Magical cleaning. Japanese art of putting things in order at home and in life

The KonMari method: cleaning the cabinet in Japanese is part of the cleaning system, not only in the cabinet, but also in life. This method was invented by the Japanese Marie Kondo and named after her by the first letters of her name. Her revolutionary way of cleaning very quickly captured the whole world under the slogan “Do you want to never do spring cleaning again?” It is filled with Japanese philosophy, a “lively” attitude to things, communication with the Universe.

The main thread that runs through the whole method is the realization that the things around us should please us, carry only a positive attitude. It differs from other restoring algorithms (for example, from the flyledi system) in that it is suggested to take apart your cabinet from the trash once, and then only maintain order.

The scale of the "tragedy"

According to the KonMari method, you need to take apart all the clothes of one person at a time. That's all - from linen to a down jacket. We collect all the wardrobe items in one place, checking all the places where they can be. This process is quite personal and it is better to carry it out alone. Marie also advises starting the analysis of things as early as possible in order to manage in one day.

• clothes that need to be stored on hangers - jackets, skirts, trousers, suits, coats, etc .;
• t-shirts, tops, sweatshirts, jumpers;
• underwear;
• socks and tights;
• special clothes - swimwear, sportswear;
• footwear;
• bags;
• accessories - scarves, hats, belts, etc.

Get rid of the unnecessary

Now, following the method, it is necessary to "test" every item of clothing for positive emotions. You need to take each thing in your hands and understand whether it gives joy or not. Thus, we determine what to leave, and not what to throw away. Vague criterion, isn't it? Well, what can please, for example, a sock. It turns out maybe. At least the fact that it is beautiful in color and not full of holes. Of course, some wardrobe items can be difficult. A classic trench coat may not bring joy, but it seems to be the way it should be. In this case, Marie recommends asking myself whether I am ready to put it on myself again. If so, leave it. If you doubt at least for a split second - we definitely throw the thing away.

Marie believes that each thing has its own function, and before you throw it away or give it away, you need to thank her for her service. For example, if a thing does not suit you, then its function was to teach you not to buy more like that - the same style or color.

The main rule of the KonMari system: you cannot transfer to the category of clothing for home that which you no longer wear at work or “in people” (t-shirts are an exception). Firstly, because in the end, the mountain of the home will certainly grow, but it will not be worn. And secondly, according to Marie - those things that we wear at home, affect our perception of ourselves.

Perhaps not everyone is ready to immediately throw out good strong things. Then a softer version of the system is proposed. Those wardrobe items that did not cause positive emotions should be put into boxes and offered to relatives or given to those in need.

According to the system, it is forbidden to impose on relatives what you want to give to them. Perhaps your mother or friend will take the proposed little thing, because it will be inconvenient for her to refuse. But it will be inappropriate, will lie idle and create a problem for them already. Leave for loved ones only that which suits them one hundred percent.

Marie Kondo writes that usually people get rid of a quarter, or even a third of the wardrobe. Items bought for a case that never happened are leaving; gifts that for some reason do not like; bought at sales that don’t suit you, but sorry for the money spent.

Whether you have enough left over or need to purchase something additionally, you will understand intuitively. As Marie writes, something must click in your head.

Proper storage of clothing

When only the necessary is left, we proceed to the organization of storage. There are two storage methods: on hangers and on shelves or in drawers. Marie Kondo suggests mainly using the second method for storage, only store things not in horizontal stacks, but in an upright position. She advises this for several reasons:

• space saving;
• when all things are folded and filled a drawer from wall to wall, you will once again ask yourself the question, do you need to buy another Wishlist if there is nowhere to fold it;
• every time we touch wardrobe items, folding them, we endow them with our positive energy.

In order for clothes to be stored vertically, they must be folded correctly. Each item needs to be rolled up into a small rectangle or twisted into a roll - like Japanese rolls. We put tops, t-shirts, shorts, jeans, underwear into rectangles. We roll socks and tights into rolls. You can learn how to stack things using the KonMari method according to sketchy drawings or watch videos on YouTube. The number of additions is calculated as follows: the height of the rectangle or roll placed on the edge must not exceed the height of the wall of the box or box for clothes.

After that, we arrange the folded and twisted things in rows into categories (socks to socks, panties to panties, sweaters to sweaters, etc.). With this layout, there are two advantages: the first - you can easily find the right one, because in sight, and the second - when you get one thing, the rest remains in its original position. To the question of whether the clothes stored in this way are wrinkled strongly, Marie replies that they are not strong. Folded vertically, it creases much less than a thrown just like that or lying in a familiar pile.

Marie advises against purchasing writes special storage devices. You can do with improvised items - plastic dividers, boxes from shoes or paper, plastic baskets.

We hang the remaining things

In addition to folding clothes, Marie also gives recommendations on hanging - suits, dresses, blouses, jackets and raincoats.

The main rule: you need to hang it also by type - blouses to blouses, trousers to trousers. Longer and heavier wardrobe items will be on the left, and lighter and shorter ones on the right side. It turns out that things are visually rising from left to right. Marie writes that wardrobe items arranged in this way will fill your home with positive energy and give lightness and comfort.

