Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you definitely must’ve heard about the organisational guru, Marie Kondo. This Japanese author and organisational consultant is widely known for her ability to transform people’s lives through decluttering. Her legendary “KonMari Method” is the reason behind her popularity and why she got her very own Netflix show. A few days ago, I decided to finally read her book The life-changing art of tidying up. Usually, if someone told me to clean my room, I wouldn’t listen to them. However, after reading this all I could think about was decluttering. Marie Kondo claims that tidying up your living area according to the KonMari method will not only make your home look immaculate but it will also make you feel more confident, successful and motivated to create the life you want. Sounds too good to be true amirite?
Sceptical but still extremely intrigued, I decided to give this method a try. However, in the book, it mentioned that you should tidy a little bit every day and you’ll be tidying forever. So I decided to start small and tackle the mess that I should’ve done a long time ago—my beauty closet. Every morning when I would wake up and get ready in a hurry I would dread opening this closet because I knew that it was overflowing with highlighters, lipsticks, mascaras and a few dozen other beauty products. So after I was done reading the book, I knew where I had to start. If you want to learn how you can also tidy up your living space then you’re in the right place. Here’s what you need to know before you try the KonMari method of organisation:
1. Visualise Your Destination:
The KonMari method is not like your average spring cleaning session. It requires some serious planning and hardcore execution. So taking out all my products and rearranging them was not an option. I had to first identify my goal and answer these three questions:
- What motivated you to tidy up in the first place?
- What do you hope to gain through tidying?
- How do you want your lifestyle to be in the long-term?
It may seem unnecessary in the beginning but according to Marie Kondo if you skip this step not only will it delay the tidying process but it will also make you go back to your old cluttering habits. So after doing some thinking, I decided that I’m motivated to live a more organised lifestyle and I want to gain clarity through tidying. In the long run, I don’t want to spend hours finding what I need and I want to get ready in peace.
2. Take Out Everything And Categorise:
When it comes to the KonMari method, you can’t just rearrange a few things on your shelf and call it a day. You have to remove everything from your closet and start filling your closet from scratch. Before you rearrange and put everything back into your closet, make categories and rearrange according to that. So I assigned shelves of my beauty closet to each category: perfumes, skincare, makeup products for the face, eyes, and lips. Here’s what my skincare shelf looked like after organising it:
3. Does It Spark Joy?
This is probably the most important step of the KonMari method. Before you start rearranging your stuff according to the categories, you should ask yourself “does this spark joy?” You should answer honestly and from your heart. If the answer is ‘yes’ then go ahead and keep it. In my case, the products that didn’t spark any joy were the ones that I haven’t even used in months and frankly, I even forgot that I owned them. Through this process, I realised that I tend to cling onto things just for their sentimental value which in turn led to hoarding. So my advice to you would be to only keep the products that you religiously use and those you love using. Be grateful the ones you decide to discard and move on. Trust me, you’ll feel 10 times lighter.
Once you’ve completed these 3 steps, all you have to do is put back all the products you want into their respective categories and display them in a practical yet aesthetically pleasing manner.
Conclusion:
- Tackle categories: Tidying up can be painfully daunting but the secret is t0 tackle categories, not rooms. If I decided to clean up my whole room it would take me hours to finish up. So start small and tackle categories.
- Maintainance is key: Marie Kondo insists that once something is taken out of its place it should immediately be put back in its place. If you don’t maintain your closet then all your previous efforts will be washed down the drain.
- Don’t be sentimental: I’m one of those people who’ll store old and empty perfume bottle just because it was a gift or because it reminded me of a different time in my life. However, this habit led me to hoard more than 20 empty perfume bottles! That’s when I realised that there’s no point in being sentimental when it comes to tidying up. Let it go and you’ll feel much lighter.
- Less is more: This whole ordeal taught me that less is more. Owning a dozen products and using only three does not make sense. Hence, the next time I’ll go shopping, I’ll invest in a few worthwhile products instead of buying a dozen of average products.
Would you be interested to see us try the KonMari method to organise anything else? Let us know in the comments below!
Follow @missmalinibeauty on Instagram for more updates.