The KonMari Method: Organizing Clothes
Learn how to use the KonMari Method of organizing clothes to create neatly organized drawers and tidy closets in your home! Saginaw Mi
If you’ve missed me this week, it’s because I’ve been folding clothes for days and days! Guys, this whole KonMari thing is no joke! If you missed the intro last week, I recently read the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
Since I’m always up for decluttering and reorganizing, we decided to give her method a try in our home, and since she recommends organizing clothes first, that’s what we tackled this week. We put in a closet system and purged a lot of our hanging clothes not too long ago, so I honestly wasn’t sure if there was going to be much to get rid of in our closet.
It wasn’t stuffed or overflowing, but we wanted to go through the entire KonMari process, so we decided to purge it anyway. Our drawers, on the other hand, definitely had some room for improvement
Our shirts were sort of haphazardly folded and piled in the drawers, and socks were balled up and thrown wherever they would fit. I actually have always used dividing bins in my sock drawer, but they were beginning to overflow. They’re not the messiest drawers I’ve ever seen, but I was curious to see what they’d look like once we had gone through the KonMari process.
So, following the book’s advice, we gathered up every piece of clothing we owned from the entire house and put it in a pile on the floor. What a mess!
The next step was to handle each item and decide whether or not it “sparked joy.” While this measurement was less definitive than the usual “get rid of everything you haven’t worn in 6 months to a year,” it really did help me think about why I owned certain things. It turns out that keeping only the things I really loved was pretty freeing. It’s easier to get dressed in the morning because I actually like everything in my closet! Who knew?!
Since I tend to be pretty practical, I had kept some things around just because they were still in good shape or because I might need them for some very specific situation in the future. Marie’s take on these types of items is that they have probably already served their purpose, so we should be thankful for them for that reason and then be willing to get rid of them. She actually goes so far as to audibly thank her items for a job well done, and while we definitely weren’t doing that, I do think it makes sense to realize that something was useful at one time, but it’s okay to get rid of it now that it’s no longer serving that purpose.
How to Fold Clothes with the KonMari Method
Even after purging our clothes just a few months ago, we still had three large garbage bags full of items to either donate or throw away! Before we could put our clothes away, though, I had to fold all of the items that were going back into our dressers. Rather than stacking clothes in piles like we had them before, the KonMari Method recommends folding them into a rectangle shape so they can stand up, allowing us to see everything in our drawer at one time. I watched several YouTube videos to get a better idea of the process, and many of them seemed to do it slightly differently, but I thought I’d share the folding method that ended up working for me. (You can also see a video of how I fold our clothes here.)
For shirts, I started by laying them flat with the back side up (1). I then folded one side of the shirt over to the middle long-ways, folding the sleeve back across the folded piece (2). I then mirrored that fold with the other side of the shirt (3). Next I folded top of the shirt back to meet the bottom edge, so it looked similar to how they fold shirts in retail stores (4). My next step depended on the size of the shirt. If it was fairly small, I could just fold it over once more and be done with it, making sure that the collar of the shirt was on the inside of the fold rather than on the outside (5a). If the shirt was a little larger, I instead folded it in thirds. Starting with the shirt at step 4, I first folded the collared part down toward the center of the shirt, then brought the other edge over the collared part (5b). The goal was for the shirt to end up in a rectangular shape that could stand on its own.
Starting with them folded in half length-wise (1), I then folded them in half length-wise again (2). Then again, I had two options, depending on the size of the pants. For smaller pants, I folded them in thirds, first folding the waistband toward the middle and then folding the other side over top of the waistband (3a). If the pants were larger, I folded both sides in so that they met in the middle, and then folded them in half (3b). The goal was the same: a rectangle shape that stood on its own.
Socks were also folded so that they could stand on end, and it helped to have some sort of vessel to corral them in the drawer. I used the plastic bins I had already had in my drawers, and I just used a shoe box covered in wrapping paper for Donnie’s socks.
(I sort of cheated with my running socks. I couldn’t get them to fold nicely since they were so small, and since they are all the same type and I didn’t need to be able to see them all at once, I left them stacked flat.}
As far as our closet goes, I was able to fit all of the sweatshirts and sweaters I had left after the purge into one bin instead of two. Yay!
For the order of the clothes, the KonMari Method suggests going from the “heaviest” items (long length, dark in color, thicker material) on the left to “lighter” items (shorter, lighter in color and material) on the right. Our closet setup didn’t allow us to exactly match the KonMari recommendations, but we got as close as we could!
Whew! Not gonna lie– it took some time and effort to get everything organized but now that it’s done, I really do love how easy it is to find everything and how neat and clean it looks.
Link & Credits to Author of article: Justagirlandherblog.com