Tidying up

Well I never got around to making New Years resolutions this year, so I figured I would just continue a bunch of my goals from last year and attempt to get better at them. Among them: get more organized (my life, schedule, and stuff), declutter more, get better about meal planning, and I'm also reading the Bible in a year again with a few friends from my community group (haven't done this since 2015). Recently Netflix made a show based of a book I read last year about decluttering. I put a few of the basic principles into practice last year, but never really went into the whole thing for a few reasons - one being that it's very time consuming and messy, and the other being that her method is a little too "touchy-feely" for me. Anyway, I watched one episode of the show, decided I wasn't interested in watching the show, but that the method deserves another look. Essentially the concept is that you have to pull everything you own out and put it in a pile so that you can see exactly what/how much you have, and then you go from there keeping and tossing (this is where the touchy-feely comes in, which is not my style) and then it continues into folding and storing methods. I decided to give it a shot with my clothes, which is the first step in her book anyway. And it actually is helpful! If you literally have everything out in front of you, it is a little overwhelming to see how much you really own.

Anyway, here was my clothes pile (everything I own minus my winter jackets, which I did take stock of, but left hanging).

It was easy to put away a lot of it - stuff I use very regularly, things I love to wear, work uniforms, etc. It was definitely harder as it got to the end though.

My thoughts on the process as a whole: it was as messy as I had feared, but I ended up getting rid of a lot of stuff! I didn't employ all of her method (some of the impractical for me storage solutions, and the "sparking joy" and "thanking" parts), but I did end up refolding the clothes in my drawer so I could see everything at once, and that has actually been quite helpful, both in terms of ability to find stuff quickly and knowing what I have.

Anyway, I'm definitely less inclined to implement these methods on things like toys or the kitchen, just because of the mess it initially creates and the time investment required, but maybe someday. I wouldn't say I'm a believer in the entire method, but the principles of confronting exactly what you have all at once and then organizing it more accessibly were very helpful!