Early last year, my wardrobe "closet" and clothing drawers were an overcrowded, disorganized and uninspiring mess. More than half of my wardrobe wasn't worn, no longer fit or just wasn't my style anymore. I found myself wearing the same 10 things all the time. I knew I needed to update my wardrobe and personal style but I needed to clear our and organize my existing wardrobe first. I stumbled on an article about the KonMari Method, created by Marie Kondo from the Japanese outlook on decluttering and organizing your home and/or spaces, and decided to apply it to my annual yet never accomplished resolution to clean out and organize my wardrobe "closet" and drawers in my bedroom. For a single gal of only 31 years, at the time, I had a lot of crap. Here in the States, we often have way more clothes than we even wear or bought things impulsively and have only worn once or that the tags are still on.
In a nut shell, the KonMari Method is a method for cleaning and organizing spaces and your home. It encourages us to be more mindful about what we have and to fill our space with items that are a necessity or that we love. Everything else needs to go in the trash or be donated to someone who can use them or will love them. You can learn more about the method HERE. KonMari instructs you to pull everything out of your closet at once and you sort through them by creating three piles: Love/Necessity, Donate and Trash. But what if you have so much stuff that this sounds so daunting and overwhelming that you don't even want to start? Or potentially worse, you started and stopped in the middle and of course, you "haven't had the time" to finish. Now you're greeted with a huge pile of everything looking at you everyday and now you really can't find anything to wear. I know myself and knew that the latter would be my story so I took a different approach to this effective closet cleaning method and tailored it to fit my lifestyle at the time.
I did it in stages. This took the self imposed pressure off of me and felt good. It even became a fun activity.
Every Saturday, I created 2-3 hour sessions to Kon Mari my closet and my drawers. One Saturday, I dedicated 2 hours for shoes. For someone who isn't a "shoe person", I had more shoes than I thought! Now I can see every pair of shoes that I have and I love and wear them all on different occasions. Another Saturday, it was for tops. You get the idea. I broke it up into sessions and that worked great for me. It took me longer to finish but it felt good throughout the whole time. I would que up my ratchet playlist, pour a glass of wine and sort! Depending on how busy my weekend was, I only allocated one hour but it was better than nothing and felt like I was making progress. I'd say this project took me about 2 months to complete because some weekends I wasn't able to do any KonMari work. My room was never filled with unfinished mounds of clothing items because I broke it up like this. Now my wardrobe is only filled with necessities and items that I absolutely love and wear more than once and in different pairings. Getting dressed is filled with way more ease and fun now.
You can tailor this method to your lifestyle. Maybe you have 3-4 hours you can allocate every Saturday or each Saturday and Sunday to get it done faster. Find ways to make it fun. Invite your girlfriends over or enlist the help of your kids if they're old enough to help and understand the process and get a nice playlist poppin. Sometimes having people help you sort, helps you get rid of more stuff that you may be too emotionally attached to. I liked uptempo music for my sessions but maybe more chill music is inspiring for you to do this kind of project. Don't drink? Have hot cocoa and popcorn instead. Make it yours and most importantly, make it fun.
Check out Marie 's book about this method, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and you can check it out HERE (affiliate link) or your local book store more than likely carries it as well. Have you tried the KonMari method for cleaning and organizing your wardrobe closet or another space in your home?
Milan is a New York City based, creative writer and the founder of AGrlCanMAC. She's a self proclaimed accessories junkie who's passionate about healthy living, adventure, books, crystals, the Law of Attraction and arts & crafts. AGrlCanMAC is a resource for women of color all over the world who want to look good, radiate good and feel good at the same damn time.
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