Tidy

Marie Kondo is a revolutionary. Marie's fascination with tidying was first peeked at just five years old. Her enchantment with the pages of her mother's home and lifestyle magazines from their beautiful interior decorations to their strategic cleaning tips, led Marie to spend far more time organizing her dolls than actually playing with them. In her youth, Maria was especially close with her grandmother Noriko, her effortless tidying and careful, considerate regard for her home inspired Maria to cherish what you own and to live with intention and care. Marie Kondo has authored nine books in Japanese on tidying and organization. Her first book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up has been translated into 44 languages. Her first television show tidying up with Marie Kondo was Netflix's number one nonfiction release in 2019, and earned seven Award nominations. In 2015. She was also listed as one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people. Hello beautiful humans and welcome to the midlife revolution ADHD edition. I am your host, Megan Connor. Last episode, we talked about what happened at the intersection of scarcity mentality modesty, culture and body shame. I felt ready to confront my clothing situation and clean out my closet, I read some Marie Kondo and made the decision to just leap into the scary reality of what was hidden in there, both literally and metaphorically. So I had a lot of fears going into this process. I thought, first of all, what if it takes forever and I lose steam and end up with a bigger mess than I had in the past. And this is where ADHD comes in. Especially for women with ADHD, we tend to have little piles of clutter all over the house, we tend to have a habit of starting and then never finishing projects. And then our shopping habits tend to be a little chaotic, like when I cleaned out my fridge and realized that I had three unopened and unexpired containers of cottage cheese. So the whole process, including moving items, to the garage for donation afterwards, took only about four hours. And that was with a dinner break, and me filming the whole thing. So if you have four hours, you can do all of your clothes in that time, unless you have way more clothes than me, which by the way, I don't share your closet or dresser space with anybody. So I was taking up the entire closet, which admittedly is not that big, and the entire dresser. Another one of my fears was what if nothing in my closet, sparks joy. And then I ended up with literally nothing to wear. And in order to get over that hump, I just had to give myself a little pep talk and say, I know I've got at least two or three outfits that I really love to wear that fit me right now that are in great condition. And if it turns out that I end up with only those few outfits, I can make it work from there, you know, I can figure out what to do going forward. And honestly, it's not necessarily that bad of a prospect to think about having kind of a uniform, and you just kind of capsule wardrobe and mix and match those few pieces that you do have. And I've explored doing that before as well. The last one was the fear of confronting my habits without shame. I know what's in there. And I know some of it's in there, because I'm just silly about holding on to things. I knew I had some sentimental items in there that I was just keeping around because of the sentimentality of it. And I also knew there was a lot of stuff that I didn't fit into anymore, that I was probably never gonna fit into any more. And I was holding on to it just in case and what if, again, that scarcity mentality coming in, and just had to get to the point where I give myself peace and grace, for the habits that I've had in the past and recognize that they protected me to a certain degree up until this point, and that now I'm ready to make some changes in my habits and my lifestyle. The last piece of it is gratitude. For me speaking out loud, why I'm grateful about something is really powerful. And I made a decision that as I was getting rid of things that I was not only going to ask myself if it sparks joy, but once I decided to get rid of it, I was going to thank it for its time in my life, and then put it to the side. So I talk about that a little bit later in the video as I'm filming that. I think that's a really important piece of it. So I wanted to emphasize it right up here at the beginning. In addition, I wanted my decluttering to be meaningful. I didn't want to just throw things away because I recognized that I do have a lot of things that still have value and could be used by somebody who really needs it. And so I did a little bit of research and I found a place close to where I live called the Kindle city sorry, the Kendall county women's shelter, and you can find their website at domestic shelters. dot org. Domestic shelters.org is the first and largest online and mobile searchable direct directory of domestic violence programs and shelters in the US and Canada, and a leading source of helpful tools and information for people experiencing and working to end domestic violence. Domestic shelters.org works to make more people aware of the services available for those experiencing domestic violence and make it faster and easier for victims of domestic violence and their friends or family, as well as program and shelter providers to quickly find services and information best suited to their location, language and needs. So I found the Kendall county women's shelter. And attached to the shelter is this amazing thrift store called fabulous finds. It's located in Bernie Texas, and all of the proceeds from the thrift store benefit the Kendall county women's shelter. So the women's shelter itself has a very specific list, a wish list of things, items that they need, and most of them are new only items. But if you have gently used items that still have some value, you can donate donate those items to the fabulous finds thrift shop. And then the proceeds from selling those items goes to benefit the women's shelter. So I felt like that was something really