Before moving to Japan I seriously purged my belongings. Yet over the past year and a half I have not used many things that I thought I had to have as well as purchased and brought into my home many, many more new things. Since clutter equals stress in my life, I was getting increasingly more grumpy and not able to relax. Cleaning was becoming burdensome and was taking longer and longer. The more crowded the shelves got, the more claustrophobic I was feeling.
With the recent addition of "Tidying Up with Marie Kondo" on Netflix, I have been inspired to simplify and organize. My husband purchased her book for me, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" and I have not been able to put it down. I am pouring over the pages, excited to start simplifying and focusing on things that bring me joy.
Since I live in Japan, why not try the ultimate Japanese form of blessing your home? The KonMari method is legend here. My friends saw me reading her book and immediately asked "is that Kondo Marie?" (Family names are said first here.) We'd then delve into a conversation about her uplifting ways of helping people spark joy in their homes.
Last week I jumped in with both feet and went through all my clothes, asking myself if each item sparked joy and if I wanted it in my future life. Soon I had a huge pile of clothes ready to go out the door. My son helped me go through his clothes and my husband also tackled his after I put them all on the bed. He said something about not being allowed to go to bed if he didn't do it. I just thought I was incentivizing him (ha, ha). We found 2 huge bags of clothes that we no longer wanted.
The next day, I pulled out every book that we own. It was a difficult process, but we found 50 books that we no longer wanted on our shelves. Honestly, this barely cracked a dent in our books. But all the books are happy to have been pulled from the shelves and set back with a bit more elbow room.
Our spare bedroom was becoming a dumping ground for items no longer needed. Before things got too out of hand, I needed to get everything out of our house. In Japan, you can't just take everything to Goodwill. Everything must be sorted and disposed of according to the rules.
After taking the kid's clothing to the park moms for distribution, I still had a several bags that needed to be dealt with. My husband decided to help me and dedicated our Sunday to purging everything once and for all. We went through everything once again, sorting accordingly.
First, we rode our bikes about 20 minutes to take our worn out clothes to Nerima City Resource Recovery Center. It was a simple drop off. We were so happy to have the first load off our hands.
Next, we took the nice clothes, bags, and a couple housewares to Off House, a resale shop. They went through the items and made us an offer. It wasn't much money, but we weren't doing it for the money. One thing I liked was that they detailed how much they were giving us for each item and offered to return any items that they weren't going to pay for. We were happy to donate the rest those as well.
Our final stop was Book Off, where we sold 42 books. It was so easy to sell them to the book resale shop. They offered us so much more than Half Price Books ever did. It wasn't much, but almost double what I expected. Just like Off House, they gave us an itemized receipt, which was really nice.
So far the KonMari process has been uplifting and energizing for me. I'm looking forward to continuing on the journey of simplifying and focusing on the joy because right now it feels so good!
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