KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Slinky

At last, blokes are here digging up the path to sort out the new cable for my dodgy phone. 3weeks I've been without it now and it won't get connected until next week as these blokes are just digging the hole. Tomorrow hopefully we'll get a date for reconnection with the outside world. Thank goodness my broadband is still working, would have been very hard to manage without.

3forholidays

Congratulations to you and your DD Tealady! Always nice to have a new baby in the family.

MMF007

Kondo'd a lot of recycling (am still concerned that we generate too much, be better not to have all the packaging, paper etc coming into the house in the first place).

Found the used-once-a-year drawing pins in an instant because I tidied them into exactly the right location in summer when I sorted out komono :T

The table decoration i rustled up out of bits n bobs at a client's house has gone down a storm with her visitors

I am quietly encouraging very small MK steps with a client I shall visit tomorrow - hoping to rationalise the mountain of chopping boards :rotfl: I spent some time with her earlier this week sorting out a pile of paperwork into recycling, re-use, filed for records. What a difference it made to a very untidy table


It certainly is magic, the MK joy!

Oh, a jacket I have had for ages has been bought back into play and fits nicely now

M

greent

Congratulations to you and your family on the new arrival, Tealady

Not much happening here. Our new sofas came today (yippee!) - old ones went to the tip/ recycling centre - they weren't fit to donate as the cushions were sagging, the springs in the bottom had gone and the frames were beginning to fall apart! OH also took some scrap wood hanging around to the recycling centre at same time. Scatter cushions have been bagged up to go to CS along with some Xmas ornaments and a Wareh0use top of DD's - will aim to take that in tomorrow so the ornaments have time to possibly sell

DD is home from uni and has put a massive pile of trashy magazines in the recycling from last year/ the year before/ the year before that! She has also found a small pile of items to be priced up for the next NNS Lots of her toiletry stash will also be leaving in Jan to go back to Halls with her too

x

Tea_Lady

Hi all
Thank you for all the kind congratulations.
I've finished work for the week. Yippee.
I'm off for my first cuddle. Car is load with boxes of stuff for the new house. ( everything was neat and tidy here. Now I've taken it out of cupboards and drawer, the stuff is breeding.)
Better than when I came here, I had 18 boxes for the kitchen, now I'm down to 5.
Have to go a give DD1 a big cuddle as well as its her birthday today.
Busy busy busy.
Tealady

VJsmum

So, earlier in the year, I sent my wedding dress to Cherished Gowns.

Today i got an email with photos showing what they have made it into. below is an example. they make burial clothes for stillborn babies. i can't even begin to describe how happy i am that such beautiful things have been made out of something that was just in a box in the loft where it has been the cause of anxiety and sadness - anxiety that something would happen to it, sadness that it was in a box in the loft.



hmm, I would pick the blurred one, wouldn't i? have another

Floss

VJsmum they are gorgeous, and such a touching gesture for the bereaved families.

silvasava

How beautiful VJ - brought a big lump to my throat.
Really feeling the woo - all the Christmas lights, plugs, decorations in labeled boxes and everything to hand. Redundant set of lights and garland being collected today so another box going woohoo!

Topher

I live in a modest semi detached house, I was a teacher & had a very damaging end to my career. I am almost 100% stuck in the past, my own (born in the early 1960s) and the one I've been interested in, my Grandma's domestic experience of World War Two. I'm married, with two adult children who left home ages ago. I've read the Marie Kondo Book & had several false starts to following her method, but past poverty, and past need to keep teaching materials in store, are really getting in my way. I may be guarding against the fear of being without, having experienced quite a lot of loss in my past, my "collections" of things are probably some kind of shoring up against disaster. I constantly tour charity shops, and have bought replacements for nearly all my "lost possessions" from the past. (By which I mean dolls, toys, childhood books etc.) I'm quite cunning at storing them, so we don't live in a state of mess & dirt, but I feel choked up and cluttered. My problem is, when it comes to discarding things, I've spent money on them, they have modest value, and it seems criminal just to discard them. I fell like I've set myself up as a caretaker, and I can't free myself of that responsibility (whic is entirely in my own mind). I also have every possible piece of equipment for a wide range of hobbies and pastimes. Drawing pencils, colouring pencils, pastels, paints, paintbrushes, specialist rubbers, specialist papers, Sewing equipment, knitting equipment, pyrography, linocutting, crochet hooks. All barely used, but there just in case, and unfortunately used often enough to just about justify owning them all.
I seem to see things when out & about that would be props for an imagined existence that I don't live.
I'm asking for help with the psychology of this. When I do get rid of things I regret it, and have another buying spree, yet I have zero income.
Oh and I have a stock of stationery that would be the envy of any retailer, things like unusual Japanese students exercise books, stickers envelopes whole cupboards full. When I look at each one, yes it sparks joy I feel really pleased to have them, yet don't use them.
I mentioned my interest in WW2 because I'm totally equipped with WW2 stuff, honestly, units in my local antiques centre have less stuff than me.
I have no energy for actually doing all of the activities that these possessions were gathered in to support.
HHHHHEEEEELLLLLPPPPP!

MMF007

Oh Topher I feel your angst.
If you haven't already done so, I'd recommend reading last year's Kon Marie thread.
Many of us explored the exact same issues - anxiety, 'making up for the past' (deprivations, poverty, lack of security etc ), planning great projects that are just aspirations we won't complete (think 60 cookery books! ) and generally trying to fill some sort of hole in our lives.
Some of us realised that the same issues were aggrevating our bodies as well as our homes and weight was a problem (not everyone, of course).

So can you take the first step? Can you stop buying more Stuff, at least for a while? That alone may well reduce your anxiety about Stuff! It will certainly give you a sense of achievement and, I
suspect, control.
You may also find that if you can identify a charitable cause close to your heart, releasing items to them so their clients' can benefit will bring the 'feelgood factor 'to the 'getting rid' action :