meaningful that I could donate to, it's a bit of a pain because it's far away from where I live. And their hours are pretty limited. So I had to put it in my schedule to actually get to the women's shelter or to the fabulous finds, and to donate the things but it made me feel a lot better about just throwing things away. So I was able to donate a lot to the to the women's shelter. And I felt really good about that. Now let's go over some advice from Marie Kondo. In her book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, she talks about a few little hints to make this process more successful for you. One of them is don't let your family see what you're doing. Because a lot of times, if mom is running around the house or dad is running around the house, cleaning things up and tidying things and getting rid of things, these little alarm bells go off in the other people living in the house. And they go Wait, aren't you're not getting rid of my stuff are you and oh, don't don't get rid of that I really love that you don't need anybody else's opinion about tidying up. So I think even better, if you can sit down as a whole family or whoever lives in the house and say, Look, this is my plan. This is my goal, this is what I'm doing. I would love it if everybody would be on board and do it all at the same time. In fact, I've watched a couple of episodes of Murray's show on Netflix. And it is really cool when the whole family gets involved in shifting their mentality to a decluttering. Less is more tidying kind of situation, it's really fun to see families come together in that way. Now, me personally, I only have two kids left at home here with me. They're teenagers, my son is getting ready to graduate from high school and he's got a full time job. So he's hardly ever here. And so I was able to do this just by myself in the house with nobody else here. I did have a little bit of a tidying buddy though. And I think that's a really helpful thing to have. If you need a tidying buddy. I'm available. I love this process. I would love to help you with it. But my tidying Buddy was just somebody I could check in with and say, It's okay, if I get rid of this, right. There's no reason for me to hold on to this right. And also to have somebody there to witness me expressing gratitude for some things. And that's going to come up later on in the show as well today. Start with the right category and do them in order. Trust me on this one. Marie Kondo has really honed this down to an art and a science. And starting and doing it in the right order is really the most peaceful, best way to do it. I believe after trying this process. Throughout my house, I'm not completely done yet. But it's really been a wonderful transform, transformational process for me. There is a part of the book that I want to read to you really quick, called What to do when you can't throw something away.

My criterion for deciding to keep an item is that we should feel a thrill of joy when we touch it. But it is human nature to resist throwing something away even when we know that we should. Items that we can't bring ourselves to discard even when they don't inspire joy are a real problem. human judgment can be be divided into two broad types intuitive and rational. When it comes to selecting what to discard, it is actually our rational judgment that causes trouble. Although intuitively we know that an object has no attraction for us. Our reason raises all kinds of arguments for not discarding it such as I might need it later or it's a waste to get rid of it. These thoughts spin round and round in our mind making it impossible to let go. I'm not claiming that it's wrong to hesitate. The inability to decide demonstrates a certain degree of attachment to a particular object. act, nor can all decisions be made on intuition alone. But this is precisely why we need to consider each object with care and not be distracted by thoughts of being wasteful. When you come across something that's hard to discard, consider carefully why you have that specific item in the first place. When did you get it? And what meaning Did it have for you then reassess the role it plays in your life. If, for example, you have some clothes that you bought, but never wear, examine them one at a time. Where did you buy that particular outfit? And why? If you bought it because you thought it looks cool in the shop, it has fulfilled the function of giving you a thrill when you bought it, then why do you never wear it? Was it because you realize that it didn't suit you when you tried it on at home? If so, and you no longer buy clothes of the same style or color, it has fulfilled another important function. It has taught you what doesn't suit you. I love that. In fact, that particular article of clothing has already completed its role in your life and you are free to say thank you for giving me joy when I bought you, or Thank you for teaching me what doesn't suit me and let it go. Every object has a different role to play. Not all clothes have to come to you to be worn threadbare. It is the same with people who not every person you meet in life will become a close friend or lover. Some you will find hard to get along with or impossible to like, but those people to teach you the precious lesson of who you do like so that you will appreciate those special people even more. Well, Marie Kondo. When you come across something that you cannot part with, think carefully about its true purpose in your life, you'll be surprised at how many of the things you possess have already fulfilled their role. By acknowledging their contribution and letting them go with gratitude, you will be able to truly put the things you own and your life in order. In the end, all that will remain are the things that you truly treasure. To truly cherish the things that are important to you, you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose. To get rid of what you no longer need is neither wasteful nor shameful. Can you truthfully say that you treasure something buried so deeply in a closet or drawer that you've forgotten its existence? Man, this