She's everywhere it seems, well everywhere in blogland anyway, Marie Kondo and her brilliant book 'The Life Changing Magic of Tidying - a simple, effective way to banish clutter forever'. It seems to be gripping our imaginations .... and for those of us that have been putting some of her ideas into practice she's changing our lives.
Take our chest of drawers for instance in the bedroom ....
... once filled with 'stacked in the normal way' clothes.
First the drawers were emptied and wiped out one by one ....
... each item held, pondered over and then if it was staying ....
...folded into a neat rectangle ....
... then a smaller rectangle ....
... and finally into a rectangle that was the same height as the drawer.
Then replaced with the others that were in the drawer, and in this case with another six that now also fitted into the same space the others had taken up. As you can see folding and storing in this way means that you can see at first glance where every one of your items is and get it out without having to move anything else out of the way. So much easier.
My neat knicker, sock and tights drawer ..... who would ever have thought I would show you this, but now it's tidy I will ;-)
Another thing that this has highlighted for me is that folding this way means that suitcases will be able to be packed so much easier, and instead of actually unpacking at a destination you could simply and very neatly live out of your suitcase all week for a holiday ... if you even need a suitcase, seeing how small things can be folded has made us both realize that perhaps for us the way forward will simply be a piece of carry on luggage if we ever fly again.
I'm currently working on my Summer clothes that have been stored in our large suitcase under the spare bed, now that things have been sorted everything I own is now fitting neatly into three of these drawers and my half of the wardrobe, so the suitcase will be filled with car boot items and sold while we are there.
To help with my tidying mission I purchased eight of these 'under the bed' storage boxes from Asda, at just £4 each they were a bargain. I am using them as drawers on the shelves of our wardrobes, because before we had piles of 'in-use' and out of season bulky things stacked on the shelves. It meant if we wanted something off the back stack we had to lift down the front stack, remove the things we wanted and then replace the stacks, all this for me whilst being stood on the end of the bed!!
Now the boxes slide onto the shelves like drawers and I can pull them out and lift down easily.
And I can see at a glance all the woolly jumpers and cardigans I own.
You can see from this picture where the 'drawers' will slide in on the shelves. I was very lucky with the dimensions of the boxes .... it was as though it as meant to be!!
There's still some more sorting to do but once it's done that will be IT, no more tidying and a complete banishment of clutter. How this fits in with my P333 I'm not sure yet, as I am simply putting all my clothes into the wardrobe for now regardless of counting what I have.
In Marie Kondo's words .... if it gives me joy it stays, if it doesn't it goes.
Oh well enough talking about it time to get back to actually doing it.
Sue xx