The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: Or, how this book gave me permission to lighten my load

Have you been seeing this book everywhere? My friend Jamie from Owl Really posted about it on her facebook and I was so intrigued I immediately bought it for my Kindle. That week I was having a hard time sleeping anyway, so I stayed up all night and read it in one sitting. I was so inspired I started cleaning out my closet as soon as I got home from work. But before we get to that, let me tell you something about myself you probably already know.

I have been a collector my entire life. One passage in the book that really spoke to me was this: "Because I was poor at developing bonds of trust with people, I had an usually strong attachment to things. I think that precisely because I did not feel comfortable exposing my weaknesses or my true feelings to others, my room and the things in it became very precious."I have always been very attached to things, and prone to obsessions. When I like something I want to get as much of it as I can. I bet a lot of you who are into vintage like me go through seasons of acquiring more stuff than you really know what to do with! Especially with estate sales, because sometimes the deals are SO good you can't leave something cool behind even if you don't really want it and don't have anywhere to put it. Case in point, the spare bedroom of our house you've never seen because it is full of boxes and piles of stuff. I'm ready to lighten my load, but it can seem so overwhelming, especially for a sentimental sap like me.
In comes Marie Kondo and this incredible book. I recommend it to everyone, even if you aren't as big of a pack rat as me. I love that her goal isn't to make you a minimalist, it is to surround yourself with only things that you love. The way she describes it is you only keep things that "spark joy". Another part of the method is you do things by category, not by room. For instance, when you do clothing gather every single piece of clothing you can find in the house and pile it up. It kind of shocks you how much you have in certain categories! Then you pick up each item and decide whether it sparks joy. I have been amazed at how easy it has been so far, and how much stuff has left our house! I'm going to document the journey here.

Part One: Clothing

Marie Kondo has you start with clothing because that is easy for most people. You don't have tons of sentimental value attached to clothes. She doesn't mention it in the book, but I think another reason she has you start there is because you wear clothes every day (duh!). During the process your house becomes a bit of a wreck, but having my closet and drawers so organized gives me joy every day when I pick out what to wear. It sounds cheesy but it really does. Travis and I have both kept it up for three weeks! 

Here is the before of my closet. I also have a dresser that was completely full.

I kept my pants folded on the shelf in the bottom of the closet and they always ended up all over the floor. I had actually cleaned out my closet in January, but it was still packed full.

All my clothes out on our bed. Lots of grey and black. There were lots of things that made it through the first purge that I had no problem throwing away this time. It is hard to describe without reading the book, but the way she talks about getting rid of things made it so easy for me. For example, I had this grey cardigan with black cats on it I bought in the fall. I wore it ONCE but I kept it because I spent money on it and wanted to like it. Which is silly. Into the charity bag it went.

I had pared my Weezer shirt collection down to five (I think I had 15 at one point!) and now I just kept the one on the right. None of them fit me, why did I let them take up so much space!

And here is the after! I kept the drag queen inspiration wall of course!

Here is a side by side so you can get better idea. I really love it. One thing that helped was hanging up my pants and moved all my shirts to my dresser. Now my closet just has dresses, jackets and pants. And I have a place for my camera bag now! (the blue thing). I was always putting it weird places because I didn't want our cat Scampi to scratch it, but this is so much better. I found a bag of camera lenses I've had for years and never used up in the closet. I took those to a resale place and got some cash while freeing up space. Yes!

I got rid of so many pairs of shoes. Now I can see what I have and I think I'll probably pare it down a little more before I'm done.

My favorite thing I did was use that vintage shopping basket I got at the flea market recently as a storage space for accessories! It holds my winter hats and scarves, small purses, and sun hats. I have never had a place for those items and they have always been scattered about the house.

Before both suitcases were full of costume stuff, but we thinned out our collection and it now fits in just the red suitcase. The white suitcase is full of purses and totes, which used to fill an entire drawer in my dresser! And there is my Mr. Tiny original sunhat up on top! I can't wait to use it this summer!

One thing Marie Kondo talks about is letting your socks rest. Which seems weird. She says keeping them balled up like this stretches out the elastic. I never realized how jumbled this looked until I folded everything Marie Kondo style.

Look at that! So much better! And now all my tights fit in there! They had their own drawer before.

All of my tshirts moved from my closet into my former pajama drawer. And I LOVE IT! I can see everything, no flipping through the hangers.

I did my pajamas the same way. This used to be a drawer full of purses. I actually have a little too much room in my dresser now, when before it was stuffed!

I didn't take photos of Travis' after, but he did so well too. Before we had no where to put his work shorts (which he wears every day) so we always just stacked them on top of his dresser. Now they are put away and easy to get to.
By the time we were done we took nine trash bags of clothes and two bags of hangers to Goodwill, and also threw out two bags of garbage. It felt great and I've enjoyed my new closet every day.
The thing I've been telling everyone since starting this process is I can't believe how easy it has been for me. I have always had a hard time getting rid of things so this really feels life changing. We'll see how I do when we get to my vintage collections! Ah! I'll keep you posted!
Anyone else working on this right now?