This next phase of KonMari iss the Komono category. Basically, it’s not clothes, books, papers, or sentimental items, but it’s e v e r y t h i n g else in your house. Even with this being my fourth go round, I was intimidated.
Luckily for me, because it is my fourth time, I have implemented many of Marie Kondo’s suggestions. For example: I do not have pens in multiple places around the house; all my bathroom stuff is in one place. I was able to mostly just go through each room (I went rooms and floors first), take things out, and get rid of a couple of items in each space—no collecting things from all around the house involved!
I started upstairs. Our room was good (though I’m already seeing where I’lll be able to sort through my clothes again post-baby, as several things are wearing out), as was the office, since I’d finished papers the previous week. My toddler’s room was also alright, though I did set aside just one rarely used or needed toy. I plan to wait a month, and if she doesn’t ask after it, donate it.
The two upstairs spaces that took any time at all, really, were the bathroom, which we all share, and the medicine baskets in the linen closet. And by time, I mean just a touch. It wasn’t difficult to go through, and I was still able to get rid of some things (incentive for truly applying the KonMari method!)
On the main level, our dining room, entry, and bathroom are all pretty empty; and our living room and cleaning closet are very organized. I still went through everything, but nothing needed to go.
Surprisingly, my fridge had a fair amount of stuff I could toss (and it’s rarely totally full!). In fact, I was able to rearrange things better, because of the space I freed up. And then there’s the pantry. This pantry…is one of the less organized spaces in our home. I did an initial arrangement when we moved in, but changed it to make more sense earlier this year. However, we still don’t have quiet the storage space (mostly the proper containers, so everything is currently spread out) desired, and so we had a lot of things on the floor. Most in a pool-colored crate, but others just strewn about with no place to go. I decided to remedy that (actually thinking we should add one more shelf next year, so we can have a b s o l u t e l y enough room, for sure). A lot of things were old, and thus tossed. We still have things on the floor, but I have them organized by category, instead of thrown into that crate willy-nilly. I think it’s an improvement.
I also took the time to organize my spice drawer, and found a duplicate, an expired one, and an empty bottle taking up precious room.
pickles fit in the side now! 
more room! 
use those aesthetic milk bottles!
before. terrible. 
after. an improvement.
before. bleh. 
after. finally decided what to put in my canisters!
With the top two floors done, it was time for the basement. Oh, the dreaded basement.
You see, we are in a much bigger house than our last apartment, but it still lacks great organizational space (hence us building in the cleaning closet, and an extra shelf in the pantry). As a result, our rubber maid bins, all our project equipment and materials, office supplies, old baby clothes, instruments, and everything else random, has to fit in the closet under the stairs—no light either—or in a regular-sized closet in the basement bedroom.
(We plan to build in a large closet eventually, for the plastic bins. Then the bedroom closet can be for exercise equipment + games and legos. Office things can go in a built in bookshelf cabinet we pan to build later, too. And under the stairs can be for everything else. Highly functional!)
Leaving out anything that was specifically my husband’s, I went through all the rubber maids, though I was pleased to see I had kept nothing superfluous. I did throw out quite a bit of random papers/trash from the gift wrap box, and from our multiple electronics (chords) boxes. The wire shelves we have for storage under the stairs was also a massive, massive mess. Like, that closet will not be a happy place to enter, but it could at least not be anxiety-inducing. With Todd’s help, we got most of it sorted in one go.
Later, though, we had to deal with the very top shelf (which I can’t even see), and the dreaded other closet. Now, that last closet has lots of sentimental, so I won’t have to deal with it quite yet, but no one wants to deal with the two worse closets in the house back-to-back.
I was completely relieved that the closet in the bedroom was mostly just untidy, and the non-sentimental items were pretty easy to deal with. In fact, I even have started planning how we can better store the things that have no real place in there (more built-ins!) Upsettingly, I found a huge (thankfully dead) spider in Todd’s loose legos.
Seung Jo, helping 
(just the desk)
Sentimental will take time, but it’s the very last official category, so I feel okay taking it on, especially as it’s basically all contained in one small closet. Stay tuned!
My KonMari Journey Part 1 – Clothes Part 2 – Books Part 3 – Papers
