The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

I'm late to the KonMari party.  I've been hearing about this book for a while now.  Everyone seems to gush over how great it is.  I was skeptical because nothing fixes my cluttery, disorganized, not quite a hoarder but just this close, tendencies.  But my life is changing.  I've only got one teen to homeschool, my other two kids are adults and even though they live here, they are off doing their own thing most of the time.  When I had a bunch of little kids around, even though the house was often trashed, and there were often whole rooms devoted to just dumping junk to get it out of view, even though there were counters that had papers and such piled on them much of the year, I still was more involved in managing and at least maintenance cleaning the house.  It was like shoveling in a snowstorm, but I did shovel and clear some pathways.  The truth is though for years we had cleaners come once every two weeks.  That was enough to try to get me to tidy knowing that a couple of ladies were going to show up and start shoving my stuff around so they could wash the floor and vacuum the bedrooms.  I have always needed external pressure to do housework, even the external pressure of someone else doing my housework!!!  Back then, I was much more in touch with the house than I am now.  I've never been a good home manager and the efforts of trying to be and failing spectacularly for decades has taken its psychological toll on me.  I am pretty detached and numb, even as my house looks more and more beautiful because of the work we had done a couple years ago. 

This summer I want to de-junk my house.  I want to turn my attention away from outside obligations as much as possible and just focus on my home.  I want to garden, cook and clean and make a cozy nest.  I know my kids are in the process of fledging, but better late than never! 

The truth is I've gotten incredibly lazy.  I look around my beautiful dining room, with its pretty wallpaper that reminds me of my mom, to the photo of my grandmother holding my father as a newborn, to the mirror that came from the dining room of the house I grew up in, to the grandfather clock R gave me when I turned 50, to the handsome glass front bookcase that holds all my grandparents and parents old books, some of these books 100 years old or more, to the breakfront that holds china painted by my grandmother and grandmother in law.  It's a room filled with things I treasure.  It also still holds a stray Easter basket that never got put away, an empty can of macaroons and the seder plate that also I never put away.  The table itself is covered with papers and books.  There's a baseball carefully tucked in the piles of junk to keep it away from the resident 2 year old who was practicing his surprisingly good pitching abilities indoors.  Why do we even have a baseball?  No one plays baseball here!   The tablecloth we used at Easter/Passover is thrown over the back of a chair.  I had so much trouble finding one I liked that fit this big table but now it's got a big grease stain on it I can't get out.  What to do with it?  Why just throw it over the back a chair!  We have a stray end table sitting awkwardly by the grandfather clock.  We got an organ from R's dad when he moved from his condo to a assisted living place.  The organ took the table's place, but I really like the table so I need to figure out where to put it.  There's also a box of electric train stuff that R has accumulated.  The train stuff is supposed to be kept up in our closet but it is too much to haul up there and back, when he likes to set it up in the living room, so it has all been shoved into another corner of the dining room.  And the dining room is one of the easier places to declutter (and I haven't even started talking about the file cabinet jammed full of old documents and photos so you can hardly shut it.)

Our study was already a dumping ground and became even more so with boxes and boxes of granddad's old stuff.  Just yesterday when I was trying to navigate the boxes to find a book in the almost obscured wall of book shelves, I found granddad's bar mitzvah certificate back when his name was Lichtman and dated 1945!  Not only the study is bad, the garage and especially the mud room and the closets are really bad.  Disgustingly bad.  Revoltingly bad.  And then there's our basement.  We actually got rid of a lot of stuff because of the big flood down there. But it is also made us critically aware of how much more junk we need to get rid of.  Did you know we have had stuff in storage since we finished that basement 12 years ago???  Yes, we pay for storage every month for stuff we can't remember and haven't used in 12 years. 

My goal this summer is to deeply and completely declutter the house to the point that we have the courage to clean out our storage unit and stop throwing money away.

One thing that makes this even more daunting a task is that I don't want to throw a lot of stuff away.  I want to figure out how to give it away or repair it.  I feel I am going to get very used to posting things on the local free cycle list. 

Back to KonMari.  This book is a strange little book.  It is an interesting glimpse into Japanese culture.  The author is very influenced by Shinto and her relationship with things is rather animistic.  She thinks things are like people and relates to them as such.  She rather psycho-analyzes herself.  In a way she is really a materialist in that material things have this spiritual 'energy' and presence in her life that she fully embraces.  But in other ways she is very practical as a result of being sensitive to the 'energy' of having too many things.  I have to admit, I found a lot of it annoying.  Even though I take pleasure in owning certain things, it is because they are antiques that tie me to my family or they are wonderfully useful.  But 'sparking joy' is not something things really do for me, usually.  Her definition of joy is kind of shallow.  I get the impression this is woman who has never had a lover or a child.  Those are what spark joy!  Things are just nice to have.

On the other hand I can't get on my high horse too much because she seems to have the key to how to systematically get rid of junk and that's what I need help with.  The book is a lot of padding around really simple ideas.  I kept wishing she would she give me a list of what to do.  I think she's trying to get us to wrap our minds around why she thinks these steps in her given order are so important for success.    For instance, she tells you to greet your house, when you come home.  This will help you keep it tidy because you'll develop a relationship with it.  But I don't really believe that.  What I do think of is the scene in It's a Wonderful Life when George Bailey has had his metanoia moment with Clarence the angel, and comes rushing back home and is so grateful for his life.  So grateful,  he says Hello old broken down, leaky old house! (or words to that effect).  He kisses the broken knob on his staircase that was forever annoying him, in gratitude for what he's got.  He isn't really grateful to the house though.  He''s grateful FOR it.  I think that's the big difference. 

But the the author comes up with some wisdom she puts in bold print: 

In essence, tidying ought to be act of restoring balance among people, their possessions, and the house they live in.

That statement I can get behind.

Anyway, I plan to try to implement the KonMari method this summer.  R isn't quite on board with it all, so I might have to modify a bit.  We'll see.  I plan to do my own clothes and books (other than antique) first.  Then I need to involve him in papers.  The KonMari order is:  clothes, books, papers, miscellaneous, sentimental.  Miscellaneous is a huge category for me - that's the whole kitchen, stuff in storage, appliances, electric cords, loose change, tools, linens, pet supplies, etc, etc.  You are supposed to gather all the things you own in one category in one central location.  So I'll have to scour the house for my own clothes, my drawers the closet, the coat closet, the laundry room, everywhere I can think my clothes might be, even a stray shirt or what have you, and then sort through them one by one.  Starting with clothes is good for me because I really don't own many.  Books are going to be much harder. 

In spite of the annoying and rather sentimental anthropomorphizing of inanimate objects, this book seems to have a simple, sound and even wise plan for putting my house in order.  So hopefully, this will be my KonMari summer. 

For more book reviews go to Read 52 Books in 52 Weeks.