How to KonMari Your Love Life in Time for Valentine’s Day!

Start by greeting your love life -

Get down into a kneeling position and close your eyes. Place your face directly on the floor and start to cry. Just a nice little sob fest to express how unsatisfied you are romantically. Next roll over into a fetal position and read your most triggering text messages until you feel ready to start drinking, I mean, tidying.

Clothing

Pile all of your clothing onto your bed. Then push it to the side and leave it there for a week to remind you of all the empty space that’s not being occupied by a romantic partner. Throw out everything but your sweatpants — the end goal is a capsule wardrobe equivalent to Tim Allen’s groutfit from The Santa Clause. Make sure to fold your clothes, and your feelings, into thirds to make them as small as possible. Then stuff them deep in a drawer you’ll never open again.

Books

Hold each individual book physically in your hands. If it sparks a false sense of hope, unrealistic romantic expectations, or sappy feelings any kind, place it in a pile to burn later. You should end up with a copy of Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and a redacted Anna Karenina with just the parts about farming. Stack them neatly on a coffee table so they’re readily accessible when you want to cry or fall asleep respectively.

Papers

Keep all your tax documents in a pretty little box. Make sure to store it in a location that will be visible as a daily reminder that there’s at least one reliable thing in your life. Tidying applies to your electronic documents as well, so any e-mails that start out like a smut novel with Fabio on the cover from the magazine aisle at Jewel, but contain phrases like, “I don’t want this to be some kind of love letter” should be filed in a folder titled, “STOP READING THIS — THE ONLY TIME YOU WOULD EVER HAVE TO SAY THAT IS IF WHAT YOU’VE WRITTEN IS ABSOLUTELY A LOVE LETTER!!!”

Komono (Miscellaneous)

Organize your kitchen cabinets to make the things you use most often most accessible. For example, Blueberry PopTarts should sit at eye level so you can easily take the entire box into your bedroom and gorge yourself until the sheets are covered in flaky pastry crumbs. But don’t worry about that pesky fitted sheet — it too can be folded into thirds!

Sentimental

Inhale deeply with your face inside a plastic garbage bag before beginning your purge to savor the sterile aroma of solitude — American trash bags are amazing! Once you’ve thrown out any pictures, gifts, or diaries, and minimized your music collection to a single playlist of “Alone” by Heart, you can celebrate your completion of the KonMari method by meditating on the gratitude that comes from knowing you’re at least not in a sexless marriage because your four year-old is still breastfeeding…