My KonMari Journey: Clothes and Books

My KonMari journey began last summer, after several friends urged me all spring to give it a try. I liked the idea of decluttering by category versus room as well as going from easy (clothes), gradually working our way up to hard (sentimental items).

Before jumping in though, I checked out some YouTube videos on the subject. I especially enjoyed watching Lavendaire's video on organizing her closet:

I then found a fantastic KonMari checklist on Jersha & Dup's site and jumped in. Sometime between decluttering clothes and books, I purchased Marie Kondo's book, The Magical Art of Tidying Up. It was a very quick read.

KonMari Method Round 1: Clothes

Applying the KonMari Method on clothes was fairly easy. I believe it took me one or two weeks, most likely because I have done some decluttering on a yearly basis. However, this was the most aggressive decluttering that I have ever done.

Although Marie Kondo states to keep only what sparks joy, I stretched my criteria to include, "Items I Need for Work" and "Things that Make Me Feel Good." Everything that didn't meet this criteria was given away to family, friends, students, and charity. Let's just say I have quite a few Hero Cards from Value Village. 

I went by section off of Jersha & Dup's list, so one day, I tackled shirts. Next day, pants. It was illuminating to see just how many items I was hanging onto that no longer fit or I simply hadn't worn for years. After some heavy duty KM-ing, I had tons of room in my closet and dresser to give each item a proper home. 

I am pleased to say that one year later, everything generally goes back to their home when not in use. There is definitely a sense of belonging to see them placed in their allotted cubbyholes.

This is the longest that my t-shirt drawer has ever been this organized.

My parents picked up three of these units at a garage sale. Since they weren't using them, I snagged them to organize my purses, stuff in my craft room, and my winter gloves, scarves, etc.

KonMari Round 2: Books and More Books

I didn't think that I was a huge bibliophobe, but I do have a sizeable personal and work-related book collection. It was impossible to get all my books (including music books) into one room for the discarding process, so again, I went in categories.

This was the beginnings of my discarding phase in the music studio.

Some of the books that I let go of.

KMi-ing my book collection was also a Summer 2015 project. It wasn't particularly difficult to decide what to let go of. Yes, I let go of books I liked, but they weren't ones I liked enough to want to re-read in the short-term or books that I had re-read on a regular basis. 

My piano students and their parents got first crack at my book discards. Next, a friend who had opened a music school (Flamingo School of Music) went through it. Many of her students are either from low income families or just immigrated to Canada, so the donations were put to good use.

Next, I took books to the Calgary Public Library, then Calgary Co-Op's book sharing bin and Value Village. Sadly, some books weren't wanted by any of these places and wound up in recycling.

One year later, my personal book collection remains organized (with a special basket for books I'm borrowing). My music library remains a work in progress. I'm going to recruit my students to help me re-shelve the books after their lessons for coveted Maestro Bucks.

My personal library - one year after getting the KonMari treatment.

Next time, I'll share my ongoing experiences with paper decluttering. It's been quite the journey - and it's not over yet! Here's a preview:

Before he passed away, Maestro was quite the KonMari Supervisor. As you can see, he wasn't impressed with the amount of paper I had amassed.

New Site, New Blog

Sometimes, we just need a fresh start. Managing a Wordpress multsite with several blogs while juggling music teaching, freelancing gigs, and trying to get Maestro's Music Tricks off the ground simply wasn't working. 

My webmaster hat and writer's cap have collected quite a bit of dust over these past few months. A bit of website decluttering and reorganizing was well overdue.

When I undertook the project of revamping my dojo's website, my dojo mate in Saskatoon and I settled on using Squarespace. We found the process of building a new site that could be managed by members from our different training locations a relatively smooth process. Web maintenance has been a snap because Squarespace manages all the plugin and framework updates. I can only assume that they are dealing with brute force attacks because we haven't had any issues with our club site.

It's been working so well, that I decided to take the plunge and migrate my site to Squarespace. So, here we are.

The other big decision I made was to consolidate all of my blogs. All six of them. The separation by topic to do different branding only makes sense if one has time to put into branding them individually, which I don't. As for the "new" blog name, as much as I loved the names for all my blogs, The Musical Muse is the only one that could cover all the topics I write about.

It will take some time to tidy up the blog posts to make them fit their new home. It will also take some time to get the Maestro's Music Tricks e-store built. so please be patient. In the meantime, if you would like more information on my gamer-inspired music practice aid, please drop me a line.

Photo credit: Philip Wilson

Lesson Planning - A Work in Progress

The big decluttering project continues. It's taken years to amass all this paper and stuff so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that it will take a while to clean up my mess. It seems though, that no sooner do I get my office tidied up that it becomes a bigger mess as soon as I tackle a new section in my office. Case in point:

Amidst the chaos however, plans are beginning to emerge. As I file handouts and documents from the previous teaching year, ideas for new handouts and teaching strategies are percolating in my mind.

However, I don't want to break the flow of my clean up (I refuse to start another teaching year with a messy office); so, I have three medium-sized coloured sheets, labelled: "Lesson Strategies/Planning", "Handouts to Make" and "To Do" on top of one of the binders in the lower LH corner.My tin of Crayola® markers are also close by.

So far, I've jotted down things like, "How to make technique more fun," "Strategies for helping the Keyboard Geography/Hand-Eye Coordination Challenged Students" and a long list of optional activities.

For the time being, I just grab the appropriate sheet and jot down a phrase. Once I get that tower beside my desk emptied out, then I can hunker down and transform the ideas into something tangible. I imagine that by the time I reach that point, I'll have more than three sheets of ideas. At least, it will be easier to focus as by then, I'll have a less cluttered workspace.

A Time to Organize, A Time to Think

It's the beginning of a new year. My main goal for the Christmas Break was achieved - migrating all my blogs to Wordpress. Sure, there are things yet to tweak and widgets to add; but the hard job is done. My other main task - to attack all the loose paper I kept shuffling from one Bring Forward folder to the next. That too was achieved. My file organizers are significantly tidier.

I guess I shouldn't complain that I didn't get anything accomplished over the break. Between that and practicing madly for Christmas and New Year's church services, I deserved the imposed break that my cold gave me on Week 2.

This has me reflecting upon the ongoing struggle to stay on top of things. To just stay organized. Between loose papers, music books and emails - we have a lot of clutter in our lives - so much that it's easy to drown in it.

However, I continue to press forward at tidying up the back end of things. Strangely, it gives my brain time to wander and think about lesson or presentation ideas that have been floating just on the periphery of consciousness.

I've taken to using the countdown timer app on my phone. It has helped keep the daunting task of decluttering my mess somewhat bearable. 30 minutes to clean email, 30 minutes to tidy up my blogs, etc. Bite-sized chunks. That's the key to whittling this monster mess down.