"Your real life begins after you put your house in order." A powerful phrase from our beloved Marie Kondo, which gives us the energy and dynamism to have everything in its place. With her book "The Magic of Order" she has helped us obtain happiness by classifying and thanking. And being such a simple and planned person, the series "Tidying Up" with Marie Kondo that you can see on Netflix has been a success. I am sure that, in one of its eight chapters, you will be able to identify with one of the roles it shows and detect if disorder reigns in your house. These are the keys that you can apply to change your life:
1. Classify by areas
9 ideas to organize your home in the new normal
The most important thing to start applying what Kondo learned is that we must classify items by categories and not by areas or rooms. These are the categories to pay attention to: clothes, books, papers, komono (includes everything in the kitchen, bathroom, garage, and miscellaneous) and sentimental items. In that same order.
2. Do not forget the fundamental concepts
There are basic rules that you must apply when organizing your spaces. After watching the series I have identified these nine points:
1- Have your box of objects that give you pleasure and happiness close to you. 2- Fold your clothes vertically to have everything in sight. 3- Only have the objects that you really need and are going to use. 4- Be grateful for the things that are going to leave your house. 5- Start with the clothes, it is the easiest part for us to decide on. 6- If you start to classify, finish it, it is a task that you must finish. 7- Do not order by areas but by categories.8- Give value to the objects you keep, if they do not contribute something to you, it is better to let them continue on their way.9- Do your cleaning alone, it is a moment of personal decisions about your feelings and things.
3. Digital storage
Marie Kondo recommends doing a quick, thorough, one-time cleanup of your digital life. For them follow these tips: 1. Create digital albums for photos.2. Have your favorite music in digital format.3. Take advantage of applications such as Netflix, Amazon Prime, Youtube, Disney + to watch your series and movies.4. Use Adobe Reader or Kindle to keep books and magazines.5. Take photos of your works, drawings, invoices, recipes and organize them in the cloud, you can use Google Photos, Google Drive, Dropbox.6. Use digital frames for a sequence of photos; With a single frame you have the capacity to have several photographs in a single element.
Stick to the “less is more” concept: donate, give away, recycle and make your home reflect your inner peace and a happy place to live with your loved ones.
Carolina García is an architect and teacher at @cademyrd
