And the tidy-fest continues!
First, let me show you how good my four-year-old daughters drawers are looking these days. Both she and my (almost) nine-year-old daughter are so excited by their nice organized dressers. I love it!
Her shirt drawer before….. what a mess! It was hard to find anything.
Her shirt drawer after! It’s so gorgeous! Picking out her clothes for the day is so easy now, she can just look in and point to which one she wants.
Now, the KonMari Method is very specific about the order in which you tidy. Just like I was a rebel to read her second book, Spark Joy, before reading her original book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I’m working slightly out of order as I feel inspired.
BOOKS & PAPERS
After clothes you’re supposed to tidy up your papers and books.
Books is an easy one for me, I’m keeping them all at this time. I cleared out my books last summer and do not yet feel the need to purge any more of them. I’m sure I will soon. KonMari says to get rid of books you’ve read (I’m keeping my favorites, thank you very much!) and the ones you have not read, because if you haven’t read it yet, chances are you never will. Again, I disagree. I bought my books because they looked interesting, I will get around to reading them eventually, and if they don’t become favorites I plan to read again, I will bring them in to Half-Price Books or donate them at that time.
Papers, on the other hand, are my Kryptonite. I can’t count the number of times I’ve given up on tidying because I just don’t know what to do with papers. Sure I’ll recycle a bunch, maybe shred a few (or more likely, put in a shred pile to deal with later), and then there’s the pile of stuff I just don’t know what to do with, so it gets shuffled to the side instead of dealt with.
Let me tell you, until you’ve cleared out your papers, you don’t know relief.
I do have a few papers left to deal with, but they’re bills to be paid once I figure out how to access the health credit money I received at the end of 2015. Then the paperwork is caught up with!
Papers to recycle in the paper bag, and papers to file or “deal with” in the yellow. That magazine? I can’t tell you how long I’ve had it. Over a year. I don’t even know where I got it! I feel no remorse in ridding myself of both the magazine or the pile of other magazines in the bag below!
Look at those beautiful ribbons of paper! Would you believe I found and shred a car insurance statement from 2006? For a vehicle we haven’t owned since 2007? No joke. I wish I could tell you why we still had that. No, I can tell you why. It was not wanting to deal with the piles of papers in my life (including those that were filed away, out of sight and (mostly) out of mind!)
LINEN CLOSET
My linen closet is tiny. Seriously, it’s ridiculous how small this thing is. And we have a lot of stuff. More than anyone could need or want. Because I’m a rebel, I didn’t purge as much as I really should, but I know I will. And for now, everything fits, and it fits a lot better than it did before.
Mind you, I didn’t really touch the top shelf. That’s cleaning supplies and that’s a challenge for another day, but you can see on the second to top shelf how nicely organized everything looks now. Initially I’d had these soft plastic baskets from the dollar store (the one in the closet was bright pink, but I have other colors in the house as well), but because they were round they didn’t really work to stand things up nicely. Everything was always toppling over in there. They do work great as a little laundry or waste basket, but it didn’t work for what I was trying to use it for.
One of the thing KonMari has her clients do is take empty boxes and use them to organize. I don’t have any shoe boxes at the moment, but even better, I found that cute Minnie Mouse tin which contained bath products my daughter received a couple years ago for Christmas, and I kept forgetting about! I took everything out so that they can go into rotation when their current bath soaps runs out, and now it houses all of the travel size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, body wash, baby powder and lotion (and a couple full sized bottles too.) The little blue basket I bought for the nursery when I was pregnant with my youngest who is now four. That’s filled with toothpaste, toothbrushes, and free samples. If you need to pull something out, you don’t need to dig around blindly in the closet, simply pull out the box and find what you need, then replace it.
Speaking of free samples, I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to those. As soon as I finish off the bottles of various products in the shower now, I’m going to start in on the samples. They do me no good sitting there in their shiny plastic pouches.
As for towels, I need to pack some up. I have way too many right now. I know as soon as I stock up on T.P. again, I’m going to have nowhere to put them, so that bottom shelf of towels is going to have to go.
(Don’t mind my poorly Photoshopped closet photos. The wall is only… 3 feet, maybe? from the closet, so the only way to get a full shot is to stand to the side and then piece them together. Anyway, you get the picture. 😉 )
BEFORE
AFTER
KITCHEN TOWELS / WASH CLOTHS
In addition to my house having tiny bedrooms and a tiny linen closet, we also have ridiculous drawers in our kitchen. They look beautiful, but they’re not the most practical. They’re either too narrow, too shallow, or both!
Trying to dig through to find a wash cloth among the towels (and no, there’s no space to keep them in separate drawers) was a real chore. Not to mention trying to close the drawer when we’re done! No more. The KonMari folding method works for towels, too!
In her book, KonMari talks about how oftentimes when her clients go through their things and get them straightened out and organized, they want to go out and buy prettier items to replace those that have seen better days. That’s how I feel about my towels and dishcloths. But you know what? For now they get the job done, never mind that some of the towels have holes burned in them (oops?) and the dishrags are falling apart (they were cheap, what do you expect?)
Someday I’ll get my hands on nicer, newer towels. Until then I’ll be happy with just being able to reach in and grab exactly what I’m looking for!
SPARK JOY
“Live Simple… But Significant” Words to live by on my new shirt. (Ignore the poor quality, nighttime cell phone photos rarely turn out well.)
That’s my progress for the week! Slow and steady, working to the end goal.
I’ll leave you with one last image.
We went shopping for hubby to get new shirts (he outgrew or wore out most of what was in his drawers, so we rid ourselves of them, and had to supply him with new shirts.)
I browsed the clearance racks for myself, looking for anything that would cause me to feel that spark of joy.
I found this shirt: it fit properly, it felt comfortable, it was under $5, and it contains words of wisdom… words I’m trying to live my life by:
“Live Simple…. But Significant”
Best of all? When I tried it on, it sparked joy. It’s now one of my favorite pieces of my wardrobe.