Konmari

Ooops. I know I said we were going to do videos, cds, albums, etc next but plans changed. TW reminded me that Melisa, who we were re-homing some “third grade” books to, would probably be able to use some of our no-joy school and office supplies. TW was right — it’s expensive for teachers who are setting up their first classroom (or setting up any classroom, really.)

So, we switched gears and I wandered around the house gathering up all of the writing utensils and scissors and notebooks and glue and paper clips and staples and thumb/jump/usb drives.

Luckily, the earlier tidying up made this a little easier than it would have been if we still had all of that PAPER all over the darn place. I had already put most of the notebooks and notepads in a box, while pulling paper out of our desk drawers and such and every time I’d seen a usb drive in recent weeks, I’d put it in a pile on top of TW’s desk.

We ended up with more writing utensils than I can count — many still in packaging and/or unsharpened.

– I went through these first, looking for anything that was obviously broken/dead and threw all of those into the trash.
– Then I touched each pen/pencil/marker and asked whether it sparked joy. Generally speaking, not much sparked joy. Any Micron or Pitt pen sparked joy, most Sharpies but after you’ve touched 5 black Sharpies, how much joy can the sixth one really bring you? Some pens due to how they felt in my hand, the design of them, or a memory of how they wrote.
– After that, I tested each item from the joy pile to make sure they all wrote and/or still brought me joy when writing with them.
– Then, in my no-joy pile, I looked for things that were obviously new and never used, things I thought Melisa could use in her classroom, and things that I knew would bring TW or a kid joy.
– TW walked through at this point and I asked her to go through the no-joy pile — I don’t think she added a single thing to our joy pile.

Which left us with a pretty small pile of pens, pencils and markers.

It also left Melisa with a pretty good size pile of pens, pencils and markers. Yippee!

I did pretty much the same thing with various other categories of stuff. All the crayons, colored pencils, kids’ markers. All of the staplers/staples/paper clips. All of the glue, glue sticks and tape.

Then we got to the paper and note pads. I want to know why we had so many different packages of mailing labels, business card makers, and other weird papers for the printer. We NEVER use that stuff. NEVER ever. NO JOY, none, zero zip.

I did save quite a few notebooks but almost no notepads. I’m a list-making doodler so I need some sort of paper on my desk all of the time. Notepads are fine but I much prefer an actual notebook — even a smaller than average notebook is better than a notepad.

And, did I mention we have (HAD!) a ton of post-it notes? I haven’t even gone through them all because I have an entire container of stuff like that in my Filofax supply section — but OMG all the post-its and flags and gah. I was pretty amused (also, annoyed) — TW didn’t really feel much joy for any of the stuff in this category but when it came to post-its and flags, she wanted to keep everything. She was sure one of the children would want/need/feel joy for all of those things. I reminded her of just how many we had. Just how few the children took to school with them last year. And, we purged. Melisa got anything brand new and unopened. The rest went into the recycle bin.

There are two items in this category that I haven’t really talked about — USB drives and scissors. I think they deserve their own KonMari Problems post. For now, I’ll just say… we have enough. More than enough. Ugh.

We started this task with a rubbermaid bin, two of those cardboard storage boxes from IKEA, a half dozen drawers and shelves full of office and school supplies and ended up with one IKEA cardboard storage box and one rubbermaid bin, neither full, of supplies.

I’ll admit to not being obsessive about making sure all of our office and school supplies were gathered. In the 24 hours since we finished this task, I’ve already seen two pairs of scissors and three pens that never got rounded up. (I discarded them.) I’m ok with that. I know what we have, now. I’m pretty sure that 99% of what we find lurking in the hidden corners of the house can be discarded without any problem at all. Excluding the stuff upstairs in the girls’ rooms. I intentionally saved their supplies until they were home — I’m really trying not to Kondo their stuff without at least SOME feedback from them. So, we’ll do theirs the next time they’re here for more than a couple of hours.

Next up is CDs, DVDs, Albums, Video Games — and cassettes, lol.

Well that went well. Mostly. We had paper everywhere! We definitely still have paper up in the girls’ rooms but we’re ignoring that until they’re both here and can participate in the Kondoing of their paper. I’m sure we’ll also find more paper tucked away in various places as we move through the process but the bulk of it is DONE.

