#251: Katie’s Kondoed Clothes

How does object-obsessed Katie respond to the Kondo method?

Marie Kondo has hit the world by storm. And with all the hype, and the backlash, around the treatment of objects, how could I not satisfy my curiosity and consider the Kondo method from an Object point of view?

I will be honest, I did not jump on the bandwagon of Marie Kondo from the first I heard of it. I am not a reality TV person, but I’ve watched the fad grow recently, and I have skim-read a few articles as people responded to the show, negatively and positively. My favourite is here. But after Emily Rowe suggested a Kondo-themed Object Post on Twitter, I decided to see what I thought of the first episode.

It was a slow, sleepy Sunday evening when I sat on the sofa and, for lack of much else to do, and rather a sleepy brain, I opened up Netflix on the TV and settled in to watch my first episode of ‘Tidying Up with Marie Kondo’. As I said, reality TV shows are not really my thing, particularly ones with overly dramatic people in them, but after the first 5 or 10 minutes, I managed to settle into it. By the end, I wanted to watch the next episode.

What is the addiction? In some ways, it’s the addiction to tidiness, the big reveal of chaos into order, which I find satisfying. I also like the tips Marie gives, inspirations for how to better organise your home. I found that I had already discovered a few of Marie’s tips all on my own, if only recently — the trick of compartmentalising drawers has seriously sorted out our kitchen drawers full of Tupperware, snacks, or veg. Other things I had heard variations of, and I particularly like the attempt to fold and store everything in a specific, useful way, so that I can see all my t-shirts at once. The Kondo aspect I had never thought to do was to ‘thank’ my clothes, my books, my shoes. To show gratitude to the objects, no matter how mundane, is something that I can certainly get behind.

I also realised, by the second episode, the other reason why I wasn’t getting as frustrated with Kondo’s show as I first expected: minimalism is not the aim. There is no limit to how many shirts Kondo thinks you should have, or how many books (despite what the internet might claim). The aim is to keep (and remove) as much stuff as seems right to you, an aim embodied in Kondo’s well-known question: “Does this spark joy for you?”

I do have some issues when approaching my own clothes with this method. Some of my clothes do not spark much joy in me, but I keep them because I have nothing better with which to replace them — and while I’m not poor, I’m not rich either. I cannot justify going out and spending money on more things to replace the ones I got rid of because they weren’t perfect: smart clothes for potential future interviews, undershirts as solutions to the cold days, along with tights with holes in them which can still be used as extra layers under my leggings. So when I sort my clothes, I need three piles — the donation/sell/recycle pile, the ‘spark joy’ pile, and the potentially fine-for-now-but-need-to-be-replaced-sometime pile. I guess this is where the ideal of the Kondo method meets real life imperfections.

Watching Kondo’s show also reminds me of the inspiration for this Object-themed blog: the requirement to clear out my grandparents’ house, which was packed full with stuff. When we had to clear it out it was hard, in that mountain of everything, to keep focussed on the joy which was once there. We were overwhelmed, and there was not enough time to sort everything meticulously. Even now, when all has been ‘sorted’ as best it could, we are still left with the thought that we did not have enough time to properly appreciate all of those objects which my grandparents had spent their lives saving and collecting.

I hope that my own future house will not be quite so full of objects as my grandparents’, but I also know that, deep-down, I could never be a minimalist. My life will always be full of objects, but that does not mean I have ‘failed’ the Kondo method, because as I said, the aim is not to be minimalist. The aim is to appreciate the objects we have, to let go of the things we know deep down spark no joy at all, and to be inspired by Marie Kondo’s tips to embrace every object in our lives. Because if there’s one thing that Kondo’s show displays so clearly, it is that while objects may clutter up our physical space, they also affect our mental space — inside and outside both matter, and it’s up to us to figure out our ideal levels of clutter, and prioritise the spark of joy.

Katie writes regularly about random objects that she finds in her everyday life. If you’re interested in reading more, check out her blog Object, a collaboration with fellow Medium blogger Eleanor. You can also follow us on Twitter at @ObjectBlog.