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You know you’re old when you agonize over buying the right dresser — and excitedly await its arrival. I’m not quite at the psyched-to-spend-hours-at-Home-Depot stage, but I fear I’m getting dangerously close.
Assembling said dresser became the massive project (along with baking cookies and catching up on The Flash/Arrow) of Winter Storm Jonas weekend, AKA the two-day period that dropped 26 inches of snow over NYC. Eventually, we conquered the beast, prompting me to try phase two of the KonMari Method: Folding clothes.
Is there really an art to folding clothes?! You might wonder. Well, according to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and Marie Kondo’s follow-up book, Spark Joy, there is.
Turns out it involves carefully folding everything into tight little pouches, then arranging them standing up, like files in a filing cabinet. The concept makes sense — then you can see everything at once — but I immediately wondered: What happens when I pull one item out? Do my neat clothing packages collapse. creating a chaotic mess I have to fix every day? Because that certainly wouldn’t spark joy.
There Truly Is A ‘Right’ Way to Fold.
Kondo has a quick answer: Not if you fold properly. Items should be folded tightly enough that they can stand up on their own; she encourages you to set the items on a flat surface before putting them away to “test” your work.
A lot of my early folds failed.
Then, I started getting the hang of it, and oddly, I liked it. I could see everything at a glance, and when I pull something out, the space just stays there, unoccupied, waiting for the item’s return.
The Illustrations Are Necessary.
Kondo’s follow-up book, Spark Joy, features illustrations outlining how to fold just about anything, from underwear to asymmetrical tops. I didn’t turn everything into pouches — just what fit in the new dresser — but three weeks in, the Kondo method’s going strong, and no one’s more stunned than me.
We’ll see if it lasts 4-5 months from now, but so far, so good. It might be worth trying in your own home, you know, if you find yourself snowed in and feeling fiendishly possessed by a need to spring-clean.