Chapter I: In the Beginning
The night before my KonMari purge, I came home to an empty apartment and an overflowed toilet. This was not a benign toilet situation: It was a disgusting, festering, toxic nightmare. A gurgling toilet and an inch of shit water, apparently brought on by no one and nothing, was like the universe saying, Okay, bitch, you wanna clean? Clean this!
In fact, I did want to clean. I wanted to clean a lot. When I purchased tidying icon Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up a few weeks prior, I was in the market for more than an organized room; I was looking for a happier life. I had been stressed, exhausted, and grumpy the moment I got home and walked into my room, which was brimming with so much crap that I couldn’t focus. Luckily, a happier life is exactly what Kondo is selling, with a decluttering approach painstakingly curated to deliver maximum tidiness, and through tidiness, MAXIMUM JOY.
I was ready for MAXIMUM JOY—I mean, sure, yeah, bring it on—but I had serious doubts about my ability to tidy in any revolutionary way.
Why? Because I’m a TLC camera crew away from being a hoarder. I’ve never been able to keep my room clean for more than a day or so. Since I moved to New York in 2013, my living space had become a prison of crap that I chronically neglected. There wasn’t enough room for my stuff. The drawers were stuffed with balled-up clothing, the closet packed tight with hangers, and a hanging shoe rack swung by one hinge so that entire pairs of shoes tumbled to the ground with a slam. I saved every paper from every thing ever. Want to know how much I paid each time I bought toilet paper from Duane Reade? That information was available in the form of thousands of receipts crammed in a shoebox. On my desk chair—which I'd never used—was a mountain of clothes that got so big that the act of extracting a shirt from the stack toppled the entire stack like a Jenga tower. The desk itself was piled with clutter, papers, books, and, for some reason, socks. I was a detective in the ongoing unsolved mystery Where the fuck is my other shoe?
Every six weeks or so, I put everything away to prevent a panic attack, but in a day or two, whatever progress I made had unraveled. Could I, a disgusting clutter demon, become Marie Kondo?
In a word, no, because Marie Kondo is a freak. Her book, a small hardcover guide, expertly details her method of tidying, the ways in which she discovered it, and why all other ways of tidying—or arguments about why you won’t be able to tidy like KonMari—are wrong. The book is alternately cold and highly emotional, practical and insane. She holds beliefs I simply do not have, and while I respect them, I also can’t fake them.
For example, Kondo holds a great deal of respect for the home and honors that by never wearing anything schlubby, even to sleep. “If you are a woman, try wearing something elegant as nightwear,” she suggests. “The worst thing”—emphasis added—”you can do is to wear a sloppy sweat suit.”
Reading this made me feel as if I was never going to nail the KonMari Method. Not only do I wear a “sloppy sweat suit” to sleep, I wear one outside quite frequently. I wash my hair once a week, eat all foods straight out of their bag or container, wash my sheets approximately never, and have a text thread with myself detailing all the best public bathrooms in which to poop in Manhattan. I’m just a gal who is hustling in New York to make it and, like Whitman, I contain multitudes. Some of these multitudes are very hygenic and respectable. I can tell myself all this, but I still don’t think Marie Kondo would keep me as a pet.
In Kondo’s worldview, “When you’ve finished tidying your home, your life will change dramatically.” Your relationships will improve! Your ambition will thrive! Your career path will clear! And you will have diarrhea. (Seriously.) According to Kondo, the process of tidying your home with the intensity and dedication that the KonMari Method demands can actually create a “detox phenomenon” that can lead to clearer skin, weight loss, and clean-as-a-whistle bowels.
Which brings me back to the night before my KonMari, on the floor of my bathroom in my underwear, gagging as I watched paper towel after paper towel practically dissolve in murky poop water. Sparing the most unfortunate details, I'll just say the evening ended with several old bath towels making brave sacrifices to sop up the water, followed by me taking three consecutive showers and not going back in the bathroom for three days due to minor PTSD.
It was an unfortunate kickoff to a cleaning event that Marie Kondo recommends you treat like a holiday. I had marked the day on my calendar weeks earlier and protected it from any schedule conflicts with the ferocity of animal motherhood. While it was tempting to treat the overflowed toilet like a bad omen, I was determined to do the KonMari fully and correctly. Well, as correctly as not owning elegant nightgowns would allow.
Chapter II: The Rules
The secret to the KonMari Method is this: You are not deciding what to get rid of, you are only deciding what to keep. This is helpful, because you don’t have to look at a beloved item and think, “Does this belong in the trash?” Instead, you only need to hold each individual item in your hands and ask yourself, “Does this spark joy?”
