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Declutter your life: How to create a home that 'sparks joy'

Too often people wrap up their worth in their belongs, but your worth is greater than your things. What you keep in your home should ‘spark joy’.

Do you feel it in the air?

It is spring cleaning season!  That can sound like a dreaded task, but if you have a plan to tackle the clutter, you can get it done efficiently. 

One of the biggest challenges with decluttering your home is parting with your things. Our home is a collection of things we have either inherited or spent money on so it's sometimes hard to part with those items. Too often people wrap up their worth in their belongs, but your worth is greater than your things. What you keep in your home should ‘spark joy’.

There are a lot of different methods to declutter, but the one we are going to focus on this week is the KonMari method.  It was developed by Marie Kondo and you may have either read her book, ‘The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing' or seen the very popular Netflix series about it.

We're going over the very basics, so if you want a more detailed look at this method, I do suggest ordering her book or checking out the Netflix series.

There are three big principles of the method. They are as follows:

1.     Tidy up by category, not by room… because if you do it by room, you find yourself just moving your clutter from spot to spot.

2.     Put everything from that category together and put your hands on each item and really ask yourself.  Does this spark joy?

If it does, keep it.  If it does not, thank it for its contribution to your life and then set it aside to be donated.

3.     Take your joy-filled items and put them in a place that is visible, accessible and organized.

It can be hard at first, but there is a beautiful nirvana in seeing an organized home. So this week we will give you a quick overview of the categories and method. 

Remember, don’t wrap up your worth in your belongings – your things should not feel oppressive in your life, it should spark joy!

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