If we’re being honest, I hate cleaning. I love the results – everything freshly scrubbed and put in neat little rows. But the process is awful, and everyone knows it. That’s why I was surprised to find out that one the hottest trends coming into 2019 was, of all things, organization.
“Does it spark joy?” The bestselling author asks, standing in front of a small Los Angeles family and the accumulated detritus of their lives. Most people are familiar with the cleaning guru from either her book, ‘The life-changing magic of tidying up’ or the Netflix show ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.’ Both are massively popular, with millions of books sales and episode downloads respectively. The lifestyle phenomenon was even named one of Time magazine’s top 100 most influential people, right up there with Nicole Kidman and Prince Harry.
You might be asking yourself – how is her cleaning any different than what I’m doing? Kondo’s method (Kon Mari) is heavily influenced by a mixture of Japanese culture and the principals of feng shui. You’re meant to take your clothing or knick-knacks out of their normal places and make instinctual choices about whether or not they are important enough to stay. Which, I suppose, is fairly par for the course as far as a closet clean-out goes. But Kondo manages to give the whole thing a spiritual air by suggesting you should say goodbye to your clothes and thank them for the purpose they held in your life. This helps to ease any lingering guilt or attachments you might have and push you towards finally decluttering.
Another facet of her method is the notion that everything has its place. Even if you don’t have a dresser to store clothes in, you can get creative with the amount of space you do have and find alternate storage solutions. Usually this is in the form of boxes and storage baskets, but this also could include stand-up apothecary shelves or desktop organizers. All of these things can come from pieces you already own, or new items that you bring in to enhance your existing aesthetic.
So, in honor of this new trend I have put together a list of IMAX’s favorite organizational décor. Maybe you’ll find a piece that will help you get a jump start on your spring cleaning.
