Since I started this blog as a spiritual journey, I figured I would tackle the spiritual items first. Since I moved, these were scattered in various locations throughout my bedroom, cluttering up everything. I made a pile intending to take care of it right away. However, I ended up letting it sit for a week instead. My altar is an old TV stand, so it just has two shelves to hold everything. In the past, I had a whole drawer elsewhere dedicated to divination items. I had my drum, incense, and various other articles located on my bedroom bookshelves.
My pile of spiritual stuff. I daresay many people would have a bigger pile than I do!
I made three piles: one of items that I LOVED. One was stuff to give away or throw away. The third had items I wasn’t sure about. I was thorough. I took all of my seashells out of their container and went though them. I took all of my gemstones out of their container and went through them. The majority of the items I wasn’t sure about ended up being kept, but I am happy and proud to say that everything now fits underneath my altar now, even my drum!
I didn’t expect to have any problems with this step. I would be separating out any sentimental papers, so I really didn’t expect to have any issues. One thing Marie Kondo says is that you have to take ALL of the papers throughout the house and pile them in one place. I did not realize I had that many papers to go through. I also didn’t expect how long it would take me to go through all of these papers. I managed to do all of the books in a few hours. It took about 6 hours just to finish the first half of the sorting. By the time I had finished, I was left with only three smaller piles of papers, I was sick of looking at papers, so I took a break.
I resumed working on the papers a few days later and that took a few hours as well! While Marie Kondo is able to really only have three folders (important papers, warranties, and stuff that needs to be done), I was pretty pleased with how few papers I had left. There is also another folder I keep upstairs of spiritual papers that I wanted to keep. Some of them were from classes I took or rituals that I liked, but there weren’t that many of them.
I LOVE books! I thought this step was going to be very difficult. Our bookshelves were overflowing with books. There also was no room on them for my husband’s small collection of books. I know Marie Kondo disapproves of keeping the same classification of items in different places, but I keep my spiritual (a.k.a. Pagan) books upstairs near my altar. I do this for many reasons. First, when I am at my altar is when I will likely be reading or using these books. Second, I don’t like to display my Pagan books when it’s possible that people will stop by who won’t know I’m Pagan and I don’t want them to know that I’m Pagan. I also keep our cookbooks in the kitchen, for obvious reasons.
Also I have seen a lot of memes on various social media sites poo-pooing Marie Kondo because they took a quote from her out of context, so I thought I should address it. She says that she has managed to pare down her own personal book collection to 30 books. People took that to mean that you should only have 30 books. On the contrary, she does not tell people how many books they should have. In fact, she just wants us book-lovers to have a bookshelf full of books that we absolutely love and gives us joy. Who wouldn’t want to love every book they have on their shelf!?
So, according to the directions for this step, I took all the books and piled them up in the middle of the room. I did get rid of a large box of books, as did my husband. I also had a number of books that I was “undecided” about. After the first round, there were two boxes filled with books and a few piles that I didn’t know what to do with.
I sorted those books into the following piles: sentimental books (books that belonged to my now deceased grandmother about Norway or teaching Norwegian), spiritual books that I might like to review on my blog before I get rid of them, books that I would like to keep for my son one day, books related to a hobby that I quit that I may start again, but that I am very emotional about (long story), and books that I might like to read again someday, and books I will probably need for work.
BeforeAfter
I took the sentimental books and put them in a place to be sorted with my sentimental items at a later date. I separated the spiritual books I wanted to review for my blog from the ones I actually liked and resolved to get rid of them in a year if I didn’t get to them by then. I kept the books for my son until he’s old enough to decide what to do with them (there were only 4 of them). I also kept the books related to the hobby until I can come to a definitive decision whether or not to give up that hobby permanently. I separated the books that I might like to read again and resolved to throw out any that I did not read within the next year. The books for work went to work where I have bookshelf space for them.
BeforeAfterBeforeAfter (but the top section has sentimental and craft items that need to be sorted)
I started watching this show on Netflix one day to help me get some motivation to tidy up our house. I found Tidying Up with Marie Kondo. I binge-watched these over a matter of days (I know there are only 8 episodes, but I have a job and a toddler). I started to work on my clothes first. Clothes weren’t that big a deal for me. Since I had given birth, I was a larger size than before I got pregnant, so I needed new clothes. As such, I only had a few clothes that actually fit me. I did end up getting rid of stained clothes and a few pieces that I just don’t wear. Then I folded them up in the special way she insists on folding them. It was funny because as I ran my hand along the clothing to fold them in the right way, I felt a small energy exchange between my hand and the clothing. I actually enjoyed folding my clothes this way. I also liked how they looked when I opened the drawers.
Yes, I had officially drunk the Marie Kondo Kool-Aid. I visited my local library and took out her book since the shows really don’t address Step 2: Books or Step 3: Papers. It was a quick and satisfying read. I took a “before” video to show how our house looks on the average day. While I was reviewing this video I realized two things: this house is nowhere near as bad as some of the ones I have seen, but this house is worse than I thought it was in other respects.
My house before tidying up the Marie Kondo way (to be fair, I already did the clothes at this point)
