Some friends came over for brunch recently—a couple of
hardcore DIY-ers who have installed drywall, a toilet, even their own
electrical wiring. They just renovated their kitchen. By themselves.
When they came inside, they looked for the usual pile of coats to throw their stuff. I gestured toward my new knockoff
Eames Hang-It-All—a brightly colored, wall-mounted coat hanger.
“Just installed it myself,” I said with only a hint of
smugness.
My friends went to hang their coats. The Hang-It-All immediately collapsed
under the weight of their spring outerwear. The whole mess—coats, hats and
cool, mid-century modern coat rack—hung sadly by a single screw.
“Epic fail,” said our eldest daughter and slouched out
of the room.
"You just need better screws," our friends told us.
We invited our friends into the kitchen, where I spent
several minutes cleaning bits of crud off the kitchen island and rooting around
in the pantry for the bottle of Perrier I’d bought earlier that week.
“I know it’s in here somewhere,” I said.
Meanwhile, one friend (the wife) got busy doing my dishes from the
night before. Because I always ask friends to come early to help me get ready for my own parties.
When she finished that chore, her gaze, full of pity, rested on my pantry. Its shelves were filled
with a few cans of food nestled in a jumble of eco-friendly shopping bags, empties,
boxes of breakfast cereal and a collapsible crate my brother had given me in an effort to get me organized. It was stuffed with old cookbooks I hadn't used since the Food Network began.
“Do you know what we’re reading?” said the husband. “It’s a
great book called The Life-Changing Magic
of Tidying Up.”
I'd heard of the book. In fact, I was number 378 on the waiting list to borrow it from the library. Which was great because that meant I could avoid tidying up for a few months.
The author, Marie Kondo, is a Japanese home
organization consultant who says she has been reading her nation’s equivalent
of Woman's Day since she was five years old. (OK, there is probably no
Japanese equivalent to Woman's Day. There is no place in the world,
other than the US, where it makes perfect sense to have a magazine cover that features
weight loss tips and a cake recipe on the cover every month.)
Kondo’s lesson for tidying up is simple: keep only those
items that bring you joy, and get rid of the rest.
There’s also good folding advice, our friends told us. Put socks side-by-side in
pairs, rather than folded into sock balls. Stack piles of shirts on their
sides, so you easily can see what you have.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “I’ll never stop making sock
balls.”
“It’s all about the energy of the socks,” said the wife. “They’re
on your feet all day. They like to rest in pairs in the drawer, not all
bunched up.”
“Yeah.”
After breakfast, my friends did all the brunch dishes and set my kitchen in order while I poured
myself a glass of Prosecco.
I noticed how naturally it came to them to tidy up. There was no procrastination or argument about who should do what. They just got it done.
When everyone had gone home, I thought about laundry. Because
that’s my excuse to watch Netflix while I avoid folding the basket of clothes
in front of me.
But then I thought, why not? Why not make an effort to get a
little more organized? It wasn’t like I had anything better to do. It was the
time when most people were spring cleaning. Plus, our middle daughter needed
her older sister’s hand-me-downs, which were buried deep in the back of her
drawer.
Okay, I thought, let’s just try one pile. I went into my
daughter’s room and opened a drawer. It was like the pantry—a jumble of folded,
piled shirts, empties (in her case, old candy wrappers) sprinkled liberally
with eraser dust and pencil shavings.
I folded my daughter’s shirts as she looked on in sullen
silence. She doesn’t like anyone to mess with her mess.
But when I put them in her drawer, the pile on its side,
magic happened. There was now a rainbow of shirts in the drawer, filed neatly
side-by-side, rather than stacked on top of each other.
My daughter and I looked at each other, both of us smiling,
astonished by this feat of domestic engineering. It made us happy—joyful, even. Here’s the weird part. I felt like the clothes were happier too. But
maybe that was the Prosecco.
The socks called to me.
“Please don’t bunch me up
into a tight ball. Please let me relax with my partner beside me.”
Sure I had spent too much time indoors that day, but it was really like these objects had preferences about how to be
kept properly.
That whole Shinto animism thing had got to me.
I texted my friend, which thankfully gave me an excuse to
avoid more folding.
“I just spent 20 minutes of my life re-folding shot. I will
never forgive you for those lost minutes!”
“I mean, refolding shut. Thanks a lot.”
“That was supposed to say shit! I was refolding shit. Fucking autocorrect. Like socks. For
20 minutes. I’ll never forgive you.”
My friend texted me back: “You’re welcome.”