The Art of Zen De-cluttering, our Top Three Recommendations

Have you heard of Marie Kondo? According to thespruce.com,
“Marie Kondo’s The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing is not just a best-selling book. It has become a cultural phenomenon, provoking people who would not normally pare down their possessions to throw away bags full of excess stuff. The book centers on Kondo’s particular method of radically decluttering a home or office, popular with her clients and the many attendees of her seminars.”

Marie calls her method “KonMari,” and we’ve boiled down what we think is the essence of her method of organization.

Here they are, our top three recommendations to get you on the road to a happy, healthy, de-cluttered home!

• Start with objects that lack emotional attachment.
  
  Start with something like clothing, or maybe books — things with which you are least likely to have strong emotional attachment. This will make it easier for you to get started on this process.
• Tackle categories, not rooms.
  
  Rather than cleaning/tidying/de-cluttering one room at a time, deal with your possessions by category. “Tidying by category,” Kondo says, “prevents the confusion that arises when you try to declutter objects stored in multiple locations.” So instead of tidying the books in one of your rooms, tidy the books in all of your rooms. Dealing with items by category across all rooms prevents the clutter from creeping room-to-room.
• Once you’ve slimmed down your possessions, don’t be tempted to keep “acquiring” new things!
  
  According to Darby Saxbe, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, in a Chicago Tribune article, “Behind the Zen of decluttering,” “We’ve got Wal-Mart, where you can buy anything for $10, and we’ve become used to this very acquisitive style, where if you can’t find your stapler, you just go buy another stapler,” she says. “I was just reading the ‘Little House on the Prairie’ books with my daughter, and if they wanted a doll, for example, they had to make it, and it was incredibly labor-intensive.” Once you have everything neat & tidy try to avoid cluttering all of that up with new, unnecessary stuff!

There you have it, folks! And once you’ve minimized your possessions you’ll probably be wanting your place to really shine — that’s where we come in. Give us a call and take back your weekends!