The KonMarie method

juliettet

Islandmaid wrote: »

Back again.....

Forgot to say, I dug out all my bra,s from my more shapely days a big box full, and have sent them off to raise money for rescue dogs info here

http://www.nowzad.org/help-us/bras-for-nowzad/

Many thanks for this Islandmaid, two large boxes for them here. In my defence my sister used to work for a lingerie company and the sales were outstanding.

carolbee

I'm loving this thread and have been rolling away here, I think I already did some of it anyway in some shape or form

The problem I have is disposing of it, I always feel I have to try and sell it first one way or another before I can donate to chazzer. Ive had a look at the trade in and a lot of the books I have aren't on there, think all the Michael Palin travel series. I think I will have to start a bootfair box for when the season is here.

Am I alone in this?? think my upbringing is to blame, my dad was a bit like Flash Harry in St. Trinians in some ways!

I am also planning to kondo my car, now we are both retired we don't need two.

Softstuff

penguine wrote: »

I have to admit having doubts about this section of the book too. For one thing, applying for a mortgage and sometimes even a savings account can require the last few months of bank statements/payslips/proof of address in the form a recent utility bill or council tax notice, etc so they can't be looked at once and immediately thrown out as MK advises.

I think it's likely the Japanese have much better organised public records than the UK which may explain her attitude!

We debated paperwork at length, but discovered, in Australia at least, that everyone accepts a scanned copy of a document. All of our evidence for our mortgage application was emailed scanned documents and the tax office certainly accept that. This meant that a couple of large storage boxes became a couple of USB drives for us.

Rainy-Days

Just to add to what Greyqueen, Maryb and Quasar have already said, I don't think it is as simplistic as just chucking stuff out because the book was originally published in Japan for the Japanese market, it became a best seller there and it then went global after being translated. So, allot of what works in Japan does not work here particularly when you consider that Japan is not only a smaller country, but the population is less dense. They also have allot of apartment living there as opposed to houses.

Hence the reason why I think the covered plastic box in loft (or under the stairs) works for long term vital 'must be kept' documents.
Perfect example was when my late parents home was sold the purchasers solicitors wanted the document for the granting of planning permission (why I have no idea but they did). My solicitors did not have it but the old battered 'Banco' box in the loft did. It saved a hell of allot of kerfuffle and that document on original planning authority yellow paper dated back to 1977. Consequently, the Banco box got updated to a plastic covered box after the house move! If you are missing documents or bank statements some companies also make a charge for it. Barclay's charge £5.00 for back statements, so having to replace lost paperwork can get expensive!

I still do the Kim & Aggie method to the post and that is deal with it there and then, put the envelopes in the recycling/fire basket (along with other bumph that comes through the letterbox) and the important documents go to the tray for dealing with/checking. Thankfully, no used envelopes have ever made it's way to the desk, but that was something I adopted a while back.

There is just stuff that you can't 'Zen' the lawnmower for instance, now I don't find 'joy' in it per-se, but I do when the lawns have been cut! The box of car cleaning stuff in the garage it is needed, but I don't find any great 'joy' in cleaning the car. There is practical stuff that I would and am struggling to 'JOY' but it's a work in progress I guess. There is a cultural difference in the book to adapting it to Western living but to me it does makes sense you just have to reconfigure your thinking on vital items/documents that you need.

imho

Sorry to all the people that are not on Facebook but link shows how to fold sports wear all together.Shorts top and socks and it ends up like the the sock rolls.

Link

Kiwisaver_2

GreyQueen wrote: »

:I have to admit a large degree of discomfort with MK's attitude to paperwork. I'm not an irrational hoarder of the stuff, but I do have things related to previous benefit claims*, a file of household related stuff, a file of recipes, plus financial paperwork re pensions, bank accounts, payslips, rent account statements, tenancy details.

In the course of my working life for a local authority I encounter peeps every day who are in a lather because of self-induced paperwork loss. They need to claim housing benefit or council tax reduction and can't evidence income or savings. They want to sell their house and the solicitor is cavilling about their extension - where's the stuff about planning permission from 30 years ago? DWP are giving them grief but they can't prove otherwise, and so on and so forth.

Had my fair share of this and some nail biting times when we were trying to piece together proof of our life history in terms of qualifications and stuff required for immigration purposes. My OH as a young and carefree man had successfully Kondo'ed all vital pieces of paper with regard to his education and apprenticeships, which proved to be a nightmare as some of the places where he gained qualifications no longer existed or have morphed into something new with no back history.

It took a lot of detective work and persistence to finally track down and got notarised copies of his apprenticeship papers.

When it was all done and dusted DHL managed to lose the package of returned 'original' documents so we never did get any of it back again but thankfully it had served its purpose and we got what we needed from it before it went astray!! :eek:

greenbee

imho wrote: »

Sorry to all the people that are not on Facebook but link shows how to fold sports wear all together.Shorts top and socks and it ends up like the the sock rolls.

Link

That's really clever I wouldn't necessarily keep them all like that, as I tend to pick and mix depending on the weather, but it will certainly come in handy for packing! I expect I could stick my sports bra and a pair of knickers in there too:cool: Thanks!

TudorRose

Small amount of tidying today.
Looked at my shoes and realised that I don't have masses of shoes that won't/don't get worn. One pair that are uncomfortable and a pair of well used summer ones have made their way to the shoe bin in the local car park. I'll reassess ther shoe situation later in the summer when I see what I wear most and what I don't.
Tidied the cupboard with saucepans in and found a small frying pan in excellent condition which is not required so this will be off to cs later in the week.
Decided to take down my cork board in the kitchen and ditched all the out of date receipts. Found I had the instruction manual for my kettle on there. Do I really need that? NO!. It's a kettle not a space ship. I'm sure that I don't need a booklet to tell me how to switch on a kettle so that's gone into the recycling. We do keep some rubbish don't we?
I'm still impressed with my tidied underwear & sock drawers. So easy to just open the drawer & find instantly what you want and I never thought that they were that bad before I 'tidied'.
Working next couple of days so I'll start again on Friday.
Keep up the good work everyone.

System

I'm about to start on paperwork tonight so thanks for the thoughts about getting rid of too much. I have a 2-drawer filing cabinet full of stuff, plus the usual piles dotted around the house. I also have a little fire-safe box but I don't think the contents are up-to-date.
So I think I need to update that box and I'd like to condense the rest into 1 or 2 box files.
One part I know I'll struggle with is the 9 box files of notes and samples from my City & Guilds in embroidery dating back to 2001. I never look in them but given that I still sew for pleasure, I think I might re-visit them when I have more time. Marie says that we shouldn't keep papers from 'seminars' because the object of the seminar was to attend it and that object has been achieved - but all my samples? Really? They represent hours of work and enjoyment :eek:

Floss

Rainy-Days wrote: »

Just to add to what Greyqueen, Maryb and Quasar have already said, I don't think it is as simplistic as just chucking stuff out because the book was originally published in Japan for the Japanese market, it became a best seller there and it then went global after being translated. So, allot of what works in Japan does not work here particularly when you consider that Japan is not only a smaller country, but the population is less dense. They also have allot of apartment living there as opposed to houses.

Actually, Japan is 28% more densely populated than the UK with 336.24 people per km squared, compared to 262 per km squared in the UK. Quite a lot of Japan is either mountain, volcano or sea so their living is very compact, hence the apartments.