I Used The KonMari Method on My Dresser
Clutter used to be my friend. In high school you rarely saw the color of the carpet in my room. The debris of teenage life was everywhere, books, papers, clothes as far as the eye could see. Trying to convince that girl to tidy would have been a painful process. Lucky for me the KonMari method and Marie Kondo landed just in time to help catapult me into adulthood. If you don't know about Marie Kondo and her tidying magic you might not have electricity and still churn butter.
She wrote the book, literally, all about tidying and has a Netflix show where she politely tells you to get rid of junk to your face with a smile. I heard about her method for deciding which items to keep and which to donate or toss. I'm pretty good at getting rid of stuff with a few exceptions. In my closet it is pretty easy since I can see everything, mostly, and can take it off the hanger. Not so with my dresser of doom.
I don't know what it is about dressers but for me they cultivate mess, chaos and general disorder. I went through these dreaded drawers last year organizing and decluttering my dresser. They have devolved again into piles of clothes shoved out of sight.
Inspired by the show and my renewed interest in keeping things orderly I decided to KonMari my dresser. The show is a great motivator in terms of, “Wow my house/ room/ life is not so bad.” Also, “If these disorganized people can get it together then it should be pretty easy.” The couple on the first episode was super obnoxious and whiny (or was that clever editing?) but watching the process at work was fascinating.
The first step is the easiest and most painless; take out all your junk and pile it up. Stare it down and realize you probably have too much stuff but you don't have to get rid of it unless it doesn't spark joy. I have too many shirts. This is a problem. I usually have a few in rotation but rarely wear them all regularly. So I got rid of a few I don't like anymore or don't fit how I like. The rest got folded so I can actually see them in the dresser. This is an important part of the process for me. Folding items and placing them back inside where you can clearly see them and not just pile more stuff on top. I wish it wasn't as life changing as it is.
Use boxes to corral smaller items together. This idea seems nonessential but actually works. Every time I get shoes I try to remember to ditch the boxes but they usually hang around my closet like a barricade. I used three shoes boxes to corral my sock collection into an orderly fashion where half don't get lost in the undertow covered up by the layers of socks on top. I might get rid of more later because three boxes seems like a lot.
Before: Imagine a huge mess of half folded clothes ready to leap out of the dresser drawer when opened
After: Organized and folded. Can you feel how calm this makes me?
The folding and sorting into different categories were the most helpful things getting my dresser back into working order. Before I barely had enough room to stuff one more shirt in. Now I have half a drawer worth of space waiting for more well folded clothes to slide into. I like the idea of thanking clothes and objects before getting rid of them. As a kid I was terrified my toys were sentient and would conspire against me if I didn't play with them all equally even if I didn't like half of them anymore. The next space to tackle is the closet but I will need a long weekend for that and not just a half day.
