KonMari 2016 - The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

Tete_en_l'Air

Happy birthday for yesterday VJsMum!

Wonderful post a couple of pages back, GQ - really meaningful and helpful! x

Hello all! I haven't posted here since July as not a lot of kondo-ing has been getting done. I've been going all out on painting and decorating so the house has been upside down for months and it has been SO suffocating! The decor is mostly done now and I went away this weekend so I absolutely blitzed the downstairs so that my aunt who was coming to feed the cat wouldn't think I was a total slob, so downstairs currently looks all sparkly and festive and gorgeous! It brings me SO MUCH JOY to be able to walk about the rooms without stepping over teetering piles of carp all over the place. My aim now is to keep it like this til Christmas as I'm cooking for Granny and expecting unexpected visitors and I don't want to spend Christmas Eve cleaning like I usually do.

The tidying blitz however does mean that the spare room is now at 'extreme hoarder' levels of mess: literally the whole floor is piled up to knee height, with only a small path from the door to the window to access the curtains. There are several big bags for the charity shop in there so I need to extract those and donate them so I have room to manoeuvre to sort through everything else.

First though I have work reports and emails to kondo - I'm going to employ the 20 minute rule and hopefully have it all done before lunch, then my Christmas holidays are all mine!

I'll report back later with how much I've taken to the CS.

Slinky

Just this minute seen my neighbour and managed to kondo some stationery to her that had been in my dresser drawer for about 12-15 years! I cleared it out last week before reassembling the repainted dresser. It had been sat on the top of the dresser for a week, and we'd twice had conversations standing next to it, but did I remember to ask her then? Did I heck! Still it's gone now, a little bit more has escaped this house and one notepad in particular gave her great joy, so that was good.

tibawo

I think it is a 'stop the world' I want to get off day for me today. I had written my to do list and thought 'no problem' but life is never like that is it!


Had to collect a parcel on way to school so DD could take in her friends presents and free up my front room. Despite having an email saying parcel ready to collect, it wasn't there so had to spend 30 mins getting to the bottom of it. I will get a refund but this could take 3-5 days and i still have to run round getting the present.


Couldn't get to launderette because of this and DD need leggings for dance exam tonight.


Then on way to work had to collect some train tickets but machine not working so had to go over bridge to main office to sort.


As getting close to work oil light would flick on when turning sharp so now need to sort that to. Kondoing more money was not on the agenda. Hopefully it just needs topping up.


so look like my list will take a back seat!


Hope everyone else's plans are going ok ? They best be as i need my faith restoring that the world is not collapsing!

Floss

TIBAWO you may just need a top-up of oil to stop the light.

greent

Happy birthday wishes for yesterday, VJsMum

oceanspirit

GreyQueen wrote: »

I enjoy Xmas up to a point. Time off work and spent with family, nice food, all good things.

What annoys me, and I get tetchier about it every year, is the endless hullabaloo, starting many weeks or even months before the event.

I'm a lousy consumer at the best of times, and detest waste, and Xmas now is replete with everything I loathe.

Subjectively, I feel that more of the people I encounter in my everyday life are trending towards the same mindset. It's as if the marketeers have finally gone too far, and a stressed, skint and over-busy population is starting to call b******t on it.

That's my twopennorth, anyroad.

Watched a programme on My5 yesterday about Christmas excesses and they featured a lady who bought 87 presents last year and 96 this year for each child, PLUS a sack each from Santa. Looking at the size, tidiness and amount of storage in the children's bedrooms most of the items from last year are no longer there and of those that were still there, the children admitted a number of them had never been used.

grunnie wrote: »

Have a good week everyone just remember Christmas isn't meant to get you tired and harassed - it is to enjoy the peace. There will be another next year to get organised for.

Totally agree, grunnie.

VJs mum, sounds as though you had a perfect birthday. Belated birthday wishes from me.

