Do You Believe in the Magic of Tidying Up?

It’s time for spring cleaning. Now let’s see, where did I put that new book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”? I’m off to a great start if I can’t even find the book. Ah, here it is.

This small book by a young Japanese woman named Marie Kondo has been all the rage lately and I thought I’d give it a try. The subtitle is “the Japanese art of decluttering and organizing” and Ms. Kondo keeps very busy helping clients do this. Her business goes under the name KonMari and you can find lots on the web about her method. So how does this book differ from all the other books and magazine articles on the subject?

Well, it is very Japanese, though the English translation flows smoothly enough. I was gratified to read about Ms. Kondo’s messy clients back home. I thought that all Japanese people were as compulsively neat as this young woman, but apparently that’s not the case. Of course, most Japanese people live in homes far smaller than in the US so there’s less room for extra stuff to start with.

Anyway, Marie Kondo takes a very personal view towards possessions, encouraging her readers to thank their shoes or handbag for all that they have done. She also encourages women to empty out all the stuff in their bags every night, store it neatly, and then restock the purse in the morning, something that would cause most women to blanch.

She wants you to be ruthless in tossing out things, but to show your appreciation to them first. This almost Shinto approach to housecleaning (she says she was a maiden at a Shinto shrine in her teen years) probably strikes most Americans as very foreign, but hey, whatever works.

Her other “secret” to organizing is to undertake one massive clean-up rather than doing a little bit at a time. That is, dump all your clothes at once on the floor and weed out what you don’t want before putting anything back. “Start by discarding, all at once intensively and completely.” Now this sounds daunting, if effective.

The key question to ask before saving or tossing something is “does it spark joy”? I presume this is a direct translation of the Japanese phrase. I’m looking around the house here and I see very little that would fall into that category. That seems like a lot to ask of an inanimate item, except for mementos. She wisely advises saving photos and mementos for last or you’ll never get anywhere.

She’s also really keen on storing clothes in a very specific way, folding them into neat little packages and standing them on end in the drawer, lighter colors to the front. (I wonder if she is really into origami too.) There is no way I would ever do this. She scolds that we hang up too many of our clothes rather than folding them and putting them in the drawer. Guilty as charged, but it works for me.

The one really strange piece of advice in this book is to set your dishes outside (in her case, a balcony in a city apartment) after you wash them. Not only is this time-consuming, but I am looking at all the tree pollen and caterpillar dirt (yuck) on the patio at the moment. Not a good idea. Surely there is dust, pollen, and pollution outdoors in Tokyo.

As far as accumulating paper goes, this is my worse clutter vice. Much of it should be tossed into the recycling bin. But under the heading “Sorting Papers” Ms. Kondo advises “discard everything”. That’s putting more faith into digital records than I can muster. I agree with Ms. Kondo about not letting books pile up. Here’s where the library comes in handy, both for borrowing new books (such as this one for example) and for donating your old books in good condition for a used book sale.

So, while I am enjoying this book as a cross-cultural experience, it doesn’t seem very useful to me. Any book on clutter and clean-up might be enough to get a person motivated, however. It seems to me that one key way to get yourself to get rid of clutter is to pretend you have to move soon, but how good are you at self-deception? Clean when you are in ruthless mood. Pay someone to help you if necessary (I haven’t resorted to this yet). Think how pleased you will be to see your house cleaned up (now that would “spark joy”). The plain bald truth about tidying up is that reading a book won’t do it for you. It doesn’t involve any magic except invoking and acting on the old Nike slogan “Just Do It”. Easier said than done.