We do not remove non-seasonal clothes

Marie Kondo believes that it is not necessary to store non-seasonal clothes for storage. But for Russia, this advice is not very suitable, as it seems to me. We have too much seasonal temperature difference. In winter, shorts are unlikely to be useful to us, and in the summer we will definitely not wear a down jacket.

Bags

The KonMari system really helps to clean up your closet, you just need to decide to put it into practice. And most importantly - after washing and ironing, immediately return everything in its place. Then your closet will be a model of Japanese order and minimalism and most likely you will want to act on this method further.

When the time comes for cleaning, each person imagines a very boring and tedious task. From this, hands drop even more, the desire to begin to do something in general disappears. But if you look at the cleaning from the right angle, then it can put in order not only an apartment, but also thoughts. This will help Marie Kondo and her bestselling book “Magical cleaning. The Japanese art of putting things in order at home. ” She published her book in millions of copies, which already speaks of its importance for all people, as well as interesting and useful information inside.

The key to cleanliness is the ability to clean properly

First of all, you need to remember that nobody has managed to turn their apartment into an ideal picture of cleanliness and order in 1 minute. It will be necessary to spend a certain amount of time on this. But you should also not engage in cleanliness every day. This creates the impression that cleaning lasts forever and never ends. In this case, the famous writer Marie Kondo uses the term “special event”. That is, cleaning should be done at a time within the same time period.

If everything is done according to certain rules and recommendations, then the ideal order will reign in the apartment, which is tedious just from time to time just to slightly maintain. This method helps even those people who by their nature possess such traits as laziness and sloppiness.

Cleaning according to the rules of Marie Kondo is based on 2 main points:

1. Get rid of unnecessary things.
2. Determine the storage order of the necessary items.

But you cannot think about the second point until the first rule is fully implemented.

Do not interfere with the cleaning of relatives and friends

Since cleaning the apartment according to the theory of Marie Kondo is a process that will clean not only space, but also human thoughts, it should be carried out exclusively in a relaxed atmosphere. In addition, no household needs to show what exactly it was decided to throw out once and for all.

The sight of a large pile of old things can lead to panic and severe stress. Therefore, relatives are trying to save old things, but it still will not lead to any positive result. Nobody will start to wear old things again, and broken objects will never work like a new technique.

What is the point of cleaning according to Marie Kondo?

The first thing that strikes the imagination is the scale of cleaning, which the author of the book calls for. During this procedure, a person completely changes consciousness, arranges thoughts that in the future will help determine what to do in life, and which, on the contrary, is better to refuse.

Cleaning by Marie Kondo consists of 2 planes: spiritual and practical.

The first, spiritual side, consists in the following aspects:

1. Every thing in the house can only be associated with positive emotions and give joy to its owner. In no case should it cause a feeling of fatigue or irritation.
2. All things that are for one reason or another in the house are alive. In order to increase the return on them of positive energy, it is necessary for each subject to determine its place and maintain it in a neat and clean form.
3. A thing that has passed its life path and must now leave the house must be thanked.

The practical side is also of great importance. Order helps to get positive energy out and find its application in other actions, as well as solving important problems.

Therefore, the main principle of cleanliness in houses according to Marie is to get rid of old and unnecessary things, as well as develop the right storage places for the remaining necessary items.

In addition, it is worth remembering one important rule: there is no such thing as “someday”. Every item or item should be useful here and today. Therefore, you do not need to turn your house into a place to store old and unnecessary things for the sake of some kind of ghostly chance to use them at least once in the future.

Clutter

This is how the cleaning process begins in Marie Kondo's book. According to the cluttering, one should not spare the old trash, but surely get rid of it without hesitation. The person after this should immediately feel relief, as if the excess load had fallen off his shoulders. This day will be considered the starting point for moving into a clean and tidy life with new thoughts and goals.

If the family consists of several people, then everyone should independently sort their things. Only children become an exception to the rule, since they have too little life experience necessary for this process.

At this time, one should concentrate one's thoughts not on those objects that it was decided to throw away, but on those that remain in the house.

How to clean ConMari?

The pursuit of excellence

The main goal of bringing order to the house is perfection. You can’t attach too little importance to this and work half-heartedly. The house will be in perfect order only if a person makes every effort to do this.

Remove everything at once

Things in the house are not stored in any one particular place. They are dispersed throughout the apartment. Therefore, it is impossible to clean each room separately, since there is a big risk that things will simply wander from one place to another.

Throw away unnecessary

The first thing that cleaning starts with is to rid the room of unnecessary things. Here, a person can show weakness and begin to leave objects for later, with the hope that they may someday come in handy. This is the main and most common mistake of most people who want to bring their homes to perfection.

Throw out without regret and delay, it is necessary those things that do not bring joy and positive emotions, as well as those that are not useful in the past and will not be useful in the future.

In addition, disassembling old clothes, people are in no hurry to throw them away, leaving them as home sets. But this is strictly prohibited. You can’t walk at home in clothes that do not cause positive emotions or become unusable in order to go outside. Time at home is a precious and important part of life.

