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| Scarves on the left, t-shirts on the right |
I read a decluttering article in the May
2014 Red magazine recently in which Japanese author Marie Kondo was quoted. Her bestseller The Life Changing Magic of Tidying
has just been translated from her native language into English. Of course I have already ordered it from the
library.
Among other things, she talked about folding your clothes to
stack ‘vertically’ rather than in piles.
Marie says not only can you see every one of your garments at once, but
they don’t wrinkle as much as there isn’t weight on top of them. As soon as I got home that night I took out
all the clothes from one drawer and then refolded as she suggested.
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| Winter and long-sleeve tops |
I had so much more room in my drawers and
could see all the colours so nothing gets missed. I found tops at the bottom of the pile I’d
forgotten about, and it wasn’t too long ago that I decluttered my drawers.
Here are some photos of my old-style
drawers here. With my new enthusiasm I even emptied out one other small drawer
with all my scarves in and put them in with my t-shirts. I had already been folding my scarves that
way so I could see all my different ones, but hadn’t thought to do it with my
other clothes that were in drawers.
Here is a link to a tiny part of
the
article on the Red magazine website here.
I can’t wait to receive my library
order. I wonder what other fun things
Marie has up her sleeve. I’d also love
to know if you are now going to your bedroom to refold your clothes OR are you
thinking ‘that Fiona really needs to get a life’.
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| Home lounge wear and pjs |
In terms of decluttering - she could give Martha Stewart a run for her money. Kondo really is a genius and wish she could come to my house...
ReplyDeleteI think you just gave me a lot more space to work with. I am going to do this today with my scarf drawer, t-shirts and sleepwear. Thank you!
ReplyDeleteBonjour Fiona,
ReplyDeleteGreetings from Massachusetts! Thoroughly enjoy your inspiring, well written and thoughtful blog. Terrific series and this is awesome. Yes, off to refold...got my work cut out for me!
Merci beaucoup!
Wow, I love the concept, thanks for the author mention.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely a book I need to read! I am loving this series, Fiona. I always check your blog before I go to work. :)
ReplyDeleteAnother blogger mentioned this tip a couple of years ago - and I still haven't got around to doing it!
ReplyDeleteI would never have thought of that trick but it sounds like a great use of minimal space....and if it helps with wrinkling I am going to try it!
ReplyDeleteI am going to try one drawer to see how it works.
ReplyDeleteOoh! I've done this for over a year in my husbands tee drawer. He loves it. It's also very easy to see which tees get consistently overlooked so makes purging them that much easier.
ReplyDeleteLove the daily posts!
Suzanne
Hi Fiona! Just wanted to say how much I enjoy your blog, I missed it when you stopped for a while! I'm glad you had the inclination to start again. Regards, victoria
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of this- my question is when you pull out one t shirt/item, does the pile "collapse" and do you have to lift out the stack to put items back in??? Not sure how it "works"!!
ReplyDeleteThanks Fiona- I'd love to hear how you are finding this horizontal stacking system
Anonymous, taking out a top or scarf here and there is fine and it's no more messy than getting a t-shirt from the bottom of the pile in your drawer. If you took out more than half then yes, the rows would fall over, but I've done washing by that time. Putting a top back is easy, I just push the others back and put it at the front. As Suzanne says above, you can see which ones aren't worn as they end up at the back eventually!
ReplyDeleteGreetings from L'Allemagne! Thanks so much for the tip!
ReplyDeleteMelanie
If you don't have enough t-shirts to reach to the back of the drawer, I would think that the pile would fall over. Is that right?
ReplyDeleteI'm going to check out this book. thanks for the tip Fiona!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this - I went right to Amazon and read an excerpt - it won't be available in Canada until October so I bought it used from the UK - can't wait for it to get here, in the meantime I have revamped my nighwear drawer. (As a matter of fact this is how I store my quilting "fat quarters".) Your tips have motivated me to declutter.
ReplyDeleteJust want to mention also that I enjoy your blog which I came across recently.
Sisty, that's correct. See in the top photo - my t-shirts on the right of the drawer I have an extra little lot going sideways because there was too much for one 'pile' and not enough for two. I'm sure Marie Kondo would have a more elegant solution but I'll have to wait until I get the book!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely worth the experiment, I'd say. Thanks, Fiona, for your answer to my question and for this wonderful series.
ReplyDeleteI do this with my underwear, but never tried it with something like my tee shirts. I would be afraid they would wrinkle.
ReplyDeleteI am so excited about this post. Have just folded my underwear drawer and it not only looks great it really is functional. I did some further searching on Marie and discovered that she believes that if your house is in order then your past will be too. Physical clutter = inner spiritual mess, quelling one soothes the other. I have learnt that instead of looking for things to throw out I should be finding things I want to keep. I can't wait to read the book Thank you so much Fiona for this wonderful life changing post.
ReplyDeleteMany belated thanks for your lovely site and for leading me to Marie Kondo's brilliant book! I read about it first in your 23 June post, immediately bought the Kindle version, devoured it in a day, and spent an ecstatic week in June decluttering our Tokyo apartment while my husband was away. (One of Kondo's many helpful suggestions is that you don't let other people see what you're getting rid of.) Have no regrets about anything I sent on to its next incarnation. Thank you again for the inspiration!
ReplyDelete