A Guide to Decluttering Your Home with the KonMari Method to Spark Joy
Unless you have been living underneath a rock for the past few months, you will have definitely heard about the world changing philosophies of one Marie Kondo. The newly styled queen of clean has burst onto the scene with a new way to bring organisation into your life, and anyone who is anyone is jumping aboard the bandwagon and giving the KonMari method a go. If you are one of the millions who has already watched Kondo's now legendary Netflix series, then you don't need me to tell you all about it, but if you somehow managed to miss it the first time around, allow me to enlighten you on the key bullet points. Here is a guide to downsizing and decluttering your home using Marie Kondo's very own method!
Tidy All at Once
Rather than only cleaning one room in a day, the key to how do you declutter your home is in doing everything all at once. You might come to one room one day and find nothing to spark joy enough to keep, but then go to the next room the morning after and have a completely different outlook on your possessions. To remove something that is unwanted you really have to go into the process with the aim of getting everything done within the day, otherwise your moods are too likely to change and interrupt your flow.
Visualise the Destination
Before throwing things out, try to visualise what the area will be like after you have finished, and this will give you the inspiration and motivation that you need to keep going. By thinking in such concrete terms, you will find that you are able to much more ruthless in your possession culling. It can also help to visualise where exactly all of this extra trash is going to end up; things like selling aluminium cans not only put a little bit of money back in your pocket, but it also gives you peace of mind that you are disposing of things in a suitable manner.
Sparks Joy
This is the main crux of the method. You should be throwing out every single item in your home that doesn't spark any kind of specific joy when you look at it. We might think that clutter and 'things' are what holds our memories and experiences close, but that just isn't true, and most of the time you realise that the objects you collected over the years no longer hold that special meaning for you. You will be much happier and feel much freer with a more minimalistic approach to memento collecting.
Tidy by Category
Committing to doing everything in one day as discussed above means that you can opt to tidy by category rather than location. If you know that clothing is the main bulk of your clutter problem, then focus on attacking the piles that are in your bedroom, under your bed, in your closet, in the spare room β¦ wherever clothing might be. It can be more productive to do a sweep of the house with each different category in mind rather clearing out everything in a room and then moving to the next. It will help you to keep that particular spark joy type mentality for one thing at a time instead of having to change your mindset up constantly.
Tidy in Order
And as for an order for this categorised tidying, Marie Kondo herself has come up with a list that is highly recommended as the way to go. It should go like this: first deal with your clothing, then move onto books, then sort out all of the various paperwork that built up over time, then Komono which is the name for all your miscellaneous stuff, and then finally, on to the things that you regard as strictly sentimental. The thought process behind this is that by the time you reach the truly sentimental things, you will have created enough room by decluttering the rest that you will have room to keep a few extras that mean a lot to you.
About the author: Riya is an inspired writer, passionate about traveling, lifestyle and encouraging startups. As a freelancer, she understands the importance of productivity at work. Riya never stopped finding new ways to create her work productivity. Connect with Riya on twitter, @sanderriya.