The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (8 page)

Follow the correct order of categories

The door opens with a click, and a woman looks out at me somewhat anxiously. “H-hello.” My clients almost always seem a bit tense the first time I visit their home. As they have already met me several times, this tenseness stems not from shyness but more from the need to brace themselves for a major challenge.

“Do you think it’s really possible to clean up my house? There’s no place to even put your feet in here.”

“I don’t see how I can really tidy completely in such a short time.”

“You said that none of your clients have ever suffered rebound. But what if I’m the first?”

Their nervous excitement is almost palpable, but I know without a doubt that every one of them will do fine. Even those who are lazy or messy by nature, even people who have descended from generations of slobs or who are excessively busy, can learn to clean properly if they use the KonMari Method.

Let me share a secret. Putting your house in order is fun! The process of assessing how you feel about the things you own, identifying those that have fulfilled their purpose, expressing your gratitude, and bidding them farewell, is really about examining your inner self, a rite of passage to a new life. The yardstick by which you judge
is your intuitive sense of attraction, and therefore there’s no need for complex theories or numerical data. All you need to do is follow the right order. So arm yourself with plenty of garbage bags and prepare to have fun.

Start with clothes, then move on to books, papers,
komono
(miscellany), and finally things with sentimental value. If you reduce what you own in this order, your work will proceed with surprising ease. By starting with the easy things first and leaving the hardest for last, you can gradually hone your decision-making skills, so that by the end, it seems simple.

For the first category, clothing, I recommend dividing further into the following subcategories to increase efficiency:

And, yes, I include handbags and shoes as clothing.

Why is this the optimal order? I am actually not sure why, but based on the experience I’ve gained devoting half my life to tidying, I can tell you for certain that it works! Believe me. If you follow this order, you’ll speed through the work and achieve visible results surprisingly quickly. Moreover, because you will keep only the things you truly love, your energy and joy will increase. You may be physically tired, but it feels so good to get rid of unnecessary items that you will find it hard to stop.

The important point, however, is deciding what to keep.
What things will bring you joy if you keep them as part of your life?
Pick them as if you were identifying items you loved from a showcase in your favorite store. Once you’ve grasped the basics, put all your clothes in one heap, take them in your hand one by one, and ask yourself quietly, “Does this spark joy?” Your tidying festival has begun.

Place every item of clothing in the house on the floor

The first step is to check every closet and dresser in the house and gather all your clothes in one spot. Don’t leave a single wardrobe or dresser drawer unopened. Make sure you have gathered every last piece of clothing. When my
clients think they have finished, I always ask them this question. “Are you sure there’s not a single piece of clothing left in the house?” Then I add, “You can forget about any clothes you find after this. They’ll automatically go in the discard pile.” I let them know I’m quite serious. I have no intention of letting them keep anything found after the sorting is done. The response is usually, “Oh, wait. I think there might be something in my husband’s closet,” or “Ah! I might have hung something in the hallway,” followed by one last dash around the house and a few extra items added to the pile.

This ultimatum sounds a bit like the automatic withdrawal system for paying bills at the bank, but when my clients know there’s a firm deadline, they search their memories one more time because they don’t want to lose clothes without being given a chance to decide. Although I rarely have to follow through on my threat, if someone doesn’t remember an item at this point, it obviously doesn’t inspire a thrill of joy, and therefore I am quite ruthless. The only exception is clothes that happen to be in the laundry.

When all the clothes have been gathered together, the pile of tops alone is usually knee-deep. The term “tops” includes clothes for every season, from T-shirts and camisoles to knitted sweaters. The average number of items in this initial pile is around 160. Confronted by their first obstacle in the tidying process, most people are overwhelmed by the sheer volume of what they actually
own. At this point, I usually say, “Let’s start with off-season clothes.” I have a good reason for choosing off-season clothing for their first foray into this tidying gala. It’s the easiest category for tuning in to one’s intuition concerning what feels good.

If they start with clothes they are currently using, clients are more likely to think, “It doesn’t spark joy, but I just wore it yesterday,” or “If I don’t have any clothes left to wear, what am I going to do?” This makes it harder for them to make an objective decision. Because off-season clothes are not imminently necessary, it is much easier to apply the simple criterion of whether or not they bring you joy. There’s one question I recommend asking when you select off-season clothes. “Do I want to see this outfit again next time it’s in season?” Or, to rephrase it, “Would I want to wear this right away if the temperature suddenly changed?”

“Do I want to see it again? Well, not necessarily.…” If that’s how you feel, throw it in the discard or donate pile. And if you got a lot of wear out of it last season, don’t forget to express your appreciation. You might fear that you’ll have no clothes left if you use this standard. But don’t worry. It may seem as if you have discarded an awful lot, but as long as you are choosing clothes that give you pleasure, you’ll be left with the amount you need.

Once you have gotten the knack of choosing what you love, you can move on to each subcategory of in-season clothing.
The most important points to remember are
these: Make sure you gather every piece of clothing in the house and be sure to handle each one
.

Downgrading to “loungewear” is taboo

It seems a waste to get rid of something that is still perfectly usable, especially if you bought it yourself. In cases like this, my clients often ask me if they can keep clothes they know they’ll never wear outside and use them as loungewear. If I said “yes,” the pile of loungewear would grow ever larger without any decrease in the overall volume of clothes.

