S & F Series--The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Okay my little chickadees, I know I told you I was going to post on Mondays, and now it's Tuesday. And I said that I would talk about skin care. But so much has been happening that I think I will need to blog more than once a week. Also, a couple of days ago I finished reading Marie Kondo's the life-changing magic of tidying up: the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing (this is how the capitalization appears on the cover). I borrowed it from the library and have given it to my husband to read. While I have referred to this book frequently, it deserves a post dedicated to it. Skin care will have to wait. 

I am already experiencing the results of the KonMari Method. I pared down my spring/summer clothing, took what I am keeping to the laundry room, and bagged the rest up to give away. My dresser drawers have been completely reorganized, and my closet is well on its way. I am paring down so much that I might not even have to store my off season clothing!

Now, Jennifer L. Scott of The Daily Connoisseur blog, who I have also mentioned quite a bit, does not agree with Marie about not storing the off season wardrobe. I haven't decided yet, but I will give you my verdict by next week. At first it might seem to make the most sense to pack away items that you only wear in the summer or winter, so that what you see when you open your drawers and closet are strickly those pieces that you would actually wear.

Then again, I live in Ohio. This means that we have lots of transitional weather. I would never be wearing shorts in winter, and some clothing is way too heavy for summer. Or so it might seem... I'm beginning to suspect that my wardrobe could be considerably expanded if I didn't store anything away, and it would certainly free up my time. We shall see.

One of the wackier elements of Marie's book is that she anthropomorphizes material things. In other words, books don't like to be at the bottom of a pile any more than you or I would. Clothes can be happy or sad. In fact, she seems to suggest that our possessions reincarnate! This is entertaining, but strangely I am discovering that there is some mystical truth to all of this.

I don't want to spoil the pleasure you will get from reading her book by quoting from it or telling you too much about how the method itself works. What I can tell you is that the furniture in my bedroom told me in a very real way that it wanted to be moved. And some of the cardigan sweaters in my closet announced that they were unhappy hanging and getting saggy shoulders and wanted to be folded instead.

I am not joking. I have had very physical experiences and radical shifts in perspective from reading this book and implementing the decluttering process. The promise given is that we will literally figure out what to do with our lives once we have tidied our homes, all in one go. We will be different people. We will be our real selves. We will only have to do this method once, and we will be changed forever. I'm talking metamorphosis, baby! From worm to butterfly.

So just get your hands on this golden nugget of a book, and let's do this! I expect to be reading many comments from you as we go along in this together. It's time to dry off our wings and fly!!