KonMari Method

It’s practically impossible to talk about decluttering without talking about the KonMari method.  Between the books and the Netflix series, I think almost everyone has at least heard of it.

I like large parts of the KonMari method, and there are parts of it that I don’t care for.  As always, I prefer to get the negative parts out of the way first. 

To me, the biggest drawback to the KonMari method is the idea that you have to tackle such huge projects at once.  For example, clothing is the first category of items to work through.  The KonMari method calls for removing ALL of your clothing from closets, drawers, etc., and going through every single piece, one item at a time. 

I understand that clothing should be relatively easy, and it makes sense to keep yourself from dealing with the same things over and over again.  But, trying to find the willpower, time, mental fortitude, and physical energy for a task like that can be daunting.  It’s easier to put it off for a weekend, then a long weekend, etc.  It’s also the kind of thing that has made me not want to start another project for a long time. 

If we were to pile all of our clothing on our bed, and it took longer than anticipated to go through it, we would literally have no good place to sleep.  We don’t have a guest room.  And spending the night in a recliner or on an air mattress doesn’t sound appealing. 

So, we broke it down into much smaller steps.  I think it’s important to get some easy wins early on.  So, I started with my socks.  I discarded socks that I couldn’t find mates for and even perfectly good pairs of socks that didn’t spark joy.  (More on that later.)  It was a doable project.  I felt good about it and myself when I was finished, and that gave me the confidence to move on to the next category. 

I’ve seen a lot of memes making fun of the KonMari system and talking about how things like a bottle of aspirin or a vacuum cleaner or broccoli don’t spark joy, so that must mean you need to get rid of them.  But, I think my favorite part of the KonMari system addresses that. 

Before you even start with tidying or discarding, the KonMari method tells you to envision your ideal lifestyle, what you want your days to look like, and what you want to surround yourself with.  In my opinion, that addresses the “these things that I actually need don’t spark joy” argument.  Personally, my ideal lifestyle doesn’t include a headache (now the aspirin is a keeper), dirty floors or furry furniture (now the vacuum cleaner is a keeper), or never eating healthy foods (the broccoli will never be a keeper, but plenty of other vegetables are, even if ice cream does spark a lot more joy).

Some of the things I picture in my ideal version of life are not being slaves to keeping the house clean, not being stressed out or late because we couldn’t find something we needed, and being able to have people over to the house any time we want.  If we’ve learned anything from COVID, it’s that time and opportunities are precious.  I don’t want to waste those because I don’t want someone to see how messy my house is.  So, with the KonMari method, those are the goals I’m working toward. 

The “spark joy” part of the KonMari method can take a little while to get used to, especially when applying it to ordinary things.  It kind of clicked for me when I was working on sweaters.  Yes, I broke clothing into very small categories; socks, sweaters, tee shirts, other shirts, pants, jeans, shorts, etc.  Anyway, during the sweater process, I had a lightbulb moment with these two sweaters. 

They both fit me, they’re both colors I typically wear, they’re both a brand I like, and there was no damage (stains, tears, etc.) to either one of them.  I almost never wore the teal one.  I still can’t really articulate a reason why.  Maybe the neckline?  I’m not sure.  Anyway, I never really enjoyed wearing it, but I kept it around because it was a perfectly good sweater, and I had it as a backup if I didn’t keep up with the laundry.   I almost never let it get to the point of wearing the sweater, though, because I just didn’t like it.  The argyle plaid one, on the other hand, I wore (and still wear) all of the time.  Argyle plaid always makes me happy!  I feel good wearing that sweater.  I like how it fits, feels, and looks.  I feel confident in it.  Incidentally, it’s what I’m wearing in my work ID photo because it seemed like a great choice for my first day at this job. 

The argyle plaid sweater (and all of the other argyle plaid sweaters I have) spark joy for me.  I feel good wearing them.  The teal one didn’t.  I was never going to feel great about wearing it.  So, it turns out I didn’t need it, even though it was a perfectly good sweater.  That sweater is no longer hanging in my closet, and I don’t have to move it aside to reach a sweater that I’m happy wearing. 

It sounds almost too simple to make a difference, but when you think about applying it to everything, it adds up to a huge change.  When your clothes are all things you enjoy wearing, your cookbooks are all ones you enjoy cooking from, your pots and pans are all ones you use and enjoy using – you can imagine how much the list can go on - it leads to an overall feeling of being happier and not needing to devote so much mental energy to basic things. 

We’re not 100% there yet, and our house definitely doesn’t look like anything you’ll find on Marie Kondo’s website, but it’s so much better than it was.  We’re benefitting from the things we’ve simplified.  Last weekend, we invited our neighbors over to dinner on the spur of the moment.  We were all outside working on various yard projects and started talking.  Everyone was home, and it was the perfect opportunity.  Because the house was in order and I knew what we had in the freezer, it was easy to decide on a last-minute dinner.  I made a huge pot of spaghetti, so we all ate, talked, and played games.  It was a great evening and one we wouldn’t have been able to have if the house had been too messy for us to be comfortable inviting people over.  That sparks joy for both of us.

