how Marie Kondo motivates me

I can't remember if I've mentioned Marie Kondo on here.  I'm sure I have.  I found her show on Netflix about a week ago and I've already watched all eight or so episodes.  And she is now permanently residing in my head.  I want to clean out #allthethings and I plan on doing more, over time.  I've worked on a few areas already, and I thought I'd share.

But first, if you don't have Netflix, Marie Kondo is the author of a book that was trending for several months called The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.  Her Netflix Original series is called Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.  She is cute as a button, but she does weird things, like introduce herself to the house and bows to it on the floor, and she says that before you decide to discard an item, you should thank it for the years of use it brought you.  I'm not planning on doing any of that, first, because an item is an inanimate object, and no, and secondly because it's weird.  I thank Jesus and people, and that's it.

She also says that when things you own don't spark joy, get rid of them.  Even though that's not how I word it, I see her point with this, because if I don't LOVE something, I won't keep it.  The areas she concentrates on are clothes, books, kitchen, miscellaneous and then she suggests different ways of folding clothes and new ways to store them, and she also suggests that storing things in short, thin boxes helps keep things tidy and easily accessible.  I want to go buy all the thin boxes now, too.  Or trays, those would work as well.  I see a trip to the Dollar Tree in my very near future.

Anyway, I love this kind of show (and have been known to watch other videos that are similar on YouTube), because though it is entertainment, it is the kind that motivates me to do things in my house.  Here are a few areas I've worked on.

This is how she teaches people to fold things in her show, even jeans and t-shirts.  I spent ten minutes on this kitchen towel drawer on Saturday.  Since then, I found a little white box I already had that was empty, and I stored all those stainless steel cup lids you see in the top right corner.

I already showed you this one the other day, but I spent about ten minutes on this cabinet as well.  It was a jumbled, hot mess before this picture was taken, and I couldn't read any of the labels on any of the spices.  I realize this doesn't look great in the picture, but trust me, it is a whole lot better than it was.  I could barely fit that blue container of salt into the cabinet before I cleaned it out!

My husband tagged me in this picture yesterday, and I don't know what nonsense this is.  ;)  I have a book problem, if you can even call it that.  I do plan on cleaning out some of the books I have (I do this one time every year) and I need to organize them better and redo my bedroom book shelf, but I will always have more than thirty books.  I reread them occasionally, and refuse to get rid of my favorites.  But I could definitely stand to donate some to my local library.

See?  Here I am, getting started.  I've read these and don't necessarily want to hang onto all of them.  A couple of these I will pass onto someone I know will love and read them.  These were only on this computer desk that you see.  There are more still up on the shelves, but those are keepers.  I also keep old bible study books I've completed, because I like to go back and look at them from time to time.  I just need to figure out a different place to keep them.  Right now, they're kind of all over the place.  I cleaned out the tupperware cabinet the other day, but I didn't take a picture.  I got rid of all the glass jars I had, because who needs all those?  If it's taking up needed space, it needs to go, because while we do have a good amount of cabinet storage, I need every bit of it.  Today I'll work on a few more cabinets and drawers in the kitchen.  And maybe my bedroom bookshelf.  Maybe.  That may take several hours, though, so it may wait until next week.

Jonah's and Noah's closet stays cleaned out, because it's small.  I just cleaned mine out before Christmas, so it's still nice.  Graham's is decent, though he needs to donate some shirts he no longer wears.  Drew's needs help.  We also plan on doing this in our attic before the warm weather returns.  We just need a whole Saturday, and so far we haven't had one since Christmas.  Maybe next week, we'll do this.

My other huge area that overwhelms me is our tornado closet.  As in, it looks like a tornado blew through it, but really, it is an actual closet under the stairs.  I need to clean off all the shelves and get rid of the games we no longer use, and the old books and school papers.  It stays messy looking because we also store extra things in there, and there are two safes in it, as well.

So, that's how Marie Kondo has motivated me.  Plus it's January, and a great time of year to purge.  I love doing this kind of thing, it is extremely satisfying seeing bags and bags of stuff being hauled out.

Anyone else doing this kind of thing?  I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks for reading!  Love to all.