Decluttering According to the KonMari Method

Continuing on in my mission to declutter my house, I decided to conquer my younger sister's room next. In the book, Kondo suggests cleaning out by going by categories, and have sub-categories in those categories. "When we tidy each place separately, we fail to see that we are repeating the same work in many locations and become locked into a vicious circle of tidying" (Kondo 25). She then goes on to define the categories that we should clean by; clothes, then books, papers, and miscellaneous items, and finally things with sentimental value. (Kondo 65) For this particular cleaning session, my sister and I chose the category of Clothes and the subcategory of Tops.

 We started out by clearing out my sister's closet and her drawers that held her tops, and then proceeded to place the clothes on top of the bed.

From here, we applied the Kondo's discarding method. "What things will bring you joy if you keep them as part of your life?" (Kondo 66) So I picked up each shirt that was on the bed, and my sister chose the ones that she felt still brought her joy. The other clothes, she put in a discard pile.

Clothes to keep and place in drawers.                                                 Clothes to keep and be hung.

Clothes to discard

While we were sorting the clothes, we found two bags of clothes that my sister had recently bought on a shopping trip. Kondo even covered this part of the cleaning process. "One of the many things that amazes me... is the number of items that are still in their packages.... When you buy them, remove the tags immediately" (Kondo 165-166). Following her advice, we took the clothes out, removed the tags, and hung them in the closet.

The only thing left to do was the store the clothes for the drawers. For this, Kondo had a special technique. "The key is to store things standing up rather than laid flat. (Kondo 75). If you think about, it makes sense. If clothes are stored in pile, the ones on the bottom are more likely to be forgotten about and end up not being worn. So, I rolled all of the tops and then placed them side-by-side in the drawer. This way, my sister can see all the clothes and no piece of clothing is forgotten about.

Finally, we were done! After putting the clothes away, my sister and I sighed a breath of relief. This cleaning session was a success, and I plan on sustaining this success with cleaning out the rest of my house.


Have you ever thought about exactly how many items you own? Is it a shocking or reasonable amount? If it is shocking, do you plan on trying to reduce that amount? If it is reasonable, how do you keep the amount of items you own to the bare minimum?


Jasleen Virk


Kondō, Marie, and Cathy Hirano. The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of
            Decluttering and Organizing. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Print.