Sophie Liard - The Folding Lady

For

Jacob, George, Arthur

and the Folding Family

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by Yellow Kite

An Imprint of Hodder & Stoughton

An Hachette UK company

THE FOLDING LADY . Copyright 2022 by Sophie Liard. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

First published in 2022 by

Harper Design

An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

195 Broadway

New York, NY 10007

Tel: (212) 207-7000

Fax: (855) 746-6023

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Distributed throughout the world by

HarperCollins Publishers

195 Broadway

New York, New York 10007

Illustrations by Lydia Blagden Hodder & Stoughton 2022

Cover photograph by Sophie Liard

The Folding Lady logo and illustration by James Ward

by Max Rose-Fyne Hodder & Stoughton 2022

Digital Edition APRIL 2022 ISBN: 978-0-06-321703-4

Version 03262022

Print ISBN: 978-0-06-321702-7

Here we are at the beginning of my first book. Im so happy and grateful that you are reading this. Im Sophie, aka The Folding Lady, and these beautiful pages have allowed me to bring together all my thoughts about, and passion for, folding and organization.

For me, its not just about the folding and sorting out thoughIm not a professional organizer, my experience is in retail and thats where the folding comes from. Im a person who has come to recognize that my home is the most important space in my lifebut I had to learn that. Im mum to two boys, and over the years, as my family has grown and I have grown up, had to work out and understand the changing needs and priorities in my home. Ive put this learning together with my folding, and there are a whole host of ideas and skills I want to pass on to you so that you too can improve your relationship with your space, and make the most of the home you have. It really can be life changing!

Being organized goes so much deeper than it appears on the surface. Social media shows us all these glorious images and stories of beautifully organized homes, and it can often feel like such things are out of our reach. It certainly does to me. The truth is that those pictures are of someone elses home and dream and life. What is missing is any connection to our own needs and wants, and the place where we live.

Your home can truly support you to live the life you want to lead if you set it up in a way thats authentic to you and the other people who live there. Once you recognize your home as a haven to make the everyday less chaotic, an easier lifea less stressed life and a life that is unique to you, and no one elsewill start to come into view. Thats when the magic really starts to happen.

I want to help you to recognize when your space is the catalyst to bad vibes, and show you how to make it a healing place. Were going to uncover how your home can provide more of what you truly need, encourage you to do more of the things you love, to be more creative, and to be more honest about who you really are. And everything in between. And you can achieve all this through nothing fancyno excessive expense or timebut merely by setting up your home in a way that reflects your needs and desires.

By the end of this book you will understand how making decisions based on After Valueand this alonehas been life changing for many of my followers. If you dont understand this phrase After Value, theres a whole section on it later but, in short, After Value is the positive feeling, reason for, or result of doing/buying something that is motivated by our own wants and needs, our goals and priorities. Not what we see others doing and having, not what social media and advertising tell us will improve our lives forever.

And we get to find the After Value in our homes by making a RESET of our spaceorganizing, reworking, rearranging, or tweaking how we use our homes for maximum After Value.

Were going to get you organizing your home with meaning and emotion, rather than just copying something you saw and liked online.

After Value will become your new currency for living a life that is so much more than folding your socks and jeans in a pretty impressive way. It goes beyond aesthetic pleasure and tidy shelves, it is about YOU and your time, your goals and your purpose for getting up in the morning, and the decisions you make every day. Its about working out what is important for you, what gives you comfort, and perhaps what gives you back that piece of yourself that you lost somewhere along the way. Were going to get you organizing your home with meaning and emotion, rather than just copying something you saw and liked online.

If you are someone who doesnt like their home, whos not happy with how their space works or what it says, someone who constantly finds it difficult to manage their belongings and is never on top of it all, then together we are going to change that mindset and have you raring to go on your home RESET for maximum After Value and ready to fall back in love with your space.

To help with this, is my manifesto about how you can change your personal space to change your lifemaximizing its functionality while creating something that helps you to understand more about what you really want from life. Its going to be goodwith small tweaks or big changes, you can make your space work for you and your goals.

is a guide to all of my most transformative folds, accompanied by lots of my favorite organizing hacks and tips. These are the folds that my followers have told me have made their spaces much easier to manage, given them so much more room, and also made doing the never-ending tasks like the laundry an activity they look forward to and power through in their daily routines.

We should all love our home, whether its the one we dreamed of or not. Its important to be able to feel grateful for what we have in the present, and the people within it. If youre always striving for something and somewhere else, then, believe me, you will be striving forever. Make peace with what you have at the moment. We are going to work on this together, and together we will make it a truly rewarding experience.

Using After Value as your new currency to make decisions around your home will make it a happier and more enjoyable space for everyone. Start organizing for your actual lifestyle rather than what you want your lifestyle to be. Learn to love your home as it is and recognize when its not too small, you just have too much stuff; or when its not the wrong shape, you just have to adapt to the space or needs of your current lifestyle.

Using After Value as your new currency to make decisions around your home will make it a happier and more enjoyable space for everyone.

And just remember, not every single bit of the book may resonate right now. But I guarantee some of it will. This is not a rule book; no one makes up the rules for your home except you. Use this book as inspiration, understanding that the way your home is set up should reflect your present priorities and no one elses. This means you may have to tweak some of the things I show you but the basics are there.