One of the most difficult processes is getting rid of souvenirs and souvenirs. But they are only a means of transmitting pleasant human feelings. Therefore, you need to thank this item for pleasant and warm emotions, and also say goodbye to him forever.

Cleaning is carried out by categories

The order needs to be created not in each separate room, but in the whole apartment. To facilitate this task will help the separation of things into special categories. To do this, items that belong to the same category must be collected in a specially designated place. This will help to demonstrate how many objects of each category are in the house. Usually it seems to people that in fact in their apartment there are half or three times less things.

To simplify, you first need to clean up the categories in which it is easier to make a decision. Gradually, we should move on to more complex classes. Based on this, the categorization is as follows:

• clothes, shoes;
• books, magazines;
• documents, papers, stickers with notes, warranty cards, unnecessary instructions;
• cDs
• personal hygiene items, cosmetics;
• electrical appliances, kitchen utensils;
• food;
• souvenirs, gifts, photographs - all items that are valuable to humans.

The latter category is considered one of the most difficult emotionally. A person who picks up a gift from his lover or a souvenir from a trip together immediately has images in his head associated with those pleasant moments in life. But they are also unnecessary items. As soon as they are removed from the field of view, a person immediately forgets about this subject and may not remember about it until until he sees again. The gift should cause joy at the time of its delivery. After that, he can no longer bring any benefit. Of course, this applies only to those things that perform the function of exclusively a gift, and they can no longer be used in everyday life with benefit.

Benefits

People who have already taken the advice of the author of the book unanimously claim that this approach to cleaning helped them get rid of at least half of the things in the apartment as a dead load. This helped free up space for really important and necessary items.

In addition, cleaning, which is performed in one fell swoop, completely eliminates the risk of developing the opposite effect. That is, when you delay, the usual mess returns to the apartment.

The main principle of efficient cleaning

After the space has been cleared of unnecessary things, the remaining must be properly placed for further storage. This will help in the future less likely to return to the cleaning of the apartment.

The first thing to do is to store things that relate to the same category in a specially designated place. For example, all books should be in the bookcase, and clothing should be in the wardrobe and nowhere else. If you neglect this rule, then after a short period of time things will again be dispersed throughout the entire apartment. A person will be forced to re-carry out cluttering.

Special attention should be paid to the proper storage of things. That is, their search should not be time consuming. Marie Kondo insists that all items can only be stored properly upright. Piles to maintain order are completely unsuitable. Therefore, before you put everything together, you need to learn how to do it right. As a result, garments and other things should look like a simple and smooth rectangle. After which, they simply fold into a roll and put them in a drawer. The main thing is not to forget to put them strictly upright. This will help a person immediately see all the items and choose from the total number the necessary thing, without turning the contents of the entire box.

On special bars for hanging things you also need to maintain order. Here they are sorted from left to right. At first warm clothes of dark shades are hung up, and it all ends with light clothes of light tones.

When the house is completely put in order, a person will have clarity in his head and thoughts. After that, he will begin to clearly understand what he wants to achieve in life, and what prevents him from successfully achieving his goal.

Today I will talk about my experience in putting the house in order according to the method of Conmari. This method, invented by the Japanese Marie Kondo, has become popular in Japan and around the world deservedly. He turns consciousness, and following its basic principles helps to restore order not only at home, but also in his own life.

Get rid of the unnecessary

The main difference between the Conmari method and well-known cleaning methods (for example, the same flyledi principles) is that the author focuses not so much on the methods of regularly cleaning the apartment and arranging things (although there is also information on storage), but on how to get rid of from all that is unnecessary, to rasplamyat housing, unload it, leaving there only that which gives a person joy.

Such cleaning needs to be done only once, and in the future it is only necessary to return things to their places and, as a rule, if everything is done correctly, this is obtained without difficulty.

That is, cleaning is not about washing floors and wiping off dust, it’s not sorting and figuring out how to keep everything in a minimum space, it’s all secondary, first of all cleaning is an action, a holiday that becomes a new step in your life. At the same time, it does not matter if you are sloppy by nature, or neat, the method works for everyone.

And the most significant step that you need to take in the first place is to get rid of what you do not need. And only then everything else. This is the basis.

But I won’t torment you, I’ll move on to the main stages of the Conmari method, as well as to what happened in practice with me.

clothing

So, Marie Kondo advises not to clean the room separately one after another, but to clean things of one type one-time. And you should start with clothes.

All the clothes that you have should be in one place, this is important. You must see it all and thing by thing decide to leave it or not. And here is the most interesting moment. You need to leave only the clothes that make you happy. You can try it on to figure it out better. You can’t leave something that you will not wear, just in case, but suddenly it will come in handy, etc. It is impossible. All that remains is the clothes that make the heart beat.

Vague criterion, right?

Frankly, it was the most difficult for me. I used to do an audit of clothes about once a year, but on a different principle. And, in the end, I still left a bunch of things that later simply lay on the shelves. This time I decided to become more radical, but in order not to cut it alive, I just folded the clothes, which are still in good condition, but which do not make my heart beat, in a large box (to wear at my parents' place or give away).

