Clean Change

Change happens slowly.

My internal narrative is that my home is a wreck. In many ways it is. But when I look around, and really see where things are, I can finally see how far I’ve come, and how close I am to having the kind of space that I have in my mind.

It’s been a long journey. I’ve been working on this bit by bit for a really long time — years. It was on my mind a LOT in 2016, but I didn’t talk about it, in spite of my promises to do so. I had wanted to document the journey here. But, 2016 was a year of an intense re-juggling of my life and how I go about my tasks. I struggled to handle even basic cyclical things like putting out my newsletter every two weeks. 

Because 2016 was such a discombobulating experience, my Konmari journey turned out to be one I had to take solo. I worked on the chronic disorganization in my home in fits and starts, little bits at a time, without enough time or energy (energy, mostly) to write about it. I wanted to dedicate a couple weeks to it directly, as Kondo recommends, but for various reasons that wasn’t possible. It wasn’t for a lack of trying. :p It was a lack of ability. 

But things are changing. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when things started to change, but I know that Marie Kondo’s methods were the spark. There’s something about the mystical ways of her methods that has made them stick with me. So even while I haven’t specifically been using her methods to the letter, they’ve been in my mind the whole time. Asking myself the question: “Does this spark joy?” has enabled me to make some very, very hard choices on some items when I was having trouble letting go.

Unfinished business, uncompleted projects, items that made me feel good and bad things at the same time — I had an internal block when it came to some of these items. Completing the project might have been very, very far down on my list of priorities, or might not have even been something that I was GOING to do in spite of a decent priority but I also couldn’t seem to just let it go. One day recently, I found myself accepting the loss of the unfinished project and put the item in the donate pile. The moment I did that, I felt free. It was like my soul had opened up.

I made many donate decisions after that, and the size of the donation pile was a testament to how incredibly easy it had suddenly become.

There’s a lot of criticism of Konmari. Maybe Marie Kondo’s mystical ways don’t work for you. Maybe you’re a more practical person and therefore want just practical advice. That’s totally fine. The funny thing is that I’m usually very practical. Sometimes I surprise my artistic side with how practical I can be. But I have a mystical streak in me, so for whatever reason, the mysticism in her methods has stayed with me, almost like I’m reading her book in my mind’s eye while I’m sorting through my things. It’s the fact that the ideas stayed with me that’s caused a slight change in me to snowball.