“I Love Mess”
February 23, 2019
“I’m so excited because I love mess!”, says Marie Kondo, author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (the irony of this cluttered title is not lost on me). I read her book when it first came out in 2014 and discovered Kondo’s mission in life–to spark joy in the world through tidying.
And now, thanks to Netflix, we can see how these joy sparks fly. Season 1 of Tidying Up with Marie Kondo aired early in 2019, and admittedly, I binge-watched the entire season in three days. Her show made me think of the Supernanny, who visited homes and helped parents shape up their kids. Instead of shaping up kids, however, Kondo is shaping up homes. In my eyes, she is the “Supernanny of Clutter” as she visits the homes of empty nesters, downsizers, widows, students, parents of toddlers, and expectant couples, to name a few, and helps them to purge their homes of items they really do not want to take into the future.
As Marie enters a home, she follows a five step process of tidying up, starting with decluttering clothing and books, and ending with paper work, kitchen and bathrooms, and finally sentimental items (which I personally find the most difficult to purge). The first two steps, decluttering clothing and books, requires the family to place all of their clothing in one mountainous pile on a bed and all the books on the floor. Then the family members are instructed to hold each item of clothing and each book in order to determine which items spark joy and thus make the cut as the items which may remain in the home. Spark-less items are given away to goodwill or discarded.
Even though this process sounds very straightforward, most of the people Kondo helps, get stuck on knowing what sparks joy. Most have never considered holding a pair of pants or a book and determining if they feel a spark of joy; most do not really know what that means. And I get it, because even though Marie Kondo never visited my home, I did read her book and I did binge on her show, after all, so wasn’t I at least a quasi-expert on the process? In the privacy of my home, I got stuck on the joy spark. Everything I owned seem to spark joy, and was probably the reason I had so much to purge in the first place! I treasured my stuff and had difficulty laying aside some possessions.
So in order to help people get over this confusion, Kondo would clarify and say, “Is this really something you want to take into your future with you?” The answer to that simple question helped many families determine what had to go and what could remain in the house.
Marie Kondo, her book, her Netflix series, and her process of decluttering got me to thinking about the stuff I treasured, the difficulty I had in purging and deciding what should go into the future with me. And then I was reminded from God’s Word what really mattered in the present and what treasures I should be laying up for the future:
19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal.
Matthew 6:19-20 (ESV)