This is not entirely correct, it would be more correct to get rid of everything that is not needed right away, but, as I already said, it turned out to be more difficult with things than I thought, so I deformed the method for myself a little. In any case, as a result, on my shelves were only things that I like. And we were striving for this.

Marie Kondo advises folding clothes not as many are used to doing, that is, in piles, but vertically. But this point deserves a more detailed explanation, so I will tell you in detail about it separately.

Books, magazines

Leave only those that make the heart beat. Again the same interesting wording. This does not apply to professional literature, but I thoroughly went over the rest.

All books and periodicals, as in the case of clothes, need to be removed from the shelves and laid out in front of you, then pick up each one and make a decision. This only works. When books are on a shelf, making a choice is very difficult or almost impossible. Reading and flipping them is not worth it, you just need to understand by picking up whether you need this book or not.

Personally, I left books on psychology that I read and reread, manuals for Pilates and yoga, everything related to fitness and training, drawing books, sewing guides, several art books and the necessary reference books. At the same time, I downloaded everything that I managed to find and download on the Internet to the iPad and gave away paper options with a clear conscience. In general, in our age of rapidly developing technologies, it is really not necessary to store huge volumes from books that I once read or were going to read, but have not succeeded for 10 years. If this book is in my iPad, I’ll read it more likely, as practice shows.

However, it’s still more pleasant for me to read some books in paper form, it is more pleasant and more convenient to look at text and drawings on paper, the atmosphere is more subtle when reading. But, you see, there are not very many such books. Earlier, the very thought that something might disappear from my sacred library already plunged me into gloom. The funny thing is that after I figured out the books, it really became easier and easier for me. There was less of this information noise around, I focused on what is really important, necessary and gives joy.

Separately, I will say about children's literature. Coloring books, training books with assignments that have already been completed and painted, my daughter and I threw away. They left only what else we will do. I left the children's books in full, there are quite a lot of them, but my daughter likes to choose one of them and reads different ones every day, so the issue was easily resolved.

All books (both children and adults) are stored on shelves vertically and only vertically, but children in the children’s area, adults in the adult.

Papers and documents

Here I just got rid of a pile of unnecessary trash. The guarantees that were issued long ago, some checks, 5-year-old utility bills, instructions that no one used and will not use, all this went to the trash. All that remains is what is really needed, and it became much easier to figure it out. Simple at times! And the used notebooks and notebooks that were lying and waiting, it is not clear why taking up a lot of space? Is it worth it to clutter up your apartment with whole boxes of things in which valuable 2-3 pieces of paper? I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t worth it and with 99% of the volume of the securities I said goodbye. And it became easier to breathe.

Vertical storage

According to the method of Conmari, all things should be stored vertically, including linen. So they take up little space, retain their properties well, it’s easy for you to see what you have in stock, the thing is easy to take and just as easy to put back in place.

I will say right away that I was skeptical about this option of storage in relation to clothes. When I saw in the pictures how the folded things stood vertically in the shelves of the chest of drawers, it seemed to me that it was inconvenient and very laborious to constantly stack them in such a way, and also do not understand how to get them. But in practice, everything turned out differently, my world just turned upside down, it was a real discovery!

Firstly, I learned to fold things so that they could stand on their own, it turned out to be not difficult and even unusually pleasant. Filling so one sliding shelf, I wanted to do it again and again.

Secondly, my daughter and husband, watching all my actions, also could not stand it and connected to the process. And, as soon as they started, all of their things were also quickly and beautifully ordered.

Thirdly, with such storage, when you take things, the shelf does not turn into a mess of clothes after a week, because nothing basically changes for other things, they are great on their own.

Fourth, everything is easy to return to their places. And this is the key to order.

In general, I regretted that we have so few drawers, because it is most convenient to store things vertically in them. In regular shelves it is also possible, but it does not look so chic.

Another important point in vertical storage, for separating things by type, you can use shoe boxes, folding linen, socks, stockings, tights and stockings is especially good there. Yes, yes, it all adds up, stands, and compactly fits vertically and it's great.

To summarize all of the above, after using the method in practice, I became a big fan of vertical storage, this is really a wonderful way, probably the best of all that I know. At the same time, this concerns not only clothes. Now I try to store everything vertically: towels, bed sheets, papers, materials, games, albums, etc. And I see how wonderful and practical it is. Why haven't I tried this before?

Own space for each family member

Each family member should have his own chest of drawers, his own closet or shelving, in general, his own personal space for storage, and then, a person, understanding his power and responsibility for this space, will maintain order there. It is also important that these places are not dispersed throughout the house, but logically combine in one zone.

I especially worked out this principle for my daughter’s things. I arranged the books, toys, dolls, everything that belonged to her in one place, there was only clothes in the general closet, but there was only her shelf, for which she was responsible, and in the near future, the contents of this shelf should be transferred to her personal dresser.

My efforts did not pass without a trace, a child of 5 years old now folds his clothes and every day takes away toys, do many children do this?

How long and with what kind of blood do parents usually achieve this result?