is all about me. If things had feelings, they would certainly not be happy. free them from the prison to which you have relegated them, help them leave that deserted aisle to which you have exiled them. Let them go with gratitude. Not only you but your things as well will feel clearer and refreshed when you are done tidying. I'm just gonna pause here for one second to note that we are only dealing with clothes today, we're not dealing with anything else in the closet that is of sentimental value or anything that is like papers, or books or anything else in the closet. That is anything that's a non clothing item is just going to stay right where it is for now. And we're going to deal with that later. I forgot about the clothes in here. So that's going to take me another minute. Okay, so here we are the whole dirty, nasty affair. All my drawers are empty. There are no clothes in here anymore. There are some like, I have a junk drawer over here. All of that's going to be gone through some other time. We're just focusing on clothes right now. So I'm going to flip around and show you what's going on. Okay, so there are a couple of points here that Marie Kondo says are really important. We're going to go through each pile in the order that she said to do it. So we're gonna start with Topps. And the important thing is to physically pick it up. And ask yourself if it sparks joy. And again, its joy is going to be defined for people in different ways. If it does not spark joy, then you are to get rid of it. It's gonna go in a bag and I've got a huge roll of trash bags over here ready to go. Okay. For me, I'm going to impose some additional rules on myself well, she actually does have some additional rules. You cannot just downgrade something to loungewear so you can't just say oh, I'm never gonna wear this out again. But I need clothes to relax in so I'm going to hang on to it and just put it in a drawer for loungewear not allowed. Even your loungewear needs to spark joy. So if you're talking about leggings or shorts, or pajamas or anything that you're gonna put on your body, it has to spark joy. So she says that's not not okay either. And then she's she goes on to talk about how to fold things and whatever. I'm not really going to mess with that right now. I'm just going to if it if it sparks joy, and I'm going to keep it I am going to either hang it in my closet or put it in a pile to fold at the end of like the tops will stop and do that. Because there's she has some information in here about folding and arranging your closet. So I'm not going to get too far down that road. I'm just going to start with the tops. And I'm going to ask myself that question. And then the other rules that I'm going to impose upon myself, because I know myself and I know what rules I need to have. Rule number one is, if it doesn't fit, I don't even get to ask myself the question if it sparks joy or not, if it doesn't fit, I am putting it away, it is going in the garbage bag to be donated, because I know myself and I will say, okay, it doesn't fit me right now. But it might fit me in a couple of months. And, and when it does, I'll enjoy wearing it like I do enjoy wearing that piece of clothing. No, if it doesn't fit me right now, it is going away. The other part is that it has to be something that feels good on my body. And it has to be something that I feel confident wearing, I feel confident in it makes me feel beautiful, it makes me feel confident. So those are my self imposed rules. And then the the other really, really important part of this is that when you decide to get rid of something, even the things that don't fit, you are going to thank it for its time in your life. And then you are going to put it away to be donated. And for me it's going in a garbage bag to be donated. I love this idea of practicing gratitude. And this is actually how I handle emotions in my life and how I especially how I handle grief. When I feel grief, come up. I say to it, grief, thank you for showing up today. And reminding me what's important, because I feel grief about this thing because I loved it. And it was important to me. I'm going to thank thank grief for showing up today. And then I'm going to ask it to go ahead and step away and release it into the universe. So that's what I'm going to do with every single piece of clothing that I decide to donate, I'm going to ask myself does this spark joy doesn't meet my requirements Does it spark joy. And if it doesn't, I'm going to thank it for the time that it served me and the ways in which it serves me. And then I'm going to let it go. And I think that's a really healing thing. I think this is going to be instead of an anxiety inducing event for me, I think it's going to be healing for me to go through these things. Okay, tops. Now I'm just going to start this process. I'm not going to video the entire thing, but I just want you to sort of like see the process that I have to go through to do this and that hopefully it's going to give you some some hope and some motivation to do this for yourself. Okay, so I'm going on physically hold each piece of clothing, I'm going to ask it if it brings me joy, I'm going to ask myself if it brings me joy, and then I'm either going to put it in the donation bag, or I'm going to set it here and then we're going to deal with how to organize it and put it away later. Okay, again, giving myself grace that this is probably not going to get finished today. It's probably going to be a multi stage thing for me. So I'm gonna go I'm gonna go as far as I can. So, again, anything that does not fit immediately is going away. This is a beautiful sweater but it has tills on it and I I'm probably not going to want to wear it with all nipples on it. Now I know I could shave the hills off, but I also know myself and I know I'm not going to do that. So if I put it away somewhere and say okay, I'm gonna shave the pills off. In fact, I have a pill shaver sitting right there on my on my dresser over there. I could totally do it right now if I wanted to. But this no longer brings me joy. So here we go.

