Hacking Marie Kondo's Decluttering Principles to Your Mental Clarity

 You have probably heard of Marie Kondo. She is a best selling author and organization consultant, who has had her books published in more than 30 countries and has become a New York Times best seller. In 2019, Netflix released a series called Tidying Up With Marie Kondo that quickly became a sensation. In the show, Marie visits families and helps them organize and declutter through her KonMari process. That process consists of 6 steps that she takes her clients or the show's families through, in order to create a more organized and decluttered home environment. 

If you watch the show or read her books, you'll notice that the rules of KonMari can be applied not just to decluttering your home, but also to an office, a job site, or even to your personal life. Marie has even noted that the process itself is highly psychological, so it makes sense that it would be easily adaptable to a variety of situations. I found that these will apply to your general life and Mental Clarity. 

The Six Basic Rules of KonMari

1. Commit yourself to tidying up
• Marie states that you must be committed to tidying up. You must be ready to go through the process and come out with an organized home.
2. Imagine your ideal lifestyle
• It is helpful to stop at the beginning and imagine what your ideal lifestyle is. That helps you to visualize your goals so you know what you are working towards.
3. Finish discarding first
• Before you can organize anything you must first have only that which you plan to organize. It would be illogical to organize trash or items that you are going to donate.
4. Tidy by category, not by location
• Rather than go room by room organizing, the KonMari method recommends that you go category by category. Go through all of your clothing, paper, books, etc as a group. By going through in category you can more easily make snap decisions on whether to keep or eliminate.
5. Follow the right order
• You must go in the right order. As we just discussed you cannot organize if it should no longer be in your home. You cannot work toward a goal you have not visualized. 
6. Ask yourself if it sparks joy
• As you're going through your things, you should ask yourself if it sparks joy. Does this item bring you happiness? If not, eliminate it through, trash, donation or sale.

How Can We Apply These Rules to Our Lives Outside of Tidying Up?

These rules obviously work very well for tidying up a home. We've seen the transformations on her show and in the pages of magazines. How can those rules be adapted and applied to your personal life? Let's go back through each rule and see how that can work.

1. Commit yourself to tidying up
• With anything that requires change in your life you must be committed to that change. You cannot force someone who does not want to change to change. Many of us have tried to change other people who were not yet ready. Every time that will result in failure. To make the changes permanent and effective, you must truly be willing to commit yourself to a new direction and the work and discipline required to maintain it and build new habits. 
2. Imagine your ideal lifestyle
• Your imagination is a powerful thing. When you imagine something, you are stopping and creating a picture in your mind. This helps to make something that is not real feel real. Good teachers, public speakers and salespeople use this to help people imagine an ideal future and create an emotional connection to that future. You can use this to do the same thing when you start out on a new personal journey. Stop and imagine what your ideal new state is. Think about how much better you'll feel and how much better your life will be. Keep this future state in mind as you work through the process. 
3. Finish discarding first
• We all collect bad habits and bad influences. Sometimes we find it easier to continue on with those negative parts of our lives than to address them head on. However, in order to truly change, you must identify those ideas, behaviors or influences that are dragging you down. Look at your bad habits and commit to eliminating them. Identify the bad influxes and toxic relationships in your life and disconnect yourself from those influences and those relationships. Remember that you don't owe anyone an explanation for why you are saying no. You are doing this for you, not for them. 
4. Tidy by category, not by location
• When moving through this process it will be easier to think with more clarity and act with conviction if you stay within different categories. Think through the habits that are having a negative influence on your life and decide what to do about them first. Move on to identifying influences in your life that lead to poor decisions and figure out how to remove them. Think about what relationships you are in that are toxic and bad for your mental health and break up those relationships so that you can have room and opportunity to build healthy relationships. 
5. Follow the right order
• You must go in the right order. You must first be truly committed to change. You must also know what you want your goal to be. Without a plan, you cannot succeed, so you must identify that plan and execute it. If you were to complete these steps out of order you would not be successful. If you start running, but don't know where you're running to, how could you know which way to run?
6. Ask yourself if it sparks joy
• As you work through what things to keep in your life, what habits to keep or break, which influences are positive or negative and which relationships help or hurt your health, ask yourself if they bring you joy? Do these bring you happiness in your life, make your life easier, help to make you better? If they do, then you should keep them a part of your life. If they are the opposite then eliminate them. Do not feel regret and do not apologize. You owe no apology for doing what is best for you. 

In many things in life, lessons can be adopted from one situation to another. The 6 basic rules of KonMari are a great example of this in action. A set of rules that is designed to help you declutter your home can help you declutter your life as a whole and lead to better mental health and clarity.

Change can be a challenge. How do you deal with it?  Tell me by posting below or send me a message!