Cleaning up and clearing out: Changing approaches

Since we did not want to make people feel like contaminants (we wanted to be gentle and affirming), the obvious choice was to focus on Marie Kondo.

Marie Kondo is an organizing consultant and author, who had a Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, in 2019.

For a while her name was everywhere and it drew a lot of criticism. I think part of that was racist and some of it was a bristly reaction to tamping down on the urge for more stuff, but some of it was also misunderstanding. Even now I see references to her and "minimalism" but that was never her theme.

Instead, she turned the focus to not what you get rid of, but what you keep, and that what you keep should be the things that spark joy. 

Yes, there is a risk of offending someone when you suggest that they are probably never going to read through that stack of books that has been collecting dust for years, or that they will probably never get back into those "skinny" clothes... the truth can hurt.

It is still beautiful to surround yourself with things that you love and make you happy, and she affirms that it leads to always having enough.

I will give some caveats. Her business started with people whose homes were so cluttered that they were calling in a consultant. That she worked in a densely populated city like Tokyo meant that most of her clients were probably dealing with smaller living spaces than we might have here on the West coast.

So if some of the methods that she uses seem more extreme than you need, that's okay. Just as you will value different things than other people, you may have your own techniques. It is worth figuring out what works for you.

We had four books on display that night (three by Marie Kondo), because even for taking in the information there were different options:

• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
• The Life-Changing Manga of Tidying Up: A Magical Story
• Kiki & Jax: The Life-Changing Magic of Friendship   
• The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room

Can you spot which one is not by her?

On the same topic there are books for children, regular prose books, and a manga.

The manga is my favorite. I think that's because having the story focus on one person, Chieki, and her issues, made it more meaningful. I don't regret reading the others.

Chieki had things that she loved but could not find because of all of the other things in the way. In one scene, she can't find her charging cable and in the process sits on an eyelash curler. 

That did not spark joy. 

There were two things that really stayed with me. 

She'd had a tendency to shape her life around the guys she was interested, especially in regards to the hobbies she had tried (the source of a lot of the clutter). That was embarrassing, but needed to be understood. 

Part of that centered on a portrait of her that she really liked, but also had some sad associations. She was going to discard it, then she couldn't, but then after keeping it overnight she was ready to let it go. 

Maybe they are just "things" or maybe there is more there, and we need to deal it. We will feel better when we have resolved the emotions.

On the flip side, there was an old recipe book that she was sure she would be told to discard, but she couldn't bear to let go. Chieki was all ready to fight for it, but Konmari just said, "Please, keep it."

You may get defensive about your joy; you don't need to be.