Some of these are really easy. Thank you taped up that I love the way that it fits. And I appreciate wearing it to the gym. It is a little bit worn out but it is a gem tank top. I'm gonna say probably I may change my mind on that later. Giant poncho that does not look good on my body. No thank you and divine. I love this tape top. I do not love this tape top. Thank you. And goodbye. I love this one. This looks wonderful on me. I do not love this one. Thank you. Goodbye. This is all thank you bye. Bye. This is really joyful takes off for me. My dear friend gave this to me. When I was working with her and her husband. She She was my nutritionist and he was my coach. I have lovely feelings about this tank top. However, it doesn't fit me. So thank you. Thank you, Jessica and John Austin. And thank you Bedlam CrossFit and I love you and goodbye. That was hard. I have never loved this goodbye. I've never even worn this goodbye. It came in a pack in one of those Costco packs of three and I immediately hated it. And they should have just returned it because Costco will take anything back.

Does Not Fit Thank you and goodbye. Well does not fit. Thank you and goodbye. Well, I don't love this one. Thank you goodbye. Don't love this simply feeling right, this one has a hole in it, they feel dry. So this one I love. Okay, now this is about to get this, this will be a little bit easier. I just want to mention and give honorable mention to this pile of T shirts over here. Because this pile of T shirts came from my bottom drawer. I put them in that drawer because I knew I was probably never going to wear them again. Isn't that weird? But I hung on to them. Because in one of my former lives, I was acquired teacher and these are all the T shirts from my time teaching fire. They're either acquired T shirts or their T shirts that came from the school that I taught at. And we were only allowed to wear jeans on Friday. If we wore one of the official high school T shirts, it had to be a Clark High School t shirt in order for us to wear jeans on Friday. So I had a ton of these. Also, I bought a t shirt every October that was pink because October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And we can only wear jeans on Wednesdays and Fridays, if on Wednesdays we wear pink. So that's how ridiculous this is. So I have a ton of these T shirts for my former time as a fire teacher that I had put away and that I knew I was never going to wear again. So these I'm gonna think I'm gonna give a universal thank you to. And then what's really funny is also in that drawer, I had a ton of cute little pajama sets that I forgot existed, because I put them in a drawer of clothes that I knew I was never going to wear again. And the rest the other half of that drawer was my pajama drawer. And I completely forgot that it existed. So there's a ton of pajamas over here that I haven't worn in a year or more, because I put them in a place with things that I knew I was never going to wear. Like why would you even keep them if you knew you're never going to wear them. It's sentimental thing for me. So I'm going to do a general Thank you and goodbye to these T shirts. Okay, those were kind of the easy ones. Easy to get rid of. Now it gets a little bit harder because I have to start to consider other things. But I'm reminding myself as I'm going through this process, I'm having to remind myself several times that I'm not asking myself if I'm ever going to wear this again. And that's you saw me pausing on a couple of those pieces. And I started to think like, am I going to wear this like I liked the way this feels? Am I ever going to wear it? That's not the question. The question is, does this spark joy. And you may have seen there were a couple of T shirts that I pulled out of there that literally a smile came to my face. And it did spark joy, but I'm not going to wear it because it doesn't fit me right now. So it goes it goes in there and I have to thank it and let it go. I did want to point out one shirt over here that I came across because this is part of the Mormon body shame thing. This T shirt that I have in here is an undershirt called a shade shirt. And it is the same dimensions as one of the Mormon temple garments. And the deal is like you wear this and then even if you have a low cut top, your garments are still covered. And I used to wear this underneath a dress and I'll show that to you in just a second. So here's the dress that I would wear this shade shirt underneath because it was a tank top on the top and so I would wear this little shade shirt underneath it so that I could wear this dress with my sample garments. And I have a before and after picture to show you regarding this dress and I will do that as well. But the reason I wanted to show you this shirt is because of the body shame issue and I am so so happy to be getting rid of this shirt and anything else like it. It brings me joy to get rid of this shirt and I'm so happy to be going through this process for reasons like this. Okay, starting to make some progress. So this is the pile of shirts that I'm left with here. I've got two bags of clothes that are going to donation already and it's time to start on bottoms. Okay bottoms are done and I'm shocked at this tiny little pile. And now we are on to Dun dun dun