rachelmanija | Thursday KatMari

Photos below cut of decluttering in progress, with "helpful" feline assistance.

Please no comments about how you're uninterested in decluttering, you don't want to declutter, or that decluttering, Marie Kondo, or people interested in decluttering are bad and wrong. If this is a topic you dislike or find uninteresting, please scroll past this post or blacklist the decluttering tag.

I cannot believe how much progress I've made. This is the first time in my life I've ever wanted to tidy up. That is, it's the first time I've ever enjoyed the process, as opposed to wanting the end result. (Except for book arranging, which I've always enjoyed.) That gives me so much motivation to keep going, as I've never been much good at doing things that I don't enjoy without some kind of extremely compelling end result, such as getting a paycheck or passing a class.

I unfortunately failed to take a bunch of "before" photos, so the apparent "before" are really "midway" - assume there were more stacked up boxes and so forth before I encountered Marie Kondo.

Here is a lifetime's worth of accumulated jewelry, most of which I hardly ever wore as it was not convenient to find and was a jumble of boxes, little bags, boxes and little bags crammed into larger boxes, etc:

Here is the tidied-up jewelry arrangement. I am trying to wear one piece of jewelry and/or one item of clothing I like and don't regularly wear every day, because all the things I've kept are things I like and which still fit me, and it makes me happy to wear them. It's much easier to do so when I can find them and don't feel vaguely guilty when I look at how messy it all is.

The glass bangles are from India and when I was a little girl. I went through and tried every single one on. Some turned out to be cracked, and I threw them out. The majority no longer fit me, and I gave them away, hopefully to eventually get to some kid who will love them. The ones you see are the ones that I can still wear - and now I will wear them.