Week 5 of the Marie Kondo Tidy Challenge was by far the most time-consuming week. Week 5 of the Marie Kondo 8-Week Challenge focuses on komono, which is everything not included in clothes, books, papers, and sentimental items.
How on earth anyone could fit all of the komono into a one-week time frame is beyond me!
We are currently on our 4th week of sorting through all of our komono. I don’t think we have an excessive amount of stuff in our house, but it sure is taking a long time to get through.
The fact that we aren’t finishing our komono during the allotted 1-week time frame given during the challenge doesn’t bother me. I know from reading Marie Kondo’s books that tidying up needs to be done within a “short” timeframe, but her books use the time frame of within a year.
Don’t be disheartened if your komono is taking forever to get through, just keep going and take it one day and week at a time.
Breaking Komono Into Categories
The first tip Marie Kondo recommends for Week 5 is to break your komono into categories.
On her website for the challenge, she gives examples of equipment, supplies, electronics, bath/beauty supplies, and tools.
My list was far more extensive!
- CDs, movies
- Video games, board games, card games, puzzles
- Make-up, skin care, hair stuff
- Electrical equipment (cords, cameras, phone accessories)
- Office supplies
- Household supplies
- Craft/Art supplies
- Workout equipment
- Gun Stuff
- Woodworking tools
- Regular tools
- Kitchen – tools/food
- Hunting stuff
- Figurines
- Holiday decorations
- Regular Decorations
- Towels, bedding, blankets
- Outdoor equipment
- Baby stuff
- Other: misc b-day decorations, junk drawer
- Animal supplies
Additional Tips on Komono
1. Tidy Your Items First
Marie Kondo recommends tidying first the items or categories in the house that belong only to you. I found this to be helpful because I was able to get working on the Week 5 tasks when I had time as opposed to trying to organize a time for me and my husband to both work on tidying.
It also means that you can get through an entire category by yourself right away. You don’t have to stop to consider the impacts items may have on others.
2. Be Grateful for Necessary Things
There are many items around the house that are necessary. These same items may not bring you joy. Marie Kondo recommends being grateful for them when the time comes to tidy them.
The example she used in her book that stands out to me was tools. Thank the tool for being there for you when something breaks and you need it there to help you fix it.
3. DVDs/CDs are Similar to Books
Going back to Week 3 of the tidy challenge, Marie Kondo recommends not listening to or watching the CDs and DVDs you are tidying.
Similar to how reading books would impact you, doing so would cloud your brain and prevent you from really knowing what would bring you joy.
I almost fell into doing this with a few movies and CDs. The thought I had was, what is the harm in watching the movie one last time before I get rid of it? I figured I could just watch the movie one last time as a sendoff.
Thankfully, I got too tired by the end of my tidying session to do so. I’m convinced that if I had, I would have ended up keeping the movie.
Similarly, I had a few CDs in my collection with an artist’s name I didn’t recognize. I couldn’t remember where the CDs even came from.
I brought them upstairs to listen to them to see if I even liked the music. Thankfully, my CD player was blocked by some Christmas stuff and I didn’t get around to it. I brought them back to the donate pile. If I couldn’t get to listen to the CDs within a week’s time, I wouldn’t listen to them regularly anyway.
My husband did tell me the CDs came from a live show we were at for another artist. I must have liked them enough to purchase the CDs, but they clearly didn’t have a lasting impact on me like my other music did.
That’s how I knew what to get rid of for my music. If it stood the test of time and I still listen to it, I knew it still brings me joy.
4. Stationary Tips
Marie Kondo had a few extra tips in this section. For pens and other writing utensils, you need to check to make sure they still write in addition to checking if they spark joy.
If a pen doesn’t write, throw it away.
She also offered some storage tips for stationery items. Paper stationery items should be stored by other papers such as your documents or books. I stored all of mine in the empty file cabinet drawer that we had after tidying our papers in Week 4.
For the office supply type items, Marie Kondo recommends to get small containers and to store stuff upright within those containers.
This is an area I struggle with. I don’t particularly have many small containers laying around my house to store stationary type items in.
I know that the challenge gets into storage later on, so I may wait to finalize my stationery storage until then.
