megdanielle

This Christmas, I asked for Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. 

If you’ve read any articles on Kondo’s method of  tidying you may feel that she’s slightly batty. Or entirely batty. But you may also feel that she is onto something worth learning.

Kondo begins her book by exposing the lack of training we receive in tidying at a young age. We’re told to clean our rooms, certainly, but not instructed how to eliminate unnecessary items or evaluate our things. After that, she begins to flesh out her method of letting go first and then putting away. Tidying is to occur by category rather than room. And it must happen all at once rather than over an extended period of time. 

It’s not that my house is terribly messy.  It’s average.  Maybe in some areas better and in others (paperwork) worse. But I do find myself researching storage option after storage option, seeking out the next organizing trick that will leave me feeling ahead in my day. Put together. In control.
Before starting the act of purging and placing, Kondo challenges her readers to visualize what they want out of the project. What does the tidy future life look like?

So here it is, the beginning of my journey to tidy:

I wake up to a quiet, clean house. My clothes are set out from the night before as are Miss Emma’s. On some mornings, I wake before the family and go the gym but today, the coffee maker is set to autostart and I wait for it to finish before getting out of bed to grab a cup of coffee. I read a short devotion before getting in the shower. Lunches have been packed for the week and Emma enjoys an unrushed breakfast before we head off to work and play.