"Does This Bring Me Joy?" - Applying Kon Mari to Interior Design

For a quick catch up on what Kon Mari is, it's a decluttering technique from Marie Kondo and her book: the life-changing magic of tidying up. I cover her book in my previous post, which I hope you will read! Although I haven't started Kon Mari on my house yet, I was inspired to apply it to interior design pretty much immediately! Some things that have been on my mind have been the idea that the decision making process that comes from picking and choosing things that you want to keep vs discard is so important to the growth of the person. If you are designing for someone else it may be more important to get the client involved in the decision making then you or they may feel comfortable with. Ideally if the client had gone through and decluttered already using the Kon Mari method they would be happy to make decisions, having a new found confidence in decision making!

Another thought I had was that the idea of decluttering your home and living a minimalist life is often overlooked for design styles other than "modern minimalist". I'm wondering what it looks like to be a "traditional minimalist" or "industrial minimalist". Take any style and put minimalist on the end and how does that look? Also minimalist may be the wrong word...it's decluttered, but most importantly the items bring joy. No one can truly do that for another person but I think they can get pretty close. Here's my list of Kon Mari inspired interior design ideas I want to try out.

1. Make sure furniture and textiles bring joy.
2. Have intent to bring joy with every furniture choice.
3. Balance using existing objects and furniture, don't be so quick to buy/add or layer things.
4. Think quality not quantity.
5. Throw out fads and trends and lean into the client's personality.
6. Keep it simple.

I will admit, I am not an experienced Interior designer but as someone who's in the process of learning how to design my own home, these are my own mental notes that I had to talk about after reading the book. I hope you enjoy these ideas and let me know if you have any more of your own in the comments!