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“It looks like Babies-R-Us vomited in my living room.”

I can’t remember whether it was my husband or someone else who said it, but for some reason this sentiment has stuck with me: how you feel when your sweet and cuddly baby starts accumulating STUFF. It still amazes me how such a tiny being apparently requires more equipment to survive than someone twenty times his size.

You think that eventually you will reclaim your home, but of course…the baby grows and accumulates MORE STUFF. And then once you start adding siblings to the mix, you basically give up.

Earlier this year we started implementing the KonMari decluttering technique in our home. It worked wonders on our clothes (part 1) and our books (part 2), but the rest of the house—what Marie Kondo dubs “miscellany”—loomed in front of me like an unmovable mocking beast. In particular, the toy clutter. It was in every room. Over time I had distributed toy bins throughout the house in an attempt to make it easy to pick up by simply tossing whatever had scattered into the nearest receptacle. This helped some, but more and more it felt like our kids were the ones who owned our house.

My husband called it “the kid creep.” Like none of our space was really our own. What’s more, it was overwhelming for the kids when I said, “Time to clean up!” They didn’t know where to start or where to end.

When I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, I, like many parents with this problem, was disappointed that there is no section explaining what to do with toys! Neither was there much help in the follow-up manual, Spark Joy. All Kondo really says is that you should teach your kids how to tidy for themselves. Good advice, but…how to even begin???

I’ll be honest: this process has taken a long time, and I could probably do even more. BUT I can say confidently say that over the past couple of months we have eliminated most of our toy clutter. I can breathe again; I feel like I have grown-up space; and my kids aren’t overwhelmed by their stuff. What’s more, they are equipped to clean it up themselves.

If you’re sick of toy clutter, you don’t have to put up with it. It will take some work, but trust me friend, it is soooooo worth the effort. Here’s what I’ve learned as we’ve taken back our house.

Make a pile. Throw stuff out that you don’t love. Rinse. Repeat.

That’s the method, simple as that. We were remodeling over a couple of months, so a lot of our stuff was floating around the house with no permanent home and giving me more anxiety than I like to deal with. I recall at least three separate occasions when I piled all of the toys from a particular location and “KonMaried” them. My kids helped quite a bit because I wanted them to learn how to choose to keep only what they truly like. But a couple of times I went solo…because the task was a little overwhelming for them.

We threw out A LOT: probably at least half. I only kept those toys which have resale/giveaway value, which are currently stockpiled with all of the other former clutter…in the garage.

Give the toys a home in one room.

Once we had sorted and discarded every plaything in the house, I wanted to simplify how we organized them. I moved the vast majority of the toys to our newly remodeled family room. It works to store them in small bins that are easy to access, which makes finding toys as well as cleaning them up simple. I don’t recommend “overorganizing” them because they will just get mixed up again anyway. If you have older kids who would like to keep a certain category separate, then do that (we do with LEGOS). Otherwise, don’t create more stress than necessary. Make your system simple!

We try to keep as many toys as possible out of the kids’ bedrooms. These are now quiet areas. We did keep a few toys that are easy to pick up in there—that fit in one small bin.

This has been a game-changer for me. For the most part, the toys are now downstairs and not scattered all over the rest of our living areas. While rogue toys occasionally sneak into other areas of the house, it’s simple to pick them up and return them to their homes. The kids are much less overwhelmed with cleanup time.

This past week my 18-month-old nephew stayed with us. Since toddlers notoriously scatter stuff everywhere, he put my new system to the test. If you have a toddler, here’s my advice: store their toys in small bins that are easy to carry. Take one bin out during playtime; then put toys back in the bin and put the bin away.

Continue to discard…constantly.

The reason that the title of this post is in the present tense and not the past is that the tidying process with the toys is ongoing. As we’ve reduced the size of our toy collection, I’ve learned that we could do even more. So I’ve discovered the practice of throwing clutter out as I see it. The kids are constantly bringing little knickknacks into the home that they play with for one day and then ignore: things like party favors and fast food restaurant toys. If I find one that isn’t being played with or is broken, I pitch it. No one notices.