I know. Sparking joy is the cornerstone of Kondo’s philosophy. It’s an enigmatic metric of evaluation, but one that she assures is consistent across all phylums of potential garbage. That should leave you only with items that make you happy, clothes that you love wearing, and documents you actually need. But in order to get a real read on what to keep, you aren’t supposed to look at your clothing drawer and pick and choose with your eyes; you need to touch every item, take a hot sec, and then decide if you’re gonna hold on to it.
After you know what you’re keeping, you find a home for each thing. You do all this in one day, riding momentum to a tidiness nirvana, at which point the literal shock of having a tidy and organized living space safeguards you against any chance of regression.
At the beginning of the process, there were three potential hiccups I anticipated, all based in fundamental differences between myself and Marie Kondo.
Marie Kondo believes clothing and belongings are alive. Straight-up. Oh, but it gets worse! She speaks to her clothing and her belongings, thanks them for their hard work, and gives them compliments and encouragement. This, she says, extends the life of her garments. I mean…I love you, girl, but no.
Marie Kondo wants you to throw out photos. She wants you to throw out everything! She thinks about five photos per life event are all you really need should the need to reminisce arise. I tried to imagine myself trashing childhood photos and felt sick to my stomach.
Marie Kondo devoted years of her life figuring out how to store purses. Literally, just purses. It haunted her. At several points in the book, she describes emotional agony and breakdowns that occurred due to several tidying challenges in her life. I respect the woman, but yikes. The KonMari Method may be effective, but so is therapy.
Kondo has a strict order of operations for tidying, in decreasing order of disposability: clothing, books, documents, komono (miscellany), and, finally, mementos. For each type of item, you’re supposed to put everything in a pile in the center of your room in order to see exactly how much stuff you own and feel weird and bad about your materialism. Fun!
Chapter III: The Purge
The morning of my KonMari, my alarm went off at 6:30 A.M. and, against all natural instinct, I started getting dressed in real clothes. I put on shoes. I put on makeup. I did these borderline psychotic things because Marie Kondo assured me they were a crucial part of the KonMari Method. If Marie Kondo jumped off a cliff, would I jump off a cliff, too? Yeah, sure. Probably.
As I started emptying my drawers and closet, piling every item of clothing on my bed, I couldn’t believe how old my stuff was. Over 50 percent of my clothing was from high school, maybe 30 percent from college, and the rest from my #AdultLife. Why the hell did I have so many clothes from high school? Was I anticipating a Never Been Kissed scenario in which I’d need a bunch of clothes ten years out of style?
I picked up the first item: a long-sleeved green sweater I hadn’t worn in a couple years. I was pretty sure I could just throw it out. But did it spark joy? I closed my eyes and dove deep into my soul to find the noncynical hippie part.
I held the sweater for 30 seconds and felt a deadness inside. I assumed it was a no-joy situation and tossed it in a trash bag to donate. I started plucking things from the pile that I suspected wouldn’t spark joy—shirts I had forgotten about, sweaters I found itchy, pants that had a weird crotch fold that made me look like an old lady—and they were all pretty easy to say goodbye to. I felt super energized throwing out all these clothes that I didn’t need—look at me, a fucking KonMari expert!—and then something weird happened.
I was holding a chunky striped sweater from Hanukkah three years ago that I had basically forgotten about. It had been languishing in the dark corner of a neglected shelf for a couple years. I held the sweater in my hands, thought of it on my body, and then, strangely, came a bright little ping from the most delicate part of my guts: Oh, I love this sweater. There it was—my first spark of joy. I tossed it in the keep pile.
As I made my way through more and more clothes, I got higher and higher on my tidying horse. I was killing it. I was somehow able to fill nearly six 30-gallon trash bags with clothes to donate without having to do any of the spiritual bullshit Marie Kondo touted. In a couple hours, I became a machine, well-practiced at identifying what needed to stay and what needed to go. I even had a few epiphanies (all very important and involving the realization that none of my jeans spark MAXIMUM JOY).
I also had a real clouds-part-and-the-sun-shines-upon-me moment when I realized this process also involved my underwear. And boy, did I have a lot of underwear. As a lady whose chest development plateaued shortly after it started, I still had some of my first bras (mortifying), as well as a lot of old underwear that made me feel schlumpy. I said a big fat farewell to undergarments that I bought when I was an uptight nerd afraid of my own body. That shit felt transformative. Can I get a Hallelu?!
Chapter IV: Goodbyes
Despite these achievements, before long I had to confront a hard truth: I was cheating, and it was creating some problems.
It should come as no surprise that Kondo wants you to do clothing by category—tops, bottoms, “clothes that should be hung,” etc.—and I had been cutting corners. Oops. I kept skipping over certain items I felt afraid to confront. A shirt an ex-boyfriend loved, a dress I graduated high school in, a sweater given as a special gift, a T-shirt from a club I was in, a turtleneck with the tags still on—all clothes that I didn’t really wear.
