I was tasked with cleaning out an office. It was like I was an expert called on to intervene on an episode of Hoarders. I kid you not a neat freak wrangled nearly a decade of clutter.
Living in and living with a mess is no way to live. Most of all I think having a cluttered apartment can affect a person’s mental health.
I recommend reading the Marie Kondo book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Like this Japanese clutter-control expert with a mile long waiting list and no clients that ever rebound: doing it all at once is something to consider. Kondo’s method seems perfect to me.
It’s a way to live life Left of the Dial when your home is NOT a mess, is NOT cluttered and chaotic. Often: to live in hope and harmony the first step is to clear the clutter to make room for the new and better.
My mantra is: for every one thing you bring into your apartment one old thing has to be removed. I’ve had this ethic for over a decade now.
The absolute best and truly effective tidying method is a variant on Marie Kondo’s method. I’ll tell you how I found out how to do this via a Google search.
Place the sweater face down on the bed. Fold the left sleeve across the back and then fold the right sleeve across the back. Fold the hem up from the bottom about 1/3 up. Keeping rolling the hem another third or so up until you have a sweater like a loose jelly roll. (You might have to fold it in quarters.)
Store the sweaters in rolls sideways across the length of the drawer.
Voila: you can store more sweaters in less space.
Best of all when you’re able to easily see them to take out one sweater the sweater will not be wrinkled after you take it out. If it’s lightly wrinkled you can use a steamer to get the wrinkles out.
I’m all for making our lives simpler.
Why have to use up tons of storage space and drawers for sweaters that can compactly now fit into one drawer instead of two or three? Why have to struggle and take time to remove all the sweaters on the top to get to the one on the bottom?
Perfetto if you ask me.
Time moves on. One day our loved ones will not be here. Cleaning up and cleaning out should not only be done after a person is gone. We should do it while we’re alive so that we don’t saddle other people with cleaning up our messes in the event we’re not here.
Yet most of all we should be neat and tidy for ourselves: to have a clear mind and a fitter body and stop from being overwhelmed with the choices we have to make or want to make.
Neat is sweet.
Left of the Dial 