HAPPY NEW CLEAR-OUT
Save yourself from clutter with neat expert advice for a tidy home in 2017
When Marina Ramalho, Vancouver’s first certified KonMari consultant, arrives at my door, she slips off her shoes and extricates a pair of white slippers from her handbag.
Hand-picked and trained by Marie Kondo, the Japanese guru of tidiness, to bring Kondo’s signature spark of joy to Vancouver’s cluttered homes, Ramalho has come ready to roll up her sleeves and get to work.
Although I tidied furiously before she arrived, a quick look around reveals the chaos behind closed doors. When Ramalho whips open the cupboard beneath my bathroom sink, a jumble of hotel-sized shampoos, hair appliances, soaps, oils, potions, boxes of Band-Aids, Q-tips and lady razors teeters dangerously. A roll of toilet paper tumbles out and unfurls at her slippered feet.
Ramalho takes a photo — a picture of the before is important to appreciate the after. “Different people have different trigger categories,” says Ramalho. She has just found one of mine. I immediately apologize.
Ramalho, who wears a beautiful floral dress to every appointment because it “sparks joy,” assures me that it’s all in a day’s work for her. “We all have too much stuff.”
Ramalho confesses that she too is a “secret-messy person.” But when a friend gave her Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, she was fascinated by the use of the “joy-factor” as a decision tool for what to keep and what to discard. She waited until her boyfriend went away on a business trip, spent 10 days going through their apartment item-by-item. Ramalho followed the process to the letter, considering items one-by-one in every category, asking if they sparked joy, and if the answer was no, she thanked the item and put it in the discard pile. She emerged a “Konvert.”
“Once you take the clutter out of your life you have time to focus on things you really enjoy,” said Ramalho.
After friends began asking her to help them work with their spaces, Ramalho decided to pursue certification. She travelled to New York for the training. Ramalho is one of only two in North America who have completed the training and the requisite 50 hours of “KonMari” with clients to get certification.
Kondo’s strategy is to approach stuff by category, not by room or area. And put off any purchases of boxes or containers until after you have sorted. Ramalho usually works with clients over a few weeks, one day a week and assigns “homework” in between.
Client Paul Irwin, who lives in a typically tight Vancouver apartment, had Ramalho come in over a series of weekends to KonMari everything from his cutlery drawer to clothing.
The joy factor is what elevated the experience from mere organizing to life-changing. “I live in a small space, a West End apartment, you want to surround yourself with meaningful things and joyful things,” said Irwin, who spent five hours each weekend over five weeks with Ramalho and calls the experience “magical.”
He likens the experience to having a personal trainer. “I’m a natural procrastinator. It was like having a date with a personal trainer, you can’t duck it.”
Although Irwin says he’s naturally clean and tidy in his home, there were pockets of accumulation in closets and drawers.
“Just the sheer amount of junk and debris, stuff in drawers and cupboards, was significant. I had a bag of bags, a shelf where I had nothing but bags,” says Irwin.
Kondo, of course, has a method for everything, including bags. (Bags are probably not going to spark any joy, but things that serve a purpose or are useful deserve respect and a place in your home.)
Kondo recommends flattening, folding and storing plastic or cloth shopping bags in a small container.
“Now I fold my bags and I get a mini-kick out of seeing them,” says Irwin.
Ramalho cautions that sentimental categories are often the most difficult.
For Irwin, the most sentimental category was his book collection. “We read books for the experience of reading them. Once read, a book has been ‘experienced,’” writes Kondo.
“I had a big, well-stuffed book case. Every nook and cranny was filled,” says Irwin. “There was a sentimental attachment that seemed overwhelming, but taking them one-by-one and asking if this is still sparking joy or do I say thank you for your service book: the result was incredible. I had an atlas from Grade 8 — half of the countries don’t exist anymore.”
Another one of Irwin’s trigger areas was under the sink. “I had about 25 toothbrushes,” he says. “Now it’s beautiful under the sink, I know where everything is.”
Irwin confesses that sometimes he just stops and drinks in the beautiful order of a space that previously was better kept hidden behind closed doors. “There is a visual esthetic to my place that I now have in my interior spaces as well.”
After just one session with Ramalho, my own closets have yielded one very full garbage bag of clothing.
What is left has been reordered with items hanging by colour in a joyful line rising from long to short.
Ramalho acknowledges that some things are more difficult than others. “My mother had given me a dress, but it just wasn’t something I wore or really loved,” said Ramalho. “Finally I said, ‘Thank you for showing me my mother’s love,’ and I let it go.”
My own clothes, I learn, fall into two categories: everyday items I use for work or relaxing, and party dresses. Although the dresses are mostly black, there is one that I have never worn: a spectacular fuchsia silk and black-lace evening gown that belonged to my grandmother, a dress she reserved for special occasions, like meeting heads of state. The dress doesn’t fit me, and I’m unlikely to be hosting formal soirees anytime soon.
Ramalho sees me hesitate and encourages me to keep the dress, even if I won’t wear it anytime soon. It’s part of honouring Kondo’s most important instructions: “Please don’t curb your dreams.” Kondo encourages her followers to “feel free to indulge in your wildest fantasy.”
The process, Ramalho explains, is less about discarding and more about opening up a future by moving out of a past that may be holding you back.
By the time we are done, I feel as transformed as my closet looks, and more than ready to escort the difficult, the worn-out and the useless parts of my wardrobe, and my life, out the door.
Ramalho offers private one-onone consultations and is leading a $49, web-based, 12-week KonMari group challenge starting in January. Go to konmarina.com for more information. More decluttering tips, B2-3