Spring is here and with it comes the natural urge to clear out the old and start fresh. In some aspects of my life I am a little “Type A”.
I like to be organized and have everything planned out down to the most minute detail, my household chores however do not fall into this category.
I’m not the best housekeeper in the world. I can go to sleep with dishes in the sink, my laundry room constantly looks like a bomb has exploded in there and with three boys in the house I’m not even going to describe my bathrooms! When I visit friends and see how perfectly their living spaces look, I feel that I should want the same for my home.
I do, but unfortunately I lack the motivation to make it happen.
In a vain attempt to rectify my slovenly ways I checked out “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” by Marie Kondo.
I’d heard mixed reviews from others who had read it and their reports had left me a little wary as it sounded quite extreme but right now my house needs a little bit of extreme.
The first half of the book focuses on de-cluttering, choosing the items that are a necessity and what truly “sparks joy”.
This is much harder than it sounds as apparently everything in my house is a necessity even the broken snowman craft one of my boys made me in preschool that’s missing an eye and half of his nose. I’m quite a practical no-nonsense person so the premise that you should connect with your possessions and humanize them doesn’t really resonate with me.
Am I really going to place my hands on every item of clothing I own and wait for my joy response?
It’s a little hard to feel joy about sports socks and pantyhose but that doesn’t mean I want to discard them.
Yes the methodology outlined in the book is a little on the unusual side but the core idea is sound so persevere I will! I think in the future I’ll probably gravitate more towards practical guides to organization such as “Decluttering Your Home, by Geralin Thomas or Clear the Clutter, Find Happiness, by Donna Smallin but any help I can get is much appreciated.
I can’t say that I’m adopting all the methods described in the book but even a few small changes have made a big difference.
The process of purging all the excess clutter from our lives is a huge undertaking but every room I tackle makes me feel a little lighter. I recently saw a meme online that said, “I always find something I’ve lost when I do my spring cleaning, this year it was my mind.”
I think this may be true for me.
There is something almost therapeutic about ridding ourselves of excess “stuff” that weighs us down.
I’ll be honest, I’m never going to be Martha Stewart and have a home that should grace the cover of Better Homes and Gardens, which is fine as we actually have to live there.
For now the chaos is being held at bay, I give it a week!
Adele Meadow is an Assistant Community Librarian at the Summerland Branch and part-time slob.