I’m usually pretty late to the party when it comes to trends of any kind - the last to read, buy, or watch just about anything. But I’m proud to feel apart of the crowd this time around because I finished “Tidying Up With Marie Condo” on Netflix earlier this week and many people are starting and finishing the series right along with me.

First off, I have to say how incredibly wonderful this show is. If you haven’t seen it, I couldn’t recommend it more. I’ve always been a tidying fan, but this show takes organization to an almost spiritual level and in the most adorable way possible. Marie is charming and sweet and her philosophy on items in your closet and your life “sparking joy” is the perfect way to sum up the feeling you feel when you hold or use an item that you truly love. And not only are her mentality and personality a winning team - her organization inspirations and folding and sorting hints are super helpful and useful, too! Plus, a little yet well-deserved shout-out goes to her amazing translator, Marie Iida, who takes on each and every episode with a smile and really adds personality to each moment of the show - not that Marie needs any help in that department.

I loved the whole series so much and I know I’m not alone when I say this, but her method really inspired me to take a look at my collected life and do some sorting through. I’ve seen the tidying up craze all over the place on social media lately and now I can officially say that I’m along for the ride.

Because I live in an apartment, most of the stuff that I could use the KonMari method to sort through is still back at home with my parents. But rest assured, next time I’m home for more than a few hours, I’ll be doing a complete overhaul of everything in my childhood bedroom. Let me know if you’d want to see me document my efforts with that in a blog post, too. I’m sure it’ll be quite the endeavor.

That said, I do have quite an extensive wardrobe here in Troy. And when Ethan was choosing my clothes for my Boyfriend chooses my outfits series (which you can read here), I realized that a good portion of what’s in my closet either doesn’t fit properly, or doesn’t, as Marie puts it, “spark joy”.

So, as I was watching Marie sort other peoples’ lives, I sorted my clothes.

These piles are everything that I decided to give another home. I am always shocked - even though I’m no stranger to closet clean-outs - to see how much stuff I’ve been holding on to without any real justification behind it. There really is something therapeutic about cutting down.

Usually when I move things out of my closet, I bring them to my nearest Goodwill. I’m a big proponent of donating your things to help others - and that’s where quite a bit of these clothing items will end up this time as well. However, my favorite YouTuber Carrie Dayton has an entire playlist dedicated to body confident fashion, thrifting, and sorting through her closet, and she introduced me, in a few of her videos, to the idea of selling my nicer items on Poshmark. In case you haven’t heard, Poshmark is an application and website where you can sell things from your closet and buy pieces from other folks’ closets, too. I recently just downloaded the app thanks to Carrie and thought that maybe this might be a fun little experiment to do with some of my favorite pieces and see what happens. I’d love it if my clothes could get a second chance in someone else’s closet and make them even happier than they made me - that’s the goal.

If you’re interested, here’s the link to my Poshmark Closet.

I’m grateful to Marie for her inspiration and for all the wisdom she shares on her show. I won’t say that without her I wouldn’t have ever gone through my closet and downsized, because I would have gotten around to it eventually. But thanks to her, I now understand the best way to differentiate the things that I should keep around and what I should let go. Her mantra of joy sparking can be so easily applicable to so many relationships you have with things in your life - from people to closets. And thanks to Marie, both of mine now spark joy for me.