Konmari-ing for the second time

So before I started my Masters I cleared out a load of things. I went through clothes, papers, books, random things and sentimental items in my room that had built up since I was a kid. I got rid of so much stuff I could hardly believe it. Now I’m getting ready for a move so I’m going through it all again…

Clothes

I’ll admit I haven’t actually done much of this one yet. I’ve done it with two drawers of clothes but not the rest of my things because I’ve had no time or space to go through it properly. I need to go through pyjamas, my dresses and my tops. Everything else is pared down enough to be fine moving (apart from my jumpers and hoodies but I’m keeping all of them since I wear them so often and all of them spark joy).

I have so many tops that it’s kind of embarrassing, but at the same time there’s actually not that many of them there. I have around 4 crop tops, 4 tank tops, and a multitude of shirts both short and long sleeved. I don’t wear the first two types that often because it’s not warm enough to wear but I keep them for the summer when I’m roasting in anything other than them. In the autumn, winter and spring I live in the t-shirts.

So, do I need to keep them all? How do I keep them? Won’t I need to make more room?

In order: probably not but I want to, easily and yes. Bit of advice: have summer and winter clothes wardrobes. Invest in those bags that you take the air out of to flat pack your clothes and then place them somewhere safe. I’d recommend a shelf in the wardrobe where you put all of these. You can get different sizes of bag and they make life so much easier.

Papers

Now, I’ve kept all my appointment letters, some stuff from uni, essays that I’ve hand written, essays that I’ve printed, and the list goes on.

Easiest way to pare down these is to look at what I really need. All of my old uni work I can make a note of and bin (keeping a file for sources with a brief description works wonders), old appointment letters are gone. Pretty much anything that’s out of date or can easily be found again that isn’t immediately necessary.

I have a file where I’ve got different sections – university, medical – appointments, medical – Cleft Lip (because I get so many of these), work, bills, general. It’s so much more useful to keep each thing separated but all together in a file like that and it’s easily transportable and good for storage. It’s square-ish, a nice colour and tucks neatly under my desk. Perfect.

Books

All of the books I no longer need or want have been given to various charity shops and coffee shops. I had fun reading them or they were useful for university assignments so why not give them back to places where other people will get that chance? Some books were donated to a school for a raffle which I loved having been far too excited for book fairs as a kid.

Sentimental Items

This section was by far the hardest to sort through. Everything from the toys I had as a child to birthday cards to photographs.

It was tough but I’ve got rid of so many of these. I kept a birthday card from each of the people that meant a lot to me and I’ve put these in a sort of scrapbook. Certain things have their own books, like my grandparents and my granda have their own books with things from their lives but that got started when I was a teenager. Having those made it easier to not hoard a lot of the cards I didn’t need to keep.

Photographs have gone in these scrapbooks too for the most part, or given to some of the other people that wanted them. A few of them I’ve just got rid of thanks to bad memories now. It was hard letting them go but I’ve got my memories, I have my things that I needed of those people. For the people that I didn’t want anything more of, they’re now gone and I can move on again.

Final Thoughts

I’m in that weird position of decluttering, trying to get rid of a lot of the things I currently own while also trying to acquire things. I need to start getting my own kitchen supplies, my own things for living that are mine and aren’t just what I’ve been given from people. It’s a strange one but I’m enjoying this.

Clearing out like this is good, not just to give myself more physical space that I can now use for this new stuff that I’m going to be getting, but also to get rid of those things that I’ve been holding onto that have been holding me back. I’m getting ready to start a new part of my life and having those reminders of my past, especially those things that looking back on leave a bad taste in my mouth, aren’t needed anymore.

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Hey! Tara here and thanks for checking out my blog. I update every Tuesday with posts about studying tips, advice and talk about productivity and organisation too. If you want to keep up to date with my latest blog posts I’d love it if you subscribed to this blog.

#decluttering #konmari #konmarimethod #mariekondo