Sep 21, 2015

Reflections on The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: Tidying by Category

I've been reading the best-seller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and implementing the "KonMari Method" described. It's so fascinating that I'm turning my thoughts about it into a series of posts. Note: This post contains affiliate links that help support this site at no additional cost to you. Thank you for clicking through them! You can read CFO's full disclosure here.


Reflections on the Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up | Chief Family Officer

One of the important tenets of the KonMari method is to tidy by category, rather than location. For example, when it comes to clothes, you might be tempted to sort through the clothes in your closet, then the clothes in your dresser, and then the clothes you have stored, etc. But with the KonMari method, you pull all of your clothes out from every location, and sort through them all at once.

I've tidied by category quite a few times at this point - I've sorted through my baking pans, my baking dishes, my shoes, my jackets, my clothes, my cookbooks, and so on.

And I have to say, I think it's a brilliant tactic. First and foremost, you see everything you own that pertains to that particular type of item. Under the KonMari method, you keep only those items that "spark joy" in you, and what I'm finding is that with everything laid out, I realize enough of the items "spark joy" so that I don't have to worry about not having what I need.

I'll admit that it can be a bit of a pain to put everything of one type of item in a central location so you can sort them, especially if their original locations are spread out. In this case, it helps to narrow the focus so you're only looking for one particular type of thing. For example, jackets are clothes but I keep my jackets in the coat closet downstairs, far away from the rest of my clothes. So I sorted my jackets independently from my clothes, in a totally separate session.

The category I'm kind of afraid to tackle is cleaning supplies. Those are scattered throughout the house, in each bathroom, the kitchen, and especially under the wet bar. But I know that's exactly why they need to be sorted as a category, so I can see exactly what we already have.

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