Everybody knows someone....might be me...might be you...whose home represents an homage to "piles". It may be piles of papers, piles of laundry, piles of toys, etc. I remember a friend whose living room and family room was never cleared of its own piles for as long as we knew one another. There were literal laundry baskets of "stuff" in both rooms; there were also a lot of dogs running around. I am not talking hoarding here; hoarding is a very different phenomenon where the piles are in control of the household. With hoarding, the stuff is all around with only a narrow path with which to navigate oneself through from area to area...or from room to room. No, what I am talking about in today's post are those of us who are just "messy" and let the crap of our own lives pile up and stay piled up wherever we place it for far too long...
For Christmas this past year, a friend of mine gave me the book "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" by Marie Kondo. It's a small book and focuses on the author's own Japanese "KonMari" method for simplifying, organizing, and storing. I loved this book! In my case, my own "piles" were found primarily inside closets, cabinets, drawers, and/or rooms that remained closed for visiting guests. And yes, for anyone who knows me...there is a reason why you were never shown our laundry room during the past 20+ years! :-P
A messy household is not happening. It just isn't. When we truly don't know if we have something or not inside our own home, we end up falling into the pattern of buying the same thing(s) over and over again like it's our job. Just recently, while I was working on de-cluttering our kitchen, I can't tell you how many "decorative" bowls I found. If I owned a catering business, no problem. But I don't. Some of the bowls were chipped and cracked (how'd that happen?) and some were constructed out of questionable materials. Instead of agonizing over "Oh geez...but this is so pretty; I might as well keep it..", I was like "Buh Bye bowl!" Grant it, the garbage man probably had a fit that particular Tuesday when he tried to move the recycling bin from our curb...but it is what it is. Out with the old...and the useless...and in with the tidy!
In Kondo's book, she stresses how nobody can tidy up effectively if they don't initially engage in a major purging effort. As such, her first suggestion in tidying up is to purge and get rid of all of the things we just don't use anymore...or never did. I actually found kebob skewers in one of my kitchen drawers still inside its original packaging. The package must have been at least ten years old. Even though those skewers had never been used once....I found enough other skewers in the drawer to put these "new" ones in File 13. File 13 being the garbage bag next to me.
Grant it, tidying up can also be a lot of fun when you find things you forgot you had that you really do love...but put away however long ago. I found our daughter's preschool class photo, framed and totally adorable to see again after all these years. Now it sits on one of the shelves in our kitchen. Tidying up can also bring to the fore some things we want and need to reintroduce into our daily field of vision as part of this process. It can also inspire new projects that allow us to place certain household treasures all in the same general area. Have you ever heard of a "photo wall"? It's actually very cool. Short shelves painted the same color as the wall are used to keep "all" framed photographs in the house. No more here's a photo there's a photo. All photos can be found in the same space and (in this case) on the same wall. Eureka!
The irony of life is that we spend too much of it acquiring things like there'll be no tomorrow. Then when we become old enough and/or tired enough, the last thing we want and have to deal with is more "stuff"! Tidying up can bring us back into the proper mental perspective. Whether we recycle and/or donate our discards, sell them on Ebay, throw them into the garbage, or give them to someone else within our social circle/family system....it's always a good idea to periodically tidy up.
When our personal space is clean, neat, and organized...we feel better on the inside too. Nobody has to do it all in a single weekend either. Spending 1/2 hour every other night in a single room of your home until it is "tidy" is a good way to start without feeling overwhelmed. So what if it takes all Spring or Summer to do it? When it's all done...it'll be done! And wouldn't it be nice to have your own space (home, office, cottage, etc.) to be completely tidy by the end of this year? It is truly possible thanks to Kondo's book and her KonMari method of getting your home...and yourself...fully organized again.
Happy tidying up!
MD