SHEs Organized

I guess here is where I should discuss my progress with the KonMari method.

It is providing the answers to what should I tackle next, and how should I tackle it. Although I don't do everything she recommends.

Today I put all my hanging clothes on my bed and sorted through them.

The first is the before shot (the clothes still hanging in the closet behind are dh's tuxes) and the second photo is the after picture. The clothes left on the bed were donated.

WTG Kathryn!

Ditto!

Well done d Kathryn!!!

I have learned a lot from this thread more than anything about myself - it keeps me centered - when I'm not here my home overwhelms me -

My daughters job also is helping me see my stuff as stuff - part of her service is to take the stuff away - her car is always filled w stuff that looks like my stuff I hem and haw over sometimes - their junk looks like my junk - lol it is helping me really look at my stuff w a more critical eye. I'm finding myself not buying in the first place

I like the quote I found about hoarding memory items - that many keepers are afraid the wonderful times won't happen again and hold on to things instead of enjoying the now w family friends and life. Makes me know I don't want to b stuck in the past - Dd is very private about her clients - which I admire-

Today's "after" photo. The camera is acting up so I lost the before photo.

It is about 1/2 a green garbage bag of things to go out.

I have about one empty drawer under the bed (split between two drawers.)

I did a bit of bedding and some towels today because they were in the sea chest (it is 1/2 bedding, 1/6 memory items like baby blankets and my mom's wedding dress, and 1/3 my out-of-weight clothing.) I found I wasn't making progress on the bedding and I realized I was hesitating because I knew there was more in the other room.

I now feel Marie Kondo's method of doing all of one item at a time is a good idea so I will be pulling bedding out again when I get to bedding on the list. And in the meantime, because I pulled out everything, I found panty hose I didn't know I had.

Thursday & Friday's challenge was books.

Here's the before pictures (the books didn't all fit on the bed) and the pile I decided to part with. The actual parting may take several months but I did take the stack of preaching books and give them to the lay leader I met with today. There is a plan for the remainder.

The process was worthwhile in that it reminded me of all the books I own that I want to read. We've probably read less than a third of our books. Certainly, well less than a third of the shelf space of books (the children's books have been read and reread.)

Of the unread books about 5% are reference and 10% are kept for historical/sentimental reasons, books I need to go through to see if my father is mentioned in them or at least to go through and make note of the parts of the books that refer to my parents' growing up (if not by name, then by circumstances.) I need to match up my father's naval record with the books on certain ships. If they don't refer to ships he served on, they can go out. And I have to go through the geographic history books to see if they refer directly to my ancestors properties or communities. So a good portion of the books fall under my genealogy records but are stored in bookcases instead of boxes.

I'll have a better chance of finding books we have now, although since we only have 3 bookcases of books, it wasn't too bad. Especially since two of those cases are across from each other in the foyer.

When we moved, I literally put books wherever they fit, not paying attention to topic. So finance books were all over, the same with organizing books. The only subject organization was that all my preaching books were in the spare bedroom. That continues, but now all the science fiction and fantasy are in one spot, mystery/spy are together, Wodehouse is in one spot, as is Shakespeare. The three quotation books now reside together, alongside the writing books.

Even my preaching books have been sorted into subcategories (homiletics, exegesis, church season, teen, children, skits, music, Bibles, etc.) except when I have many by one author. In that case, they are sorted by author.

I'm pleased this task is finally done, given that it was a project I wanted to do last winter.

Kathryn, good job working on your clothes and books!

WTG!