“I’m gonna give you my foolproof tidying plan. Ready?
Move.
Seriously, put everything you own into boxes, put those boxes into a vehicle, and move them somewhere else. Because that’s the easiest way to clean up your life. All that shit you don’t really want? Gone, baby! I didn’t move for eight years, and then I moved twice in one year. The difference between the first and second move was pretty damn noticeable.
Okay, as for this book, here’s the good.
Go through your crap category by category. All your clothes at once. Big pile on the floor. Handle every item, and see if it “sparks joy.”
That’s the part that’s a little strange to think of at first. Holding something and seeing if it sparks joy. And I’ll admit, it’s a little tough because, for example, the shirts I LIKE and the shirts I have to wear to work don’t necessarily cross over. Same with pants. I warned my partner when we were on vacation that I had to pack a pair of khakis because I didn’t have enough clean pairs of jeans before we left. I warned her specifically because I thought the shock of my wearing non-jeans on vacation would be a potential health risk.
But I suppose there are lots of people who don’t have that problem. I mean, there are grown men who wear plaid shorts and the kind of sandals I wore into the shower while living at a college dorm, so what do I know?
Second, do it all at once. I actually get behind this. Many a great plan is foiled because we say, “I’m going to throw out one thing per day.” Who can keep up with a daily thing? That’s the hardest shit to do. Face it, we’re wired to do a big, exhausting project, not to chip away at stuff one little bit at a time. I’ve always thought it would be great if you could go on a single, 20-mile run and have that be the same as going on 10 2-milers, or if you could just take one long dump every couple weeks, that would really solve a lot of the world’s problems. Or hell, we’ve all thought how it would be great if you could sleep 56 hours straight and then stay up for a week, right?
But it doesn’t work like that with most things. So when it’s possible to cram it all in, I say go for it, and so does this book.
The book made a pretty good point about the difference between divesting yourself of stuff and organizing. You can be organized as hell, but that just means you have more room for stuff you probably don’t even want. Solid advice.
I also liked how this book, unlike so many others, didn’t subscribe to an “X number of things” contest. I hate that shit. Oh, look at me. I have less than 100 objects in my house. I bet everyone would be really impressed if they came over, which they don’t because every time it’s a lecture about minimalism with you. I really appreciated that this book didn’t go down that road.
There were a couple things in the book I wholeheartedly disagree with.
I’m a person who buys three tubes of toothpaste at a time. Or three things of deodorant. Because I’ve got my brands, I will absolutely use them, and running out only makes me feel like a dope. I know some people go overboard, but advising that people only have, say, one bar of soap in the house is kinda silly, to me.
Also, the thing where you don’t keep anything in the shower seems like too much work. I hate to be a knock it before I try it guy, but I have two bottles, bar of soap, and a razor.
As for the thing where you talk to your objects at the end of the day…I actually kind of dug it. I mean, I don’t have the guts to do it really, to look at my shoes and say, “Thanks for carrying me today.” But I will say, I have this yearly ritual where I wear my old running shoes on a rafting trip, and by the end of the trip they’re destroyed and have to be tossed. And when I throw them in the dumpster, I think about how far we went over the last year, and that’s a good feeling.
While it’s weird to talk to your objects, I think it’s one way people can show respect to the things they love. Most of us don’t wear shoes that require polish anymore, most of us don’t dress in a full suit that requires an undressing process in the evening. For the most part, our lives have made it easier to replace a worn object as opposed to maintaining it. I’m pretty charmed by the idea of thanking objects, especially as a stand-in for the maintenance that’s really no longer required for our stuff.
While we’re on that and the idea of sparking joy, and with my move in mind, I’ve got this thing. A boombox that I couldn’t throw out. I tried. When I moved this last time, I carried it to the dumpster and opened the lid, but when it was time to toss it in, I didn’t want to.
It’s this boombox I’ve had since I was a kid. Like a little kid. There are marks on the radio tuner I painted on so I could turn the dial and get to my favorite stations real quick. It works, it’s giant, and if you’ve got about 4 D batteries, you could even run the thing unplugged. I assume. I don’t know if I’ve EVER done that successfully.
I couldn’t get rid of it. Or, more accurately, I didn’t want to. When I held it in my hands, there was too much good feeling wrapped up in that thing.
That brings me to the part of the book that I felt the most ambivalent about. The author said something about how you should live the life you want for yourself today, for the person you are today. Not the life of yourself from the past.
I don’t have a ton of nostalgia, really. I kinda thought everything sucked from kindergarten until about the end of high school. Not because I was some cool outsider, a real Bender type or something. Because I was pretty lonely and worried about stuff all the time. If we’re going with our John Hughes tropes, more of a Cameron from Ferris Bueller, I guess. I DID like the Red Wings. And I did stay home sick a lot, although I didn’t have an asshole buddy who dragged me out of bed to be the third wheel on a city-spanning date with his girlfriend. What a dick.
Anyhoo, I don’t hold on to a lot of stuff because it reminds me of a better time. But there are a handful of things, like that boombox, that I just feel too strongly to get rid of. Where I don’t know if they spark joy, but they were the point of light in an otherwise bad time. Where they’re maybe something that doesn’t take me back to that bad place, but rather, remind me how it’s possible to get through the bad places.
I’m gonna try this with my clothes. But for now, the boombox stays.”