“Ordenar” es un verbo que es fácil de decir pero más complicado de poner en práctica. No es recomendable que nos pongamos a ordenar nuestra casa por simple impulso, porque si lo hacemos, lo más probable es que nos agobiemos, cansemos o que incluso acabemos creando más desorden del que ya había inicialmente. En su lugar, tenemos la opción de diseñar una pequeña estrategia que nos ayude a organizarnos y a establecer una serie de reglas básicas de fácil cumplimiento.
In fact, in recent years, a number of different methods have emerged to help us keep our homes organized. In our guide to “Keeping Your Home Organized,” you can find the most important ones; however, of all of them, today we want to tell you about one of the most popular and practical: keeping your home organized with Marie Kondo.
Marie Kondo is a Japanese consultant and writer born in late 1984. From a very young age, she was interested in the world of interior design and home organization—a passion that carried over into her teenage years and young adulthood, as she enjoyed organizing other people’s belongings and rooms.
She says that at age 16, when she walked into her room with a trash bag in her hand, she felt the urge to “throw everything away.” “It was the peak of my stress, and at that moment, I fainted. A couple of hours later, I woke up, and the phrase ‘look at things more carefully’ popped into my mind. I don’t know if it was a real voice or something that came from within me, but I think it was ‘the god of order.’ That’s when inspiration struck,” he recalls.
After studying sociology, he founded a highly successful consulting firm in his country. Shortly thereafter, his book was published *The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up*, a true bestseller that catapulted her to stardom and helped her, within a few years, become one of the 100 most influential people in the world, according to *Time* and even led to her own television series on Netflix. That’s why she’s now one of the leading authorities on home organization.
What is the basis of Marie Kondo’s methodology?
Marie Kondo’s method for organizing is called KonMari and is based on two main pillars:
- Getting rid of all those objects that don’t add anything to our lives: in the consultant’s opinion, the home we live in influences our mood and our emotions. And she is certain that happiness isn’t achieved by accumulating objects and possessions—quite the opposite: if we keep only what is useful to us, we’ll more easily achieve the order that helps us feel at peace with ourselves and our surroundings.
- Folding clothes properly: making the most of your space is the second basic rule. If we learn to fold clothes correctly, we’ll be able to store them efficiently, because in addition to saving space, we’ll be able to find them more easily when we want to wear them.
You could say that the KonMari method is, in itself, a lifestyle that helps us be happy. That’s why, when making the most important decisions, we should apply the criterion of happiness: assess whether that specific item in our home is useful to us and something we like, or whether, on the contrary, it merely takes up space without contributing anything to our lives.
Marie Kondo’s 6 Tips for Creating Order at Home
According to the KonMari method, it is possible to keep your home organized with Marie Kondo if you follow these six principles:
Committing to Order
For our work to be truly effective, we have to believe in what we’re doing. The goal—not just of tidying up, but of keeping everything tidy afterward—is essential to achieving good results. And let’s not forget that the KonMari method is meant to be with us throughout our lives, not just to offer a one-time solution for organizing our home.
Imagine our ideal lifestyle so we can try to achieve it
If we achieve a sense of well-being in our home and within ourselves, it will be much easier for us to find happiness. So the key is, first and foremost, to make the effort to imagine what we want out of life: if we think about the lifestyle we’d like to enjoy, we’ll be much better able to chart the path to achieving it.
The Importance of Learning to Get Rid of Things You Want to Throw Away
Material attachment is one of the great “enemies” of the KonMari method. According to this approach to organizing, we can be happy with just a few things around us, so the goal is to start organizing our home by getting rid of all the things in it that we don’t need.
This can be a tough and time-consuming task, because we may have accumulated a lot of stuff over the past few years and now need to take our time getting rid of it all. And if that’s the case for you, we recommend that you plan this decluttering by areas or zones of the home, so you can clean up little by little without feeling overwhelmed.
When organizing, sort by category
When it comes to organization, where we store things is secondary. What matters is that we group objects by category or by use; because if we do that, we won’t take up different spaces for things of the same kind.
For example, we might have a place to store tools in the living room and a similar spot in another room or in the garage. If, instead, we put all the tools in the same place, we’ll always know where to go if we need to use one. Plus, it’ll be much easier to compare all similar items to determine if we can get rid of any of them.
The correct sequence to be sorted
Where should you start decluttering? Based on her experience, Marie Kondo is very clear on this. She recommends starting with clothes, then moving on in the following order : books, papers, komono (miscellaneous items), and finally, items that hold sentimental value for us. The reason? It’s a process that goes from easiest to hardest, so if we follow it, it won’t feel like an uphill battle.
When in doubt, ask ourselves the big question
If, at any point during this process of tidying up our home with Marie Kondo, we’re unsure of where to go next or what to do, we can ask ourselves a question that will help us clarify our thoughts: Would the next step we’re considering take us make us happier?
In other words, the KonMari method suggests that we make decisions to promote our well-being, because true order is what makes us feel in harmony with our surroundings. So, if we see something in our home that doesn’t really add anything to our lives, we practically have a duty to get rid of it so it doesn’t continue to get in our way.
Order at your own pace and when you have a quiet moment
With these 6 tips, we’re now ready to put Marie Kondo’s method into practice. But now we need to address other key questions: when and how? Since this is an activity that will have a significant impact on our lives, it’s best to choose the right time and do it at our own pace. We might consider starting on a morning when we have time and are alone, so we can make the most important decisions without being influenced by others.
And you—do you already know when you’re going to get started?
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