Before long, those were the only items remaining, and as I looked at the mishmash pile of clothing items that made me feel either sentimental or guilty, I knew the right thing to do was to throw them out. I’d held them as Marie Kondo wanted me to, and while I didn’t feel nothing, I also didn’t feel any thrill of joy. Fuck.
I picked up the first shirt—a blue striped tee I’d worn hundreds of times. It was my favorite for years, a shirt that made me feel like myself. It was the date shirt, the first-day-of-school shirt, the music-festival shirt, the everything shirt. Could I really throw it out when it still fit?
Marie Kondo, believing that her clothes are alive, thanks them for their good work and encourages you to do the same. I had neglected this practice, mostly because it’s dumb. Yet, as I gently placed my beloved stripey shirt in the trash bag, I found myself involuntarily thanking it.
Thank you, I whispered, like a weirdo witch.
Then something magical happened: I felt at peace with its disposal. I thanked each special item, and I really meant it. It felt amazing. (And what about the clothes with the tags still on? Kondo says the purpose of these items could have been to deliver a thrill upon purchase. “Every object has a different role to play. Not all clothes have come to you to be worn threadbare.” Alright then!)
At the end of it, I had eight 30-gallon bags of clothing to donate and one 30-gallon bag of trash. My closet was half empty, my drawers (full of clothes folded according to the Method) had room to spare, and my nightmare shoe rack was in a trash pile on the street, as my amount of shoes had been reduced to a reasonable number and stored on a closet shelf.
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Next were books and papers. I had two full shelves crammed with papers: notes from college lectures, drafts of essays I wrote years ago, countless handouts I intended to use as a reference point, and, like any very cool lady, hundreds of saved programs from college theater productions. It was clear from the beginning that they were just remnants of my packrat tendencies.
I looked at the clock and realized it was 2 P.M. I hadn’t eaten anything all day but felt fine (and no diarrhea to speak of…yet). My room looked like a tornado hit it. A bunch of shit that yesterday I’d never fathomed I’d throw out was gone. Outside my door, the number of trash bags was growing. I’d cooed goodbye to dozens of items like a lunatic. Was I officially part of the KonMari cult now?
Drunk on tidying power, I moved onto komono. I am the Queen of Komono. Remember the scene in The Little Mermaid where she’s singing at the mountain of crap she’s accumulated? That’s me, but with frizzier hair.
I couldn’t imagine piling all my komono in the middle of the room, so I cheated. I went to each section of my room (dresser for medicine and hair products, bookcase for tchotchkes, desk for everything else) and did it there. I still touched everything—I just cut a few corners.
Here are some items I kept: a New Yorker cover print with a bunch of dachshunds on it, a lot of pens, a button that says “I LOVE MY LIBRARY,” a stuffed Captain Haddock Beanie Baby, a handful of birthday cards from my family, and condoms.
Here are some items I threw away: a lot of little toothpastes from dentist visits, expired DayQuil, drawings, cords to devices I don’t own, a flask, five paper weights, and glitter pens.
Last came mementos. This was a small pile to begin with: photos, some gifts, including a small wooden box from India and a painted glass mason jar, special notes, my dad’s guitar, a dumb but precious keychain. I threw out a couple mementos that, I was interested to discover, didn’t hold much meaning for me anymore. The rest (including my entire shoebox of photos) stayed.
Seven hours, fifteen trashbags, and five Swiffer sweeps later, my room was fully Kondo’d. Everything was put away. I was blissed out.
Chapter V: The Epilogue
Maybe it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, maybe it’s “the life-changing magic” advertised in the title, but, against all odds, I’m a KonMari success story. I didn’t follow the book to the letter, but my crowded dust cave has been converted into a minimalist safe haven.
I'm not a slob anymore, and am happier for it. I don’t leave clothes or shoes out when I come home. I throw away receipts without hesitating. I take better care of myself (I go to the gym consistently, eat better, see friends more) and am a better roommate, friend, and girlfriend. And on top of that, my dick grew three inches. Just kidding, I don’t have a dick but would love feedback from any dudes who completed a KonMari. Isn’t this all insane? I’m a freak. I love this dumb book!
I had anticipated issues with (1) my clothing being alive, (2) throwing out photos, and (3) Kondo’s near-psychotic devotion to tidying. At the end of it, I still think clothes are dead, photos are okay to hoard, and it’s not necessary to fold socks or healthy to cry over purse storage. Maybe cutting the corners prevented me from getting the full effects (i.e., a cleansing bout of diarrhea), but I’m a KonMari convert. Hell, yeah, MAXIMUM JOY.
