Konmari overwhelm, a fresh take on space clearing, and suddenly, possibly, having it all
I went to bed early yesterday and highlighted the hell out of Marie Kondo’s first book, wondering if I should spend my final 7ish pre-maternal weeks going through the konmari method properly.
I set that thought aside and went to enjoy a decadently healthy Sunday brunch at The Assembly, followed by the Holistic Health Saloon at The Center SF. I lucked out to book a session with my friend Suzanne Astar who started our session with the invitation to choose an affirmation to work into my body. I told her how I feel torn between 3 paths right now and didn’t know how to choose an affirmation, second-guessing myself right and left most days.
Should I hustle to market, book and work as much as possible while I’m physically capable and pay down my business card debt? Should I focus on my own wellbeing and desires while I can? Or should I do that decluttering bootcamp mentioned above to be the expert and reach that near perfection that adorable guru touts before my life gets turned upside down?
I deeply felt the cognitive dissonance of campaigning for women to be able to have all three, while it was feeling near-impossible and dizzying to me.
Suzanne listened patiently, then offered two possible affirmations for us to work with: “I am at peace with the progress I have made,” and “ I have enough energy to focus.”
We worked those two affirmations into my pulmonary meridian with facia-releasing resistance exercises that made me feel like a graceful dancer and an egret. I got calm in the present moment, and finally felt that I was were I needed to be.
Another helpful perspective she offered was that I’m gestating a business baby, Even when I’m stuck at home nursing, I can incubate the business, nurturing connections and concepts now, perhaps content next, and then emerge with a viable business on the other side of this passage to motherhood, such an unknowable transformation from this current perspective of mine.
I came home calm, happy, and ready for hot chocolate and a mochi muffin. Apparently I was still in the wellbeing and desires mode. Bernat walked with me and we talked through some of the changes to come. We simplified dinner with some Mac and cheese takeout, plus emergency-kale (learned today from Booka Alon that bitter greens help the liver produce the bile needed to digest fat).
So I was able to take some time to tidy and declutter in the evening. I resisted the perfectionism of “must have a full-on categorical kondo session,” and just set about setting up my space for what I loved and what I love to do. The old clothes and fresh laundry came off the top of the dresser and went to their homes, appreciated. The storage nook clutter separated into shredding, recycling, reselling, and business supplies in their elfa drawers. The baskets did their thing containing the sections. Granted, I don’t love reselling and shredding, but I take some pride in responsible reallocation and some hopefulness in reclaiming some value of resellable items.
When Suzanne and had a chat on the phone earlier in the week, space clearing came up. Her intuited interpretation of the skill I was of course feeling l needed to learn through a paid course was refreshingly simple and accessible. She said something like “soften and widen your perspective of a room in your home — from this wide angle, notice what you don’t like, then remove it.”
Despite the perfectionist pressure to go full kondo on my home to prove my worthiness as a professional organizer, I simply moved my beloved items to their spaces and cleared the spaces of what was ready to leave my home, or got them ready to go.
After a day of treating myself with love, I was able to treat my spaces and belongings with love.
I may have even unearthed some business prospects in the midsts of all this. Booka, the functional nutritionist who filled a room with the first workshop at the saloon and wow-ed many of us with the concept of a plant-based ketogenic diet, wants to spruce up her kitchen. She even has some clients who could use a cupboard purge+upgrade. Fingers crossed!
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