Earlier this fall, Marie Kondo — author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up — took up residence in both my house and my brain. One of my daughters had recently come under her spell, and as she cleared her house of extras, I decided I should follow suit. Now that the holidays are just around the corner and I’m preparing for guests, I’m even more motivated.
Clearly, over the years, my husband and I have held on to too much.
Standing beside me in the bathroom some mornings, Kondo wonders how I could even consider an additional hair product or bar of soap. In my bedroom closet she pushes me daily to examine this sweater or that pair of trousers, to thank them for their service and pass them on. Someone else could use them.
She descends the stairs with me to the kitchen, where she counsels making do with only the basics. In retirement, she says, I can again rely on my Le Creuset Dutch oven for the next batch of chicken soup and donate the slow cooker to a tag sale. Someone going to a job each day will be grateful.
And so it has gone as Kondo follows me around day after day. Her constant presence reminded me of how I was raised: to always consider that I might need something I hadn’t thought of and end up miserable without it. “What if the weather changes?” my Iowa mother would ask. “You’d better take a jacket along.” What if those shoes cause a blister, she’d worry, on a trip to Colorado when I was young. Just put in an extra pair in case. Thinking back, I recognize here a “What if?” mindset. Over the years, I’ve hung on to countless items because it was just possible I might need them sometime.
I often tell myself that living with less would be the kind of joy I experience when I travel with only a carry-on suitcase. In fact, my mantra as I pack is, if you can’t carry it, you can’t take it. Yes, I always have an extra pair of shoes and layers of clothing for temperature changes. But when dressing for dinner out on a vacation involves merely trading sneakers for boots and adding a string of brilliant red beads to my black turtleneck, life is good.
Fortunately, I’m making progress with clearing things out. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t add something to the “toss it” box of excess baggage.
My library, though, remains a challenge.
The books, in their very existence as they sit year after year on shelves within easy reach of my desk and my reading chair, are almost my identity. My collection dates back to my college days as an English major and includes multiple copies of texts I used in my classrooms over many years of teaching. Do I need three copies of Oedipus Rex or Macbeth? Of course not; and in truth, were I to read either play today, I wouldn’t choose these old, marked up versions. Yet I want them near me as the dear friends that they are.
Even here, though, I am learning how to pare down. While I still need my historic edition of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, I can live without Elizabethan Minor Epics. I pick up and reread the likes of Dickens, Virginia Woolf and Toni Morrison, but I can pass along a lot of the fiction I’ve acquired over the years. As well, I have had a Kindle e-book reader for long enough that I know what choices work for that mode of reading. Which is to say, not everything. If I live to be 100, I can imagine still enjoying bookstores and books.
As I gain perspective on my possessions — what I have, what I need and what I clearly should part company with — my relationship with Marie Kondo is changing too. No longer a stalker, she is beginning to sit more gently on my shoulder as a reminder to lighten up. By now I’m getting ready to thank her for her service in showing me how I can look at things differently.
Mary K. Otto lives in Norwich.