The Year of Living More With Less: Catching Fire

A couple of months ago, I mentioned that I was going to try the Konmari Method of sorting and "tidying" the house. Now, here's my disclaimer: I did not read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. No...I read about 6 blog posts by people who did read the book. I got the gist and ran with it. Essentially you:
1. Print the list of categories that she provides in the book.

*This has been shared so many times on Pinterest, I can't find the original pinner or know who to credit.

2. Start with clothes (and according to this list, tops, specifically). Gather all of your tops. This is a little more complicated than it sounds. It involves doing the laundry first so that the tops (and really all of your clothes) are clean and ready to be sorted. The Konmari Method suggests gathering all of one category - whether it's books that are in every room of the house or laundry that is clean/dirty/laying on the floor of various closets. Bring all of one category together before starting and it really does help, although admittedly, it is a giant pain in the butt. Resist the urge to just start going room by room instead of gathering all of one category. Seeing ALL of your books in a pile instead of all of the books from one room will really help give you a sense of how many you have and which ones truly spark joy...which brings me to #3.

3. Sparking joy. So, even though I grew up with a psychologist mom, I still found the idea of holding something in my hands and asking myself if it sparked joy to be a pretty big pile of quackery. There is no way that makes any difference in whether I decide to keep or toss something. Except, IT TOTALLY DID. How do I know? I make a major purge before and after every move. This will be our 6th move in 8 years. That's a LOT of purging - more than most non-active duty households, I would presume. And there are items that I've carried with me since our first move and some things I've moved since high school. That is something like 23 moves. Like this...

A bin of journals that I wrote in between 1990 and 2000. There are no profound words of wisdom in there. They do not contain the next great American novel. They are filled with teenage/college angst and over-analyzed conversations with boys (this was mostly before He's Just Not That Into You was written...what a blessing that book would have been to my teenage self). I only had to hold one journal while asking myself if it sparked joy to know that they decidedly did not. In fact, it sparked anxiety and sadness. I tossed every single one of them in the trash.

I can't explain why the question Does this spark joy? works. It just does. It shouldn't be any different than looking at something and wondering if you like it enough to keep it. But asking yourself if something sparks joy overrides the 2 reasons I've kept a lot of stuff: I paid money (sometimes a lot) for it and someone gave it to me. Spending money on an item or the idea that someone else spent money on it has been the deciding factor for keeping a lot of what I've lugged around since I was 17. But when I hold it in my hands and ask the question, I know immediately; yes this sparks joy, or no it doesn't. It doesn't have anything to do with whether I *like* an item. DOES IT SPARK JOY? It has to be that question. (And it helps if you are doing this in silence, although I've had to keep working, even on snow days and weekends, so if there's some 5-year old chatter in the background, it is still possible to hear your own answer.)

Now, I've been mocked somewhat ruthlessly for adhering to this aspect of the method. And that's probably fair because I've ruthlessly mocked others for the same thing. But if you are serious about scaling down, whether you want to live in a tiny house or just clear physical space so that the mental space can be cleared as well, this step is imperative.

My first category, per the list, was my tops and it looked something like this:

Step 1: Gather all the tops in one place. 

Step 2: Hold each one and ask yourself if it sparks joy. Here are some things I learned regarding my tops:

1. I have a shirt from one of the last times I saw my friend, Traci, during a Making Strides for Breast Cancer walk. It says "Traci's Pink Brigade". When I hold it, I don't think of the fun we had at that event; I think of saying goodbye to her as she passed and how deeply I feel her absence from my life. I never wear this shirt because it just makes me too sad. And Traci would be pissed if she knew I was keeping something that made me so heartbroken that I couldn't even bring myself to wear it. Worse, I had shoved it to the back of the drawer because I couldn't even bear to look at it. So, I donated that shirt. And I didn't feel bad about donating it because then I made a little album of photos I took of us, from the time we met until the Oztoberfest in Kansas. And that album sparks so much joy that I actually feel her sitting next to me as I flip through it. I still miss her, but I feel so blessed to have those memories with an amazing woman of God.

2. I own one black shirt, which I bought in Kentucky on one of my trips home. It says something about Kentucky girls and bourbon, but I never wear it because the neck is tight and it's black and black makes me look like I've been rode hard and put up wet. So, even though it appears in this "sorted" picture, it didn't make the final final cut. And now I don't buy black t-shirts...not even the school carnival one last week - even though the money was going to a good cause. I would rather just give them the money.

3. Even I was a little surprised by which shirts sparked joy and which ones did not. I haven't been able to participate in a Wings for our Troops event for quite some time, but I still love wearing the American flag angel wings and thinking of everything my friend, Tami, is doing to help Servicemembers see family members before and after a deployment. But I have to reiterate, holding a shirt and asking myself if it sparked joy resulted in an immediate and strong reaction: either it did or it didn't. It was really that easy. Whether I had gotten my money's worth out of a shirt or whether I would offend someone by getting rid of it really didn't factor into my decision at all...and that's how you declutter a house.

And that left me with this:

Except that's only 1/2 the pile. In that stack are not only clothes that are worn out, but also sweaters that I've only worn once and a few that still have the tags on them. Getting dressed in the morning is so much easier now that my eyes don't have to block out the clothes I don't love. And I have worn more clothes that I love but had forgotten about because they were pushed to the back of the drawer. (Like my "Not everything that starts in Missouri ends in dysentery" t-shirt. If you get that reference, we can absolutely be friends.)

The next step is to decide what to do about the discard pile. In general, if I bought it at Goodwill, back it goes. If it still has the tags or is in excellent condition, it goes to the yard sale (which I am DREADING but is, I suppose, a fact of life if you ever want to get any money back). Some things were so far past their prime that they just went into the trash. It would be an incredibly thrifty thing for me to cut them up and make them into rags but I have actual rags for that. At this point, the KonMari Method says I should thank each item for the role it played in my life.

Yeah. I didn't do that. I barely thank my husband. I'm certainly not thanking a Mossimo v-neck.

Lastly, #4...putting away what's left. The KonMari Method suggests a certain folding method that involves standing up your clothes so you can see them better. I found that I actually prefer rolling them, which is still a change from my previous practice of folding everything. Rolling my shirts, especially my t-shirts, allows me to see them quickly, side-by-side, and choose the one I'm most in the mood to wear.

Although I didn't photograph the entire process, so far I've completed the list up to "office supplies". I even took a week and went through my crafting supplies. I'm serious. It took a week. Scrapbook paper, stamps, pens, embossing powder, beads, Cricut cartridges...I almost gave up. But I kept what sparked joy and donated the rest to a local crafting store. That alone probably makes this move 50 pounds lighter. I also found some lost gems...

Proof that I was a University of Louisville Cardinal before I was a University of Kentucky Wildcat. I vaguely remember making this ID but I can't remember why, except possibly because we were bored and looking for some way to entertain ourselves that didn't involve illegal drugs or pulling a fire alarm.

And...

My Muscular System Manual from massage school, complete with tabs for easy access. A lot of our tests in massage school were open-book, but also timed, hence the tabs. I removed the tabs and kept the book because a lot of things in this world change constantly, but the skeletal system does not.

I'm still working through the rest of the list and I'll show the complete pile of stuff that we are getting rid of when I'm done. I have less than 3 weeks. I should probably get back to work.