I gathered up the paper from our desks, from our bedside tables, from the cubby in the bedroom, from various junk drawers throughout the house, the two plastic file boxes jam packed full of “important papers”, and from the drawers of TW’s dresser in the cold room.

We ended up with three bags of trash and a bag and a half of paper to shred. We also have a box of “sentimental papers” to go through at the end.

One of the file boxes is completely empty and the other isn’t even close to being full. We also stumbled upon dozens of gift cards and I’ve gone through the annoyingly tedious process of checking to see if any of them have balances — most do. The ones that didn’t, were cut and thrown away so we don’t have to go through that process again. I’m pretty sure there are more gift cards in the “sentimental” box because our sorting piles got a little confused for a few minutes and I was not going to go back through the box to find a few darn gift cards. We’ll deal with them later.

I’m pretty pleased with our progress. Now I just have to decide if there’s a community shredding event scheduled in the near future at a time that’s convenient for us to go shred. Or, if we should just buy a shredder… I’m leaning toward NOT buying a shredder but I want this stuff out of the house ASAP. It defeats the purpose of sorting it and bagging it if you’re just going to leave the crap sitting around in bags. Hmph.

Next up: DVDs, VHS tapes, CDs, albums and video games… those are all over the house, too. (What isn’t?)

As I mentioned a few days ago, we have some issues with Marie Kondo’s ideas about books.

TW and I talked out some of our issues about how to determine whether a book sparks joy. Defining “joy” and such like that. I had also pretty much decided that we were not going to move all of the books into one room in order to search for sparks of joy. The act of moving all of the books alone would exhaust us physically so much so that we’d probably not be able to sort them until we’d had a few days of rest, after which time the dogs would have eaten the books — and that would not bring us joy. Been there, done that, we’ve worked hard to avoid that happening.

Think about it… in the office, we have five full size Billy bookshelves with the extension units. We have two of the corner style Billy bookshelves with the extension units. Those shelves are full. Some of the shelves have books on top of books and multiple rows of books. We have books on the library cart. Books on the shelves of our desks. A rubbermaid bin of children’s books is also sitting here next to my desk.

In the family room and dining room, we have three more Billy bookshelves (no extenders) full of books. We have books sitting on table tops right next to those bookshelves as well. There are books in our bedroom. There are books upstairs in the girls’ rooms. There are also board books for JMP lurking in the other bedroom.

No way could we move those into one room and survive to look for sparks of joy.

So, I’d decided that we would simply go pull each book off of the shelf, hold it to determine joy factor, and replace on the shelf if we felt the joy. The non-joy-bringing books would then be added to boxes. This modified KonMari seems like it should work for us, right?

Except, TW pointed out that my back has still not fully healed and she did something to her shoulder on Friday. Neither of us is fit to cart books away to the Friends of the Library folks or to the children’s book collector people (whose name I cannot remember at the moment.) Which means if we do books next, our house would be full of boxes of books for… the duration.

That seems problematic.

TW wanted to skip books and come back to it later. I’m a stickler for process and didn’t want to do that.

So, we’re going to do a little bit at a time. We’ll go through a shelf and when we fill up a bag or a box to the point that one of us can safely carry it without injury, we’ll stop. We’ll take that box to the drop off point and then we’ll start where we left off. This means it’s going to take us a long time to KonMari our books.

This also means that I’m going to take TW’s suggestion and move to step 3, paper, while we are working on the books.

Paper is an equally troubling issue here as we have paper EVERYWHERE. I’ll be collecting it all week as I wander around the house and we’ll sort it completely over the weekend. While we’re slowly working through our joyful bookshelves. Pray for us.

So, we started the KonMari Method over the weekend. Step 1: Clothes. Hahahaha. That was fun.

I knew we had a lot of clothes, stored all over our house. It took about three days to gather everything up (and when I say everything, I just mean my clothes and TW’s.) We piled it up in the extra bedroom and it was overwhelming. Just the huge number of socks we own overwhelmed me.

I started while TW was napping — pulling out all of the tops, of which we had thousands. T-shirts. Lord, the t-shirts. Once I’d done that, and TW was still napping, I went back into the extra bedroom and sorted the other items into piles and that took all of about 15 minutes. The shirts, the shirts were what did me in.

