Marie Kondo’s 2010 book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, sparked a phenomenon of decluttering that continues to inspire people to get organized. If you’re wanting to give your Southern Maryland home a complete cleanup but aren’t sure where to start, Marie Kondo offers some great tips that can help homeowners tackle their clutter once and for all. Here are a few of our favorites:

Your Plan of Action

When you’re looking at decluttering your entire home, you need a plan of action. While most homeowners tend to go with a room-by-room strategy, Kondo has a different suggestion. She recommends that homeowners organize by category, not by room. Her categories are clothing, books, paper, misc., and mementos. If needed, you could adjust these to fit your needs, but this system tends to work really well for most homeowners.

Reduce

Kondo also offers advice for homeowners to get rid of belongings they no longer need. It can be challenging to start reducing, but she emphasizes how good it can feel once you get started. In the paper category, for example, she recommends getting rid of any paperwork you can access online. So often, we keep bills and other paperwork stacked up or filed away, when in reality, we don’t need the majority of it in paper form. Another popular suggestion when going through clothing in particular, is asking if the item brings you joy. When you pick up that t-shirt or old pair of jeans, is it something you want to put on, or does it usually end up back in the drawer? For the things that don’t bring you joy, it’s time to go.

Work With Nostalgia

Working through the category of mementos or sentimental things may be the slowest part of the process. It’s important to set aside enough time to adequately go through everything that has ended up in that category. For so many of us, sentimental things are tucked in boxes where we never see them. This isn’t ideal. Go through each item and think about how it makes you feel. Some you may be able to part with while others are too important. For those sentimental items you want to keep, see if you can find creative ways to incorporate them in your home as pieces of artwork.

Give Everything a Home

Once you’ve gone through this major overhaul, the biggest question may be, how do I keep it this way?. This is why Kondo says it’s so important to give everything a home. From bags and car keys to items in your desk, when everything has its specific place, it’s much easier to maintain the clutter-free organization you worked so hard to achieve.

 

Have you read Marie Kondo’s book? Do any of her strategies resonate with you? I’d love to hear your thoughts!