Having said that, I admit that I myself once did the same thing with clothes I knew I’d never wear to go out. Pilled cardigans, outdated blouses, dresses that didn’t suit me or that I just never wore—it wasn’t long before I had developed the habit of demoting clothes like these to “loungewear” rather than discarding them. Yet nine out of ten times I never wore them.

I soon discovered that many of my clients also had collections of dormant “loungewear.” When asked why they don’t wear them, their answers are very revealing: “I can’t relax in them,” “It seems a waste to wear this inside when it was really for going out,” “I don’t like it,” and so on. In other words, these castoffs are not really loungewear at all.
Calling them that merely delays parting with clothes that don’t spark any joy. There are stores dedicated solely to loungewear products, and the design, material, and cut are all aimed at relaxation. Obviously, it is a completely different genre from what we wear outside. Cotton T-shirts are probably the only type of regular clothing that could be reused in this category.

To me, it doesn’t seem right to keep clothes we don’t enjoy for relaxing around the house. This time at home is still a precious part of living. Its value should not change just because nobody sees us. So, starting today, break the habit of downgrading clothes that don’t thrill you to loungewear. The real waste is not discarding clothes you don’t like but wearing them even though you are striving to create the ideal space for your ideal lifestyle. Precisely because no one is there to see you, it makes far more sense to reinforce a positive self-image by wearing clothes you love.

The same goes for pajamas. If you are a woman, try wearing something elegant as nightwear. The worst thing you can do is to wear a sloppy sweat suit. I occasionally meet people who dress like this all the time, whether waking or sleeping. If sweatpants are your everyday attire, you’ll end up looking like you belong in them, which is not very attractive. What you wear in the house does impact your self-image.

Fold it right and solve your storage problems

After the selection process, my clients are usually left with only a third to a quarter of the clothes they started out with. As the clothes they want to keep are still piled in the middle of the floor, it is time to start putting them away. Before I go on to that step, however, let me tell you a story.

I once had a client with a problem that I just could not understand. A woman in her fifties, she told me during our initial interview that she didn’t have enough closet space in her house for all her clothes. From the floor plan, however, it was clear not only that she had two full closets to herself but that those closets were one and a half times larger than average. Although this should have been plenty of space, she also had a clothing stand with three rods full of clothes.

Amazed, I roughly estimated that she must have more than two thousand outfits in her wardrobe. It was only when I visited her home that I finally understood. Upon opening her wall-length closet, my jaw dropped. It was like looking at the crowded racks at the dry cleaners. Hanging neatly on hangers were not just coats and skirts but also T-shirts, sweaters, purses, and even underwear.

My client immediately launched into a detailed explanation of her hanger collection. “This type is made especially for knits so that they don’t slip off. And these
are handmade. I bought them in Germany.” After a five-minute lecture, she beamed at me and said, “Clothes don’t get wrinkled if you hang them up. And they last longer, too, right?” Upon further questioning, I discovered that she did not fold any of her clothes at all.

There are two storage methods for clothes: one is to put them on hangers and hang from a rod and the other is to fold them and put them away in drawers. I can understand why people might be attracted to hanging their clothes. It seems like far less work. However, I strongly recommend folding as the main storage method.
But it’s a pain to fold clothes and put them away in the drawer. It’s much easier to pop them on a hanger and stick them in the closet
. If that’s what you’re thinking, then you haven’t discovered the true impact of folding.

Hanging just can’t compete with folding for saving space. Although it depends somewhat on the thickness of the clothes in question, you can fit from twenty to forty pieces of folded clothing in the same amount of space required to hang ten. The client described above had only slightly more clothes than average. If she had folded them, she would have had no problem fitting them into her storage space.
By neatly folding your clothes, you can solve almost every problem related to storage
.

But that is not the only effect of folding. The real benefit is that you must handle each piece of clothing. As you run your hands over the cloth, you pour your energy into it. The Japanese word for healing is
te-ate
, which
literally means “to apply hands.” The term originated prior to the development of modern medicine when people believed that placing one’s hand on an injury promoted healing. We know that gentle physical contact from a parent, such as holding hands, patting a child on the head, and hugging, has a calming effect on children. Likewise, a firm but gentle massage by human hands does much more to loosen knotted muscles than being pummeled by a massage machine. The energy that flows from the person’s hands into our skin seems to heal both body and soul.

The same is true for clothing. When we take our clothes in our hands and fold them neatly, we are, I believe, transmitting energy, which has a positive effect on our clothes. Folding properly pulls the cloth taut and erases wrinkles, and makes the material stronger and more vibrant. Clothes that have been neatly folded have a resilience and sheen that can be discerned immediately, clearly distinguishing them from those that have been haphazardly stuffed in a drawer. The act of folding is far more than making clothes compact for storage. It is an act of caring, an expression of love and appreciation for the way these clothes support your lifestyle. Therefore, when we fold, we should put our heart into it, thanking our clothes for protecting our bodies.

In addition, folding clothes after they have been washed and dried is an opportunity to really notice them in all their detail. For example, we might spot places where the cloth has frayed or see that a certain piece of
clothing is becoming worn out. Folding is really a form of dialogue with our wardrobe. Japanese traditional clothing, kimono and yukata, were always folded into rectangles to fit perfectly into drawers designed to their uniform dimensions. I don’t think there is any other culture in the world where storage units and clothing were matched so precisely. Japanese people quickly grasp the pleasure that comes from folding clothes, almost as if they are genetically programmed for this task.