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For those of you who somehow don’t know, Marie Kondo is famous for her 2014 book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, which encouraged people to purge their overcluttered houses of anything that didn’t bring them joy.

Last year, she also starred in her own Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, which inspired a new wave of ‘Kondoites’ to adopt the KonMari way of life.

People have a tendency to collect stuff. Over the years we accumulate trinkets, mementos, appliances, and furniture that take up valuable cupboard and living space.

While watching the show or reading the book was enough for some to start hugging their stuff and thanking it for its service, before tossing it on the donate or throw-away pile, others needed a little more guidance.

That’s why Kondo has put together an online tutorial, Fundamentals of Tidying, comprising 10 videos, that will take you through the process step-by-step:

If you’re keen to try it, but want to know a bit more about what you’re getting yourself into, Mindbodygreen pulled five tips from the series to give you a taste of things to come.

Imagine a new way of being at home

We’ve all spent a lot of time at home over the course of the last year, so we’re pretty familiar with, and honestly a little sick of, our surroundings at this point.

Change is good, but before you start tossing things in a trash bag, Kondo recommends that you sit down and envision what you’d like your home to look and feel like. Break out a magazine, make a mood board, or just meditate on the idea.

Reconnect with your books

One of the things that initially put me off the KonMari method was the suggestion that one should purge one’s home of all books.

That’s a hard pass from me – I’m happily surrounded by piles of them, spilling out of the bookshelves.

Now, Kondo recommends that you take all of the books off the shelf and “tap them to wake them up”. Once you’ve awakened the books, you can decide which ones to keep and which ones to store or donate. This, she says will help you to “rediscover your interests and values”.

Organise your papers into key categories

If you enjoy organising paperwork, I’m sorry, but you’re in the minority.

Kondo has a simple method, though, that will make the task easier on the rest of us.

You need to imagine that someone is set on burning all of your papers and you have to decide which ones to save. Organise the ones that remain into papers that need immediate attention, important files that you need to keep, and joy-sparking papers like old letters or cards.

Thank your stuff

Take things and thank them for whatever it is that they’ve done.

I ventured off to the toolbox to thank the measuring tape for helping to determine where the dining table should live. In the series, Kondo thanks a screwdriver.

While I still don’t feel any sense of kinship with the tape, this apparently helps the cleaning process. If you can’t find something to thank an object for then you probably don’t need it anymore.

Designate a power spot

Kondo says that you should take one part of the house, whether it’s a room, a shelf, or an unused corner, for yourself.

“Creating a power spot—and spending time in it—is one of my favourite ways to live joyfully,” she says.

Once you’ve thanked, sorted and thrown away some stuff, you might still find yourself with a number of items that you can’t part with, but that are taking up unnecessary space. Or, even worse, space that could be dedicated to a ‘power spot’.

The solution is simple – toss them into storage.

Stor-Age, South Africa’s leading self-storage brand, provides clean, dry, and secure self-storage units tailored to your needs for as long as you need them.

Sign up now, and you’ll get 50% off of your first month of storage, which you can then renew on a month-by-month basis.

Take that sweet deal as the sign you need to get going on tidying.

[source:mindbodygreen]