New Year Organization

As I mentioned before in my nesting post we have been working on refreshing/decluttering the house. In my adult life I always feel overwhelmed with a list of things that I want to get done around the house to feel more organized. This pregnancy though, has been kicking my butt to where I am not fulfilling that list. However, there is still the never ending list going on in my head.

I use to have a routine, being a stay at home mom, to get these things done. Now that I am working, I find that I lack motivation for anything beyond basic tidying (dishes, vacuuming etc). Having that routine was essential for me because it maintained my cleaning rage.

For a few years now I have been watching Cullen & Katie on YouTube. They are family vloggers that live in Alabama. The past couple of weeks Katie has been talking about her process with the Konmari method. Basically it is going through everything you own, touching it, and if it brings you joy you keep it and organize it appropriately. If it doesn’t spark joy then you either donate, sell, or trash it. It got me making a list of things to do in our house, just for reorganization purposes. Then last night, I stumbled upon the Netflix series Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. Marie is the person who created the Konmari method, so I figured okay let’s watch this and see what it is all about.

Chris and I watched the first episode together. I won’t lie, I sort of kept laughing at the people in the episode because it seemed like they were making a lot of excuses not to do what they obviously were wanting and needing to do. The process itself, mostly, is really great. You start with all of your clothes. You take every clothing item, and make a large pile so that you can physically see what you have. It amazes me how many clothes one person has. I am talking several closets full of clothes.

Once you have your pile, you have to physically touch each item to see if it sparks joy or not. In the show, Marie has you thank the clothes you choose not to keep. I personally don’t think I would go that far, but I get why she does it. You do this entire process throughout your whole house. In the episodes I watched it took most of the couples a month on average to complete the whole thing.

I love organizing. Watching the show sparked my motivation to want to go through even more of our stuff and get it organized in a better fashion.

The biggest tip is to take it one room at a time. Don’t try to start more than one room at a time or you will be very overwhelmed in the temporary clutter and you can lose motivation quickly to finish it.

I am not going to follow the plan to a T, but it did help to give me a starting place.

Do you like organizing? Does clutter and dysfunction in the home make you stress out?

Let me know how you maintain organization in your home or what areas are lacking it!

Until next time,

Jenn