5. Free Items
If they don’t spark joy, get rid of the free items. This is a category that Gretchen Rubin gets into in some detail in her book “Outer Order, Inner Calm”.
One of the ways to prevent this sort of stuff from getting into your house in the first place is not taking it. It is as simple as saying “No thank you,” when someone offers you a free item.
Just get in the habit of turning free items down. When I read that tip in Gretchen’s book, I immediately started it and it has prevented me from gathering many more free items I wouldn’t want.
Free items are something you typically grab thinking, “Cool. It’s free. No harm in taking it.” I know I had that mindset in college. What college kid doesn’t like free stuff?
Well, then you get it home and realize you don’t actually have a use for the free stuff, but you hold on to it anyway because you feel like you should.
Get rid of it and all the guild that holding on to the free stuff brings. It is so freeing.
6. Remainder of House as you Progress
One item that Marie Kondo doesn’t bring up in her book, but I feel like I should note here. The mess gets worse before it gets better. As you are tidying, you are getting rid of stuff first. Then at the very end, you find the final homes for everything.
This means that until the very end of the challenge, most stuff is in limbo and stored in random spots. For each clean shelf I have a picture of, know that there is at least one other, if not two that is a total mess as I work through the clutter.
Where I differed from Marie’s Recommendations on Komono
Marie Kondo recommends gathering leftover scraps from the kitchen and making a broth. I’m just not that into making my own broth and we didn’t have a ton of scraps that would make sense to put into broth.
That step would have been too stressful for me, so I skipped it! I don’t feel like I missed out on anything.
She recommends tidying your own items first. I started off that way, and it really got us set on a good path.
I was able to get through more categories by doing my own first.
But, when you have a child, you need to work your joint tidying into your schedule when you can. When we were able to get a babysitter before we had finished doing our individual categories, we took it!
We took that time to tidy our kitchen and it felt so good that those items are done!
Feeling After Week 5 of the Marie Kondo Tidy Challenge
Week 5 of the Marie Kondo Tidy Challenge has been exhausting and tiresome! If any stage is going to lose you along the tidying process, it is this one.
Truthfully, I don’t think anyone could possibly accomplish the komono stage in one week unless they took an entire week’s vacation and dedicated all their time to it.
We have made a huge dent in our komono work and still have a way to go. The most time-consuming section of komono so far has been our kitchen. All together it probably took between 6-8 hours to go through everything including food.
We finally progressed through all the small stuff – like make-up, medicine, and cleaning supplies. Though small categories, these all really add up in the end.
Since we aren’t quite done, I can’t say for sure how this week has fully impacted my emotions. I will say that it does feel good to continue to get rid of the unused items that no longer bring us joy.
It also feels good to actually go through all of our items and throw away expired things such as food and medicine.
Once we are fully done with Week 5, I will feel so much freer. Free from the burden of all the items I don’t use and the guilt of having so much stuff.
I imagine quite a bit of that feeling will come when we actually remove the items from our home. Right now, everything is piled on a table in our basement, waiting to be donated. Just the idea that I still have that task left to do is weighing on my mind.
If you can, I recommend donating and getting rid of your items on the same day or quickly afterwards. It really helps to alleviate the weight that your possessions have on your mind.
Take the Challenge With Me!
Right now, I am looking forward to finally finishing up the full komono that makes up week 5. I have high hopes that in the next two weeks we will be able to finish it up!
As we continue to work our way through Week 5 of the 8-Week Tidy Challenge, our home is slowly becoming less cluttered. We are finding that we actually do have enough room to store our items. We even have shelves with open spaces!
When we first started the challenge, I felt like our house and possessions were starting to close in on me in a claustrophobic sort of way. That feeling is slowly starting to alleviate as we move more items out of our house.
We are more easily able to find items in our home. The closets look cleaner and more organized and slowly everything is finding a “home”.
If you are working your way through the challenge with me, don’t get discouraged. While it is called the 8-Week Challenge, it may take you longer to get through it.
That is okay!
Everyone moves at their own pace and has their own responsibilities to get done besides the tidying. Make sure to not let it get you down or make you feel too anxious if you fall behind.
Take it one day at a time and slowly work your way through the tidying steps!
If you’re participating, how is your tidying going? What is one area of your house that you’d like to tidy in the upcoming year?
