond my comprehension.  The magazine’s spokesperson went on to explain, however, that Marie Kondo’s tidying philosophy is to let go of everything that no longer sparks joy in your life, and the more I considered it, the more I realized that concept really did resonate with me, so out of curiosity, I bought and read the book.

The KonMari method is about getting rid of everything you own that no longer brings joy to your life, letting go of things by acknowledging with gratitude their previous usefulness to your life while also recognizing that usefulness may have expired, and then intentionally keeping only the things you do still use and enjoy.  With clothing as an example, you then fold most everything into neat rectangular forms which can be lined up easily inside a dresser drawer.  She further recommends (and I agree because I like how it looks) to order the items in the drawer in harmony with Feng Shui…i.e. in the below drawer you’ll see my clothes are all arranged in the drawer from dark ones up close to the front, moving to lighter colored ones toward the back.

What I love about it, is that I can see exactly what I have in the drawer as soon as I open it, and I don’t have to dig around to find things.

I’ve been using the KonMarie method for my clothes now for just short of a full year, and I’m totally sold on it, because not only can you see what you have at a glance, but once you remove an article of clothing stored this way, it’s also extremely easy to see where to replace it, whenever you’re ready to put it back (notice the 3 vacant spots in the below picture).

You might still be a skeptic, and I can’t blame you for that.  I used to hang everything in the closet except socks and underwear, so I really had to try it for myself, and so that’s really all I’m suggesting…

Try it for yourself;  I think you’ll really like it!