Apparently, I am not alone in this sentiment. For instance, I had a recent conversation with my good friend Cathy, who has also moved her family of 7 many times, often across oceans. When I said I had contemplated arson as a means of solving my clutter problem, she could totally relate. Before each move, she would pare down their belongings, and ship most of what was left by slow boat, taking just enough to live off of for a few months with them to their new place. Every time, she would find herself hoping the slow boat would just sink. When the shipment arrived (as it always has) she would pare down even more because she had discovered in many cases that they had lived just fine without it. It's no wonder Cathy's home is always so neat and attractive.
I think most of us would agree that in general, our society is way too buried in stuff. Stuff is so available to us, in so many varieties. Even "poor" people in this country can have houses full of possessions. Families in 3rd world countries live with so little, and yet we often hear stories of how happy they can be. Stuff doesn't make us happy, but advertising is constantly trying to sell us that lie. Quite to the contrary, owning too much stuff has the effect of binding us down to this world. We are forced to shift our focus to the burdensome responsibility of managing all our stuff instead of actually living our lives.
I have never been good at managing clutter. I try to blame it on my right-brained creativity, but that doesn't make me feel any better. When I am focused on a project I can be sadly oblivious to the mess that I or the kids are making all around me. In all honesty, it probably comes down to plain old laziness, either that or lack of faith that I can ever actually get my house clean. Whatever the cause, I feel like my inability to clean my house is my big fatal flaw (I have many others, but this is the one that has pained me the most). I knew it was particularly frustrating to my husband, who grew up in a home where his mother seemed to keep the place effortlessly clean (though I am sure much effort went into it). On the other hand, I grew up in a home with a high clutter tolerance. Mom tried to teach us to keep things neat, but she admitted that she wasn't very good at it, either. Her excuse, she would say in more candid moments, was that her mother had never made her work. Although her dad would make her and her siblings do the dishes, Grandma's philosophy was "let them enjoy childhood, because adulthood will be hard enough." Sometimes, I've been told, Grandma even did major homework projects for them. Mom tried hard to make up for it, though. She bought Don Aslett's popular books on cleaning and taught us all how to scrub down the bathroom and mop and dust and vacuum. She made chore charts and in the summers we had rigorous inspections before we could go out and play. But still, the clutter accumulated. It seemed like a constant battle. When Grandma would come for a visit, she would take on her mother role again, trying to relieve Mom of her work load. She would clean house from top to bottom and return home so exhausted that Grandpa would threaten to not let her visit again. It would seem that Grandma was a cleaning queen, but when I visited Grandma's house, I noticed that even though she knew how to "clean" house, it never felt tidy. They had boxes stacked in many bedrooms, and by the time I was in college, we couldn't sleep at their house when we visited because the spare rooms were too full of stuff.
Apparently this wasn't so much a cleaning problem as it was a hoarding problem. I think this all came to head for me when my grandparents and my grandpa's brother (who lived similarly) all passed away within a year of each other. Because my Mom also passed away that year, my siblings and I became more directly involved in the task of sorting through the stuff they left behind than we otherwise might have been. The experience has been eye opening. The sheer volume of possessions acquired by three people in their 90's who had lived in the same houses for more than 60 years (for their whole life in my great-uncle's case) was mind boggling. Some of it was pretty cool stuff, treasures even. Lots of it was mysterious. Lots was junk. We're still not done.
Apparently this wasn't so much a cleaning problem as it was a hoarding problem. I think this all came to head for me when my grandparents and my grandpa's brother (who lived similarly) all passed away within a year of each other. Because my Mom also passed away that year, my siblings and I became more directly involved in the task of sorting through the stuff they left behind than we otherwise might have been. The experience has been eye opening. The sheer volume of possessions acquired by three people in their 90's who had lived in the same houses for more than 60 years (for their whole life in my great-uncle's case) was mind boggling. Some of it was pretty cool stuff, treasures even. Lots of it was mysterious. Lots was junk. We're still not done.
As I've watched this process unfold I have looked around at my own stuff and envisioned what it will be like for my kids someday to have to sort through all of it. Would they feel obligated to keep things when they didn't even know what it was, where it was from, only that it must have been important to Mom because she kept it? Would it take them months or years to sort through the mysterious messes I had left behind? I didn't want to do that to them.
I had already been praying regularly for the ability to get my home in order, for the necessary skills to make decisions and put things away. With this new motivation to not burden my children with my mess when I die, I prayed with even more fervor, but still the desired results escaped me. In my mind, the biggest issue was time. I felt like the daily tasks of cooking, doing dishes and laundry, chauffeuring kids, and general cleaning was all I had time for. There were lurking piles and boxes of stuff that I always had on my mind, but they were never a high enough priority to displace the daily grind. Those unfinished projects weighed heavily on me. I desperately wanted my house to be clean, but it seemed impossible. Sorting, organizing and storing my things properly was the project I could never finish, and therefore I could never have the tidy, pleasant home I wanted. It never even occurred to me that the solution to my clutter was not how to organize and store it, but simply to let go of it.
That was the magical revelation that the KonMari method introduced to me. It was at the same time both terrifying and liberating. At first, I felt my hoarding instincts screaming in resistance at the thought of getting rid of this or that thing I had kept for years. But every time, I found myself slowly realizing that I could in fact let it go. Not only that, but the thought of doing so was thrilling. It feels like the contrast between flying on a big, bulky crowded airplane and the rush of hang-gliding. It may be a little scary out in the open like that, but you get to feel the wind and see the view and experience what flying is really all about!
As I read the book, I felt like my mom and my grandparents were behind this gift, that they wanted me to read it. It seemed like their effort from the other side to break the cycle of hoarding that had plagued 3 generations already. I also felt like the author, this little Japanese girl who grew up reading housekeeping magazines and staying in from recess to organize her school classroom, who went on to develop the KonMari method and write a book about it, was sent to this earth just for me, to liberate me from the shackles of too much stuff. Her philosophy has blessed many, many others as well, of course, but I still can't get over how perfect the timing was, and how precise the solution was for my life.
As I read the book, I felt like my mom and my grandparents were behind this gift, that they wanted me to read it. It seemed like their effort from the other side to break the cycle of hoarding that had plagued 3 generations already. I also felt like the author, this little Japanese girl who grew up reading housekeeping magazines and staying in from recess to organize her school classroom, who went on to develop the KonMari method and write a book about it, was sent to this earth just for me, to liberate me from the shackles of too much stuff. Her philosophy has blessed many, many others as well, of course, but I still can't get over how perfect the timing was, and how precise the solution was for my life.
I think a person has to come to KonMari willingly. It is not something anyone can talk you into doing. It has to spring from a desire to simplify and finally solve the problem of an overly cluttered life. I am still learning how to apply it, and I still need to develop better skills at just putting things away. But for the first time, I feel like I can do this! That feeling is so empowering! Not only can I do this, but I believe it will be finished far sooner than I ever imagined. The thought of all I will be able to do when it is done is incredibly exciting to me. Maybe I'll even take up hang-gliding :)
My other posts on KonMari:
My other posts on KonMari:
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