The Making of a Minimalist

“Being messy is not hereditary, nor is it related to lack of time.”

---Marie Kondo

Ok, so there’s what being messy isn’t, but what about what it is? I would argue that being messy is about a whole lot of issues, including but not limited to genetics, time, aptitude, motivation, comfort levels, and so much more. We would all be minimalists if it was easy to figure out why we aren’t. For that matter, we would all be geniuses if we only knew how to better reach people in education. We’d all be a perfect size six, toned and healthy if we truly understood food, fitness, and nutrition. 

And so on, and so on. For every problem we have to fix, the solutions are an individual as we are. If you do a search for books about organization and cleaning up, in about a nanosecond you get 20,000 results from Google and Amazon. Marie Kondo is the current darling of the home organization space, but she isn’t the only one talking about it.

I read her book. While it’s hard to argue with success, since she has helped so many people, for me, deciding what sparked joy and whether or not my jeans and socks are really happy in the cramped bottom drawer of my dresser left me too much in my head and not enough in the process. Someone told me once that his mother always said, “The best cleaning tool is a garbage bag” and honestly, she’s right. Sometimes you just have to haul butt and go at it, rather than picking up every last knick knack or pair of shoes, trying to decide how you feel about them.

That was the challenge recently at my house. My daughter decided to become a minimalist. You’d have to know her to know why that sent me into a fit of laughter so hard I nearly needed a new pair of pants. The girl owns 27 pairs of black leggings, all of which she swears are different, but I can’t tell a Lulu from a Nike Dri-Fit so what do I know? You want to talk socks? She could outfit a family of centipedes. Add in framed pictures of friends, cheer bows, Alex and Ani bracelets, hair scrunchies, and water bottles of every shape and size and you get the picture. I’m not sure one can be both a VSCO girl and a minimalist, but either way, her room was a disaster.

I turned to a dear friend, who has the ability to design spaces, to take input on what someone wants from a room and turn it into a real haven. She knew to ask my daughter questions like “Where do you think is the best place for your beauty gear and tools?” and “What spot works best for your pictures so you can see them easily?” The questions I was asking were more like, “Mother of God, Devin, how did this happen to your room, did a Viking horde stomp through here while I was out?

She started by getting rid of the old kiddy bed with its Dora the Explorer stickers, and putting in a new wrought iron daybed (thank you Buy Nothing Marblehead!) and from there it became about setting a scene. Sure, there was trash to be tossed, old clothes to be donated, and a major dusting and vacuuming effort, but having someone who can visualize efficiency and order is invaluable. I wouldn’t know efficiency and order if they jumped into my lap and called me Mommy.

 Within a matter of hours, the room was a calm oasis of neatly stored clothing, pictures of friends, and precious mementos. There was also a huge pile of garbage bags all ready for the trash or the donation box. There are still enough pairs of leggings for an entire yoga class, but they are stored neatly. They may or may not be experiencing joy; I forgot to actually ask or consider that, but it’s not even my room and I’m ecstatic. Watching this effort unfold, it struck me that it’s about more than just dust and clutter. It’s about how we want to live and, sorry Marie, for me at least, figuring that out is going to take more than your book of magic joy. Eventually I will get there. Maybe.

Still, it was a start. Now that I have a secret weapon of someone who knows the hot mess that I am (and will likely always be) perhaps there will be some forward progress in bringing order to at least a few parts of my life, like my desk or my kitchen. Of course, we are all happier when we operate in an orderly environment, that is hardly news. Getting there is different for us all though. I will be stocking up on garbage bags though, and I will try to make a dent in some of the disorder.