Birthdays are also a good time to assess, with the kids, which toys are no longer sparking joy. Plus it’s fun to make room for new stuff that they do love!

Concluding observations

I’ve learned a lot through this process and am continuing to learn. While Marie Kondo doesn’t give any specific advice for toys, I think her “spark joy” method has been extremely helpful as we’ve decluttered our toys.

I believe that there is a separate category of kids’ stuff that I didn’t address here, major clutter-causers: crafts, puzzles, games and building sets. I am not yet on top of these beasts but I hope to be soon.

Finally, if you’ve been following this journey you might notice that quite a lot of time has elapsed since I first started (about six months ago). I feel like I have a long way to go…but I believe in the system and I am going to press on with the rest of my house!

(Please pray for me, haha!)

What’s your biggest obstacle when it comes to decluttering toys? Please leave a comment here or on social media.

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“No matter how much stuff you may own, the amount is always finite.”
Marie Kondo, Spark Joy, p. 35.

I started my KonMari tidying journey about three months ago (read about Part 1 here). I was eager to see the life-changing magic this decluttering method promised. I was not disappointed when we went through our piles of clothes and discarded most of them. To this day, our closets and drawers are tidy—in some ways they look even better than they did at first because we’ve mastered how to store everything.

And then I look at the rest of my house. We have so far to go.

In her second book, Spark Joy, Kondo addresses some of the apprehension you can encounter when you realize the amount of sheer work that it takes to completely tidy your whole house. And she says to keep pressing on. Because someday, it will be done.

Our busy lives got even busier in the last couple of months. Step 2 in the KonMari method of tidying up is books. I didn’t think this leg of the journey would be difficult—and it wasn’t really—but the rest of life got in the way. I’m about a month behind where I thought I would be at this point.

But you know what? That’s okay because at least I’m not endlessly going through stuff, with no goal in mind. We have made progress, and now we have a collection of books for the whole family that is pleasant to the eye and easy to navigate.

10 Lessons Decluttering Books the KonMari Way

If you haven’t read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, one of the most shocking sections is when Kondo tells you to go through your books. You are supposed to pile them up on the floor, pick them up one at a time and assess your feelings about them. If they “spark joy” you should keep them, and if they don’t you should toss them. DO NOT open the books.

Naturally, this gives book-lovers a bit of a heart attack.

At some point in my young adulthood, I recall saying that one of my life goals was to have a massive library. It would be a way to showcase my love of learning, right?

And then along comes KonMari, who says toss all the books.

What?!!!

Nonetheless, I decided to put some trust in my favorite new Japanese friend and follow her advice. Does it spark joy?

With a busy schedule it took me several weeks to complete this. I did the adult books in one session, the homeschool books in another, the baby books in another and the older kid books in another. I also quickly went through cookbooks and sheet music.

Here’s what our family (well, mostly I) learned from the process:

1. We have a lot of garbage books.

You know, the ones you pick up but never finish, the ones that are water-damaged, the ones that you keep after college because you think they have valuable information—but ten years later you can’t remember a thing about them (and have no interest in relearning).

These are easy to get rid of.

2. It’s okay to throw away old books.

We have a lot of books that have been well-loved but are falling apart, particularly those supposedly indestructible baby board books. As Kondo says, thank them for their service and say goodbye. They can go to the garbage can—it’s okay! No one will be offended.

3. Keep the books you’d want to lend.

This might go against KonMari’s advice because I wouldn’t necessarily read these books again myself. But one of the reason I love to have books is because I love to lend them. Ask my friends; whenever someone is trying to solve a problem I will often say, “Oh, have you read this book…?” And then I go grab it.

But then again it might not go against the KonMari method after all. It gives me joy to lend books. So I keep them.

4. Aesthetics matter.

I’ve been inspired by Modern Mrs. Darcy lately, who regularly displays her gorgeous book collections on Instagram. Her books are often color coordinated! This goes against my intuition because I want logical order but dang, her bookshelves look pretty. Thus, it’s okay to keep a book just because it looks nice.

