The hottest new consumer trend of 2019 so far? Cleaning your home.
"Tidying Up with Marie Kondo" has millions of Americans watching on Netflix right now, and hooked on her message of decluttering and organizing for the new year.
Woman gets inspired after one episode
If you are struggling to get rid of the post holiday clutter, one Cincinnnati-area mom told us the show was exactly what she needed.
Anna Cooley is a Cheviot mother of two cute and very active kids, who could never get a handle on all their stuff, until Marie Kondo's show came along.
"All my friends were saying you got to see this, it is really great. And so I did, and it was very eye-opening," she said.
Cooley says she's been trying to organize her kids' toys for months, but before this show came along she didn't even know where to start.
Now, she is enlisting the help of her son, Sully, and daughter, Zi Zi, to clean up their playroom.
"I am helping her to say, 'Zi Zi do you love this toy?' Sometimes she will say, 'I love it.' Sometimes she won't and then we know it can go," Cooley said.
She'll keep only the toys that the kids really love, or that spark joy, in the term now made famous by Marie Kondo.
"We're going to make sure the toys themselves spark joy," Cooley told her children.
No joy? It gets donated
Books go in containers, which are then neatly organized on shelves. If it doesn't spark joy, it gets donated to Goodwill, The Salvation Army, or other charities.
"Are these toys that we could donate?" Cooley asked her son. Sometimes its tough.
"If I don't keep them, it will not make me happy," Sully told her about his Spiderman and Aquaman action figures.
Other toys are bagged up to go, while the keepers end up on small shelves. Soon the playroom is looking better and mom is thrilled.
"It's wonderful to see how our lifestyle can be managed by tidying our lives, by sparking joy in our lives, by keeping the things in our lives that truly do matter," Cooley said.
As for the cleaned up playroom, she said, "as Marie Kondo likes to say, that's tidy! I love to tidy!"
Sure, most of us are probably not as overwhelmed by clutter as the families in Marie Kondo's show, but just watching one episode might help with that new year's cleanup so you don't waste your money.
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