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The biggest mistake I made when I 'Kondo'd' my home

Marie Kondo’s books  "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up," published in 2015, and her 2016 follow-up"Spark Joy" — inspired me to clean out my closet last year.

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Kondo is a Japanese lifestyle celebrity who has the miraculous ability to help people declutter their homes for good. Her trick? Only keep things that “spark joy” or make you feel happy, and discard the rest.

Messy Room
Cher in "Clueless" should have kondo'd her closet. Clueless/Netflix

While cleaning my closet, there was one Kondo tip that I was unable to take to heart: Don't downgrade your clothes to "loungewear," or things that you might wear to lounge around your house when you're not in public.

"It seems a waste to get rid of something that is still perfectly usable, especially if you bought it yourself," Kondo writes in "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up." "[But] calling them [loungewear] merely delays parting with clothes that don't spark any joy."

Kondo herself writes about how she fell into this trap of demoting clothes she barely wore into loungewear she'd wear around the house.

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"Nine out of ten times I never wore them," she wrote.

She found the same thing was happening with her clients, who would admit they didn't like the clothes that they had downgraded to "loungewear." Instead of wearing these items around the house, they had simply put off the inevitable of having to discard the clothes later on.

When I read this section of the book, it didn't resonate with me. So when I started to 'kondo' my closet, a lot of t-shirts and ill-fitting clothing wound up in my drawer reserved for loungewear, work out clothes, and pajamas.

I had trouble parting with clothes I didn’t wear out of the house or that I considered too casual for work. I thought to myself, "I'll wear this to get groceries on a Sunday" or "This is too comfortable to give away."

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But have I worn them since tidying up my home? Nope.

I usually reach for the same pajama sets again and again and I prefer to look good in my gym clothes since I believe it helps me want to work out. And as for those Sunday grocery store runs? I'm putting on clothes that I like rather than my discarded "loungewear."

90% of what I downgraded to "loungewear" hasn't seen the light of day and now I find myself battling a full drawer of clothes I don't wear — precisely the problem I was having before I kondo'd my closet.

"This time at home is still a precious part of living," Kondo writes. "Its value should not change just because nobody sees us."

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The entire point of Kondoing your home is to fill your house with things that make you happy. If only I had listened to Kondo the first time around.

Time to give away those old t-shirts.

Cleaning
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