No matter how organised you consider yourself to be, the truth is we’re all guilty of hoarding to some degree. Your Achilles’ heel could be clothes, shoes, video games, books or objects with sentimental value. You know what we’re talking about: all the things you just can’t bring yourself to throw away and find “good” reasons not to, like “I love this T-shirt!” or “My first boyfriend gave this to me on our 2 week anniversary 20 years ago”. We’ve all been there!

When it comes to decluttering our homes, we might find ourselves incapable of deciding what to keep and how to organise things, so we give up decluttering all together. Luckily, there are experts like Marie Kondo who can guide us on this hard mission of tidying up our homes.

Let’s have a look at the KonMari method of decluttering that sparked a massive buzz on Netflix a little while ago. Read on to find out how to tidy up your home like a pro!

The KonMari Method

Often the best ideas come from slightly changing an approach that has already been used for ages. This is how the KonMari method was developed by the internationally acclaimed pro-organizer and author Marie Kondo: instead of tackling objects room-by-room, you tackle them by category. This revolutionary idea changed the lifestyle of millions of people who were struggling with hoarding and living in cluttered homes.

The KonMari method isn’t only about organising your things, but also about creating a space that contributes to your mental wellbeing. By using her approach, you can surround yourself with the objects that spark joy instead of objects that cause you stress.

Marie Kondo’s method consists of six rules:

1. Commit to decluttering: it might sound easy, but this is actually the hardest part. You need to set the clear intention of tidying up your home and finally getting rid of all the things that don’t spark joy (if it’s your first time, you probably have heaps!).
2. Think about the advantages of tidying up: imagine yourself living in a space that makes you feel at peace, never dreading spring cleaning again, but actually looking forward to it. Considering how tidying up might change your life will keep you motivated through the process.
3. Throw away anything you don’t want or need first: do a full sweep of your home and throw away all the objects that you know you’re never going to use or want ever again. Sometimes donating these objects might make it easier to let go of them.
4. Organise by category, not by room: instead of tidying up one room at a time, for example, you focus solely on cleaning out all the clothes you have in the house.
5. Use the KonMari checklist order: it was created with a specific order in mind, so it’s recommended you stick to it. Check it out below.
6. Enjoy the process: instead of focusing on the fact that you’re throwing away objects, focus on the fact that you’re making so much room for the objects that make you happy. Having a positive mindset really helps keep you on track and get amazing results.

Are you ready to declutter your home? Here’s the KonMari checklist to help you choose a category to organise.

1. Clothes: take all your clothing out of its set area and make a big pile. Take each item and ask yourself if you really need it/ if it brings you joy. If not, you know what to do! The rest can be organised by using Marie Kondo’s folding method, which you can find on YouTube.
2. Books: same as with clothes, make a pile of all the books in your house and decide which ones you really want to keep for further reading.
3. Papers: cleaning through all the papers like magazines, paperwork, receipts, bills etc. that pile up in any house might not be the most fun task, but it will clear up a LOT of space.
4. Miscellaneous: these are all the objects that don’t fit in the other categories, including dishware, cosmetics, all the garage stuff (yes, you have to declutter that too!) etc.
5. Objects with sentimental value: you might have a designated space for these items, but you will find these in other categories as well. Gather all of them and try to find a way to make use of them – you now should have much more space to display a photo of your parents, for example.

The KonMari decluttering method will help you create a better living space for you and your family, so that any object your eyes fall on will spark joy!

Decluttering can leave you with massive piles of items you want to discard, so why not hire a handy skip bin to make things easy? We can help you with skip bins in Fremantle and other SOR suburbs!