My bookshelves aren’t magazine pretty, but they’re no longer a disorganized mess of books I have no interest in. And they’re not bad, right?

5. Ditch the educational stuff you don’t use.

I’ve only been homeschooling for about two years, and already we have stockpiles of educational material. Most of it is junk that I acquired at used book sales or has been given to me. At one time I thought that it would be handy to have a deep pile of resources, but it’s not handy if you don’t use them! It’s a relief to know what we like and what we don’t—and it’s okay to pass along the stuff we don’t.

6. Double-check with the spouse.

This decluttering project is mostly my thing. My husband is supportive, but I’m doing the bulk of the work. The challenge with books is that many of them are shared. When I went through our shelves, I took everything off as per the KonMari instructions. First I kept the books I knew I wanted as well as the books I knew Marc liked. Then I left a pile of books for him that I wasn’t sure about. At his convenience he went through them and pulled out the ones he wanted to keep. It was no-drama.

7. About those books you “might” read.

Kondo says to trash them, but I couldn’t pull the trigger on all of them. I have a handful of adoption books and a few others that were given to me as gifts. I’ll hold onto them for now. I now am not afraid to get rid of books, so I can revisit them later (she does say that you can do this to a certain extent while you hone your tidying skills).

8. Kids do better with less.

Prior to decluttering, we had a ton of kids’ books and I was afraid that I would be harming my children by getting rid of any of them. But the truth was, they couldn’t find half of them anyway! In addition to the falling-apart books, I discarded the ones that they had outgrown or were just not good reads. You know, like the free paperbacks you get with a kids meal.

Now their fewer books are much more neatly organized, and—shocking—my kids are reading more! They are much more likely to pull a high-quality book off the shelf when they can see it. Here is the bookshelf in my boys’ room (ages 5 and 6). My daughter (3) has most of the toddler books in her room. I plan on getting a small shelf for her soon, but in the meantime they are lined up against the wall. It works for now!

9. Do you really need all those cookbooks?

Um, no. Especially these days. I kept my favorite Betty Crocker as well as a couple more that I refer to regularly.

10. Sheet music—ditch the mess.

I have been playing the piano since I was seven years old and I have carried around all of my old music with me for a couple of decades. It was time to say goodbye, especially since I don’t play a lot anymore anyway. I kept hymns and Christmas music, which I occasionally play at church, as well as my favorite classic and fun music to play. I had a huge basket full of music that I hadn’t looked at in years. Now there is small magazine holder that contains all of the music I love as well as my kids’ lesson books.

Moving forward: All said and done, I think we got rid of about a third of our books. Volumes that had been buried in drawers are now on display. It’s fulfilling to look at our shelves and know that we enjoy everything on them. Kondo says that after you declutter your book collection, you have a snapshot of your personality and values. For the adults, we have a lot of Christian books and some classic literature, as well as a few practical living books (oh and Marc’s fantasy collection in the basement 😉 ).

As I said, we still have a loooooong way to go in our decluttering journey. While I threw out the books in poor condition, I still have a handful that I am trying to decide what to do with. My current thought is to list the most valuable ones on Amazon and put the rest out at a garage sale I will hypothetically have this summer. I suppose if I can’t get rid of them by next fall I will probably donate them.

Up next is papers! Yawn. After that is miscellaneous items. I will report as I find interesting and appropriate.

Have you tried KonMari decluttering? Where are you in your journey? I could certainly use the encouragement if you have any tips! Leave me a comment here or on social media.

Update: check out my post on decluttering toys.

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Minimalism intrigues me. If you look at my Pinterest profile, it’s cluttered (ironically) with terms like minimal, simple, classic, declutter, simplify, organize and throw away.

But in everyday life I am anything but a minimalist. At this moment I am sitting at my dining room table in a sea of markers, crayons, coloring books, blocks, stuffed animals and half-finished homeschool assignments. Most of the time I just live with it because kid clutter is just part of life right now. Yet it bothers me.

