A few weeks ago I moved into my first apartment. Filled with the excitement of starting in a new place, I ran at the opportunity to design my apartment to reflect my inner self. I bought dozens of items, so much so, that a weekly knock from an Amazon delivery worker became a point of comfort. However, no matter how much stuff I bought and how much I actively attempted to organize my new belongings, my house could never seem to stay in order.
It became a point of contention for me, an endless battle against the inevitable clutter that seemed to crop up in my apartment no matter how hard I worked. Finally, I came to a realization. What was the purpose of me continuing to struggle on my own with organizing my physical possessions when there were experts who could show me the way? So, I watched YouTube videos and collected various organizing books and tools, but none seemed to push me closer to achieving a permanent organization process that I could maintain.
Then, one day as I browsed through Netflix, I came across a show staring Marie Kondo. Right off the back, I recognized Marie’s organizational style as unique and different than organizational systems I had attempted. There was less focus on organizing things, and more focus on treating the things (that as she puts) brought me joy. She brought to me a groundbreaking (but obvious) realization
“By only focusing on the things that bring one joy, naturally it becomes easier to declutter. Why should I keep something that invokes no longing or need? The only option is to discard.”
As I watched some of the episodes from the show, I begin to research Kondo’s organizational method, the “KonMari” method. This led me to purchasing and reading her book, ” The life Changing Magic of Tidying Up: the Japanese art of Tidying and Decluttering”. When I purchased the book, I expected to find a framework to change how I approached organizing and decluttering my life. However, I did not expect to find an entire new framework to approach life in general. Kondo’s book not only centers decluttering one’s things, but also decluttering one’s life. The book’s encouragement for reader’s to take a second look at the things they own, and to ask themselves why they own it, is a process that I now find myself not only applying to general items like clothes but prized mementos as well. For example, Kondo recommends that most of the mementos we keep, such as photos of vacations and graduations, are not actually needed. This is because the thousands of pictures that often accompany those occasions do little to capture the essence of those experiences. Instead, out of all of the pictures that we take of special occasions, the unique essence of that experience can often only be found in a few pictures (out of their respective collections). This observation caused me to raise the question, “Are the objects I own distracting me from remembering and appreciating the true essence of my lived experience?”
Framing my clutter in this way allowed me to know exactly which items needed a basket and which needed a bin. That shoe stand that I kept buried in the closet? Suddenly, it became a valuable method for me to avoid feelings of resentment toward guests who left unused shoes all over my home. The old college shirts I kept to sleep in? Suddenly, I recognized that my attachment to relics from my recent college past may be preventing me from fully embracing my current post-grad life.
In short, the book was not only putting me on the near term path to diminishing unneeded things in my life, but a long term framework to constantly evaluate my belongings and future. For that reason, I write this blog to say, that the KonMari method is a great book for those who not only desire to declutter their lives today, but tomorrow as well.
As a result of Kondo’s work, I have scheduled a complete weekend to fully enact the steps outlined in her book for my own home. And for the first time, I look forward to finally sticking the nail in the coffin to unneeded consumerism, vanity, and possessions. Having a home filled only with the things I need and which bring me joy sounds like a life worth living.
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