De-cluttering with The Tidy Coo

DE-CLUTTERING Rosie Barron is The

Tidy Coo, a Professional Declutterer and Organiser, Certified KonMari Consultant and Photo Manager based in the North East of Scotland.

When tidying any of your belongings, it is important to remember the golden rules:

• Commit to tidying

• Start with your vision of what you want your life to look like.

• Declutter first, then organise. • Choose positively what to keep.

• Start with the easiest decisions.

• Handle everything, nothing gets a free pass.

• Work in categories rather than rooms.

First of all, start by finding 2 or 3 of your very favourite items of clothing. Pick them up and see how you feel when you are holding them. Often when I am working with clients I will see them smile when they start to tell me about the item they are holding. It is this positive lift that Marie Kondo refers to as Sparks Joy. Keep these items visible whilst decluttering your wardrobe and use them as a reference point. It is important to remember that items can Spark Joy for practical reasons, such as a work uniform which allows you to earn money, or a warm vest. Remove all of your clothes from their storage space, right down to the pants and socks, and then sort them in to categories. It is important to take them out from their usual place as that can help change your mind set. If it is too overwhelming to get all of your clothes out at the same time, then you can get out one category at a time, but do make sure that you have found the entire category and don’t give anything a free pass. My clients often say things like, “All my socks are fine!”, but when we go through them, they discard about half! Whilst it may sometimes feel a little like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic to organise your sock drawer, you will find that these small steps add up pretty quickly. Remember to start with the easiest decisions first, such as those that you definitely want to keep or those that you wonder what they were doing in your wardrobe at all! Any that you are not sure of, leave to one side until you have done the others. Perhaps try them on if you are really not sure.

The most important question that you will ask yourself as you declutter your clothes is:

“Does this Spark Joy?”, but other questions can be super helpful in clothing too, such as, “Would I buy this again?” “Do I reach for this?”

If you really can’t decide whether or not to keep an item, I encourage you to keep it with confidence. Put the item in an easily accessible and visible space and see if you wear it in the next 6 months. I do a wardrobe check in the Spring and in the Autumn to check my clothes.

Common pitfalls when decluttering your wardrobe are:

Keeping Clothes that are the Wrong Size – I often find that people keep clothes that don’t fit, often entire wardrobes of them. Keeping large number of clothes that don’t fit is often counterproductive. The mental weight of lots of clutter can mean that you find it hard to lose physical weight. Let the clothes go that are in the wrong size and if you lose weight, buy yourself some beautiful new clothes. Keeping Clothes because they cost a lot - You won’t get your money back by shoving it in a drawer. If you are very concerned by the amount of money that you spent on an item, you can try and sell it, however, do give yourself a date by which it needs to be gone by and if it doesn’t sell, then donate it. Storage - When it comes to putting your clothes away, store like with like and designate each type of item a specific area. So a drawer of t-shirts and a drawer of jumpers, rather than having them mixed in together. It makes them easier to find and allows you to see how many of them you have. File fold your clothes. By this, I mean fold them so that the edges are sticking up. Otherwise it’s like having a pile of books where you can only see the top one, rather than storing them spine out so that we can see them all. File folding takes up less space than conventional folding and makes it so much easier to see and use your clothes. For items that are hung, I love to use velvet hangers. The slim line shape of them creates space in your wardrobe and the material prevents clothes falling off them.