And here, thanks to a good and thoughtful organization and the fact that everything is within the same zone, the child cleans himself and with pleasure. That is, the right habit and responsibility for your things develops. In addition, my daughter really likes to fold clothes so that she can stand upright and I understand her perfectly in this. :)

Where to store things?

You need to store things by category: books separately, clothes separately and also divided by type for convenience, all medicines separately, cosmetics too. In general, there should be a place for each category of things. Then they are easy to find and the thing will not be lost. At the same time, it is better to avoid complex structures for storage, the simpler the storage, the better.

Clothes are ideally stored in dressers, drawers of wardrobes, or on shelves. Hangers are also good, but things take up many times more space on them, so it is recommended to leave only clothes from flying, airy fabrics on the hangers, such that requires space.

As I already said, they are perfect and indispensable for separating clothes during vertical storage of shoe boxes.

For documents and papers I use folders with files, they are also stored vertically.

Shelves, open or closed, are good for books, and chests of drawers with drawers are also suitable if the drawers are high enough for vertical storage of books with their roots up.

My children's toys are stored on an open large shelf, partly in boxes on wheels where everything is logically arranged by type. Games on the shelves of the rack are stored naturally vertically, and that is why they are conveniently removed and returned to their place. Boxes with designers are also easy to get and return.

In general, the convenience of returning things to their place is the main key to success in organizing things.  Because no matter how beautiful things were folded, if they are difficult to take, and most importantly, it is difficult to put them back in place, then the order will not last long, and the cleaning will be constant. So, the house will look messy with glimpses of short-term cleanliness. Therefore, it is so important not to stretch the pleasure, but to quickly carry out cleaning with the reorganization of the living space, convenient for everyone. Which we did.

My findings and results

Cleaning using the Conmari method can transform any house, any room, and it makes sense to get acquainted with the basic principles for everyone, because even if you do not become a radical follower, you will gain a lot of useful things and save a lot of time and effort in maintaining cleanliness in the house after implementing the principles of this method.

After we started cleaning, we threw away 20 bags of garbage, really garbage and all these 20 bags were in our 2-bedroom apartment, we were surrounded by things we hadn’t needed for a long time, I even complained about the need to add storage space at that while we just kept what was worth saying goodbye. And this despite the fact that I periodically sorted out (once a year or two) things and it seemed to me that I threw away the unnecessary. But, a big cleaning began, and it became clear that we store things that should not be stored, which have been in boxes for years, take up space, and the principle of “what if it comes in handy” does not work at all. We just forget what we have, it becomes crowded in the house, new cabinets and racks appear that clutter up the space and are not really needed.

In addition, as a result of cleaning, an audit of resources took place, the ability to choose what is needed in life and say goodbye to what is no longer needed was activated.

And now almost a month has passed since we finished cleaning and I feel new ideas, strength appearing, how easy it was to breathe in the rooms, how much more pleasant it was to be in the apartment.

Our path is not finished yet, because there are still thoughts on the reorganization, but this is not so important, the important thing is that I can say with confidence that the method works, life changes, order is maintained. The space around begins to work for a person, nourish with strength and pleasant emotions. But is it not for this that we surround ourselves with things? Is it not so that they please us, help us?

Therefore, my advice to everyone, try the basic cleaning principles described by me, make room for air and joy in your home.

Have you seen how clean and spacious Japanese apartments are? A completely empty room, and everything you need, including a bed, is stored in a wall cupboard. Not surprisingly, one of the best house cleaning experts is Japanese. Marie Kondo has created a whole ConMari course on cracking down living quarters using traditional ideas.

Cleaning by such a system was called “magic”, because the results of using the KonMari system are simply magical. Maria Kondo wrote a book about this system, which has been translated into many languages \u200b\u200bof the world. In Russian, a book was also published, entitled “Magical cleaning. The Japanese art of bringing order to home and life. ” It can be summarized in the following nine paragraphs.

From simple to complex

If you start getting rid of unnecessary things in your archive of sentimental things, you will stop there. Throwing away what is sweet to the heart is almost impossible at the initial stage. Therefore, first disassemble the usual household deposits: utensils and kitchen utensils, clothes, the contents of the toilet closet, endless papers ... It is ironic, but after that it will be easier to part with dearly beloved trinkets, if there is such a need.

Easier to do it in one go

Contrary to other methods of mopping up, Marie Kondo advises not to spray and snatch short sections for short periods of time. You just stop putting off cleaning for later and start cleaning this or that. Otherwise, it will be difficult for you to follow this system. But the result will be visible immediately.

One at a time

Despite the previous paragraph, you are not invited to clean the entire apartment immediately. You need to choose a “theme” - clothing, household chemicals, baking accessories ... And work with it throughout the apartment. This differs from the “zones” from other techniques, such as.

There is a slight digression. Marie Kondo is not only the author of the methodology, but also a home consultant. So, working with the client’s apartment, she gives him a kind of task. One of the main ones is to select all things from the whole apartment on the topic and bring it for further sorting. If something at this stage does not fall into it, then upon detection it is immediately sent to the scrap. The logic is this: if you did not notice this or, even better, did not remember at all - you do not need it.

