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Right now, it’s hard to scroll Instagram, Twitter or Facebook without seeing half a dozen posts from people who are winnowing their closets, declaring what sparks joy in their lives and ditching the rest. Marie Kondo’s new Netflix show, Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, has inspired tons of people with her refreshingly simple, deeply empathetic take on decluttering your life. And for me, it was a wake-up call: You see, three years ago, I attempted everything she advocates on her show. And today, my closet is a complete disaster.
It’s not that the KonMari method failed me, per se; it’s that I got a little lazy. Okay, a lot lazy. Kondo’s method calls for going through everything you have, determining whether it “sparks joy” for you. If it doesn’t, thank it for its service and donate or toss it. The rest should be neatly organized and stored. It’s that last part that was my undoing.
How The KonMari Method Works:
Kondo folds everything into tight, square packages that can stand upright. It takes some practice to master, especially with gauzy, flimsy clothing (AKA half my wardrobe) or bulky, knit sweaters. If you commit to this folding style, it’s easy to open your drawers and see everything at a glance. But if you don’t fold everything just so, pulling one shirt out of the bunch can cause the whole row of clothes to collapse, undoing your hard work. Womp womp.
How Hard It Actually Is To Maintain:
My other failure was switching from a dresser to a closet when we moved. I used the closet’s open shelves to stack my shirts, pants, and skirts that couldn’t fit on hangers, creating leaning towers that quickly became amorphous piles I flipped through as I got dressed each morning. Every day, the disaster got a little worse, until my dressing strategy became more or less: Open door, see what topples down on me, put on body. You know, letting the universe decide my fate. That may or may not be why my sense of style has gotten increasingly uh, eclectic (read: slovenly) over the past few months. Well, that and maternity fashion.
My husband has taken over our dresser, and his clothes are still neatly folded and stored vertically. Except for his shirts — he’s taken to rolling those to keep them in check, and it seems to work. Out of the two of us, his modified Kondo system’s still in place. Mine could use a major refresh. That’s what I’m learning, three years in: You can’t get lazy with it, or like any other resolution, it’ll fail. A commitment to properly folding and putting away your clothes each time you do laundry makes all the difference. Which is, coincidentally, the biggest hurdle to ever getting organized in the first place, no matter which method you follow.
For more on Marie Kondo’s organizing strategies, pick up a copy of her book, The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up.
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