So what about you?  Have you used the KonMari method?  What sparks joy for you? 

Masks

I know this post is really, really late in the grand scheme of wearing masks, but it seems like wearing masks will be going on for quite a while, so maybe better late than never.  And I’ve seen a few other people post about their masks, so I decided to as well.

Obviously, we’re wearing masks.  North Carolina has a mask mandate in place, though it’s not rigorously enforced everywhere.  We’ve been making a point of supporting businesses that do enforce it, and not supporting the ones that don’t.  It’s something we both feel very strongly about.  

That being said, it took some getting used to remembering to always bring a mask, and some trial and error to figure out the best way to organize them.  It seems like it’s always a little hectic trying to leave the house, and we’ve learned to keep things we need to take with us near the door.  We hang our keys near the door, so we decided hanging masks near the door would work.

We put up this hook for them.  

It’s very sturdy, so whenever things are back to normal we plan to use the hook for things like bags of library books that need to be returned and other things that need to be taken somewhere else.

We have a lot of masks.  It took some trial and error to find the ones that are most comfortable.  And Nick hasn’t been able to work from home, so that’s a mask every day, two now that the CDC has started recommending double masking, plus additional masks for any time I have to go into the office, or any time we have to take pets to the vet or go anywhere else.  Since they can’t go in the dryer, I wanted to make sure we had plenty of extras for the times when we get behind on laundry.  So we have a lot of masks.

We’ve also been following the guidance to wash them after every use.  I feel like the guidance to treat them like underwear; don’t touch them/take them off in public, wash them after every use, etc. is pretty simple to understand and follow.  

We have this bag hanging near the door to collect the dirty masks.  It’s just a reusable bag that I used to take to Aldi. 

It’s washable, and I periodically wash it along with the masks.  I know we could just put the used masks in the laundry hamper with everything else, but there’s a lot of potential for the mask to be taken off and left somewhere else in the house on the way to the hamper.  Since there have been cases of animals getting COVID, we don’t want to risk Duke or the cats getting sick from a contaminated mask, so the bag near the door works well for us.  We come in, put the mask in the bag, and immediately wash our hands.  

All of the masks that we’ve bought say to hand wash or wash on the gentle cycle, so they all go in the washer on the hand wash cycle.  Early on, I put them in with other things that were washed on the hand wash cycle, but the masks tend to get caught up in sleeves and pant legs.  A few accidentally went through the dryer that way, and I felt like I had to throw them away after that.  I wasn’t sure if they’d still be  effective, so I threw them away.  After that, I started counting the masks and making sure I had hung up the right number of masks before I put anything in the dryer.  That kept me from ruining any more masks, but it was a pain, so now I just wash the masks by themselves. 

It was a challenge figuring out how to dry so many masks at once.  We can’t hang them anywhere within reach of the cats because Caroline and Mortimer will chew the straps.  And a mask with no straps is pretty much useless.  The best method I’ve come up with is using a straight plastic clip hanger like this, so I can put several masks on one hanger.  Then I put the hanger on one of the hooks we have over our bedroom and closet doors.  

The cats can’t reach them, and they get plenty of air to dry.  

I decided early on to get masks in cute/cheerful prints/patterns.  There definitely hasn’t been much joy and happiness during the pandemic, so I decided to put a little bit of happiness wherever I could, and cute masks make me a little bit happier than plain ones. 

 

I’m a Friends fanatic, so of course I have a Friends mask.

Nick is a huge Star Trek fan, so he has a Star Trek mask.

If you’ve visited much, you know I love to cook, so I  have a mask with a cooking print.  

Nick loves sloths, so he has a sloth mask.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that most of my masks have butterflies.

Unfortunately, Nick’s job doesn’t share my view that cute masks bring a little bit of happiness, and they have a policy of solid color masks only.  They adopted that policy fairly early on, so Nick only has a few masks with prints.  We have a lot of solid colored masks, since Nick has to wear masks a lot more often than I do.  I’ve bought masks in pretty much every possible shade of blue since that’s Nick’s favorite color.  I refuse to give up on trying to squeeze a little bit of beauty and happiness into wearing masks.

My job, while being very strict about enforcing the mask mandate, has said we can wear any kind of mask we want as long as it’s not offensive.  So I still get to wear my happy masks whenever I go into the office.  Most of my coworkers have opted for solid colored masks anyway, but I don’t think it surprises anyone when the person with the pink office shows up in a mask with butterflies or rainbow hearts.  

So what about you?  Did you have a hard time getting used to remembering to bring a mask?  Do you prefer patterned or solid color masks?  

