KonMari method proves to be a grueling mental challenge

Looking at the massive heap of shirts on my bed, I realized that I had committed to another two hours of sorting and folding. It was 10:30 p.m. — I had been going through my clothes for three hours — and my face glowed with sweat.

It was the second day of my tidying renegade inspired by organization expert Marie Kondo’s KonMari method that earned her a Netflix original series that follows Kondo as she helps people tidy their homes. The method, which Kondo describes in her No. 1 New York Times bestselling book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” urges the tidier to ask themselves one essential question about their stuff: “Does this spark joy?” In turn, this question has been immortalized as a meme.

KonMari has six basic guidelines: commit yourself to tidying up, imagine your ideal lifestyle, finish discarding before storing items, tidy by category rather than location, follow the right order (clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous and sentimental items) and ask yourself if it sparks joy.

I started off by tidying my desk, drawers and shelves, not realizing that I had broken the fifth rule of KonMari — follow the right order. The process took me almost five hours, resulting in three boxes of discarded items.

Certain items were easy to eliminate, so I quickly filled a box with useless accumulated items like random trinkets, old pens and old chapsticks. Once I weeded these out from the pile of items stripped from my storage, I had to confront what Kondo calls “sentimental items.”

Wary of falling into the time trap of looking through old letters and photos, I looked through each quickly, thanked them for their service and discarded them. Although I had initially scoffed at the idea of thanking inanimate objects, I found that this mindset helped me let go of things that I once cherished, but were no longer practical to keep. Gone was the small rubber golden retriever I had received in my Christmas stocking and gone was the Newton’s cradle I had once repaired using fishing line and superglue.

As the clear surface area of my desk and floor increased, my mental capacity to make decisions dwindled. The constant decision-making of the previous hours left me mentally drained, but I was committed to staying on track to finish these items and leave the next day for my clothes. Of course, my mom chose this time of mental crisis to pick over my discarded items, holding each thing up and asking me if I was sure I wanted to discard it.

Although the second-guessing and repeated mutterings of the word “wasteful” did not help my cause, my shelves soon looked as neat as a staged living space at IKEA.

The next day, still admiring my work, I threw my clothes (by category, of course) onto my bed for evaluation. At this point, my closet had become a wreck of clothes that I had lazily strewn on the floor for a week in anticipation of the great day of cleaning.

I was appalled at the number of pieces that I had mindlessly accumulated for years, with some items dating as far back as the fifth grade.

For years, my clothes had been organized in stacks, which would easily become overturned in desperate times of flipping through outfits in a time crunch. Needless to say, I was blown away by her simple and elegant logic of folding clothes to stand upright to be viewed easily and simultaneously.

I tried on scores of pants, shirts and outerwear, mindlessly listening to an ‘80s rock playlist (Kondo suggests to tidy in silence, but I chose to break that rule to keep myself going).

Finally, I reached my sock drawer, which would always burst with pairs of bunched up socks — my weakness and article of clothing that I buy impulsively and recklessly. I considered skipping the sock category since I was tired and didn’t expect to discard many socks, anyway, but from deep in my soul, I felt Marie Kondo’s reproachful disapproval for my chaotic army of socks.

At the end of the day, discarding items of clothing was less mentally grueling than other mementos in my room, albeit tossing my obnoxious striped toe-socks wrenched my heart.

The KonMari folding method has proven to be a sustainable arrangement that has kept my clothes tidy and visually pleasing. Following through with KonMari felt productive, and the experience engendered newfound respect for Marie Kondo, who must pack more mental toughness in her 4-foot 7-inch body than I ever could have.