KonMari

Marie Kondo has got nothing on us.

This weekend we are cleaning out the family house of twenty-two years of the accumulated detritus of raising kids. There is a twenty-foot dumpster in the driveway that is already overflowing after just one day and it is not apparent that we’ve put much of a dent in the project. It might take five dumpster loads and several weeks to completely clear this place out. A few lessons:

1.      There was never any reason to keep 90% of this stuff. You just don’t need 80 jelly jars, retired bed linens, old paperbacks, the kids’ plaster of paris handprints, 110 coffee mugs, a broken toaster, 2nd grade homework, or those six 18” 2x4s with a 45° angle cut in one end.

2.      Nobody wants your crap. Just get over it. Yes, there is some universe where that thing may have value to someone, but you do not know them. We live in a disposable society and the stuff we accumulate is also piling up at the houses of our children, friends, and neighbors.

3.      Sentimentality is the enemy of tidying up. Take a picture of that thing and keep going. If you have to stop and wax nostalgic about everything you pick up, you will never finish the job. Yes, the kids were cute when they were little, and, yes, I remember that vacation.

4.      Just say ‘No!’ to the storage unit option. Your future self will not want this stuff any more than your current self. If it has no value today, paying to store it just makes the problem worse. Put it in the dumpster and move on with your life. It feels like losing ten pounds.

I admit to having an anti-stuff bias. My grandfather liked to keep everything and was certain that it would be useful one day. He also had several barns to keep his stuff. I prefer to travel light through life, collecting memories and experiences. All this stuff is weighing us down. Just get rid of it.

Ironically, one of the things we found while cleaning out the house was an (obviously unread) copy of Marie Kondo’s book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” I am clearly a Kondo fan, but I also know that she would need my help. At 4’ 7” how would she be able to reach anything?