This has been a long time coming.

Slowly, over the course of the last year, we have been making more conscious decisions about what we have in our home, what we spend our money on, what we put out into the world.

But in the last little while – we have both needed a boost. We found we were cleaning and purging the house only to have it get all messed up and cluttered again within a couple of weeks. I’d clean my studio and put everything in its place and then find I was searching high and low for my favourite multi-bit screw driver, my paint thinner, my tape measure. Nothing was really working despite our best efforts.

So we made a decision to start Decluttering with KonMari

What is KonMari? Well – it’s based on the booked by Marie Kondo, called the Life Changing Magic of Tidying up. You can get your copy here. (*Update!* Now that we’re finished this process we 100% recommend buying the book. It’s sorta impossible to achieve great results without it.)

Until a few weeks ago, our guest room looked like this. All the time. No matter what we did, it ended up as a dumping ground for stuff. And at the end of the day – we never even knew what stuff was in there. 

We just finished our foyer makeover – which really helped us streamline what we need in that area of the house and it’s been working much better for us now – but we are turning our attentions to the rec room next.

The room is TERRIBLE.  Worse than the guest room.

As such, it’s a mish mash of mismatched furniture, old blankets and pillows, mementos, weird art and all other sorts of miscellany.

We want it to be our sanctuary. We LOVE heading down there on Fridays with a bottle of wine and a pizza, a board game and a movie. It’s literally our favorite thing. It only makes sense we want the room to exude that relaxed and family feel.

It’s going to be a monster project.

We have to redo the floors, the walls, the ceilings, the lighting and the furniture – and we knew there wouldn’t be any point to fixing up the room only to fill it back up again with a whole lotta crap.

ALSO – we have been kinda open about our struggles to have a family. And after two years of really really hard soul-searching, we both feel like we might have the courage to start the process again. We have no idea where this will lead us. It’s possible it will lead us to more heartache. But it’s also possible that it won’t.

As such, we want our house to REALLY feel like a home. Full of only things we love and cherish, that serve our family – that Spark Joy.

So this post is the beginning of that process. With the help of the (life changing) book called The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up, we have begun a journey to Decluttering using KonMari – a Japanese method of simplification and tidying that promises no relapses and lasting results.

We are not alone in this journey! We will be taking it along with these other fine bloggers and we’ll all be updating our progress on Sundays for the next couple of months.

UPDATE!! Here’s a full list of our posts!

• KonMari: – Starting the Journey
• Week 2: The Closet
• Week 3: Accessories
• Week 4: Books
• Week 5: Tools & Storage
• Week 6: The Kitchen
• Seven Things I Learned in Seven Weeks of KonMari
• NEW! The Five Unexpected Joyful Benefits of the KonMari Method

In fact, here are all the other blogs who are participating and, today, sharing THEIR visions for #SparkingJoy.

A Journey to Sparking Joy:

Anderson & Grant
Making it in the Mountains
DIY Passion
Dwelling in Happiness
Zevy Joy
Cupcakes & Crinoline
Lost in the Found
The Happy Housie

What we can tell you is this process is not easy. It involves a lot of heart talking and answering some significant questions about who you are and why you hold onto things in the physical realm.

We can also tell you that we have already begun with stages one and two and are feeling an incredible lightness of being.

For this first post – we are supposed to lay out our ‘vision’ for why we are using KonMari.

So our hope is at the end we have a home that feels light. It feels happy. It allows for us to spend effortless time doing the things we love with the people we love. It’ll be easier to clean and therefore live in. It won’t feel forced or over done.

Our hope is that in the end, we feel just right.

As we go through each stage, we will further refine our vision depending on what it is we are tackling. Next week, for example, is all about clothing and closets. We are both on our way to a modular wardrobe and we did some preparations prior to starting this particular KonMari – so we’ll be explaining all of that too.

This is going to be great fun. And hopefully you’ll enjoy following along with us 🙂 and our other Joy Sparking Bloggy Friends…

Want to SPARK JOY? Take the JOURNEY? SHOP our KonMari Survival Kit – You can totally do this!

Here are some of our other posts you might find joyful! 😉

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