Marie Kondo | BulgingButtons

In Other Words, Cleaning Up My House

I’ve never claimed to be the world’s best housekeeper. I’m not. I do like a certain sense of order, though.

For example, the glasses in my kitchen cupboards are organized by type and are in precise locations. The wine glasses and crystal are in one cabinet, the everyday glasses are sorted by type and size in another.

It’s not just in the kitchen, though. My fabric collection is folded and stored on open shelves by color. The clothes in my closet hang on identical hangers (well, one type for pants, another for skirts, and a third for dresses and tops, but you get the idea). The tops progress from teal to green to white, then tan, brown, black, into red, pink, purple, and finally blue. There’s a system.

I don’t have systems for everything, though. Or if I do, they break down. Take books, for example. I’ve been trying to get most of my books from Overdrive, the online library app. It saves me money and storage space. Still, I like to support local authors, and the professional books that I use are valuable additions to my library. As a result, I have more books than my current system allows. There are books on the kitchen table, books on my nightstand, and books on the kitchen counter. And yes, there are books on the bookshelves too, but they’re a mess.

Purses are another issue for me. I don’t have nearly as many as lots of people I know, but I do have a few that I use routinely. Where do they end up? On the kitchen counter. There a small section to the left of the fridge that is a complete disaster. Mail, meds, purses, you name it, it might be there.

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All of this extra stuff brings me down. It drains my energy. It doesn’t bring me joy, as Marie Kondo, of The Lifechanging Magic of Tidying Up would demand. But on the other hand, it’s stuff I use. Just not all at once. So what’s the solution? Put it away, of course.

Flylady, of Flylady.net often says, “You can’t organize clutter.” I agree. There comes a point where too much is simply too much, and no matter how clever I think I’m being, I need to scale back. It’s time to do that, but I can’t do it all at once.

Here’s where the eating the elephant comes in. They say it can only be done one bite at a time. Well, I’m starting to bite. For me it’s more like one area at a time. The kitchen island has been done, but that one keeps accumulating stuff. It’s what Flylady calls a hotspot.

My bathroom vanity has been done, and man, it’s so much more pleasant to get ready in that area. My brain knows this, and yet, I let it get cluttered over time. WHY?

There are, unfortunately, so many more of these areas to go, but if I keep at it one bite at a time, eventually I’ll eat that elephant. Today’s goal? The kitchen table. Where I’m writing at the moment. It’s not a second office, it’s a place for meals. This one should be simple, just a few notebooks and books, a laptop, and leftovers from someone’s birthday, last month. Yeesh. One bite at a time.

DISCLAIMER: I would never eat a real elephant. Just so you know.

I’ve been slimming down. Well, perhaps that’s an overstatement, but I have been watching what I eat and I’ve lost a few pounds. I still have a long way to go to get to “slim” and frankly, I don’t know that I’ll ever reach that status, but I am making positive changes.

The decisions that I’ve been making have been based on what works for me, and they are becoming a little bit easier to make. Yes, I still have some bad habits, after all they are deeply ingrained, but I’m making progress. I like looking in my refrigerator and seeing things that I know are good for me.

I like having a pantry with items that provide me with strength, not empty calories.

A super tidy closet. Disclaimer: not mine!

I feel empowered by the control I have over my environment.

Except that I don’t really feel that I have control over my environment at all. The other day I looked around my house, and nearly every flat surface had stuff on it that didn’t belong. I knew it was time to clean it up, in a big way. Imagine how glad I was when the online library I use informed me that The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo was available. People have been buzzing about this book, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

First of all, it was a really quick read. The tone is conversational and it’s easy to follow. There is a lot of content about her own history of learning to “tidy” and her way of thinking about the objects a person has. She believes that our things all want to serve us, but we often have so much that we don’t take care of what we have, or even use it. We should make choices about what to keep and what to discard based on one simple question, “Does this item spark joy?” Just reading that question brought to mind many items that do not spark joy, and even cause irritation. Why am I hanging on to those things?

Her method for “tidying” follows a specific order, and since she’s the expert and I have no desire to argue the point, I decided to try it out on the first item on the list: shirts. The idea is to take them all out of their hiding places (drawers, closet, wherever you keep them) then pick up the items one by one. Each one should “guide” your decision, either it sparks joy or it doesn’t.

I suppose I have a lot of shirts. I have t-shirts and tanks that I fold on shelves, I have blouses that hang, I have long-sleeved t-shirts folded on a different shelf, and I have a few jackets, sweaters, and sweatshirts. So far I’ve only gone through the t-shirts and tanks. I kept about half. I feel lighter already. Tomorrow I tackle the long-sleeved t-shirts. Who knows, I may even finish the tops tomorrow.

When I walked into my closet tonight to get my pajamas, I felt the difference. The t-shirts I kept were happier because they weren’t squished and they had more of a chance to be worn. The whole closet is starting to look and feel a little lighter and better. I can relate!

Just like my weight loss, it will take time to go through the steps necessary to make long-term changes, but it can be done. I’m looking forward to living with less, and enjoying my space more. As Flylady always says, “You can’t organize clutter.” Amen to that!