My Day of Freedom

I did get my day of freedom yesterday.  I didn’t go anywhere.  I didn’t even talk to or see anyone other than my husband.  I didn’t go on Facebook, and I completely ignored the phone.  It was wonderful.  I may have to do it more often.  I was able to get quite a bit accomplished too; not as much as I would have liked, but definitely enough to call it a good day.

I cleaned out and organized the refrigerator.  This always makes me happy and makes me feel like a success in the kitchen, so that was excellent.  

I caught up most of the laundry, including putting it away (that’s always the really hard part for me for some reason), and some of the ironing.  I am beginning to think that the cats pull clean clothes from the closets and dressers and toss them in the hamper while we’re gone.  I think it’s possible; our cats can behave very badly sometimes, and we seem to generate an exorbitant amount of laundry for just two people.  

I submitted a poem to an online publication.  I had been meaning to do this for about two months, but between procrastination and a fear of rejection I just hadn’t gotten around to it.  It’s submitted now.  It will be about three months before I hear anything back from them, so now that it’s done I’m trying not to think much about it.  Yes, I am aware of the fact that if I’d submitted it when I first decided to I’d only have about another month to wait before hearing from them.  Live and learn.

Continuing on the writing front, I organized my partially written posts into folders within my folder on the desk top, and named them appropriately.  I will be happier because I can find things now, and my husband will be happier because they’re organized and not all over the desktop.  (He has this theory that you shouldn’t save everything to the desktop and that that’s what folders are for.)  I also worked on a few posts for later on, though not quite as many as I had hoped.  

I also scrubbed the kitchen floor; the on your hands and knees with a bucket of soapy water kind of scrubbing, instead of using a mop or Swiffer.  I haven’t done this in a while, and let me just say that almost every inch of my body is screaming “WHY???  WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” today.  But the floor looks really, really good.  

The floor scrubbing was good too because, being a mindless activity that kept my hands busy, it gave me time to think about some things.  As I mentioned Tuesday, I’ve been edgy and snappish lately, so I spent the time trying to figure out some solutions.  I concluded that at least part of the trouble is that I’ve lapsed into a very disorganized state.  I am happiest when I know what I’m making for dinner every (or at least most) night for the week, when my work clothes are laid out the night before, and when things are just generally well-organized and planned.  This hasn’t been happening lately.  I’m not entirely sure why, but I suspect it’s due to a combination of poor time management and a general lack of organization.

I found some great articles on organization with some tips and ideas that I plan to try, and I’m working on a plan for getting some things organized.  I’ll probably be writing more about that later.  

The time management part is harder.  I seem to have a pattern of saying yes to everything I’m asked to do or participate in, getting burned out that way, and then saying no to everything.  I’m still working on a solution for this one.  Most of the things I commit to seem important at the time, so I’m having a hard time figuring out what to say no to.  How do you prioritize?  Do you have a daily/weekly/monthly limit for things you’ll commit to?  Do you have any suggestions at all for better time management?

I also came to the realization that I spend (okay, waste) a lot of time every week on Facebook and talking on the phone.  I realize that not all phone conversations are a waste of time, and there are definitely people that I need and want to talk to.  I need to stop answering my phone any and every time it rings and staying on the phone until the other person needs to go.  I plan to start utilizing voicemail and prioritizing whether or not a call needs to be returned immediately, based on the voicemail and what I’m currently trying to accomplish.  And I think I’m going to start setting serious limits for my time on Facebook.  I’m also considering whittling down my friends list.  Have any of you tried this, or had success in limiting phone and Facbook time?

I hope you all had a safe, wonderful, and happy Fourth of July.

Enjoying Freedom

No, I’m not talking about the kind being celebrated tomorrow.  I’m talking about the kind that comes from  having no commitments for a day.  I, like a lot of people, have the day off of work tomorrow.  Unlike a lot of people I’ve spoken to I have no plans for the day.

My husband is currently working nights, so he’ll be sleeping during the day, which means we’ve made no plans.  I’m pretty sure I could have a rock concert in the living room and he would sleep through it, so I’m not really limited on what I can do at home.  Not that I want a rock concert.  I’m actually not a fan of loud noise; it’s just nice for me (and for him since I’m a klutz) that I don’t have to tiptoe around quietly while he’s sleeping. 

I have rescheduled the one commitment I had for tomorrow and have blatantly refused to make any others.  I need the freedom of an unstructured day.  I need to clean the house.  I need to iron.  I need to work on some blog posts that have been swirling around in my head.  I need to regain control of myself.

I need 24 hours in which I don’t have to meet anyone’s demands, solve anyone’s problems, or deal with anything outside the walls of our little house.  I have felt myself becoming increasingly snappish and edgy for the past week.  I’m not entirely sure what is causing it, but I am sure I don’t like who I am at the moment. 

I think I will be a much better person after my day of freedom.  I plan to use the time to come up with a plan for making myself less edgy and snappish.  I suspect this will involve coming up with a plan to get some things organized and set some time management priorities, and of course beginning to implement said plan.

 So what about you?  How do you plan to spend your day of freedom?