Monday, July 20, 2015

The Magic of Tidying Up

This is my house y'all! I'm having about 50 people house guests in a bit - o.k. maybe 15 - but STILL...I should be cleaning not desperately looking for the Magic of Tidying Up to manifest in  my home. I've started the book by Marie Kondo and I AM enjoying it. I especially like "hearing the Japanese culture" in the book - because I AM supposed to be in Machida this week. ::snort:: I figure now is a good time for me to "do it all at once."  This is taking way longer than I expected (where DOES all this stuff come from in 2 years) - so I'm glad I am right here - though my leaking eyes haven't quite gotten the message.

And THIS is the CLEAN area - library and upstairs hall are WAY worse

 
The boys went through all the "toys" and decided they really don't need them any longer. I do believe Eyeore and a rubber dinosaur will go into storage....

I continued to pull things out and off the walls that the older Gherkins have tagged as things they would like. I've got a staging area in the garage for the Gherkins, homeschool, and donations. We continued to fill a couple more "donate boxes" which we don't think the Gherkins will want, but still have some good use in them.

The kids love to play dress up and produce plays - we have quite a few costumes. I can't see them fitting in the trailer....and I'm sure they won't fit the kids when we get things out of storage. I'm not sure what we're going to do with them - so I laundered them and we'll decide later.

I had visions of Arielle and I being able to get through the school shelves after lunch.  Our school cycles through four segments of history  - over and over. The kids hit each segment as a grammar, dialectic and rhetoric student. We no longer need the lower grammar material.  Our plan was to go through the books, pull out the ones that are lower grammar. Go through the year plans and pick out the books we want to use, mark each one with the year, week and level. We would also decide which extra books we need to keep (from our Sonlight days), put each year of books in it's own tub and get rid of the rest. I decided to take photos of the grammar books and put them in the homeschool album I'm creating to offer to locals.
One shelf per year
These are the books Stacia and Zander need for Tapestry next year. This does not include science, language arts, math etc. The white binders are teacher's manuals - each year plan gives lesson plans for K - 12th grade so I can easily keep us all on the same page at our own level. We only sorted one year this afternoon. ::sigh:: I need to finish the school stuff while Arielle is here. She's a huge help.

This thing is HEAVY. I can't budge it. Yes, I know they now sell digital teacher's manuals. The problem is that my set is copyrighted in 2003 and so the books are from THEN....the digital ones have newer books and I don't want to have to buy all new books. Yes, that's right - I've used the same core for 12 years - you can do that with classic, living literature. It's paid for itself.

Ms. Kondo, in her book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, instructs one to pick up each item and decide if it brings joy.  If it does, you keep it. If it doesn't you thank it for bringing joy to your life at one time and release it to go bring joy to another.  Sounds good.....in the end you are surrounded by things you LOVE and the things you don't love are not cluttering your home. Sounds fairly easy and good....it worked well as I went through the China hutch, the junk drawers, the desk, the kitchen....then  we hit the bookshelves.

"Nero, thank you for bringing me hours of reading pleasure and joy. I no longer need you (I am fixin to go buy the whole set on kindle if I get desperate ::snort::). I release you to go bring joy to other readers." Into the box he went....along with Tamar Myers, Dr. Seuss, I Can Read Books and host of Children's books.

And again, "I release you to the recycling bin - you are far too battered to bring joy to another."
 
I tried. Hard. These simply would not be released. Too many happy childhood memories to release.
 
What's THIS? Ah - it appears that things can jump right out of boxes!!!! The two books from above  are not in a box and are in a waiting area while the discussion goes on. We HAVE Lord of the Rings in two electronic formats - but Nolan loves the maps in this one which has pages falling out. The dinosaur book is signed by Duanne Gish for BreAnne and Krista - and held together with PACKING TAPE!

Arielle rescued "Amelia Bedelia," Complete "Winnie the Pooh" works,  and all the "Land of Barely There" books.  By this time the whole family was gathered around the shelves in the library. I knew this would be tough. We went from 13 floor to ceiling shelves in TX to 7 when we moved to Japan.  Now we need to go further - but I've promised we can keep the ones that mean something to the kids - that they may want at a later date....

I explained the Magic of Decluttering via the Kondo method.....but they didn't get quite as excited as I had hoped.

I was reminded that books are friends and you can't just go around stuffing them in boxes. I explained that if you RELEASE them you might be able to do just that - I've not gotten that far in the book; but it makes sense that relationships could clutter one's life.. ::snort::

Look what I caught him doing - checking the selection in the give away box. 

Long days - lots of mess - small progress. It's good to retire when you get to be our age - I'm quite sure we had more stamina 20 years ago.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

I'm glad you are enjoying the book. I too really enjoyed the glimpses of Japanese culture.

DeEtta @ Courageous Joy said...

Thanks for recommending it. This is the perfect time for me to read it.....motivation to keep going and I'm going to be touching everything in my house anyway. Just hope I don't do something wrong and read about it in the next chapter. LOL

Laura said...

Oh so hard! Books ARE friends!! You are accomplishing a mighty work there. Good luck in your continued efforts!