After years of doing your own laundry, you might be shocked to hear you've been folding your shirts incorrectly. It may sound absurd, but there is a phenomenal way to fold your shirts that you might not know about. My bet would be on the fact that you fold your shirts and stack them on top of each other, like I presume the majority of Westerners do. I am certainly guilty of folding my shirts this way and I've done so for as long as I can remember.
It's not clear (to me) how we learned this storage system, but it appears we've become stuck in a vicious cycle of storing our shirts vertically, as if we're trying to make the insides of our drawers look like the shelves of our favorite stores. However, there is one glaringly obvious flaw with this system: It doesn't work. How many times during your past shopping excursions, have you tried to pick out a shirt from a pristine pile, without causing a clothes avalanche? Doesn't it frustrate you when you're failing to pry a shirt from the bottom of the stack in your drawer? I don't know about you, but the harder I try to be stealthy, the more messed up my drawer gets. I'm sure, like many of you, I just accepted this as the only way to store shirts. That is until I was enlightened.
Marie Kondo is an organizing expert who developed the KonMari Method; she's since written books on the topic, to help others achieve organizational bliss. In addition to helping people declutter their homes by teaching them how to decipher which of their items "spark joy," Kondo also assists followers of the KonMari method to store the belongings they want to keep. From the perfect underwear drawer, to how to store socks, Marie Kondo is helping the world to properly (and lovingly) store their most beloved possessions, one fold at a time.
The Huffington Post caught Kondo, the folding aficionado, in action as she shows viewers how to fold a shirt in this video lasting under 30 seconds. At the end of the tutorial, Kondo shows an example of what your shirt drawer should look like. Instead of layering your shirts, one on top of the other – which makes it very difficult to not only see what shirts you have, but also struggle to access them – the KonMari method of folding ensures your shirts are stored neatly, independently from one another, and within easy reach.
Tidying novices will be pleased to view this video, which features animated illustrations from Kondo's book Spark Joy . This tutorial makes easy work of folding shirts and shows you how to master folding T-shirts, long sleeved tops, and more.
So, there really is a correct way to fold a shirt and it looks entirely addictive. You'll never look at a store shirt display in the same way again!
Image: Getty Images (2)
