The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and My Spring Project

I chose The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up as my most recent audible.com pick.  It is that spring cleaning, I-want-to-reorganize-everything-I-own time of year, and I was game to try something new,.  At first I was skeptical, as I listened to Marie Kondo define her method of organizing your home.  It was a bit drastic.  This is not a room-by-room type of project.  This is balls out, take everything you own of a certain category, and dump it onto your floor in a particular order.  By the end of the book, I was excited to test it out.  So I went to Target and picked up a hard copy.  I needed to start flagging the important pages.

I admit, I am one of those people that has a closet full of clothing and nothing to wear.  The first step in this book is closet organization, so I figured I had nothing to lose.  I took every single item of clothing I had and dumped it onto my bed.  Since I had nothing to wear, I didn't think this would take very long.  I was wrong.  I was very wrong.

This is part of my pile on the bed.  It was a lot of stuff.  The rules are as follows: pick up every piece of clothing and decide if it brings you joy.  You must touch each item. When you wake up tomorrow, would you be excited to put it on?  No guilt from keeping gifts other people have bought for you.  No guilt in keeping items that still had the tags on them.  The book rationalizes why (and it worked for me).

When I was about halfway through, I was exhausted.  Why did I own this much crap?  Would I be happier wearing a few things that I love a lot, rather than a lot of things that I was only wearing because they were clean and in my closet?  

I started this project on Saturday, and by Sunday night, I had completed maybe 75%.  I had five trash bags ready for donation, and one trash bag full of things that were garbage.  I still needed to go through my purses and random bags that hang out on the shelves of my closet.

I am hoping that I can keep trying to go through my belongings throughout the week and purge more items that do not suit me.  As I have been doing this exercise, I have been keeping a list of items I need to repurchase (either because the ones I have been hanging on to are worn out or just don't spark any kind of joy in me).  After I complete this exercise, I need to move on to cleaning out my books.  I hope I can get there soon.  It will definitely be easier to purge items that are mine alone, and do not need my husband to also go through.

This book is definitely worth picking up if you are at all interested in a major spring cleaning purge. It offers some new ideas and new ways of looking at items that are not working for the life that you have.  Five enthusiastic stars from me.  Now that I have some momentum going, I really want to keep it up.  I would love to only be surrounded with things that are loved or are in some way useful.