Kondo In The Time Of Corona
On January 1, 2019 - the world experienced Marie Kondo's second coming. The best-selling life-tidiness prophet - for a decade relegated to influencing the world of self-help book-readers - burst into our living rooms with the release of her Netflix TV special. At once - millions of the world's citizens (ready for to embark on their New Years' resolutions) were reminded, "Oh yea! There's that lady that wants you to throw stuff away!" and no doubt, many of us immediately threw ourselves into the newest opportunity to improve our lives.
I too was such a person - and became curious if Kondo could work for me. Maybe there 'was' something to Marie's decade-long staying power and unflappable optimism. I asked my friends on Facebook, maybe a few of them would have experimented already? Unsurprisingly - two of them had. Surprisingly however - it had worked for both of them and they were able to keep up the results! I took their advice and brought Marie Kondo's work into my life as well - and am so glad I did.
If you've never heard of Madie Kondo - here is a brief primer:
Marie wrote The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up
It's a book about… tidying up..
The viral element of her book is Marie's insistence that you handle everything in your house and only decide to keep it if it "sparks joy"
The controversial element of that is that many who try end up either:
a) becoming afraid to throw things away, or;
b) throw too much away, regret it, and write blog posts angry that Marie made them throw things away
My first step was to watch the entire Netflix special. There was something pleasant about Marie's general attitude and her helpfulness. The odd thing about the show was that - unlike a home renovation show with a nice before/after - most homes just looked "normal" afterwards (and a lot of them looked pretty normal before, too). The show had some nice pointers, but as someone who wants to actually do this thing - I don't think that you need to watch the entire series.
For me - the first step to engaging with the process was going out to buy the book and reading it cover-to-cover (it's very short). Only then did I proceed with the system that she lays out.
I won't go into the system here - it's not hard to find online even in a condensed version, but I think that you’ll miss a whole lot of nuance if you skip reading the book. However I do recommend a couple of items if you're skimming this:
First - Read The F'ing Book
It's short, and fills in a whole lot of gaps in Marie's philosophy, along with helpful tips
Second - Do The Whole Thing. Period.
You can organize one area, but until you finish your entire house - you will not gain the main benefit of finally living a life integrated with the objects in your home
The process looks pretty much the same for everyone - make a huge mess, and then slowly clean it up… Room by room… Day by day…All of my clothes out the closet and onto the couch, sorted one by one. All of my cupboards emptied. Every mug accounted for. Every trinket, book, and random "potentially useful in 10 years" thing touched and thoughtfully considered, and placed back in attractive ways. Several bags of clothes made their way to the Goodwill, and many other objects wound up in the trash.
I even individually tied up and tidied my two boxes of random computer and audio cables from the modern person's "big box of random cables". That took some time…
Finally - after a 'full' weekend of doing the method - I was done. It felt… Clean? But it wouldn't be until several months later that I'd look around and realize… Wait… It's still pretty clean.. Somehow - the simple steps outlined in Kondo's book helped to re-set both my brain and my house into a new paradigm - where nothing was out of place - because I had designed a place… for everything.
I write this today from quarantine - perhaps where you might read it - or you may come to this piece long after the Great Virus of 2020 is over. I write today because of my realization that one year ago - I gave myself one of the most important gifts I've received so far.
I've been a somewhat messy person for as long as I've known myself… Those naturally clean of you may cry, "shame!" but some of us just have different programming, I'm sorry. The bed may be unmade because well - you're gonna sleep in it soon anyways. The dishes might be left for another day. Perhaps there are some papers strewn about the table - since you tell yourself that you will reference them soon enough. Regardless of whether I've lived in a tiny space (where one out-of-place item creates the illusion of an awful mess), or a big place (where actually, the same rules apply) - I had never actually managed to maintain a deep and permanent state of tidiness.
Doing the Kondo - I think that I might have an idea for why that was - and perhaps that's you as well. In my case - I think that the objects in my life had never been acquired or stored purposefully. Mostly - they were just bought and stored somewhere. Out of sight, out of mind. Marie's idea - which can be described as, "look at and hold literally everything you own, and then put it back - if you like it" provides for a profound reset of the integration of your objects into your life.
Even if you're not convinced about the "sparks joy" element of Marie's philosophy, or if the austerity of a Shinto shrine or Scandinavian Modern Minimalism doesn’t appeal to you - the act of taking everything out of your closet, onto a bed, and then back into your closet gives you maybe the first opportunity of your life to make sober and meaningful decisions about your objects. Sure - when you first move in to a place, you have a chance to do that. Newlyweds may even have an opportunity to receive a whole host of their desired life objects from their wedding registries and arrange them into a dreamhouse formation. Usually however - you're just trying to put clothes away somewhere so that you can move on to putting the kitchen items away somewhere. But what if that somewhere wasn't useful, wasn't ergonomically efficient, or visually appealing? You know that deep inside, you may never get around to re-organizing your house.
