The Clutter Fairy Weekly #122

Throwing Off Sparks: The KonMari Method in Philosophy and Practice 1

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Marie Kondo helped kick the decluttering movement into high gear with her bestselling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The “KonMari Method” tossed out a lot of the conventional wisdom of the organizing industry and introduced a new approach. In episode #122 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, examines the Marie Kondo approach to organizing and talks with people who’ve used the KonMari Method about how it worked for them (or didn’t).

This is the first episode of a three-part series about the work of Marie Kondo. You may still respond to the survey discussed in the episode, Marie Kondo in Her Own Words: Quotations and Discussion Questions.

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Darlene’s Photo Algorithms

In this episode, we shared these algorithms for purging photos offered by YouTube viewer Darlene, and several participants expressed interest in having the list in writing. Enjoy!

My algorithms for my photo collection were that I would toss out these photos:

  • landscape pictures that weren’t meaningful, where I didn’t recognize the place or didn’t like the picture
  • pictures of people that only showed the backs of their heads or were blurry, or where the people couldn’t be seen well enough to be able to recognize individuals. Rare exception to this rule is for rare but not perfect photos, like the only picture we’d been able to find of my great-grandfather.
  • when I had multiple different pictures of the same thing/event/group of people taken at the same time, toss all but the best one or two
  • are they truly sentimental? For example, my parents cleared out their photos and gave me a bunch of candid photos from their wedding. They kept the best ones, these were not as good. Are these photos really sentimental to me, or am I keeping them just out of a sense of obligation?

Thanks again, Darlene, for your great suggestions!

Weekly Tittle

The Weekly Tittle is an exercise designed to focus your attention on a specific space, aspect, or challenge of decluttering and organizing your home. We assign a new tittle in each webcast/podcast, then check on your progress the following week.

Tokimeku?

Cathy Hirano, the translator responsible for the English edition of Marie Kondo’s first book, considered several translations for the Japanese word tokimeku before deciding to use the phrase “spark joy” (and several others) in the book.*

This week’s assignment is to choose a small category of items that you’re considering decluttering and evaluate them using KonMari Method principles. Handle each object, and ask yourself whether you can answer “yes” to any of these questions:

  • Does this inspire joy?
  • Does this bring you pleasure?
  • Do you feel a thrill when you touch it?
  • Does it speak to your heart?
  • Does it brighten your world?
  • Does it make you happy?

*Read this Apartment Therapy post for an interesting and thorough discussion of the translation of tokimeku.

For the full discussion of this week’s tittle, watch the Weekly Tittle segment on YouTube.

Chat Transcript

Download a transcript of the chat that took place during the live event.

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