Underwear, Socks and Ts, Rochester, N.Y. circa 2018
Part One: Decluttering, the First Six Years
About 8 years ago, inspired by Maria Kondo’s best-selling book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, I embarked on a little project to declutter. I had seen some of Ms. Kondo’s videos on YouTube and I wanted my underwear drawer to look tidy and organized like hers. I read the book, was sold on the project, and began right away.
For those of you who may be unfamiliar with her methodology, there are two parts.
1. Declutter
2. Organize
The idea is that one keeps only the belongings that spark joy in you, and you ditch the rest of your stuff. It doesn’t matter if you use the thing or not. It’s doesn’t matter if you might use it. If it doesn’t spark joy, sell it, trash it, or donate it. How do you know if it sparks joy? Well, you hold it in your hands for a moment and search your feelings like a Jedi master for what you know to be true.
There is a particular system and order with which one must proceed, and here is where I got stuck for about 6 years. You are required by the KonMari System to proceed in this order (from easiest to most difficult)
Clothes
Books
Paper
Komono
Sentimental Objects
I did fine with clothes. That was pretty easy for me. Almost none of my clothes spark joy. But I had to keep something because, well, you have to have something to wear. I tossed out a ton of schmatta and t-shirts that I had gotten for free and never wore.
Books were harder. But I took several boxes to the used book store.
Papers were harder still. I had filed every bank statement, every tax return and every receipt by month and year in accordion folders and I had about ten years’ worth, filling several file cabinet drawers. Marie’s advice: Throw it all away. I guess she doesn’t believe that a tax return could spark joy. But they say you are supposed to keep some of that stuff going back at least 7 years in case of a tax audit. So, I had to make some choices. Also, you can’t just throw that stuff in the trash because racoons are constantly sorting through your trash looking for chicken bones and bank statements (they are notorious identity thieves). You must shred the papers. Five sheets at a time over a period of years, two shredders, and lots of paper jams, I got down to just the most important papers. They all fit into five slim folders. And if the IRS ever finishes auditing our ex-president and decides it has nothing better to do then to audit me, I’ll just have to hope I can find all the needed documentation online to prove that it was all the racoon’s fault.
Unfortunately, this is where is stalled for five years. The next category, kimono, or miscellaneous junk, is a big one, unlike clothes, books, and papers which were all in one or two places. There was kimono everywhere: in the basement, in my office, in the closets and in the shed.
Our shed is a quaint little structure that is older than our house. About the size of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin on Walden Pond, the shed served as storage for the gardening tools of the women who owned the one-acre parcel on which our house and two others were eventually built. When the developer who built our house in 1977 bought the land, he left the gardening shed on the parcel that became our backyard. The shed has electricity and even plumbing though the water has been turned off. I once found the valve and turned it on only to have water start spraying everywhere. It has barn door style doors that do not fit tightly, inviting in not only lots of leaves in the fall but also various critters like mice and several exotic varieties of snakes. Every spring a Carolina wren enters through a round hole in the side, which seems to have been drilled for this purpose, and builds a nest in an upside-down bicycle helmet. The baby birds hatch early in the spring, and usually by the time we go out to the shed for the first time they are already gone.
The shed had the previous owner’s junk in it when we bought the house in 1999 and we have increased that volume many times since then. Several defunct sukkot, two lawn mowers and their attachments, a tub of dirty oil, deer fencing (ineffective) rakes too numerous to count, and several scooters that belonged to children who are no longer children and no longer live here.
I was just beginning to wrap my mind around this next daunting step of decluttering when I received the call sending me to Rochester, N.Y.
From June 2015 to March 2020 I was home only for a few weeks at a time and when I was, I didn’t have the energy or the will to tackle the kimono. Meanwhile, conditions in the shed continued to deteriorate.
But my underwear drawer sparked Joy every time I grabbed a pair of socks.
Next Week Part Two: How I learned to stop worrying and love bulk trash pick-up day.