So, if you take apart, for example, clothes, then collect it from the whole apartment in one place, and only after that take it apart. If, after such a grandiose mopping-up, you find somewhere else unnoticed little thing - its fate has already been decided. Because if you have not attributed it to everyone else, then it is as if already not in your attention, and therefore in your home.

According to the KonMari system, it is recommended to mop up in this order: clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous, nostalgic. “Miscellaneous” include: office supplies, kitchen utensils, seasonings and other contents of kitchen cabinets, household chemicals, cosmetics and appearance, decor.

First we collect, then we sort

Take all the things from the topic under discussion - and throw it on the floor! And then take away everything unnecessary. Then it will be much easier to plan the placement of everything remaining.

When sorting, try to find a common place for all thematic subjects. Do not rely on frequency or place of use.

Get rid of with love

According to the philosophy of Marie Kondo, getting rid of things should be a positive action. Your cluttering can help change the world for the better.

If possible, things should be given to those who need them. With the development of the Internet, it has become even easier to find such people, since there are special services and groups in social networks such as “give free”. You can try to sell unnecessary things - on special sites on the Internet or in thrift stores.

If for some reason you don’t want to bother with distribution and sale via the Internet, then you can take the clothes to the monastery. From there, she can get to the needy, who come there for help, and quite a rag will already be put up for household needs.

Books can be handed over to a second-hand bookstore, can be handed over to libraries or just handed out. Books that nobody likes can go to waste paper and save the tree.

And how to make positive the disposal of things that are donated by dear people? Surely you will feel guilty as soon as you take all these memorable postcards or trinkets in your hands. Marie advises to thank the thing for staying in your house and serving you and say goodbye to it. Strange, but it helps, because you kind of ended your "relationship", and amicably. The secret here is that people are generally prone to anthropomorphizing things. That is why such a psychological technique is quite logical and justified.

Do things give joy?

This simple test for the need to get rid of things is one of the central ideas of the ConMari methodology. If you picked up a thing and immediately felt that it is connected with you and brings a positive emotional outburst - leave it. Hand out the rest.

This approach will allow, for example, not to think about what to wear today - after all, every wardrobe item on your shelf will be loved and pleasant.

There is no point in acquiring sophisticated lotions for organizing space

And spend money on them. Get cleaning and organizing skills instead of crutches! Wherever you stack and hide piles of your property, it will not take up much less space. You will only continue to forget about the existence of everything that is crammed into that beautiful ikea basket, on which there are already three more.

It is necessary to identify the excess and get rid of it. Then - learn how to organize and stack everything so that it occupies. The KonMary method provides both aspects.

Properly folded clothing saves space

The Japanese are famous masters of folding fabrics. T-shirts and shirts folded by Marie according to a special technique easily fit in compact rows (not piles!). No vacuum bag compares. Truly laying clothes is the most enjoyable and affordable part of this technique.

What you need is shoe boxes, and possibly containers for clothes (if you do not have sliding shelves in the closet or dressing room).

Cleaning is a holiday!

It can really be very exciting. The satisfaction that you will experience from a renovated, tidy room or closet is a worthy reward for your work. And what interesting things can sometimes be raked out of the general rubbish! So do not treat your deliberate slavery as a difficult and tedious task. Proceed with it, anticipating the result. And the result will be a completely changed living space and, as a result, a change in your entire lifestyle to a more productive and joyful one.

You can read a fragment of the book “Magical cleaning. The Japanese art of putting things in order at home and in life ”and if you want to buy a paper or electronic version of the book.

Quote message Marie Condo Magical cleaning. Japanese art of putting things in order at home and in life

Mari Kondo, the Japanese expert in cleaning up the house, promises: if you are ready for big changes, the result of cleaning will be a real miracle

The best-selling book by Marie Kondo, Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Getting Rid of Unnecessary Things and Organizing Space, has truly changed the life of Emily Clay, the mistress of an Oregon home. According to her, after reading the book, she got rid of the “ton” of clothes and books, and although she loves to go shopping, Marie Kondo’s advice prevented her from filling up all the shelves and cabinets again. “This book completely changed my view of things,” she says. “If I don’t like a thing, if I have never used it, never read it, never wore it, I get rid of it without thinking.”

The same opinion is shared by the designer from San Francisco: “I myself follow the basic tenets of Kondo’s book and advise everyone to do the same: it’s worth keeping only that which is fun,” she says. - This rule helps me determine the place of things in my heart and my house. It’s amazing how much cleaner my house has become after I threw away all the junk. ”

We are waiting for changes!
   However, the definition of “life-changing” is perhaps too bold. Life is changed by events such as marriage, birth, death, moving. The cleaning, even the capital one, does not fall under my idea of \u200b\u200bglobal changes, but Marie Kondo’s ideas change the attitude to the house without a doubt.

