To go along with the 100 Things...

So there's a show called "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo"--a young Japanese mother and mogul who helps families de-clutter their homes and lives. I had seen it passing on Netflix, but hadn't quite decided to watch it until a friend of mine mentioned that she'd binged it. Next time I was looking for something to watch...Marie Kondo got the click. Since I have been in a "getting rid of stuff" faze, it seemed like a good choice.

The first aspect of people's lives Marie tackles is clothes. She has the people she's helping take all of their clothes out of closets and drawers and boxes and make a pile on the bed or floor so that an individual can see how much clothing they actually have. Usually it's a lot. Partners make separate piles.

One guy had over 150 pair of shoes, many of which he'd had for over a decade and most of which he'd never worn. It was interesting to see how emotionally invested he was in those shoes. Eventually though, he pared the cache down to under fifty pair.

So anyway...once you've got your clothes in a pile, Marie says to touch each item, one by one, and keep it if it sparks joy within you, while thanking and then putting aside the items not being kept.

While clothing wasn't specifically on my list of things to purge, I do know I've got stuff I don't wear and so I've been pondering the KonMarie method to get rid of anything extraneous. I'd love to get DH going on this process too because I know he has quite a bit of stuff that could be gotten rid of, but that's going to be a challenge, so it'll have to wait--life is still not quite back to normal.

Getting rid of books will be (has been) pretty easy. Since I prefer e-reading and the fact that I can carry 100s of books/stories with me on a phone or a Kindle is wonderful; getting rid of physical books isn't a hardship. I have a few that are sentimental in value, but for the most part, the rest can/will go.

It's really all the miscellaneous stuff that I'm going to struggle with because I love my stuff...all my collections and fandom oddities that I've accumulated over the years. But Ms. Kondo isn't about getting rid of ALL your stuff. Just the stuff that no longer sparks the joy it once might have. That's easy and fair enough.

I promised an update today on my quest to get rid of 100 things, so here it is...

On Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, I worked my way through three drawers of a dresser in my office. The contents were mostly craft related with a handful of other random items thrown in for whatever reason.

I was pretty ruthless and realistic about the stuff. All I kept was anything cross stitching related. Business cards were relocated. Sewing stuff was put in a box for a friend I mentioned a while back. All other random crafty things were put into the donation box.

Contents of the top draw...all that I kept were the rolls of Aida cloth, the white box in the center, and the two post cards at the bottom. Everything else was given or thrown away.

Contents of the middle drawer...everything given or thrown away except for that little stationary set on the left. I thought it would be good fro writing notes to my Grandma.

 The bottom drawer "before"...

Contents of the bottom drawer...the fabric and the patterns went into a box for my friend. The cross stitch related items went into one of the other two drawers. A few things went into the donation box or the trash. See below what's left in the drawer now.

Marie Kondo is all about using small boxes for sorting and organizing small items within drawers. I took her method to heart as you can see. I used to use plastic shoe box containers a lot to keep things like batteries and light bulbs sorted. I've gotten away from it as a general practice, but the clean lines of sorted possessions is speaking to me again. Here I used empty boxes from 12-packs of Ramen Soup. I had one sitting around and pulled the other one out of the cabinet, leaving the packages of soup in a stack.

I guess I just have to classify everything I got rid of as two items: one of miscellany and one of sewing stuff. That puts at me at thirty-two items. :0)

Have a great weekend, y'all.