Everything went on exactly like this, until Marie Kondo’s book fell into my hands (again by magic): “Magical cleaning. The Japanese art of putting things in order at home and in life. Here is what the author of the book writes about herself:
In general, Marie Kondo from childhood was not quite an ordinary child. She had a strange hobby – cleaning. The very process of cleaning and the methods of its implementation so absorbed the mind of a little girl that she devoted almost all her free time to this activity. As a result, after a while, Marie came up with her perfect way of cleaning. Which, however, can put things in order not only in the house, but also in the head and soul.
And really, how do we get the knowledge of how to clean properly? Basically, we are all self-taught. Children adopted the methods of cleaning from their parents, those from theirs … But! We will never pass down a cake recipe that doesn’t taste good, so why do we adopt methods that don’t make our home cleaner and us happier?
And what, and so it is possible?
The method offered by Marie Kondo is fundamentally different from what we are used to. As the writer herself says, cleaning is an important and joyful holiday that happens only once in a lifetime. And this is a holiday that will not only help your home always look the way you dreamed about it, but also help you touch the threads of inspiration and magic that skillfully intertwine our whole life.
Principles of the KonMari Method
1. Imagine what we are striving for. Before you start cleaning, ask yourself the important question of how you want your home to be, what emotions you want to experience in this home and why. Often, when we start our journey, we forget to set the right direction. How will we know that we have arrived at our destination?
2. Look around you.
Very often we store things in the house, not even really wondering why we need them. And the cleaning process turns into a thoughtless shifting of things from place to place. Things that we don’t even really need. Hand on heart, can you remember everything that is in your home? And how often do you use all these items?
Here is what Marie herself says about her house:
3. Understand what we want to keep. Many traditional cleaning methods come down to “decluttering” the house. We don’t think about how our space should look, but about what we don’t like. Thus, having no idea of the ultimate goal, we fall into a vicious circle – buying unnecessary and again and again getting rid of this unnecessary. By the way, it’s not just about things in the house, right?
4. Say goodbye to the unnecessary.
In order to understand what things you would like to say goodbye to and what to leave, you need to touch each of them. Marie suggests that we start cleaning not by room, as we usually do, but by category. Starting with the easiest to part with – the clothes in our wardrobe – and ending with memorable and sentimental items.
When dealing with things that do not bring joy to your heart, do not just put them in a separate pile with the words “well, I don’t need this”, but dwell on each of them, say “thank you” and say goodbye as you would say goodbye to old friend. Even this ritual alone will turn your soul so much that you will never be able to buy an item you don’t need and leave it to suffer alone.
Also, do not forget that “cleaning up” in this way in the things of your loved ones is an unacceptable thing.
5. Find a place for each item. After we said goodbye to everything superfluous, it was time to put in order the things left in the house.
The main rule of KonMari is not to let objects spread around the apartment. The simpler the storage, the more efficient it is. If possible, keep items of the same category next to each other. The writer advises to arrange them not so that it is convenient to take objects, but so that they are convenient to put.
The author suggests the most interesting storage method for our wardrobe – to arrange all things vertically, folding them like sushi. On the Internet, you can find many funny videos on how to do it right.
6. Carefully store what brings joy.
Treating the objects that surround us and that laboriously serve us from day to day as our good friends, we learn how to handle them with care. We are familiar with every item in our home and we will think thrice before getting something new.
Many people today are wondering about the hyperconsumption that has plagued our world. Ecologists, psychologists and simply caring people publish many scientific articles, trying to draw people’s attention to this problem and offering their own methods for solving it.
According to Marie Kondo, the average amount of garbage thrown out by a single person during cleaning according to her method is about twenty to thirty 45-liter garbage bags. And the total amount of things thrown out by customers for the entire time of its work would be equal to 28 thousand such bags.
An important thing that the Marie Kondo method teaches is to appreciate what you own. To understand that the world will not fall apart, even if we lack something. And now, when I enter my house and greet it, I will not let it remain uncleaned – not because it is my “job”, but because I love and respect it. And most often cleaning takes no more than 10 minutes. I know and enjoy every thing in my house. They all have their own place where they can rest and where I can find them. Order settled not only in my house, but also in my soul. After all, during the most important holiday in my life, I learned to appreciate what I have and carefully weed out the unnecessary.
This is where the magic lives.