Marie Kondo Folding Underwear: Tips You Need to Know

How to Fold Underwear Like Marie Kondo

We all want that movie-style level of organisation in our wardrobes and drawers, but it often seems unrealistic in everyday life. To help out, we want to tell you about Marie Kondo and her folding underwear tips, and all the benefits of keeping a uniformly organised underwear drawer.

It’s not necessarily the most important job, but it’s a manageable task that could kick-start the journey to a fully organised home.

In this post, we’ll cover who Marie Kondo is, how to fold underwear, why it’s necessary and how to keep it tidy.

The Marie Kondo Folding Underwear Method

Who is Marie Kondo?

If you haven’t heard of Marie Kondo or her methods, the basic principle is to keep things that are meaningful and purposeful and get rid of anything else.

You can find her website here – konmari.com

She asks whether items ‘spark joy’ to help with making this decision.

Anything that does spark joy gets to stay and is folded, organised and ordered with immaculate precision.

She teaches her methods in her books “Spark Joy” and “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”.

Or, you can buy the set of books together here.

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Since gaining fame from her signature techniques and lovable personality, she teaches her skills on TV shows and youtube videos.

This is great as even if you don’t agree with all of her ideas, you can still learn what works for you and apply it to your home

How to Fold Underwear and Clothes Like Marie Kondo

Here’s a quick video of Marie Kondo folding underwear. We also explain the method in detail below with everything you need to know.

Step 1: Have a clear-out

Time to spark joy! Go through your underwear and decide whether each item is still useful to you or brings you joy.
Its time to say goodbye to anything with holes or that’s past its best, and anything that doesn’t fit or that you just don’t wear.

Step 2. Start folding

Pants/Knickers/Boxers: Place them flat on the floor and fold the two outer thirds in along the waistband. Fold the bottom third of the rectangle you made up, followed by the top third.
Socks: Put pairs together flat and fold in half, thirds or quarters depending on the size. Thirds works well for most socks.
Bras: Marie does something fancy in the video but ultimately all you need to do is fasten the bra to avoid fabric pulls, and tuck the arm straps in.

Step 3: Creating sections

Use shoe boxes or adjustable dividers to create sections between each item.

Step 4: Line them up

Place all your neatly folded underwear in their sections vertically with the seamless edge facing upwards.

Vertical storing is for a uniform appearance and so you can see each item straight away when you look in the drawer.

Why is Organising Underwear Necessary?

To some of us, folding underwear might seem like a complete waste of time. You have your underwear drawer and see it once a day (or more – accidents happen…), so why does it need to look neat?

Space-saving

Other than appearance, there are real benefits that come from a tidy drawer. Most notably is space-saving.
Living in a tiny apartment in big cities like New York or Japan where Marie is from, every inch of storage matters.

A tidy underwear drawer makes the most of the space and leaves room for extra items like vests and shorts.

For couples sharing an apartment, this is even more true, as your underwear space can literally be cut in half.

Only owning items that spark joy

Cutting down the amount of underwear you have can provide a sense of clarity and make you appreciate the items you own more.

Have you ever had a morning where you’re late for work, realise your tights are ripped and every pair of tights you try on has a hole or ladder?

By purging your un-used and irreparable items, your left only with the underwear you like and need.

Being able to see what you have

A huge benefit of the KonMari underwear folding method is being able to see everything at once.

It helps with laundry timings too, because you can see straight away how many more days you can get away with before washing clothes.

Tidy Folded Clothes in Drawer - Folding Underwear Marie Kondo

How to Keep Underwear Drawers Organised

It’s one thing to get your underwear folded and organised, but a whole other job keeping it that way. If you manage to stick to the Marie Kondo folding method then you might not need these tips, but for some people, the method just isn’t realistic.

When your day is filled with 1000 other tasks, folding pants and bras just don’t make the list.

To maintain a tidy drawer without the time spent folding underwear try some of these time-friendly tips.

Use dividers

Even if you don’t have time to fold underwear, using dividers like shoeboxes or investing in adju s table dividers makes separating items easy.

Even if you can’t see everything, it makes it much faster to find what you’re looking for in their relevant sections, rather than rummaging through a big pile.

Keep your collection small and of high quality

Be realistic about how often you do laundry and how much underwear you actually use, and need. It’s much easier to keep 15 pairs of underwear tidy than 50+ pairs that don’t get worn.

Buying higher-quality items will reduce the amount you need to throw away and replace. This is more relevant for socks and tights that get worn down quickly.

Pair your socks

It’s much easier and faster just to throw clean socks in the drawer unpaired. But taking a few extra seconds to pair them up and fold the ankles down into balls keeps them together, and saves the time spent looking for a matching pair in the mornings.

Final Thoughts on How to Fold Underwear Like Marie Kondo

To summarise, folding underwear like Marie Kondo adds space and time-saving benefits to your home. But, it’s not the only way of getting organised and definitely not the fastest or most realistic for busy lives.

We agree that less is more when it comes to underwear. So let’s get sorting!