'Sorting out the house' was mentioned several times when I asked friends what they would do with a few months off. I'll look back at May 2017 as the month of decluttering. Like many others, I tried the Marie Kondo book 'The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying', aka the KonMari method.
Marie Kondo is a Japanese organising consultant and now bestselling author. She sounds insane when you read her book – she was addicted to tidying up by the age of eight – and her methods are no less bonkers.
But… it works.
I still can't quite believe how folding your clothes so that they stand up has actually transformed what I wear simply because I can now see it all in one go. Or how asking if something 'sparks joy' has allowed me to emotionally, rather than practically, let go of things I've kept for decades – from university research papers to my 1990s Thelma and Louise denim top that never came back into fashion.
It could be procrastination from other more creative work or it could be life-transforming as the book promises. I've cleared out so much crap, I do feel lighter and freer, and more pertinently for an allergic person, the house is becoming easier to clean. The really sentimental things are to come but that's why you practice with your socks and pants first. It gets easier.
Here are some before and after photos. Sorting is done by category – another trick that helps massively when facing a big clear out.
TOPS
BOOKS
ACADEMIC PAPERWORK
The nice thing about this is the focus is less on throwing things away and more on only keeping things that you love. But possibly the biggest lure of the KonMari method is that you only have to do it once. We'll see if that is true in time but my socks do remain firmly folded for now.
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I organised my running tops like that and it's helped immensely. I'm also trying to chuck one thing out per week and that's going quite well. I haven't read the bonkers book, though. Really glad it's worked for you, esp on the allergies side.