A Kondo refresh allows for you to "move in" to your house, and to your life - anew.
Marie Kondo is not prescriptive in most of her methods of where to put things and why, though she does offer some tips that have worked for her and her clients. She does not care where the pans go, nor where the pots go. She wants your things to be somewhere useful to you. Items themselves - if you believe in the animus of things - want to be useful, or at least want to be respected while they await their usefulness. Think back on Be Our Guest from Disney's Beauty and the Beast, and you'll know what I mean here. Your things want to serve you, to be seen, and to be useful to you to - in fact - spark your joy :).
Of the more interesting details that Kondo proposes - I found her thoughts on refrigerators quite resonant. Kondo advises that you find a way to "display" the food in your fridge, and I have found that to personally mean placing things much closer to the front of the fridge rather than to the back (as is the typical way one puts things into a fridge - to leave room for future items). This is a much easier way see and to understand the fridge's contents and to give yourself ideas of what's for breakfast/lunch/dinner (since we're eating all of the meals from home in quarantine these days). She says the same thing about your pantries and spice racks as well. I've found that it is very liberating to think about storing spices in a way that considers future browsing, rather than, "put this away… somewhere."
"Life-changing" (or game-changing, as we say these days) life choices have one interesting factor… once you have fully implemented the change, your life is now on the new track and it is difficult to remember how things were before. The same goes for this change. I don't remember how messy I might have been.. I don't remember when my pots and pans were not easily accessible, and I don't remember how my pantries looked pre-Kondo. All that I know is that now… I know where everything is, and that there was a time before this when… I didn't. The lasting change however is that if I ever need to "tidy" up my house again (and this is a process you are forced to do daily, as a human being), it takes almost no time at all, and almost zero stress. I both know where everything is supposed to go (because I chose its storage place thoughtfully, myself) and it has a much, much lower chance of being out of place anyways.
For example - because I know where the soy sauce is, I never have to search for it - and I'll always put it back. One of the most surprising things of a post-Kondo life is just how little I end up interacting with a lot of objects in my life. To be a little bit more clear - consider a closet. Pre-Kondo - I would empty out and attempt to reorganize shelves several times a year, and still never finding what I was looking for. Now - and for the past year - I haven't. Things are just… there… where they are supposed to be. They are in full battle-preparedness. Putting things back is easy - because I know where they go back. No shelves are overflowing, and no things are hanging when they should be folded - or the other way around.
Kondo's folding techniques are interesting as well - once again aimed at keeping all of your items within eye's gaze, rather than sitting under a pile of something else.
The only caveat in my glowing review of this method if you are deciding to go down the Kondo path - is that you must complete it. It doesn't matter if the process takes a month (it may - if you're busy and can only do room-by-room on the weekends), a week, or a couple of days. If you do not complete the entire top-to-bottom Kondo-fication of your life, things will find a way to be out of place again. You must also do everything. Yes - that includes the forgotten places - under the sink - inside the medicine cabinet - the utility closet. Every single thing must be taken out, reviewed, and put back (if kept).
Again - Kondo gets a lot of flak for her "sparks joy" philosophy, and questions about items which well.. may not spark joy (an ironing board or lightbulb for example may not be the most exciting objects in your life). Our reactive culture loves to make this kind of argument and throw the entire method away. If that's you - then fine - you're welcome to live as you please. A book isn't forcing you to do anything - but considering whether each of your things has a place in your life or should move on is a powerful tool.
For me - no one of the hundreds of individual data and audio cables in my life spark any kind of joy individually. They do however, in their grouping and their totality - when they are all tied up and organized. When I know which box a specific cable might be in, and when I know that if I have to empty out the entire box, it will be easy to put everything back neatly - that sparks my joy.
In my mind, whatever term that you'd like to use to describe how you feel about an item - the powerful and profound piece in this method is that when it's over, you will have touched and considered every item's place and function in your house and in your life. Your objects will have a chance to serve you once again - even if you don't look at them for another five years. You'll know that they'll be ready to do their duty.
Having to spend the entirety of my days and night in my apartment over the 70+ days of sheltering-at-home so far has shined a light on and received dividends from the biggest investment that I have made in myself and in my house - implementing the Kon-Mari Method. I've been able to spend the long quarantine in a house that's as tidy today as it was when the crisis began. This has most certainly helped to balance my mental state - rarely having to look upon a mess, and never helplessly looking at a mess. If you implement the Kon-Mari method in your life, I believe that you too may reach a new level of life - one of the easiest and most lasting gifts that you can give to yourself.
Now - if you're already a clean and spotlessly organized individual - thanks for reading, anyways!
Get the book here!