This week, I was delighted to participate in a Yelp-sponsored virtual event with professional home organizer Michell Domke.
Michell is an Ohio-based, gold level certified KonMari consultant, teaching Marie Kondo’s world-famous, Japanese-inspired method of home tidying and organizing. She offers both virtual coaching and in-person support.
Z and I enjoy watching Marie Kondo’s Tidying Up show on Netflix and have experimented with her methods of home tidying and organizing before, so I had high hopes for this Yelp event with Michell.
I am fascinated with this tidying process and the idea of having a home that is free from piles and clutter. Yet somehow, I have never been able to make it stick long-term.
Michell’s Yelp class was focused around five tips to create a joyful space through tidying and decluttering. She explained that the process is really about understanding yourself and your goals.
Here are Michell’s five tips and my notes on each:
1. Start with your vision. Michell said this is the most important step but it can also be difficult and many people try to skip it. She said this is critical because your vision becomes your tidying roadmap and guide, helping you decide what to keep and what to let go of.
Michell acknowledged that one’s vision may evolve over time. She also offers an Ideal Lifestyle Worksheet as a free resource on her website to help determine one’s vision.
2. Follow your joy. The core of the KonMari Method, following your joy, is unique to each individual. It can be tough to figure out at first, because this simply isn’t often how we make decisions in our society. In this context, joy means a source of delight, an experience of great pleasure, a state of happiness or an emotion evoked by well-being. Hmm, sounds like self-care to me!
Michell recommends that we train ourselves to recognize and follow our joy because it can help in more ways than just tidying and organizing. For example, once we recognize what sparks joy in us, we can use that anytime we are shopping or bringing something home by only bringing home what sparks true joy. Hint: this is also a great way to know that a job, career opportunity or life change is right for you!
3. Discard first. Michell recommends that you pick one category of home objects, gather them all together in one place, and then go through one by one to decide which to keep and which to let go. Michell recommends that you focus on this process intently, with no TV or music on in the background to distract you.
The traditional KonMari categories are clothes, books, papers (my biggest problem area!), miscellaneous (or “komono” in Japanese) and sentimental items (another problem area for me). Michell offers a checklist on her site that you can use as a resource as you tidy your whole house.
Once you have all of your t-shirts piled up in one place (or socks, or spatulas, or whichever item or category you are working on first), then you set a timer for 15 minutes or so and go through each item, holding it briefly to determine whether it sparks joy or can be let go with gratitude.
Once you have a pile of items you have decided to let go, you can then decide whether to donate, sell, recycle or toss them.
4. Organize last. Michell and the KonMari Method recommend that each item have a home – meaning nothing sits out or piles up. Can I just say that this is the antithesis of how I currently do things in my house!
She also recommended keeping like items together and using matching hangers, little boxes and drawer dividers to organize smaller items in drawers, and labels for containers in kitchens and bathrooms.
When asked about organizing paper items, Michell suggested dividing everything first into keep or let go piles, and then creating three piles for your papers to keep: action items, short-term keep/store and long-term keep-store.
I feel like step 4 might just be the most important one, and certainly the one I’ll have the toughest time sticking to!
5. Fold vertically. Michell demonstrated an awesome way of folding items vertically so they each end up in a little “packet” that can stand up in a drawer. When you fold and organize your items in this way, you can see everything the moment you open the drawer, which means things stay tidy because there’s no need to “dig.”
I definitely think my dresser drawers will all benefit from a KonMari makeover and I am excited to tackle this manageable first step!
Overall, I benefited very much from spending this hour with Michell and I’m grateful to Yelp for yet another awesome virtual event.
If you’re interested in learning more about how Michell and the KonMari method can help you, Michell offers a free 30-minute consultation call so she can work with you to determine the best plan for transforming your space and life. No risk in that, right?
Let’s all get tidying and spark more joy in 2021!
