The key is not to buy things in the first place...not to have to declutter or worse buy organizational products. |
It was definitely her least descriptive area. I need more advice for paper than "Get rid of it all." I'm in academia, so probably have more paper than an organizing consultant. |
| Sort of. Spouse and kids aren’t really on board so it’s uphill for me. |
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Yet another vote for "It helped me think about whether to bring something into the house and when/how to get rid of stuff"
And because I'm no longer drowning in stuff, I can get rid of things in more ecofriendly ways than 20 trash bags, like they showed on one episode of her Netflix series. |
| I still fold my clothes the way she instructed |
This. I "Kondo'd" our linen closet that also holds bathroom items, etc., and it has never gone back to the frightening mess it once was -- despite having kids and DH using that closet nearly every day. |
| It has stuck for me, in that I bring a lot less stuff into the house than I used to and am less tied to keeping things for the “just in case”. My house isn’t perfect, but it’s manageable. I also use her folding methods, which are great for helping you see what you have. |
Ugh. Paper is the worst for me. |
Just in case is my nemesis. How did you break that habit? |
Not PP, but the "keep only those things that spark joy" helped me break the "just in case" habit. Like I kept an extra comforter around just in case, but realized that I didn't love it. If I thought I really needed an extra comforter, why not look for one that really makes me happy every time I look at it? Then when I see it taking up space in my closet, I don't get irritated by the lack of space, but feel happy to see it. |
+1. I keep paper copies of all my kids health forms "just in case." In this instance, it's not that the paper copies "spark joy," but I do feel happy to know that if the electronic copies of those forms fail for some reason, I know I have the paper copies and can get to them quickly. |
| If you did the Marie Kondo method, did you do it all at once? How long did it take you to do each category? |
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Answering op, I didn’t have time to read all responses.
Yes a lot of it has. I still have habits affected by her book and show. What isn’t looking great, I haven’t put much time or effort into. Or is kids area. But even then, there are still a lot of improvements. I follow a couple of other declutter people now, and all in all, every bit of it inspires me to not mind chucking stuff / buy less / buy better quality. |
But “more relaxed” is probably still less cluttered than the vast majority of people. She used to clean her purse out every night, for heaven’s sake (I don’t know anyone who decided they needed to do that after buying her book). I feel like a lot of people are using “even Marie Kondo stopped decluttering after having a baby” as an excuse for their own mess. The people who get mad about her are the ones who have issues. (FWIW, my house was never cluttered, but if people found her process for decluttering helpful, and she made money from it, it seems like a win-win to me). |
| I love the spark joy and thanking for items part but the folding was too hard for me because I couldn’t see the difference from one item to the next with her folding method. I was always picking up the wrong shirt guessing incorrectly which one I wanted. |