Hello, dear friends, and Happy New Year. We are so glad to be back with you, and we hope you all had a wonderful holiday. This is a busy week around here. I am in Charlotte, NC at Jordan’s right now. Tomorrow is her birthday (a big one), and my birthday is Thursday. Plus, our blog turns nine this week. There’s lots to celebrate! Jordan and Charles went to Charleston over the weekend to celebrate her big day (hope you saw it on our Instastories), and so, Mike and I flew down to babysit. My secret to being a successful babysitter is that I go to bed when they go to bed. Ha!!! As is our tradition in our first post of the month, we are going to revisit a post from last January, and of course, it is about an organzing success story. Since many of us think about cleaning up our acts and organizing this time of year, we are revisiting how Jordan used the Marie Kondo method to organize her closet. Enjoy the post.
The other day we were taking a family walk, and Charles told me that there was a new series on Netflix called Tidying Up. I had read the book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo, and I was curious now about this series. Then while making dinner, I received the following text from my mom
So, what did we do but sit down and watch three episodes and loved it. I agree with Mom. Marie Kondo is just adorable and does have AMAZING skin.
Watching the episodes inspired us so much that after church on Sunday Charles and I went to work in our closets. I don’t know what I was thinking, but I wish I had taken a “before” shot of Charles’s closet. Picture these clothes stuffed everywhere. You couldn’t even see the shelves. I had stuff on the floor of my closet which was a big mess, and a dresser full of random clothes and things. I should add here that we had our closets designed and customized with shelves shortly after we moved in to maximize on the space we each had.
The Stuff
Marie’s first step is to put all of your clothes in a pile. This is a crucial step because you need to see everything at once.This isn’t close to everything, but how depressing on how many clothes we had. There were so many that we never wore and just didn’t like but for some reason held onto them.
The cute thing when we were working on this Little Miss saw us and then decided to go in her room and fold away and organize. Here she is folding her ballet leotard. The looks on her face proved she was so proud when she wanted to show us. It was adorable.
Marie Kondo has a different technique for folding, and seriously, it is life changing. You can get so much more in a drawer and actually see what you have. We used EasyClosets to build our closets which we absolutely LOVE and even more so now. The drawers we chose are not that deep so we can fit so many more shirts in using this method.
Charles’s Closet
Here is the “after” of Charles’s closet. I’m really sorry that I don’t have a “before.” Sorry y’all #badblogger, but we were living in the moment. Now, he has shelves to spare, and we could not see these shelves before.
My Closet after Tidying Up
Here is my closet. I designed it a little differently than his again using EasyClosets. I made an area for dresses. I have a door rack on the door for my shoes.
Here I have a box I purchased from Ikea that is storing some of my summer clothes. I can put it on top or under the bed, but it works great tucked in the corner.
Now it is easy to just open up and see what I have before I shop for summer clothes. I will swap out and pull out the shorts and tops for the summer and store the winter clothes in here.
This is an old picture from our Syracuse house, but this dresser is currently in our master bedroom. We have been talking about relocating it to our son’s room and painting it. In order to do so, we needed to get it empty, and now it is completely empty!!!!
The Results
The final result. Two large bags of trash and these four bags of clothes to be donated. Of course, Gracie saw the camera come out and wanted to be in this post!!
So have y’all watched the Tidying Up series? What did you think? Let me know if you have jumped on the bandwagon.
Cheers!
Take care.
Lynn Kolokowsky says
Happy Birthday, Janette & Jordan!
Janette says
Thank you, Lynn!