Marie Kondo Organization Tips for Tidying Up

Whether you own a home or rent, you can probably attest to the fact that our homes can get quite untidy. Whether it’s too much clutter or too many things out of place, our homes can feel messy and disorganized. When our homes space begin to feel overly cluttered, it can impact our stress level.

If you haven’t heard of the Konmari method, it’s a type of cleaning and tidying method that’s been sweeping the nation thanks to a Netflix series called “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.” The host of the show, Marie Kondo, takes families through her organizational process to help them better organize their homes. In this blog post, we’ll show you the Marie Kondo organization tips to get your home back in order.

The Marie Kondo Categories

The first step in the organization process is to purge what you no longer need or use. If you’ve watched the show or heard anyone talk about it, you may know about the five categories:

• Clothes
• Books
• Papers
• Miscellaneous (referred to as Komono on the show and in her book)
• Sentimental items

The idea of tidying by category rather than room is that we often have the same types of items in different rooms. When you bring everything together with each category in its own pile, you get a better sense of how many items of similar nature you really have. You also want to work through the categories in the order they’re listed since they’re in order of easiest to hardest to let go of.

Go through each of the categories, one item at a time, and ask yourself if that item brings you joy. If it doesn’t, it’s time to let go. If it does, set it aside to organize.

Finally, remember to show gratitude for the items you’re not keeping.

Organization

Once you’ve decided on what you want to keep, it’s time to start the organization process.

1. Clothes — Your dresser should become your best friend. The Marie Kondo way of folding clothes is to stack your clothes on end so you can neatly see everything at once. If you don’t have a dresser, stack your clothes vertically in your closet for extra space.
2. Books — Store books you’re keeping on their ends rather than stacking them. As you go through your books, make sure the ones you keep align with where you are in life and where you want to go — chances are you won’t read them otherwise.
3. Papers — Because digital copies of most things are available, you probably won’t need to keep many papers. For the ones that you do decide to hold on to, keep them in one place with organized labels such as To Deal With, Keep Short Term, Taxes (with years), Identification, and Keep Forever.
4. Miscellaneous — Like other items on this list, store everything upright and never stack things on top of each other if you can help it. Utilize small boxes to make sure everything has a home for it to return to later.
5. Sentimental items — Find a home and storage method for everything you’re not putting on display. If you’re storing photos, organize them by year or event and in a photo album if you can.

Keeping Items with Find Self Storage

When you’ve gone through the purging part of the process, you may end up with items that you can sell or give away. If you decide you want to sell those items but don’t want them in your home in the meantime, a personal storage unit may be your answer. Located in Louisiana and Texas, Find Self Storage has unit sizes for every need, ranging from 5×5 to 10×30.

Organize and declutter your home with a storage unit rental from Find Self Storage!