A photo posted by Denise Tanton (@dtanton) on Jun 13, 2015 at 8:57am PDT

TW was STILL napping so I started sorting the shirts into piles. Hers, mine, and the ones that were sentimental in some way. As I sorted, I threw some obvious no joy shirts into a huge box that I’d placed next to the table just for this purpose. It was full before I’d gotten through the initial sort.

TW was STILL napping so I started going through my shirts for reals. What gave me joy? Not much. And here’s where personality traits really come into play here. I have no really strong feelings about clothing. Obviously. If it’s comfortable, I’ll wear it. Mostly.

The things I felt TRUE joy over where not the shirts I would wear. They were the old, old, old shirts so well-worn that they really do need to be tossed out. They were so well-worn because they had brought me joy. They still brought me joy but no, I can’t really keep wearing the long sleeved white thermal style shirt with little lines of pastel colors for the rest of my life. I’ve been wearing it for more than 15 years as it is. Yes. 15 years. Not kidding. When something is comfortable, I wear it forever and ever and ever, amen.

The other things that brought me true joy are the t-shirts made by old friends, the t-shirts that remind me of old friends and experiences with my children. The first Melissa Ferrick t-shirt. The Calliope Fest t-shirt (man that was a great festival, I miss that festival.)

These really are sentimental things rather than plain ole clothing. So many of them went into the “sentimental” pile to deal with last (a la the KonMari method.)

The rest of my clothes — I could give or take. But really, there’s no joy involved in this for me. It’s just not my thing. So this step, it was really hard for me. I ended up with way too many shirts, still. I’ll probably try to narrow it down again at some point. But, I’m super happy with my sock drawer. Those socks BRING ME JOY. Absolutely. Which is pretty damn funny because I actually hate socks. haha.

A photo posted by Denise Tanton (@dtanton) on Jun 13, 2015 at 12:02pm PDT

TW woke up and she went through her shirts… like lightning. This is where she and I differ. She will buy something, wear it for awhile and really enjoy it but suddenly, one day out of the blue, it no longer brings her joy. She’ll generally keep wearing it, because you don’t get rid of perfectly good clothes just because they don’t bring you joy… except she did that yesterday.

I was really impressed with what she got rid of. A few things surprised me. Most things did not. I pulled a couple of her things out of the discard pile because I knew she felt sentimental about them and by then we’d pretty much decided that a t-shirt quilt is in our future. She pulled a couple of things out of the discard pile as I was bagging things up, too.

All in all, it went really well. Our drawers are neat and tidy and we have nine bags of clothes to drop off at Goodwill.

Then, I made the little girls go upstairs with me and KonMari their clothes. This was amusing and personalities absolutely came into play again.

RJ mostly did hers herself. Pretty quickly and without a lot of hemming and hawing. She did look up at one point and ask if it was ok that the socks she got for Christmas last year brought her no joy. I said absolutely fine, discard. Gifts don’t have to be held onto. It’s the joy of giving and receiving that matters most. Being saddled with gifts you don’t love brings no joy, for the giver or the receiver.

Elly, however, yelled “Hey, let me see those socks! I want them!” And that sums up her experience with KonMari.

I handed her each item of clothing and if it was a sock or underwear, it brought her joy and it went into her drawer. I think she tossed two pairs of underwear that she wore when she was 8 and the bras that don’t fit. Other than that, regardless of condition — she kept the rest. The kid slays me. She NEEDS and LOVES her socks and her underwear. ALL OF THEM. (Even the underwear she stole from her sister…)

She was slightly sentimental about some items that she wore when she was little. She fondled a few things and reminisced about wearing them. She enjoyed the memory of stealing something from her sister and getting in trouble for wearing it. She pondered whether items like that might still fit… and then she let them go. The only really sentimental item that she kept, I think, was a knit cap that she sewed bunny ears on to. I think she’s going to take the ears off and sew them back on her bunny, though. (The kid is nuts, what can I say?)

She also had pretty clear ideas of things she never loved and things that she’d love to be able to wear but they don’t fit anymore and she let it all go to the discard pile, without any fuss or regret.

In the end, we added five more bags of clothing to the Goodwill pile.

A photo posted by Denise Tanton (@dtanton) on Jun 13, 2015 at 4:13pm PDT

And yes, we are all feeling pretty darn joyful about step 1 of the KonMari Method.