A lot of folks have been
posting lately about a book called The
Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The article I read called it “a
mysterious Japanese organizational manual.” The subtext here, of course, as
with most self-help books is that the way you currently organize your life, by
the way, is wrong. I’m sure this is true
for me—first, there’s nothing either Japanese OR mysterious about my
organizational system.
Also, I learned from this article that according to Marie Kondo, the author of this inspiring tome, I am also bad at throwing things out. The way you’re supposed to do it is, find everything of one kind in your house (like every piece of clothing, for example), then put it in a giant pile, sit down and go through every single item, one at a time, and ask—does this item spark joy in me?
Also, I learned from this article that according to Marie Kondo, the author of this inspiring tome, I am also bad at throwing things out. The way you’re supposed to do it is, find everything of one kind in your house (like every piece of clothing, for example), then put it in a giant pile, sit down and go through every single item, one at a time, and ask—does this item spark joy in me?
What?? I
think it would be faster to just keep my dog and that one pair of Lucky jeans
from the late nineties that I’m convinced are labeled with the wrong size—because
literally nothing else sparks actual, like, joy.
I mean, she’s not asking, does this item make you happy, or content—nope, the
litmus test here is JOY. That's a lot to expect from a t-shirt or a spaghetti
strainer or a wall sconce.
The system gets weirder,
though—this Kondo person also suggests that if you do give an item away, you should first thank it for the role it’s
played in your life.
What I want to know is,
when did we get so chatty with our material possessions? When did it become
socially acceptable to start a dialogue with our sock drawer? Kondo also
suggests socks be stored flat, because they work so hard for us while they’re
on our feet. I’ll bet if socks do talk, she’s their number one hero. Finally!—the socks will say. Marie Kondo is the Sock Advocate we’ve been
waiting for!
It seems to me that all
this personification of stuff is likely to lead to more issues, not less. I’ve seen a few
of those hoarding shows, and those folks always have these mysterious (there’s
that word again) relationships with their stuff. Everyone around them is
screaming that they should throw away those National Geographic magazines from 1975 already. But the hoarder woman says, like-- no, I need to keep them, because my
father loved lizards, and there’s a great gecko article in the July issue, or some such.
Here's the thing. It’s just stuff. You don’t have to apologize to your castoffs before putting them in the Goodwill bag. I’m also going to make the radical claim that you don’t actually need to feel
joy when looking at your kitchen utensils or your upstairs closet. When I look
at probably eighty percent of what I own I think, wow, I’d really like to buy a
new one of those. And that’s okay. It’s aspirational, even—right? Instead of digging
through my closet looking for joy, you can probably find me shopping, which, if
you ask me, is where the magic really happens.