I caught on to the minimalism trend a few years ago after reading a couple of books: Being Consumed: Economics and Christian Desire by William T. Cavanaugh and 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker. I realized that, while material goods are not evil in and of themselves, they make life complicated. If we’re not careful, they consume us.

With newfound conviction I purged some of our belongings. And then we moved on with our lives. We had another kid. Our possessions reproduced like rabbits. And so here I sit.

I knew why I wanted to declutter but I didn’t know how to do it. There’s a problem with a lot of the decluttering advice out there. It says to purge your home but isn’t clear about what you should fill it up with. And so we get bulimic about our possessions; we purge and drop off a load at the thrift shop and then we binge whenever we find a “good deal”…until our closets are bursting again. It’s a discouraging and kind of gross cycle.

Enter KonMari.

I asked for The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo for Christmas. This book has grown immensely popular in the U.S. over the past year. I read it from cover to cover and was convinced that this was the answer to my clutter dilemma. I dubbed 2016 the year of tidying up in the Poirier household.

There are about a million posts out there reviewing, analyzing, testing and critiquing the KonMari technique, so I’ll try not to be terribly repetitive. I’m going to share how it’s working (or not working) for us. Take it or leave it.

At the beginning of the book, Kondo encourages you to write down “why you want to be tidy” before you start implementing this system in your home. On December 27, 2015 I wrote:

I want to wake up each morning and go to bed each night peacefully, so I can focus on God and my family instead of my life’s distractions.

Simple, right? The hope is that by tidying up my life I can also tidy up my thoughts (and that should flow into my prayer life, which I wrote about here!).

Kondo says that to do this properly, you have to have a “tidying marathon”: going through your house category by category. You keep the items that “spark joy” and discard the rest.

The phrase “tidying marathon” sounds about as fun to me as swimming in ice water. It might be refreshing but you’re going to have to give me a good reason why I need to torture myself. Doing it in small doses is more appealing.

I’ve concluded that for us, taking a few days to go through our entire house all at once isn’t going to work. And the more closely I read, I think there is a misconception about what Kondo recommends. She says that the average person takes about six months to thoroughly tidy their home (p. 35). And she primarily works with people in tiny Tokyo apartments, so for us it could take even longer.

My method is to spend a couple of hours each weekend focusing on one category of possessions in our home. I (and when applicable, we) will methodically sort through each item in a category, discard what doesn’t “spark joy,” and put away what does spark joy in an orderly fashion. I hope to be done by summer, but I’m not stressed about the deadline. We’ll be done when we’re done.

The first category Kondo recommends to tidy up is clothing. I just finished going through my clothes, my kids’ clothes and our linens (my husband is on his own 😉 ). This process took about six weeks. And we are easily discarding most of the clothes we own.

If you’re unfamiliar with the method, it involves taking every scrap of clothing in your house and piling it all in the same place. You then handle each item individually and test how you feel about it. You keep it if you love it and you trash it if you don’t. Then you fold most of it up and stack it in your drawers vertically. What you decide to hang in the closet should be minimal and rises from left to right.

I did it with my own clothes first and then together with my boys (my daughter is too young). Kids’ clothes are daunting because if you’re like me you not only have their current sets of clothes, but also the stuff they’ve grown out of and the stuff they have yet to grow into. We tackled it all.

So far, I’ve been extremely pleased with the results. Here is what I’ve observed from the experience:

• Tidying is contagious. I’ve been talking enthusiastically about my tidying up with my friends and family. While my husband isn’t following the method exactly, he got inspired to clean up his “man cave” area in the basement. He’s very happy with it. Other friends have bought the book themselves and have started sorting their clothes. Some people have teased me about it (there’s a mystical aspect to the book that feels silly), but it hasn’t bothered me.
• I have a strange attachment to my possessions that I wasn’t aware of. Why is it so hard to throw out something that you haven’t worn in five years? Kondo says on p. 181 that you’re either holding on too much to the past (the outfit from that special event), or you’re anxious about the future (I’ll keep it just in case I need it). If it has served you well, even if it made you happy for a brief moment, be thankful and let it go.
• I don’t miss the things I discarded. I’d forgotten that I even owned most of them anyway. If I really feel like I need something that I threw out, I can go get another one. This hasn’t happened yet.
• My dresser drawers really make me happy. I’ve shown them off on more than one occasion. Super weird.