A few simple decorations are now up - just a bit of tinsel on the pictures and a couple of candles on the sideboard. Feeling Christmassy now which is just the right time to feel it.

Only a few local cards to write and deliver and a couple of presents to wrap when they arrive tomorrow, apart from that, I'm all ready and it's been so easy this year with getting started earlier.

oceanspirit

I now have a curtain pole with a pair of curtains hanging at my bedroom window. Only taken 9 years 4 months to get them put up. Now have a big space on shelf in bedroom to put more stuff...

Slinky

Well done on the curtains ocean. I've just taken delivery of 2 pairs to go in our lounge. We papered a wall a few weeks back and the existing curtains don't go at all. We're planning on moving house at some point, so have bought some off the shelf ones which will match the paper much better and also be easier to leave behind than the expensive made to measure ones they will be replacing. They will need shortening, but I'll get that sorted in the Spring.

I'll get the existing ones cleaned and hopefully they will fit our new home whereever that may be. I know it's a case of creating stuff for Justin, but we've successfully had other curtains which have been in 3 homes, being adjusted to fit.

Igamogam

VJsmum wrote: »

I celebrated by walking a stretch of the Wales coast path (we have an aim to do all 870 miles of it, and are currently on about 70

A belated Penblwydd Hapus VJsmum. I intend to complete the Angelsey coastal path in 2017 with a pal - we have done 2 sections, think there is 10 to go!

2017 will be a year of 'intentions' I think....rather than resolutions. I might work better for me although I am pretty good at keeping resolutions but this coming year there are lost of fiddly things I want to embark on, try out or achieve;)

Topher

Many thanks for all the encouragement I've received on here. I've decided that I haven't got the energy, or ability to adjust my mindset to properly start the Kondo job on my house before I get Christmas out of the way. However, in anticipation of the clothing sort, I have been checking out some clothing bits that I'm not pleased with, or pleased to own, or know I don't trust them to make me look halfway decent, some I've gathered in a "Try again after Christmas when I do the job properly" box, some have no question mark over them whatsoever and are washed, ironed, & ready for the next stage of their journey. This has happened as I've come across them on a day to day basis, not in a truly MK examination of all. In this way, one small carrier bag has gone to the Chazza, and one small box also.
As I got my MONSTER collection of chritmas decorations out, I was able to test how pleased I felt about seeing some of them again, and how "Meh!' I felt about others. A carrier bag of Simple tin ware ones has gone to my son's house for my Grandson & Granddaughter to either have, or for my son & daughter to dispose of after use this year. (They've just set up home, and were feeling the shortage of decorations on their new tree). I've assured them there's no emotional comittment to anything, & they can sling it, or I will transport it on to a charity shop at their request if they want.
Then I cleared one of the areas where my precious stationery items were stored. This was the top section of a writing bureau which is now purely functional, clear, easy to access.
Something I learned from that:
I needed evelopes to put in my trusty old leather writing case. I'd been picking up writing sets from charity shops to fulfil that need, but had never used them. I decided to break open the seal on a particularly nice branded set that I'd picked up at a bargain price. The musty smell was hideous, I decided to try to salvage them (they were such a bargain, such a good make) and sprayed near them with a room spray. The smell of the chemical room spray (that I'd barely used because it was a luxury item) was even worse. I gave up, bundled up the writing set, added the room spray to the bag, & deposited it with all the useless, half used LACKING SPARKS OF JOY sets, took them to a charity shop, and spent a whole £2.50 on Basildon Bond envelopes from a real stationery shop, and put them in my writing case. Since then, I don't know how many times I've opened the bureau top, to look at my lovely writing space, gloat over my leather case, and enjoy. I even showed a friend (who understood exactly what I ws getting out of the newly sorted Bureau. I'm just so proud of it, not because of the neatness, but because at last that bureau top is dong what it was originally bought to do in a tinny segment of my lifestyle.
Thank you.
XXX