dresses and jackets. Okay, well, ice ordered out about 6pm. It's about 930. Now I'm completely done with my closet and my drawers like every single piece of clothing in my room has been taken care of. I realized though, as I was putting bags out for the donation collection that I have two containers of cold weather clothes in my garage that I haven't gone through now according to Marie condos, rules, that means I don't get to have those clothes, they're just going to go away forever. And to be honest with you, most of them probably will, because they were either put in there because they were cold weather clothes that didn't fit me anymore, or they were summer clothes that didn't fit me anymore. So it's very possible that all of that is going to go into the donation pile. I also have a front hall closet that has all of my coats and jackets in it, which I do need to go through the majority of those I probably will keep because they're, you know, specific to whatever weather situation. So I'm not going to go through those yet though I consider those a separate project mainly because my bedroom closet was the goal tonight, and I'm so excited that I was able to get it done. I also did have a lot of help. My partner Samuel came by and he started taking things out to the garage that were going to be donated, he helped me throw away all my plastic hangers, which makes me feel so peaceful. I hated those plastic hangers. The ones I got from Costco are very thin, they're covered with a little felt material that keeps clothes from slipping off of them. And they just are super compact, and they're all one color. They're all black with a silver hanger on them. So they look really nice in the closet. I'm very happy with that. All in all, I ended up ended up donating about six bags of clothes, it was a lot more than I thought that I had no idea I had that many clothes in there, I ended up keeping just a few things for the gym, a few swimming suits, probably more than I should have kept on swimming suits, honestly. But in the summer, I'm gonna go through those again and sort of call out the things that don't that I don't absolutely love. I kept probably more tops than I thought. And I have a little confession to make. I ended up getting rid of all the four of my skirts. And I had quite a lot of them because of the Mormon uniform that I used to wear. But, and also because in my former life, I was a choir director and I did have to have performance attire, most of which needed to be black. So this brings me to my point I kept for skirts, they are all black. But they're all different. Like there's one that's made out of performance fabric that's much more casual. There's one that is a it almost looks like a suit skirt. Like for business things. It's knee length, it's very clean and professional. The other one is made of wool, and it has a big zipper that comes up the front so it's very different style. And then the last one is a high waisted pencil skirt. That is mid calf skirt. And it has a really stylish belt that goes with it that I really love. So I feel like even though the only skirts that I kept are all black, they're very different for different situations. And I think I'm just going to be happy with the way that they are. I ended up with way more dresses than I thought I would mainly because some of my dresses are casual and comfortable to wear. And I kept the two or three special occasion dresses that I have just because you know if I do need something fancy they're there. However, you know, I also set myself a an alarm to go through my closet again in 30 days, and I'm going to take out anything that I haven't worn or that I don't still love and I may end up removing any more items. So I'm really happy with the way things turned out. I really appreciate the Marie Kondo method of like giving gratitude for the things that I got rid of. And I'm really excited for the donations I'm going to be able to make to the women's shelter so that overall I just feel really good about the whole process. And I'm really excited to read the rest of the book, and to go through the rest of my house and just like declutter and get rid of everything. So I am going to continue to make some ADHD addition adventures in ADHD additions to go along with the midlife revolution. So I hope you'll join me for more of that and please like and share this video, share it with your friends, especially anybody who is struggling with adult ADHD. Anybody who you know who deals with clutter on a regular basis and has it as part of their life that they don't enjoy. Anybody who's deconstructing Mormonism and is free Feeling body shame or is sick of modesty culture and just wants to go through and get rid of some clothes and and things like that. Share it with the people who you know are going to benefit the most for from it. So as always, you know, liking and subscribing the videos is the best way to support the channel. I also do have a website at third dash verse.com That's where you can find my coaching. You can find links to the books that I've written. You can download a free chapter of my book and you can also download a free how to hire a therapist guide. So I hope that you guys have a wonderful day. I hope that this video helped you and please stay tuned for more adventures in ADHD