I’m sure many of you have heard of Marie Kondo – a Japanese organizing consultant. She rose to fame with her first book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up.” Her basic principle is to discard every item that “doesn’t spark joy” and put the rest in order. Of course, there’s a little more behind that simple principle but I’ll get to that later in the series. Marie Kondo has trademarked her way of tidying as the KonMari Method. Not too long ago I found out that one can get certified in this method and become a KonMari consultant. I decided that that’s what I’m going to do and I will share my journey here.
Effects Of Reading “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up”
When I first read Marie Kondo’s book, I was fascinated by her approach. In fact, I could relate to many parts of her book so well as if I had written it myself. I’m someone who likes to keep my belongings to the bare minimum (I consider myself a minimalist after all). That doesn’t mean that I don’t have things I could still get rid of though. I do. But the point is that I’m living with someone who has a much harder time letting go of things. My husband is that person who rarely discards of items if I don’t make him to. Although he’s come around in the last year or two after we started reading the book together.
Yes, I made him read the book to me – one or two short chapters every night. And there were countless occasions where I said to him “look, I told you!” I could relate to the content so much it was crazy. But I also learned quite a few new things that made me think further and evaluate my own way of thinking about decluttering and organizing.
After we were about two thirds through the book (we never finished it together to this date), we began to put some principles into practice. For instance, we discarded manuals we had kept but never used, discarded of several books and my husband organized his sock drawers applying the KonMari folding methods. I was quite amazed. But we never followed it through in a thorough way.
Becoming A KonMari Consultant
I recently listened to an interview with Marie Kondo and somehow this made me pick up her book again, look her up on Instagram and visit her website. I discovered that she’s now offering a certification program in the United States. The program is for people who are interested in becoming organizing professionals – specifically, KonMari consultants – or who just want to go deeper into the method for themselves.
For the past couple of months, I’ve played with the idea of becoming a professional organizing and lifestyle consultant. However, I knew I would need to get some sort of certification or training (despite my personal love for all things minimizing and organizing) and hadn’t quite found what I was looking for. So when I discovered the KonMari program I knew it was the missing piece I needed.
KonMari Consultant Training Program
So my plan is to go through the program, get certified and eventually start my own consulting business. In order to hold myself accountable and show others who are interested in the program as well, I will document the whole process here. To give you a little overview of what lies ahead, here are the seven steps that I need to complete:
- Read the two Marie Kondo books “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up” and “Spark Joy”
- Tidy my home
- Attend a seminar
- Join and participate in the KonMari community via their Facebook group
- Submit tidying reports of the first (at least) two clients (min. 50 hours)
- Complete online assessment exam
- Apply for certification
Right now I’m reading the books and taking notes. Read the next post (part 2 of the series) in which I share important principles of the KonMari method and how to get started decluttering.
Download your FREE KonMari Category Checklist incl. a summary of the method’s core principles to get started tidying on your own!
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