KonMari My Clothes – Part 1

Today marks 1 year of blogging for me.  It is the first birthday of all-round better me.  But I did a post just recently celebrating my 100th post, so I figured I didn’t need to do another post of that sort… instead I’m going to attempt to document my first go at doing the KonMari purge…

Last week I posted my plan for going through my clothes… And I should really know better than to expect everything to follow those well laid out plans… I really should…

As you may have guessed, things didn’t exactly go as I had originally thought… I did most of my laundry on Thursday and Friday nights, so when Saturday morning came around, everything was clean and ready to go…  But then we got a call from my husband’s parents saying that they were in town for the day with some other visiting relatives and wanted to drop by for a visit… So I didn’t really get started on the clothes until early afternoon…  Then I got part way through my tops, and my husband started panicking that we hadn’t done any Christmas shopping yet (I’m a really good procrastinator), so we went out and got a few things knocked off the list, but that put my sorting and purging on hold… And with a Christmas party on Saturday night, I didn’t get back to it until mid-morning Sunday…

So first up I’ll show you what I started with.  Full disclosure here: When we moved in to our house over a year ago, we just threw our clothes in to the closet and didn’t give any thought as to how things were organized and how best to store things… At our townhouse, our bedroom had 2 closets, one was sort of a walk-in closet that my husband (then boyfriend) took over when he moved in, and the other was not a full walk-in, but generously sized and well laid out that I kept for myself.  Our new house has only one closet in the master bedroom – we are still learning to share…

 

It used to have sliding doors on it, so that only one side was accessible at a time, but if we both wanted to get dressed at the same it would be a battle of sliding the doors… so my husband took the doors off, and now we have an open closet.  I like it much better, but the side walls make it hard to get in to the back corners of the closet, and I know that we could rearrange it better…

Anyway, enough about the closet… The rest of my clothes are stored in my dresser…

First step in Marie Kondo’s process is to gather all your clothes… I found everything I had, emptied all my drawers and my side of the closet, and amassed everything on my bed.

The Pile.

Tops

First category of clothes to work on is tops… Just as Marie Kondo directed, I took each piece in my hands and asked the question:

“Does it spark joy?”

But honestly, I had trouble with it… I had some that were easy. And then I also had to think practically… Did I wear the shirt? Or did I just really like the idea of the shirt? Was it really the item of clothing that I liked? Or was it the memories that come with it?

I love the idea of this shirt… I just don’t wear it anymore…

 

And then there were some shirts that were definitely nearing the end of their life, but I still really love them and wear them (even with the obvious signs of wearing out)… So I decided to keep them on the premise that I will make a shopping list of things to replace and get rid of them as soon as I do…

In the end, I kept 97 tops and tossing 54 tops, with an addition 4 tops in storage for when some of my work out tops wear out.  When I first saw that total in the keep column of my notebook, I was shocked!  But please keep in mind that my total includes every top I own… all my undershirts, long johns, camisoles, sports uniforms, fitness clothes, jackets and seasonal clothes – along with my every day clothes… I know I could be happy with a lot less, but this is my first go-round with KonMari.

Goodbye tops.  Thank you for your service.

Bottoms

The second category of clothes following Marie Kondo’s method is bottoms. I didn’t really toss all that much in this category as I have mostly things I wear and use regularly, or I have my few pairs of dressy pants and skirts for special occasions…

I kept 36 bottoms, and tossed 12. Oh and I put my hiking pants in storage, since I don’t really wear them regularly, but want to keep them for when I go hiking (once spring comes along and the weather is nicer).

Goodbye Bottoms.  Thank you for your service.

KonMari Folding

Honestly, I’m on the fence about her method of folding… I do like the idea of seeing everything laid out, but my dresser drawers are nice and deep, and it seems a bit like a waste of space…

My folded shirt doesn’t even take up 1/3 of the drawer.

So I did a bit of a hybrid approach… Where it made sense to keep them vertical, I did, but where I was able to get more in and not loose the functionality too much, I stacked… (Bad me, I know…)

For some reason I don’t have a full photo of my shirt drawer… So here is a partial after shot of my shirt drawer:

Stored Vertically.

And my “fitness” drawer… (with Big Cat in it… and before I finished with my soccer socks that also go in that drawer…)

Hello Big Cat!

Then of course, in my closet, I had to stack my clothes on the shelves because vertical storage just wouldn’t make sense there.

Sorry Marie Kondo, but I have to stack on these shelves…

I think I’m going to end this post there… It’s getting to be long, and that’s only the first two categories…

Stay tuned for part 2…

Have you done the KonMari purge on your clothes?

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