If you’re anything like me, you’ve been intrigued by all the rage that’s been the new Netflix show Tidying Up With Marie Kondo. One day, I decided to binge-watch the show and quickly became obsessed with it. The concept of the show is that Marie goes into a family’s house and helps them tidy up the clutter step-by-step, resulting in positive effects on the family’s relationships and mental states. The show is overall really inspiring and definitely makes you want to tidy up your own things, too!
Marie has a very specific strategy for folding called the KonMari Method, which involves carefully origami-like folding all of your clothes down into a tiny rectangle that can stand up on its own. As a result, you can store your clothes in a drawer standing up side-by-side so that each piece is visible rather than stacked on top of each other. After watching a few episodes of the show, I decided I needed to face my own messy drawers and test this folding strategy out for myself! (Also I’m sorry this is the most Virgo article that could ever be written, I can’t help it). Here’s some of the pros and cons of the process and results of testing it out:
1. Pro: It made me more aware of the clothing I own
A huge part of Marie’s tidying process is getting rid of clothing pieces that don’t “spark joy” for you. The process of dumping out all of your clothes into a pile and having to look at each piece one by one definitely makes you think about whether you really need all those clothes are not. After looking at and carefully folding all of my clothes, I realized that half of the things I have in my drawer I don’t really wear and I should probably get rid of when I have the chance.
Here’s what my clothes from one drawer looked like before I folded them (yikes):
Photo by Author
2. Con: The process is extremely tedious
I thought that I would be able to fold all of my drawers pretty quickly, however I soon realized that the process of folding each one in the KonMari Method actually can take a really long time. The folding strategy itself is a little complicated (like I said, origami-like) and it took me a while of looking at tutorials on Pinterest to get the hang of it. After that, it went a little faster, but it still was a little bit frustrating how long it took me to get through my things when folding them this way. For a while, I wasn’t really sure if it was worth doing this because it was so time-consuming.
3. Pro: It’s good for small spaces
I definitely recommend this folding strategy to college students or people living with minimal storage space. I think the rectangle-shape is definitely the best way to minimize the amount of space your clothing takes up in your drawer. I previously thought that my one drawer was overflowing, but once I actually folded them and placed them upright, they fit with more than enough space!
Here’s my drawer after all of those clothes were folded:
Photo by Author
4. Con: Some pieces of clothing are hard to fold like this
This may be more of a problem for someone like myself who owns a lot of different styles of clothing than just t-shirts, but I found that some of my pieces were a little tough to fold up in Marie’s recommended fashion. I own some bodysuits, shirts with funky straps and sleeves, and crop tops that were a little frustrating to figure out, so I ended up just kind of giving up and rolling them up like a messy burrito the best I could.
So no, my drawer did not look like this one, which is a little unsatisfying.
5. Pro: Once you’re all done, it’s easy to see your clothes in the drawer
A big pro to this strategy is that you can easily see every single clothing piece you have in the drawer at first glance rather than having to dig through and see what might be hiding underneath something else. This will definitely be helpful if you’re ever rushing to get ready. Never dig through your drawers for that one specific shirt ever again!
Image by Author
Overall Thoughts:
I think that the KonMari Method is very good in theory. When you really need to get your life together and do a full clean-up of your room, or if you just like to keep things perfectly organized at all times, going through all of your clothes like this and carefully folding all of them can be really satisfying. However, the folding process itself can definitely be tedious and a little frustrating, so I can see someone with short patience giving up on it quickly. It also might be difficult to keep up with and put everything back exactly like this all the time, especially if you’re a person who gets dressed really quickly and tends to throw things back in the drawer like me. Overall, I recommend trying this out to anyone who needs tips to revamp their organization, make extra space in their dresser, or who likes to be super tidy, but it may not be the best for everyone. Next time you do your laundry or have some free time, give it a try– Marie will be proud!