So much of the holiday season is about indulgence in every sense of the word — delicious meals, vacation holidays, festive gifts. Of course, there’s a fine line between mindful celebration and thoughtless over-consumption. Thankfully, the KonMari Method™ can help you navigate holiday buying, gifting and hosting with an eye towards joy and sustainability. Here are six tips for planning a holiday season with a gentler footprint.
Gift Experiences
Not all joy-sparking gifts come in packages. Marie loves gifting a combination of beautiful and functional objects from artisans, sustainable goods and experiential gifts, such as a ticket to see the lights at a public botanical garden, a baking or cooking lesson or a donation to a favorite charity in a loved one’s honor.
Use the KonMari Method to Pick Gifts That Spark Joy
Following Marie’s tips for selecting gifts that spark joy will help ensure that each item you choose delights your recipient — an essential part of reducing an influx of unwanted goods around the holidays!
Choose Gifts That Are Sustainable
Why not start with gifts that do good for the planet? Many of us are considering how to reduce our impact in our daily lives, and there are many ways — big and small — to do just that. Show your love for family members and Mother Early with green gifts and stocking stuffers. For help with ideas, explore this collection of eco-friendly home goods.
Wrap Sustainably
Paper gift wrapping is one of the least sustainable traditions of the holiday season — all that paper often goes straight into the bin! Instead, why not use reusable (and beautiful) furoshiki to wrap gifts? Recipients can reuse their furoshiki, like this KonMari-designed citrus one, over and over again long after the holidays end. As an added bonus, furoshiki are especially useful for wrapping oddly-shaped gifts!
Tidy Tip: You can also save and reuse the paper friends and family gift to you. Store undamaged paper and gift bags with your holiday decor to reuse for next year. You can even recycle the cardboard wrapping paper rolls to tidily store tree lights at the end of the season — a trick we learned from one of our KonMari Consultants!
Set a Sustainable New Year’s Resolution
Incremental changes add up! Before the New Year, sit down with your family to brainstorm ways to make your home more mindful of the environment. Perhaps it’s starting to compost, switching to reusable paper towels or committing to walking to work or the grocery store more often during the week. This is also an opportunity to talk to children about the environment and encourage their thoughts!
Stay in Touch with Your Kurashi
It’s easy to get carried away by the “should dos” and “should buys” during the holiday season. Each time you consider making a purchase, whether it’s a holiday sale or New Year’s Eve dress, pause to check in with your inner why, or what Marie calls kurashi. What does your ideal holiday season look like? What about life in the New Year? Staying connected to your kurashi will help you make smarter decisions about where you spend your time and money this holiday season.
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Above all, a more sustainable season comes from committing to honoring what matters most. By prioritizing spending meaningful time with those you love, you’ll be able to cut down on excess and lean into what brings you joy.
On behalf of the whole team at KonMari, we wish you a joy-sparking — and green-friendly — holiday season!
