How The Aspiring Minimalist Can Modify The KonMari Method

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Have you been sitting in your house wondering where all this stuff came from?

If you’re like me it didn’t come all at once, it crept up slowly over years. A new apartment brought new furniture, new marriage brought knickknacks and kitchen gadgets, and new jobs and events brought logo tees I swore I was only going to “wear around the house.”

Did you know that the average home size in America has increased by over 1,000 square feet since 1973!? And the average family size has decreased so we should have so much more room for activities! Yet we still feel trapped in homes that seem to shrink every time we come back from Target.

If you feel this way then you’re probably ready to embrace a more minimalist lifestyle.

There are many roads to minimalism and the first step is figuring out which way is right for you. I personally like the KonMari Method by Marie Kondo with a few modifications made along the way. She’s not a minimalist per se but that’s kind of why I like her.

What is the KonMari Method?

I was introduced to the KonMari Method to decluttering when I read Marie’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I thought I was pretty minimalist already and blamed most of the clutter in the house on my quasi-hoarder husband.

But even for someone who doesn’t love to shop or accumulate, Marie showed me there were still items in my closets and drawers I was personally holding onto for the wrong reasons.

She recommends a category-by-category declutter vs. room by room. You start with the first item group on the list, take all of that particular item out from every room in the house, put it all in a pile then decide what stays and goes.

There are rules to follow that will help speed up the process and keep it going.

Her method is definitely a rip-the-bandaid-off kind of approach. Other great minimalists offer insight to doing things slowly and easily but Marie Kondo says you shouldn’t drag the process out any longer than you have to.

I’m an all-or-nothing person so this sounded great to me but I’m also really busy so I took the essence of the KonMari Method and modified it for my needs.

If you’re a visual person, I made a free printable schedule called the Weekend KonMari Tidying Guide! Because everything is more fun as a printable challenge right?

She recommends doing everything in a weekend but I was happy to see in her new Netflix series that she allowed people 6 weeks to complete the process. It’s much more reasonable and I hope it’ll get more people on board with her program.

How Do I Make The KonMari Method Work For Me?

While in the fibers of each episode’s narrative, but not clearly stated in her Netflix series, are her rules for tidying.

Marie’s first rule to decluttering, which she calls tidying, is to commit yourself. This is aided by the second rule, to imagine your ideal life. It’s basically visualizing your “why” for wanting a more minimalist life. That can be less time cleaning, a more calming place to come home to, or for the ability to downsize your home.

Her third rule is to finish discarding first. If you love organizing and planning (raising my hand right now) then it can be tempting to organize between every group.

Guilty.

But because I wasn’t able to do everything in a weekend and I didn’t want to live in a tornado all week, I opted to organize between groups. I don’t know if Marie would approve but it worked best for me.

Next is to tidy by category, not location, and to follow the right order. She breaks up the home into five categories of items:

• Clothing
• Books
• Papers
• Miscellany
• Mementos

The point is to find the hidden things where they shouldn’t be and to keep similar items close together so they’re easier to find.

I love this concept because it starts with the end in mind. If I keep all my papers in one place in one room, then I’ll never have to search the entire house again looking for one bill or receipt.

I tried to follow this rule but it was hard to remember all the places I kept things and I felt it was more important to get the job done than scour every inch of my house to make sure I got everything on the checklist.

Done is better than perfect.

The order is important because it starts with the easiest and ends with the hardest. Marie says if you try to start with mementos you’ll never get past them.

And the last rule, to aid in your tidying up, is to ask yourself if the item sparks joy.

This is kinda what she’s famous for right? It’s also my least favorite part of the KonMari Method. Marie talks to her items and equates them to the source of joy in the room.

That’s where the minimalist and Marie’s paths diverge.

The purpose for my decluttering isn’t for the sake of having a decluttered and “joyful” home. It’s a byproduct of wanting a simpler more fulfilling home & life.

I have to admit it sounds a lot weirder in the book than it does watching it on TV. But the principal for me remains the same. I want to only keep things I like and use frequently but I don’t want to trick myself into think they are the sources of my home’s joy.

But I did find one other phrase she used to be really valuable when getting rid of something difficult. Marie “thanks” the item for whatever it brought in the moment or season it came into the house.

She used the example of a skirt that’s barely worn and fits fine but never gets worn. She bought it because she thought she wanted to dress a certain way but over the years couldn’t bring herself to like it as much as she wanted to.

She thanked the skirt for teaching her more about her true style and acknowledged the “sunk cost” as the price she had to pay to learn that lesson.

Marie’s was a skirt, mine was a dress. A beautiful sequin party dress that I idolized but wore only once and couldn’t bear to part with. It’s the person I wanted to be, but just wasn’t. I thanked that dress (in my head) and let it go.

Ready to Get Started With The KonMari Method?

I highly recommend the book and the Netflix series to learn more about the logistics of her decluttering method. And take comfort in the knowing you can declutter using the KonMari Method too, no matter how much time or space you have available.

This method is best for people who are ready to “rip the bandaid off” so-to-speak, but can really be modified for anyone who sees value in it.

And I want to give you the weekend challenge that helped me start your KonMari journey. Download my Weekend KonMari Tidying Guide for Free!

In reality, it takes more than three days to fully minimize down to the essentials, but after a full weekend committed to the KonMari Method you’ll feel like you’re fully embracing minimalism.