Have You KonMari’d Your House Yet?

My sister in law has a giant closet full of beautiful clothes. And shoes. And bags. And accessories. AND she’s nice, darn it! Sometimes I think that if she ever woke up to my wardrobe of clothes (pictured above – the hanging clothes have been organized at least!) it would be like that moment in the The Family Man where Nicholas Cage opens the closet in his ‘glimpse life’.

I stumbled upon Tidying Up on Netflix right around the same time everyone else did over the Christmas holidays. And, just like that, Marie Kondo is a household name. I find watching her show quite relaxing and I usually find myself tackling a new area of my house shortly after watching an episode. I like the idea of less clutter and of giving more appreciation to the things we have.

It has me questioning how we have our house organized. Which is the same way we organized it when we moved in 14 years ago with a one year old, a lot of stress and no clue what we were doing. Why are the glasses in two different places? Why are there things in an entire cupboard that we never use? Why are our medicines with the spices?

While cleaning out my lazy Susan (which I hate, by the way) I realized I had quite the collection of honey jars. Here they are put to better use and sparking joy for me every time I open this cupboard now.

Clothes are easy for me to part with. I am happy to get rid of the old to make way for the new. Sentimental items are a different story. Why would I part with something I connect an emotion or a memory to? It’s really hard to do! I guess I feel like it is a real connection to my past – impossible to get back to yet here I am, able to physically hold something from it. I’m not sure how I feel about parting with anything sentimental. I think if I do a good job with all of the other ‘stuff’ in my house, the sentimental pieces can stay! Even if it is just a key chain I got in fourth grade with my boring name on it.

Anyway, it is an interesting process and it forces us to think about ‘stuff’; what it means to us and why we accumulate so much of it.

We even KonMari’d Nick’s room…