Kon Mari: Item organization for students

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TalTech Blog

7 min readSep 2, 2020

This is the next part of my series of posts discussing the Kon Mari organization philosophy developed by Japanese Marie Kondo. Previously, I took a look at how to organize all of the different types of papers you have. This time, I’m taking a look at how to organize all of the other items you might have that are neither articles of clothing, books, or papers. These are called “komono” items in Kon Mari.

General principles

The most important principle is to know the subcategories. Compile a list of subcategories either by using the list I have compiled at the conclusion of this post or devise your own. It really depends on your current living arrangements as a student. Once you have the list ready, you can begin gathering all your items around your home into their own piles/boxes/bags. You can use tags, pieces of paper, or masking paper with the names of the categories written on them as indicators for each category and place them on the floor/tables/counters/bags/boxes to aid you in staying focused.

If you estimate only have one or two items from a specific category, don’t make specific categories for them, instead, make an own category for them. Ideally, all of these items should have some special value to them (and I’m not talking in terms of their monetary costs) but rather in how they enrich your day-to-day life. Think about their builds and usefulness and other qualities that make you feel gratitude for having these items at your disposal to aid you in your day to day life.

Writing supplies

This category comprises of all the kinds of tools for writing and working with sheets of papers, such as pens, pencils, erasers, scissors, hole punchers, staplers, rulers, and paperclips. As you are organizing items from this category, get rid of items that are nearing the end of their span of use, or those of inferior quality, such as advertisement pens you have received for free.

Since I have now taken up art, I have quite an extensive assortment of pens, pencils, watercolor pencils, paint tubes, etc. to organize. I will come back to them in their own category. But I still do have regular tools mentioned above around the desk and some regular pencils and pens. Pencils and pens each have their own small box on a shelf next to my desk and likewise, I have a tray containing a stapler, hole puncher, and scissors. I keep smaller supplies such as staples, paperclip, and tape on their own separate tray.

Paper Sheets

Empty paper sheets I have simply separated into two piles which I keep in a drawer of my desk, which is lined paper and unlined paper. Each of these piles also has notebooks and flipbooks. As you are organizing this category, you might encounter notebooks or flipbooks which may have been used by only a few pages. Check to see if these notes might prove to be of some use to you (see my previous post on organizing papers.) Then cut those pages away and either save them or dispose of them. Either way, you now have a perfectly usable notebook or flipbook for any future projects and you have saved a trip to the bookstore to buy a new one.

Electronic cables

This category comprises all the cords for the electronic appliances you have. Chargers, link cables, headphones just to name a few. Gather them all into a single pile, look through and coil the ones you have a use for in the future. Some cables, such as those for portable videogame consoles usually have clearly visible indicators for the specific appliance they pair with, but others may not. Write on a piece of tape the specific appliance each cable pairs with, coil them up and then store all of the cables in a single place.

Hygiene supplies

For hygiene supplies (i.e. hairbrushes, combs, hair products, toothbrush, toothpaste, moisture cream, deodorant) I tend to keep them all in a single bag, storing them in an upright position. When traveling, you can then simply close the whole bag and take them with you which saves a lot of time when packing.

Makeup

I don’t use makeup on a regular basis, so I can’t really offer any personal insight on how to organize items in this category. But after reading the section covering this topic in Marie Kondo’s book I realized that most of the advice relating to this category is similar in nature to organizing art supplies. I have gathered my tips for organizing art supplies in their own article.

The first rule of thumb is to keep makeup products separate from hygiene supplies. Hygiene supplies are mostly water-soluble, whereas makeup products are not. The main reason for this is that exposure to moisture from hygiene products can weaken the properties of makeup products.

Kondo tells a story of a woman she met who has organized her makeup products into “teams”, that is, on the first one, there are products that she uses daily, and the second one has products which she uses for inducing variety. She says that if the procedure of applying makeup gets tedious, it tends not to be done. The rule of thumb is to cut out all unnecessary phases. That’s why she stores her products in compartments so that it is easy to see at a glance where each product is.

Sports Gear

The sport I engage in currently is Historical European Martial Arts (which I wrote a post on earlier). As I am currently in Finland, I cannot attend my club’s trainings on a regular basis, and I also don’t have my own sword yet, so I train with a cast iron bar on the yard.

Whether going for a run or to the gym, it is helpful to keep all your sport supplies ready to go in a bag. I recommend having a bag with a separate pocket for shoes. Keeping at least two sets of sports clothes is especially helpful as well, as once you’re done with the training you can then take out the clothes used in your last training session, put them in the wash, and replace them with a fresh set in the bag. Once you know that your sports bag is packed and ready to go, it’s relatively simple to combat the tiredness or exhaustion to attend training sessions either in the morning before lectures or after a full day of lectures, the only thing you have to worry about is to just grab your bag, put on your shoes and outdoor clothes and head out of the door to the gym. Or, if you are going for a run, have your running clothes and shoes ready waiting for you in one place when you wake up or come back from the university in the evening.

Monetary Items and Other Items of Value

Designate a separate “resting place” for your wallet. By keeping good care of it, you will feel gratitude each time you take money out of it or take it with you. This, in turn also affects the way in which you spend your money. As Kondo states, one of her customers said that “Now I feel gratitude each time I take money out of my wallet. Because of it, I can eat three meals each day and exchange money for products which bring me joy. The way I spend my money has really changed.”

Now, due to the currently ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, “taking money out of your wallet” in most cases means using contactless card payment but the same principle still applies. Keys, passport and other cards you do not use on an active basis should also be kept in a closed container or separate drawer, which is worthy of the respect these items require.

Tools and Emergency supplies

Aim to have a minimal amount of tools, for us students a screwdriver set with replaceable tips should be more than enough. If you have any leftover screws, bolts, or other small pieces from assembling furniture, decide which ones you need to keep and recycle the rest. With these items, you should keep items for emergency situations, such as flashlights for power outages.

Concluding: Getting Rid of Killjoys

To organize items and getting rid of unneeded ones is to emphasize the feeling of joy you receive from the items you have in your home. As important it is to emphasize the feelings of joy, it is also important to get rid of “killjoys”. Kondo calls these “anything that does not bring you even a sliver of joy and is just unnecessary extra.” Nowadays there is an increasing amount of worded information we are being bombarded with, mainly in the form of advertisements. Kondo states that “the more of worded information you have in your environment, the more of semantic static you have in your home.” Getting rid of as many possible visible product labels and other “junk” will make your home appear much more elegant.