Episode 2
As with any lifestyle or self-help book, there are parts of Marie Kondo's book that I'm not likely to adopt. Some things don't work for me right now, but others I won't adopt ever. Fortunately, Marie is on board with this:
"... automatically following criteria proposed by others and based on their 'know-how' will have no lasting effect - unless their criteria happens to match your own standards of what feels right."
-Marie Kondo
(I'm just not sure if she knew she would be the one that I would apply this quote toward).
The one thing Marie is adamant about is that you must discard first! But after that, "The rest depends on the level of tidiness you personally want to achieve."
With that said, here are a few KonMari practices I'm not moving forward with:
1. The Folding
Okay, most people love the folding. I actually do, too, but I don't feel like I can turn my life over to KonMari folding right now. For one thing, I can't get the other five people in my house on board with the folding, especially the 3 and 6 year olds. Actually, you know what? All five of them are equally unlikely to jump on the folding bandwagon - not just the littlest, but I think of them first because they empty their dresser drawers on the closet floor every day. Sometimes more than once. So I pick up the clothes in one big wad and throw them back in the drawers.
I can hear what the KonMari believers are saying... "But if you fold their clothes like Marie Kondo, they'll be able to see what's in their drawer, and they won't throw all the clothes on the floor." That may be true, but I'm not up for the experiment right now. Let's just say that if I go through the work to do the folding, and the clothes still end up on the floor, I'll feel so defeated that I'll have to go to DI on an emotional shopping trip, and I'll probably buy all my old stuff back.
On top of that, I feel like the folding is very time consuming, I don't like using a surface area to fold (I fold in the air), most of our stuff hangs in closets, and our dresser drawers aren't tall enough to store our clothing vertically.
However...
I have folded Scotty's and my socks and underwear. We are just testing it out - I don't know if we can keep up with it, as it taints our entire laundry routine. Prior to Tuesday of this week, we didn't mate our socks or fold our underwear. We have literally thrown it all in a drawer for the last ten years, so it's going to take a significantly bigger chunk of time to fold and put away laundry if we keep up on it.
It is pretty, though, I will say.
I also folded out pillow cases. My mom has made my kids pillow cases for each holiday, so we have more pillow cases than the average household, and they look lovely folded up all KonMari-like.
2. Shoe storage
I don't think Marie mentioned this in her book, but I recall her saying in one episode of her show that she like shoes to be stored lined up with their mates in a way that allows you to see them all easily.
So she would probably frown at my practice of throwing them all in a laundry basket on a shelf in my closet.
3. Ditching the sweats
"The worst thing you can do is to wear a sloppy sweatsuit. I occasionally meet people who dress like this all the time, whether waking or sleeping. If sweatpants are your everyday attire, you'll end up looking like you belong in them, which is not very attractive."
Hello, Marie, I am one of those people. I love my sweatpants, and I don't care if I look like I just climbed out of a dumpster, I'm not giving up on my sweats. Girl, please.
I imagine Marie Kondo putting on sweatpants and being like the princesses in Wreck-It Ralph II when they discover lounge wear.
She don't know what she's missing.
She don't know what she's missing.
4. Keep things out of the bath
Marie Kondo says you should wipe down your bath products after you shower and put them in the cupboard.
5. Piggybanks are disrespectful to small change
Marie thinks putting change in a piggybank is putting it in a place to be ignored and that it's disrespectful to money.
I disagree. I feel that piggybanks are actually very respectful to money because it allows us to save change until we have a large enough amount to do something useful with rather than just spending it at the McDonald's drive thru (which I also do... because I'm all about balance...)
I really enjoy filling up a piggybank and then taking the change to the bank to make a deposit.
6. Empty your bag everyday
Marie wants you to empty your purse (or bag) every day. This means you have to have a place different than your purse to keep your wallet, keys, Carmex, tampons, whatever... at the end of each day.
Apparently "grab and go" isn't her thing, but it is mine! My stuff will stay in my bag.
4 comments:
I'm really impressed with you embracing this. I've enjoyed hearing about your adventures in tidying up.
My only exposure with her is 20 pages of her book before I chucked it across the room four years ago. So I just watched a YouTube video on how she folds shirts... Ummm, no.
On the emptying the bag thing I think this is two fold. If you're the type of person who uses one bag almost always, then at the end of the day empty if of trash, receipts, junk etc. However if you're the type of person who changes bags maybe based on outfit, then the idea is to have all of the bags lined up (she also shows you bag inside of bag storage) with a spot next to that for your basics like wallet, chapstick keys etc. That way in the morning you can easily grab a bag and add your items, vs scrambling to empty one, change purses, and leaving the old purse in some random area. I have tried to be much better lately about cleaning receipts and trash from my purse.
The shoe thing seems silly but I now swear by having my shoes lined up. First of all, I've noticed my shoes look better. My shoes were getting scuffed, smooshed, and yucky being all piled up. Second, I get up at 3:40am to go to my first job teaching at the gym, and it's SO MUCH EASIER to open my gym shoe closet in the front hall, and grab the right shoes when they are lined up waiting. Also, I lined up shoes and turned them around. Anything not turned around after a few months had to go. Finally once I lined them up I was able to see I somehow had 3 pairs of brown boots, and 3 types of black boots. One pair unworn that I didn't even know about.
I'm obsessed with the folding. Once I folded all of my personal clothes it seriously changed the game for me. I wish we were FB friends so you could see the before and afters of my drawers. The best thing that came out of it, is I stopped buying stuff I already had. A few months back I got a new skirt with green in it. However I didn't own a green tank top so I went out searching. I ended up buying two. When I just folded my tank tops I found that I had already owned two that would have been perfect. Now I somehow own four. Also I was able to consolidate all of my stuff into one dresser, and clean out two whole shelves in our closet.
For my kids, I did get my boys on board with folding. My youngest (11) loves folding his shirts. It's helped him a ton to see his socks. But most importantly folding and sorting his baseball stuff, and finding the space to have a dedicated baseball drawer has saved me so much time. We used to frantically dig around for white pants, or certain color baseball socks, his cup, this jersey, or his belt. Now it's all Marie Kondo'd into one larger drawer and every single thing is fully visible. It's amazing. For my oldest (13) who is kind of just now learning about dressing nice and matching we got kind of tedious and sorted his shirts by color even. He loves now that he can grab pants, then find a coordinating matching shirt, and then sweatshirt or jacket. Before he would dig through piles and piles of shirts looking for a black shirt, get discouraged, grab a bright yellow one, shove his drawer closed, and repeat.
So far my favorite of every drawer is the dish towel drawer. I'm not sure anything has ever been as soothing as opening my dishtowel drawer now.
Where does on put one's change if not a piggy bank? I give my kid any change I find on the ground; he needs a place to save it.
She says to put it straight into your wallet and then use it.
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