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Minimalism: My conclusion after 18 months Magic Cleaning!

Magic Cleaning: From chaotic to minimalist?!

Since the beginning of January, the whole world is in the Magic Cleaning fever. Marie Kondo, the author of the book Magic Cleaning Amazon Affiliate Link is omnipresent! Whether on Netflix (-> Clean up with Marie Kondo), Spotify, Facebook, Udemy or Instagram: There is no way around the consistent mucking out this year. I bought the book of Marie K. many years ago and then with the implementation began. Today I want to show you how our home has changed since then. Contrary to the many reviews that I have read in the last few days, this book actually helped me. But look for yourself!

Previous contributions to the subject of minimalism & Magic Cleaning:

If you are interested in my history, I have now my previous blog posts on the subject Magic Cleaning / Minimalism link:

Here you will find, among other things print templates, which helped me to better structure our chaos!

How the order has affected our lives!

In my further contribution, I then told how the outer structure after a short time positive have affected our lives:

To the order I have one for myself budget created yours here can download for free.

The key to more order!

My most important findings of the last 1.5 years are:

  • The “normal” tidying up (ie clearing things from A to B) does not help. After a short while, it looks like we left. One has the feeling of never getting ready and constantly turns in a circle.
  • You do not have to be prepared for any strange situation!
  • No matter how cheap something is: not to buy it, corresponds to 100% discount!
  • The less you own, the easier it is to keep order.

So you really have to take the time, once in a while, to really pick up every part that you own and make up your mind for it. I can understand that Marie Kondo is ridiculed by many for her “Does it spark joy” approach, but I have to say that her approach was just right for me!

Is it even possible to maintain the structure??

After more than 1.5 years, I am convinced: Yes! It is possible. It’s with us anyway so neat as never before, although I invest much less time in tidying up. But I really have Massively mucked out and I separated from (almost) all things that I do not really like or that do not really mean anything to me.

Our second home in the last 1.5 years: the landfill!

At first I found it very difficult to separate myself from things. Meanwhile, I find it relatively easy, because I have noticed in the last 18 months, that I do not miss the sorted things. On the contrary!

Positive side effect: Since I learned how much effort it takes to dispose of things, my buying behavior has changed dramatically. I rethink purchases much more often and have 2018 e.g. just under 30 € for new Kle >-> On Instagram you can read what I have bought. Here in between, I always report “live” from my current projects.

The before / after comparison: what are the differences??

Since we had accumulated quite a few things in recent years, there were a corresponding number of construction sites that needed to be cleared. There are, among others:

My wardrobe (or my chest of drawers)

My age wardrobe is e.g. now a small one commode in which I keep my clothes folded according to the #konmari principle:

the question arises Instagram has been asked many times: No – the shirts do not have to be ironed again before wearing! Here’s how the folding method works:

Practical tip: If you are the First try folding method you want, you can just small instead of a new dresser Plastic boxes (for example from Ikea) in your wardrobe. I also did that initially because I was not sure if the method was really right for me. Cost and effort are so manageable!

The living room:

Unfortunately, I have no better picture before (-> I could not foresee then that the project could assume such dimensions). But that’s how it looked like with us:

After this muck out we have completely redesigned the room. Quite a difference, or?

The plant is not beautiful, but “Joy Joy”, because it reminds us of our wedding! ��

My desk:

Before: Creative chaos …

… now: structure! (So: Mostly at least):

Of course, I did not just clean up my real desktop, but also my virtual desktop (aka desktop) on the Mac. Also: The apps on my smartphone, the cards in my wallet, etc.! #wenndannrichtig

The bathroom

Tidy by Category?!

Here you can see an example of the Cleanup rule Tidy by Category – clean up by categories! To clean up the children’s books, I have all children’s Books from the whole house on a pile and then these are together with the children gone through. Then we looked for a place for the books we wanted to keep. We donated the remaining books.

The cellar

The largest construction site (it is still not 100% completed) is and will remain basement, cellar. We have a total of 3 basement rooms, one of which previously looked like this:

In the meantime it has become much better. Why we u.a. I have not been able to explain about 21 Ikea wrenches!

in the Hobby area the children can now be tinkered again:

The kitchen

And also in the kitchen a lot has changed – although not everything is recognizable on the first view:

Even in the drawers there is order now. This usually only lasts for a few weeks.

Magic Cleaning with children

Now I would like to briefly something to Theme Magic Cleaning with children (or partners) say. If you do not live alone, the implementation of a cleanup project u.U. relatively complicated. There are e.g. :

  • Partners who do not want to part with things
  • Children who rummage through the neatly folded and sorted by color clothes or distribute in the room

And anyway, hardly anyone keeps to the rule that everything should be put back in its place immediately. In any case, I have already received several feedback from mothers who have gone to great lengths to implement it, but were in the end frustrated because the rest of the family did not participate.

My opinion on this topic: You should basically sort out your own things first (for example, clothes) and remember that while you are currently motivated, the rest of your family does not necessarily go through the same phase. A degree Chaos & Tolerance basically belong to the everyday family life.

Besides, you should consider with every action, whether this really makes sense and also fits the age of the children. We fold the clothes of my son e.g. still in the usual way (-> sometimes he takes over with himself -> his DIY clothes folding board ), because he does not care how his clothes are folded and I do not have to be so annoyed when the closet looks chaotic again after a short time. It’s his closet, after all. My husband also folds his clothes in the usual way, our daughter has been infected by my action and has now replaced her wardrobe with a chest of drawers. Since she folds the clothes herself, she handles them accordingly. That too works.

How to sort out things that belong to the whole family?

After all, I cleaned up after the 4-box principle and asked the rest of the family to look through it shortly before disposing of the “Can away” box. That worked amazingly well.

My conclusion:

Even though there are occasional relapses in stressful phases (that is, when we travel a lot), overall I find that I am much better organized and that we all feel much more comfortable in our home. Even otherwise, a lot has changed: I just feel happier, have more time and no longer feel stuck in a hamster wheel.

Whether that’s because I want all this tasks no longer in the back of my mind (-> you should definitely clean up the basement..etc.), because I have no time with the Search for documents and access data waste, or simply at the Quiet, who radiate the no longer crowded rooms? I dont know. But it does not matter – after all, it depends only on the result. And that’s good! ��

So, that was my contribution to Theme Minimalism / Magic Cleaning. As always, if you share this post or tell me what you think about it, I look forward to it. If you have written your own articles about Magic Cleaning, you can also link them in the comments.

Here are a few posts from my blogger colleagues who have also dealt with this topic:

In addition, there are now some Facebook groups such. these ones where you can talk.


Tip: The audio book Magic Cleaning is also available Spotify! Plus, you can easily listen to it for free if you sign up for one Audible trial subscription decides (-> unsolicited advertising).

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Christina Cherry
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