It does not matter how you feel about magic, which is constantly emphasized in this book. However, the sales of this book around the world can truly be called supernatural. She stayed on the NY Times bestseller list for 23 weeks in the Tips & Tricks category. The site Amazon was named the best book of 2014 in the "Needlework, Home and Garden" section. Since the first edition last fall, the book has been published 13 times, and two million copies have been sold. Looking at these numbers, we can conclude that people really desperately want to change the existing order of things. Let's see if Marie Kondo fulfills the promise given in the bold title of her book.

  Two key rules
   After many years of practice, the Japanese space organization specialist developed her own method. The essence is simple, but it can be incredibly difficult to apply it (I’m speaking from my own experience), because people never want to part with their own things.

So, the two key settings of the Mari Kondo method are that only things that fill the heart with joy should be kept at home. And in the cleaning process, you need to work not with rooms, but with categories of things.

Keep what you love
   Kondo quite often uses the phrase "sparkle with joy," talking about things dear to the heart. Summarizing the above, we can draw the following conclusion: if you do not like a thing, get rid of it. The difficulty is, as they say, to separate the grains from the chaff and to distinguish between the concepts of “happiness” and “affection”. In his book, Kondo offers a pretty tough way to help do this.

Deal with things, not with rooms
   One of the main ideas that distinguishes the Kondo method from all others is that things should be sorted into categories. For example, instead of cleaning the dressing room, you need to deal with all the clothes that are in the house.

Usually it is stored in several places: in the dressing room, dressers and wardrobes of bedrooms and nurseries, in the hallway and even in the attic. The experience of Marie Kondo showed that if you clean each room separately, it will be an endless process. Therefore, everything that is in the house must be divided into categories and sorted out with each of them. On the first page of his work, the author writes: "First you need to reject everything that is unnecessary, and then clean up the whole house once and for all."

Cleaning step by step
   Meet Marie Kondo at the beginning of cleaning in the dressing room of one of her clients. In her world, the path to cleanliness and order begins with the idea of \u200b\u200bhow you want to live. In her interview, she described this process in stages.

  1. Think about what ideal life is. . In other words, how you want to live.

2. Pack one type of thing and put it together . For example, put all your clothes on the floor. Kondo offers to start with clothes, then do books and, finally, documents.

3. Ask yourself if every thing radiates joy.   “Take the thing in your hands, feel it and try to feel whether there is joy in it,” Kondo writes.

  4. Sort things and put them in place. . The appropriate location for each item is determined in advance.

It seems too simple, right? But Kondo believes that the method is difficult because many of us fill things with emotions. Sometimes we get attached to things that we don’t like, simply because we were presented with them. We allow books and papers to pile up on the table in the hope that someday we will read them. We flatly refuse to throw away unsuccessful purchases because we regret the money spent. “The essence of my method is to look impartially at my goodness and decide which of all that has been accumulated over the years is really important,” Kondo writes.

Now you understand how difficult it is. In response to all doubts, Kondo quotes the words of Princess Elsa from Frozen: Let go and forget.

This is a photograph of the room of one of Kondo's clients before cleaning. For many of us, shelves that are packed to capacity and endless bags of things are a common sight.

And Marie Kondo has seen this a hundred times. She urges people to forget the things that overwhelm the cabinets (since they are hidden there, then nobody needs them), not to get attached to objects that may be needed “someday” (for Kondo, “someday” means “never”), and be sure to give your things to those who need them, so as not to feel guilty that you are getting rid of them.

The same room after cleaning according to the Kondo method. The publisher was worried that photographs of the homes of Japanese Kondo customers might scare Europeans. And in fact, after the table was moved to another room, and most things were thrown away, this room seems empty.

However, what seems to one person Spartan, another will call ideal. Here is how Kondo describes his own home: “At home, I feel a sense of bliss, even the air seems fresher and cleaner. In the evenings, I like to sit in silence and think about the past day with a cup of herbal tea.

Looking around, I see a painting that I really love, and a vase of flowers in the corner of the room. My house is small, and there are only those things that have a place in my heart. This lifestyle brings me joy every day. ”

DO: A magical transformation awaits this Tokyo cuisine. Just imagine what difficulties her mistress has to face!

AFTER: The same kitchen after the work of Marie Kondo. Radical transformations, right?

But what about considerations of necessity?
“It's hard for many people to follow the rules of Marie Kondo,” says Cayley, a space organization specialist in San Francisco. ─ I like some of her ideas, but not all of them work. ” How, for example, to put into practice the idea that you need to store only those things that cause joy? “Every home is full of things that have nothing to do with happiness, but are simply necessary,” says Cayley.

Kondo talks about the necessary things, but her definition of the necessary goes beyond the usual ideas. For example, what to do with textbooks and manuals for operating equipment? They can be found on the Internet. Books you have not read? Give it back, you will never read them anyway. Gifts from loved ones that you don’t use? Free yourself from them too.

A real example from California
   Kaley is sure that many people find it difficult to follow Kondo’s advice in everything. In order not to be unfounded, we turned for help to Susie Shoaf, a resident of San Francisco, who won a free consultation with Marie Condo. In this picture, you see Suzy (left) in your 84-square-foot home. m during a meeting with Marie Condo.

