Hopefully by this time you aren’t KonMari’ed out yet! I read the book The Magic of Tidying Up last summer and spent the last month of my summer break purging and deciding what sparked joy in our home. I know the masses were introduced to Marie Kondo at the beginning of the year with her new show on Netflix, which was right around the six month mark for us. One thing the show doesn’t explain is what happens after the cameras leave. We’ve seen on other reality type shows that involve some type of major life overhaul, a follow up to show the viewer if they have maintained that lifestyle. Now, Marie Kondo’s show doesn’t offer a follow up, but I can certainly share my experience living a post KonMari life.
First things first, a big part of the KonMari lifestyle is not bringing items into your home in the first place that don’t have a designated task or place. So that eliminated a lot of our previous clutter. Impulse buys, trips to the bargain section of a certain store (you know the one), and clothes / items that “were just $XX” have pretty much completely stopped. Now, I actually have a thought process before I purchase anything. I ask myself, “Is this going to take up space?” or “Is this something I’m going to be happy to have in my home?” and probably the most important, “Is it worth it?” Another part of this is something it took me years to understand and perfect; that is telling my kids no. When I was decluttering, I donated so many little toys, games, etc. that were never used or played with. Now, we don’t really have that problem.
One thing that I just KNEW that was going to continue to be a struggle was the paper situation. Mail, bills, receipts were the bane of my existence. The thing with paper is you kind of can’t stop it. Even though most of our bills are paperless, communications from school, documents for taxes, and other miscellaneous papers are inescapable. Marie (yes, we’re on a first name basis now) recommends having clear plastic pouches for such papers. I splurged on a few from the dollar tree and picked up some labels also. Currently, we have a few for “bills in progress” which are mainly medical bills, “maternity leave documents” because I’m 30 weeks pregnant and need to have those handy, and “tax documents” since we’re in that point of the year. Everything else pretty much gets trashed, taken care of immediately, or filed away in our filing system. It’s not perfect, but usually all the papers get stacked on my vanity / desk and I’ll spend about 30 minutes every Sunday getting the paperwork organized and discussing with my husband about what needs to be taken care of the next workday. The important thing is that there’s now a system in place instead of stacking the mail on the kitchen table and forgetting about it.
One more big takeaway that we’ve managed to continue is spending about forty-five minutes to an hour tidying up before bed. I think most adults do this, but we didn’t. I noticed when school started, I strongly disliked our weekend routine. Saturdays consisted of grocery shopping, cleaning, and laundry. Often, the laundry went into 9 or 10 PM and who wants to spend half of their weekend doing that? So doing a little during the week has helped tremendously. My husband usually handles dinner and getting the kids ready for bed. After they’re asleep, he works and I’ll clean the kitchen and fold or two loads of laundry. I actually enjoy this time. Nothing compares to waking up to a super clean kitchen, and I can sneak in an episode of Friends while folding clothes before bed. Then, by the time the weekend rolls around, there may be one load of laundry to do. Boom!
To be honest, somethings haven’t been super consistent. Our pantry easily gets disorganized after a trip to Costco, some drawers (like my husband’s sock drawer) are still KonMari folded but our 18 month-old’s onesie drawer is definitely not. Christmas? I tried my best to just go with the flow. I also have a husband and two sons who apparently have strong opinions about me trying to sneak their things to Goodwill so that, of course, will always be a challenge.
