Rectangles, folded toward the middle

If you don't live under the proverbial social media rock and you have any female friends at all whatsoever, then you are probably aware of the existence of Marie Kondo, a tiny Japanese woman and exemplar of the 21st century phenomenon of organizing as a paid profession.

Professional organizers are nothing new. For about two decades, HGTV and Real Simple magazine and ten million blogs have proclaimed the life-altering power of cleaning and organizing and arranging. And I like to clean and organize and arrange. I am the prototypical suburban woman who can't function amid chaos. I'm a bit more compulsive about neatness than most people, but I'm a bit more compulsive about a lot of things than most people.If you are looking for mental health advice, you have come to the wrong place.

But much as I love a clean and well-organized room or closet or life, I don't like professional organizing advice at all. When it comes to cleaning up, it's my way or the highway. So when I heard and saw all of the buzz surrounding Marie Kondo's Netflix show and her earlier YouTube videos, I ignored it. I don't like to binge-watch, and I was also sure that the show would be exactly like every other before/after home renovation show.

I continued to ignore Marie and her joy-sparking, but she wouldn't go away. My friends on Facebook and Instagram continued to post before and after pictures of chaos turned to order. After I read an online review of the show that included the words "unmitigated kindness," I finally had to see it for myself. Unmitigated kindness is in short supply and if Netflix is handing it out, then I'll get in line. I watched a few episodes during the snowstorm last weekend, and although the show is produced and scripted just like lots of other before/after home improvement shows, it's quite different, even radical.

There's an episode in which a young family of four (the most delightful people you will ever see) is trying to organize and tidy their cramped two-bedroom apartment. During the entire 40 or so minutes that the episode runs, Marie Kondo doesn't speak a single word about eventual homeownership or the need to upgrade to a better and larger space. Nor does she just take a "do the best you can with what little you have, poor people" approach. Instead, she treats the apartment with great respect, showing the the viewer that this tiny apartment is a dignified and private family home, as important and worthy of care and attention as any HGTV after picture.

Speaking of the after picture, this is a big difference, too. In the episodes that I have watched, no new items are purchased or even suggested. Nothing gets painted or recarpeted or refurnished or resurfaced in any way. Marie uses boxes that are already in the house--shoeboxes, in one case--to arrange and compartmentalize belongings. The only difference from before to after is that a cluttered room or closet becomes clean and orderly, without the aid of expensive baskets or shelving systems or other organizing products.

The first step in what Marie Kondo calls the KonMari method is a huge purge of old belongings, by category, not by room. Although her Shinto-inspired Japanese approach is different from the American approach to organizing (she asks people to express their gratitude to each item before letting it go), the idea of purging old items is nothing new at all if you're an American woman who has been exposed to any form of media at all, any time during the past 20 years. What's very different is that Marie Kondo has no interest at all in making room for new things, which is the real reason why women's magazines and home improvement TV shows want us to clear our clutter. The KonMari method is focused only on clearing out belongings that don't bring beauty or happiness to their owners' lives. She calls it "sparking joy." If a thing doesn't "spark joy," you should let it go, and that's all. In the context of a TV show devoted to home organizing, letting go of a thing without any plan to exchange it for a newer or nicer thing seems almost revolutionary.

And it's lovely to watch. "Unmitigated kindness" is exactly the right phrase. Watching Marie Kondo is like watching Mr. Rogers, reincarnated as a smiling, beautiful Japanese woman in a twirly skirt and black ballet shoes.

*****

Just like the author of the review that I linked here, I watched for just a few minutes and was inspired almost immediately to do something, though not everything. There's no way on God's green earth that I'll ever follow the KonMari method exactly as it's prescribed because the sight of every piece of clothing in my house heaped in a pile will induce paper-bag-breathing hyperventilation that cannot be good for a person my age. I have to do it piecemeal or not at all. My way or the highway. I started with my spice cabinet and kitchen towels, and then moved on to a few drawers.

I spent part of my youth in the retail trenches, and I thought I knew how to fold. And it turns out that I do. I tried the KonMari folding method in my t-shirt and underwear drawers. The underwear folding method, I have to admit, is quite brilliant, and I will probably stick with it. But she's dead wrong about  the t-shirts. They're much better folded flat. I mean it's nice that I can see which one is which, but I didn't have any trouble finding them before, and I'll probably go back to the old way. My sweaters and long-sleeved knit shirts are folded on shelves in my closet, and I'm going to leave them that way.

Yes, they all spark joy for me. Even the Capitals shirts.
Even after the Nashville game. OMG.
And no, I'm not going to show you my underwear drawer. Weirdos. 

I have only watched a few episodes, so I haven't seen the infamous "30-books" episode. I suspect that the uproar about this episode is another manufactured social media controversy cooked up by grievance fetishists with finely tuned passive aggression skills. Anyway, I have a lot more than 30 books, by a pretty big order of magnitude. I might be willing to part with 10 or so. So in addition to t-shirt folding, Marie Kondo and I might also disagree on book collection size.

*****
The world is a little chaotic right now, even more so than usual. I think that it could get worse before it gets better. Maybe taking a few extra minutes to fold a shirt just so will make someone appreciate the shirt a little more. Maybe by appreciating things a little more, we will appreciate people, and life itself, a little more. That would be nice. But right now, I have an organized spice cabinet, and neatly arranged kitchen linens and drawers filled with stacks of compact little rectangles, folded toward the middle. And that's pretty good.