Let’s get one thing straight, Mr. Home Organizing Service.
When I said I wanted to organize my house, I did not mean I want to discard everything that you shame me into believing is useless.
I am not interested in throwing away the souvenirs my late political science professor husband collected from his world travels just because they don’t bring me joy at the moment.
Nor do I wish to park a dumpster in the driveway to encourage liquidation.
In fact, the word “organize” does not mean “throw away.”
It means, after 35 years of crazy, busy family life, I want to take inventory of all the un-shelved knickknacks scattered in boxes and drawers around the house.
I want to gather up the important papers and put them in one place.
I want to pull together all the uncategorized photos that are in a basket in one room, a box in another.
Make no mistake, my dear minimalist organizer friend, which you obviously are and I’m not, I’m sure I will come across bank statements from 1983 and unrecognizable, stuck-together photos that I will happily throw away.
But that’s not the point.
The point is, after 35 years of family life devoted not so much to the house but to the people living in it, I simply want to see what I have, and if that’s as far as we get, at least I know where the deed to the house is.
This is not the way of the many people in the organize-your-personal-space industry. Sparked by Japanese organizer Marie Kondo’s wildly popular 2014 book, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” the decluttering industry promises to save stressed-out Americans from their chaotic lives by relieving them of physical chaos.
To their way of thinking, decluttering starts with throwing things away, so the client can see what they really need/want to keep.
At the heart of the process: Hold each item you’re considering in your hands. If it brings you joy, keep it. If not, bye-bye.
One organizer told me she would not even start the process of organizing my house unless I first committed to a dumpster. Another walked into my house, pointed to a favorite knickknack and said, “Why do you need that?”
Clearly, I am at a point in my life when I want more organization. I also like things. This does not make me a hoarder, a pack rat, nor a consumer-crazy American. I am simply at a point in my life when having familiar things around me brings me comfort, especially now that all the people are gone. I have neither the energy, nor the desire, to pick and choose. If I had to make a decision about every thing I have collected during 35 sentimental years of marriage and motherhood, instead of feeling joy, I might just fall apart. I also might misstep.
The other day, as my handyman friend Theo dismantled my youngest child’s shelf above his desk in the room next to mine, I started feeling panicky. Hearing all those PEZ candy dispensers, Harry Potter wands and sports trophies going into a box never to be seen again in that same way, in that same space, I realized I was not ready for certain aspects of organizing. I may never be ready, I realized, and I was glad I had a picture of the shelf to show Theo.
“Can you put that shelf back just the way it was?” I inquired.
My therapist friend asked me the other day what it was I wanted to accomplish in organizing the house — a way of being, by the way, that even Kondo, a decade after her book and the busy mother of three children, now admits may not always be possible.
One reason I want to organize my house, I told her, is to de-chaos. I also want to find all the important stuff to pass on to my kids. A third reason has to do with not leaving a mess for the kids to manage when I’m gone.
My friend’s response vis-a-vis the chaos: Focus on the rooms I live in and let the rest go. As for locating the important stuff, I can make a list of critical items and ask somebody to help me find them.
Regarding leaving a mess to the kids, I know on the one hand that going through my mother’s stuff after she died was therapy. Even if it took me six weeks to get through it all, I learned things about her I wouldn’t have known. I was able to grieve deeply as I put together a life I didn’t know was there. Leaving my stuff for my kids could likewise be a hidden gift.
On the other hand, it’s a lot of stuff.
Either way, my friend said, let it go.
“Give them permission to throw everything away when you’re gone,” she said.
At which point, it won’t matter a whit there’s a dumpster in my driveway.
Debra-Lynn B. Hook of Kent, Ohio, has been writing about family life since 1988. Visit her website at www.debralynnhook.com; email her at [email protected], or join her column’s Facebook discussion group at Debra-Lynn Hook: Bringing Up Mommy. This column is distributed by Tribune News Service. Send comments to [email protected].
