KonMari Step 2: Books

This past weekend Mike and I continued our tidying journey and completed step 2 of the KonMari method. Step 2 is all about books. For me, books were pretty easy. I have been through them recently and I really do not have that many. I still followed the method and took everything off the shelf, held it and decided if it brought me joy or not. If you are brought joy by just looking at the book on the shelf, then you should keep it, even if you do not think you will read it again. I love that about this method, I get to keep things that make me happy even if they are not super useful. I ended up getting rid of a decent size stack of books and cleaning and organizing my shelves better. Mike ended up getting rid of almost 3 shelves worth of books. He has way more books than I do because he used to go to the library book sales and get a giant bag for $1. It was pretty easy for him to part with titles he read once and felt done with and helped him decide which books and authors he wants to continue to keep and read more of. Step 2, books, only took us a few hours and now we can move on to step 3, papers.

Mike had some work to do in his lab over the weekend, so I decided to continue KonMari without him. Rather than go to step 3, papers, I decided to skip ahead a little bit. Step 4 is miscellany, and has several sub categories. It is easily the longest section. I decided to do one part of step 4, skin care products and make up. I chose to get to this step sooner because every time I walked out of my beautifully organized closet, I walked into my cluttered, disorganized bathroom. It was driving me crazy and was defiantly not bringing me any joy. So I took everything out from under the sink, the drawers, and the cabinet and organized it. Since switching to Melaleuca products, there were just so many things I never saw myself going back to use. I had a huge bag of trash and a box of things that are still useful to someone. We were able to completely clear off the counter (aside from soap and electric tooth brushes) and have everything organized in a much better way. I also ended up going through all of my nail polish, the laundry room, and under the kitchen sink. It is amazing how many things we accumulated that we did not need, would not use, and no longer brought joy. I now feel so much better about my closet/bathroom area.

Crystal, Morgan, Levi, and Parker arrive in one week and I am super excited to see them! We have some fun activities planned, like Levi’s first Padres game (we are teaching him who his favorite team is), beach day with the entire family, visiting with Ariel and her family, and pre-wedding activities. Because they are coming to town soon, and the wedding is so close, we are putting a pause to KonMari and will pick it back up after they leave. So far, we have gotten rid of 4 trash bags of clothes, 5 boxes of books, 2 boxes of random things for Good Will, 2 full recycle bins, and 2 full trash cans. I also have several boxes of things for Ariel. I randomly found my “unsharpened pencil collection” from my childhood. Yes I know it is a weird thing to collect, and no, it no longer brings me joy, so I am ready to part with it. I figured Thomas would get some good use out of it since he teaches 4^th grade. Ariel’s pile consists of many things like that. I am really glad I am able to give joy to someone else with some of the random things that have followed me around over the years.