About Netflix: I spend more time searching than I do watching stuff. Sometimes I get lucky. The other day, I clicked on a Netflix “reality” show called Tidying Up, featuring a tiny and gentle Japanese lady named Marie Kondo. Apparently, she’s written a best-selling book that I never heard of. But I quickly got hooked on watching her (with her translator) enter into people’s homes and show them how to fix the mess. In some cases, it’s a mild version of Hoarders. In others, it’s family relocation chaos, loss of a partner, empty-nesting, or some other not-too-extreme case of clutter out of control.
In every episode, the gentle and kind Marie begins by reverently “introducing herself” to the house. For the tidying process, she presents a list of categories in a specific order: Clothes, Books, Paper, Komono (other stuff). She invites the participants, when sorting their stuff, to consider, for each item in hand, which ones create in them a “spark of joy.” Nothing else is kept. Things to be discarded are “thanked” for their use in the past before being set aside.
Bill and I are not into clutter. Even unannounced visitors will find our home guest-ready, because that’s the way we like it. But watching Marie teach her new friends how to carefully fold things into drawers in order to keep them neat, visible, and accessible—that lit a spark in me. I went right to work with a sense of, well, joy.
First, the bedroom clothes closet. All those t-shirts and casual pants stuffed on shelves? You should see them neatly lined up now! Next, dresser drawers: socks, underwear, pajamas, more t-shirts, sports gear. Everything folded and rolled, readily accessible, and nicely tucked in. Yes, I tossed a few things into the Donate bag. But simply by organizing, I gained space. Best of all, opening those drawers and that closet makes me smile. Yes, a spark of joy.
And that’s not all.
When I tackled the “junk drawer” in the kitchen, in the mess of rubber bands, unidentified keys, discarded receipts, hotel ballpoint pens, and more, I found an envelope containing three gift cards from our wedding FIVE years ago. They are all still valid, I’m happy to say, and worth $150 in total. So my tidying had an actual cash benefit.
Maybe I’m just nesting as I move into the new year. But I give Marie the credit. She has succeeded with me in accomplishing her mission: to bring joy to the world through cleaning.
Who’d have thought?
In some ways, we’re much alike. In this way, we differ. But I still enjoy reading your tangents into a foreign land like joy in cleaning. Please call, preferably a day or two before, before coming by my house.
I could not get thru one episode of that show. Maybe it is my general distaste for reality TV, but mainly I could not suffer the “sweetness” of the host. My takeaway from that one partial episode was the 5 categories which will definitely be useful – and the sense of joy. There’s lots of unjoyful stuff around here.
Clearly, I need to find a new hiding place for those gift certificates!
Laughed out loud at Bill’s comment.
Lynn is much neater than I am. He can fold a fitted sheet into a perfect square. I used to kind of mush the whole thing together and shove it onto a shelf. I tried to get the thing to fold neatly, but I don’t have much patience. So I would be back to mush and squeeze. Lynn folds most of the laundry that needs folding. He’s 6’2″ so folding any king-sized sheet is his task. His folding makes even jumbo towels seem like wash cloths. And any piece of clothing is a square piece of clothing after he folds it. Makes a lot of extra room in drawers–oh wait, I’ve filled all that space.
With $150, you can provide breakfast for our Sunday school class for months. Great idea.
Me again. The show you watched has gone “Big Time.” Talked about on the View.