The Basics of Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up Method

May 28th, 2019

Have you ever heard about Marie Kondo? Marie Kondo is known to be the author of the book called ‘The Life-Changing Method of Tidying Up’. It is a book about de-cluttering, and she is the one responsible for setting off and popularizing this amazing craze throughout the world. She’s had a track record of success, having clients that changed their ways. She’s also had her own show on Netflix as well. But what exactly is Marie Kondo’s tidying up method? What are the basics?

The Marie Kondo method of tidying up is inspired by minimalism, and it is an approach in cleaning up by categories instead of through every room. Below are the six basic rules of the tidying up method:

1.Commit to Tidying Up

The first step, and one of the most important basics in Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up Method is to commit yourself to the task. You need to understand that cleaning up won’t be easy, and you would need to dedicate yourself to whatever lies ahead in your journey of applying all the methods or approaches to de-cluttering your home.

2.What’s Your Ideal Lifestyle?

The next step is to think about the ideal lifestyle that you want. This way, you will be more inspired about tidying up, and you’ll have a better idea of what you want to get rid of as well. In order to help you better, think about the type of home you want to have, and build your tidying up method around it. Because you’ve built your tidying around the ideal lifestyle that you want, you won’t also end up rebounding after. Make sure you think about the ideal lifestyle that you want before starting to get rid of all the clutter.

3.Finish Discarding

What Marie Kondo means by finishing discarding is to not attempt to store everything you clean up. When cleaning up, you should be able to get rid of a lot of things. While putting away items into storage units will make your home look organized, you are only filling them up with unnecessary things that you won’t be able to organize. If you’ll be using any storage boxes while cleaning up, make sure that you sort all the items accumulated after.

4.Tidy Up By Categories

Usually, people will tend to tidy up their home according to rooms. This approach isn’t recommended because you will just end up scattering the items in various locations inside your home. What you can do it to clean up by category. For example, pile up all your shoes into one location so that you will have an idea about how many you own.

5.Tidy Up By Following The Order Of Categories

It is also important to tidy up according to the correct order of categories, which is:

  • Clothes
  • Books
  • Paper
  • Miscellaneous items
  • Sentimental items

Tidying up in the correct way and order will help save your time, and you will also have a better way of determining which are the items that you actually need. For example, you aren’t allowed to clean up your sentimental items until you’ve finished de-cluttering all your clothing items.

6.Does Is Spark Joy?

When tidying up, this is the most crucial question to ask yourself in determining whether you want to keep or discard an item. Ask yourself: Does this spark joy? Keep only the items that bring you joy.