This is a photograph of Susie’s living room after Marie Kondo’s visit. “You can laugh, but I really wanted to put things in order for a long time,” says Susie, who had heard about the method of Marie Kondo, but had not read her book. - Many of the things I inherited from my parents, and I myself like to collect finds from flea markets. Things accumulated until the house became difficult to move around. Something had to be done urgently. ”

AFTER AND BEFORE:

Although Suzy usually takes books in the library, she has a weakness for art and design albums, as well as guides for foreign countries. This was what her bookcase looked like before she started cleaning with Kondo.

Susie was a little scared to get rid of her many things, but she knew that she could save what she truly loved, and this thought reassured her.

   “She started by removing all the books from all the shelves on the first and second floor,” says Susie, who herself was shocked at how many books she actually had (Kondo gives many similar examples in her book). “She didn't blame me,” Susie continues. “But when I saw how many books I had accumulated, I realized that I wanted to deal with this avalanche and wholeheartedly accepted Marie’s method.”

“Before the analysis, Kondo patted each book and said that she would wake them up like that,” recalls Susie. - Then we sat on the sofa and began to take one book after another. Through an interpreter, Marie asked me about every book whether it exudes joy. If I said yes, we put the book aside in one pile, if “no” in another. That day we looked at 300 books and got rid of 150. "

When all the books were taken apart, Kondo offered to bow to the books, with which it was decided to say goodbye, and thank them.

In his book, Kondo says giving thanks for service is an important part of saying goodbye to them. “When you say“ thank you ”to things that have served you faithfully, you get rid of guilt for throwing them away and you feel appreciation for those things that were allowed to stay,” she writes.

AFTER: The very idea that you can throw away so many books confuses many. But no matter what you think, admit: now this bookcase looks much better. “I took seven boxes of books to the Library Friends Fund. It means a lot to me. And I'm sure that, paradoxical as it may sound, the analysis of each individual book accelerated the process and helped me understand which of them are really important, ”Susie says. When Suzy and Marie took the books apart and left only their favorites, enough space for photographs and decorative objects appeared on the shelves. And, importantly, now they are better seen.

   “The books that you liked when you bought them can become useless over time. The information in books, articles and documents does not remain relevant for long, says Kondo. ─ When you put on the shelves only those books that cause joy, it’s easier for you to understand that you no longer need the rest. And then everything is simple: the fewer books on the shelf, the easier it is to maintain order. ”

With clothes, the same principle works. Pull everything that is out of the cupboards, select the favorite and get rid of the rest.

DO: Susie really wanted Marie to show her her method of folding clothes. In this picture you see one of the drawers of the chest of drawers before cleaning.

AFTER: The same box! Kondo advises stacking things not one on top of the other, but vertically, or, as she herself says, "standing." In her opinion, this is the only way to maintain order and quickly find what is needed.

One more tip: pack things in compact rectangles.

Suzy demonstrates this method on a blouse: “Wrap the long sides of the blouse or t-shirts inward and remove the sleeves there to make a long rectangle.

Now, grasp the narrow side of the rectangle and fold it in half. Continue folding the thing in half or three times until it is reduced enough to gently "stand" in the drawer next to the rest of the things. "

   “Now my drawers look beautiful inside and out,” Susie laughs.

Cleaning as a way to success
   How to become an international star in the field of space organization? In the first part of her book, Kondo talks about how she began her journey to success. From childhood, she was obsessed with cleanliness and parsing. “When I was five years old, I read my mother’s magazines about home economics, and this aroused my interest in everything related to the house,” she says.

At school, she understood for the first time what her main mistake was. Before Marie discovered the book “The Art of Throwing Things” by Nagisa Tatsumi, her experiments sooner or later turned into an enchanted circle. She cleaned in one room, then moved on to the next, to the next - and so on until she returned to the first, where it all started all over again. “It seemed to me that no matter how I cleaned, it did not get any better. In the best case, the process of analyzing the blockages began later, but it nevertheless began, ”she says.

However, after reading the book, Tatsumi Marie realized that she urgently needed to restart the entire system. She returned home and locked herself in her room for several hours. In her book, she writes: “When I finished, I had eight full bags of clothes that I never wore, textbooks from elementary school and toys that I had not played with for many years. I even threw away my collection of erasers and seals. I honestly admit that I forgot that I have all these things. After the analysis, I sat on the floor for an hour and wondered why I kept all this junk at all. ”

This very question laid the foundation for their own business with customers who are waiting in line for several months. As a result, he also led to the writing of a book, which became a bestseller in many countries.

Does it really work?
   So, we return to the question posed in the title of this article: can cleaning change our lives?

Of course, Kondo thinks he can. “The whole point of my method is to teach people to understand what is important in their life and what is not,” says Marie. ─ Following my advice, you will understand what things make you feel happy, which means you will know exactly what you need for happiness. ”

Readers - such as Emily Clay - agree: “The book made me think about how many things I have and how much I really need. I do not regret at all that I got rid of a heap of everything unnecessary, although it is unpleasant for me to recall how much money I spent in vain. Getting rid of unnecessary things to some extent freed me, ”Emily admits. “Now instead of buying new bags or shoes, I am saving money for a trip to Italy.”