  

• I can find anything I need in a snap. I can also tell if something is missing because if it’s not in its designated spot, it’s not in the house.
• I have all that I need. I have less than half the clothes that I used to, but I find that it is easier to get dressed in the morning because whatever I spot in the drawer is something I like. I will occasionally need to update my wardrobe, but this is much easier now that I have a full picture of what I actually need to feel stylish and comfortable day to day.
• Kids can be tidy. All of my kids’ drawers used to be a mess. I’ve tested my boys (ages five and six) for a couple of weeks now, and they are perfectly capable of putting folded clothes away properly and selecting their favorite outfits without pulling everything out. They like everything they own because they helped me sort it. The key is having drawers that aren’t overstuffed, with clothes that are easy to find. One of the doubts I had about KonMari was if the method would work for families. She has had many clients who are parents, and she simply says that kids as young as three can be taught how to be tidy. She goes into this in more detail in her second book, Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up.

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• I don’t need to keep everything given to us. I have an awesome friend with two older boys who has given us all of their old clothes, many of which my kids have yet to grow into. These clothes are generally in great condition. I decided to go through them and pick out the best of the selection and then get rid of the rest. What used to be a huge mess at the back of the closet is now a much smaller volume of apparel that is strategically organized by size. Now when my oldest moves up a size, I can pull out a full wardrobe for him, ready to go. I’m donating the rest.
• It’s easier to be generous. The day after I finished sorting all of the kids’ past, present and future clothes, I had a friend come over with her kids. They wanted to play in the snow but her oldest son didn’t have snow pants. I happened to know that I had a pair his size that my kids hadn’t grown into yet, so he borrowed them. While I was thinking about it, I gave her a big pile of clothes in sizes too big for my boys—the ones that would have been sitting uselessly in the closet and probably wouldn’t have been worn.
• I have a garage sale ready to go. I took all of the clothes we didn’t want and sorted through them. The ones in poor condition were donated to a recycling bin managed by a local shelter, while the ones in good condition were sorted by size and put in bins. Now they’re ready to go for the garage sale I plan on having after this little adventure is over (to fundraise for our adoption!). They are also easily accessible for friends and family whom I’d like to donate our old clothes to as needed.
• Tidying the KonMari way is all or nothing. One of the unique qualities of this method is that you do it by category. What that means is that some of my storage space is only half organized right now. The top shelf of my closet has odd little knickknacks; there is unused space is the kids’ closet that I eventually want to use for toys; the bathroom closet has nicely folded linens and disastrously cluttered baskets of toiletries and medicine. If I am going to feel excited about my whole house, I’ve got finish what I started.
• Storage methods can be trial and error. One of the things I initially didn’t like about Kondo’s first book was that it left a lot of room for interpretation when it comes to how to organize your belongings. I think she did this because your method largely depends on what your personal belongings are like and what type of storage space you have. I’m currently reading Spark Joy, which is like an organizational encyclopedia and is quite helpful. But there is flexibility even within that. I’ve rearranged my closet a couple of times ever since I first went through it, and it has gotten better—but I’ve needed to figure out how to make it work.

It’s hard to believe that this is only the beginning of my tidying expedition. We’ve accomplished so much, but there is a lot more to go. Staying true to the method, the next category to tackle is books. This is dizzying, as we are bibliophiles with mountains of toddler books and homeschooling materials (many of which we aren’t using). I’m writing this in part to keep myself accountable! I’ll keep you posted throughout the rest of our tidying journey (don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss a post!). In the meantime, I hope that you’re inspired. If I can tidy up my house, so can you. Have you tried the KonMari method? What has your experience been like?

Update: now you can read Part 2: 10 Lessons Decluttering Books The KonMari Way and Part 3: How We’re Banishing Toy Clutter, for Good.