I was getting buried in clutter. Here’s how I finally got free.
By Valerie Peterson
With closets overstuffed with clothes that didn’t fit, pots that threatened an avalanche every time I wanted to boil an egg and bookshelves packed two volumes deep, my apartment felt burdened. Growing piles of rubber tubs made it onerous to clean the floors — especially because my vacuum resided behind bags of miscellaneous “stuff” I shoved into the closet whenever people were over.
Clutter problems in my family vary from the annoying (“I can’t find the city tax bill in these piles of paper”) to the alarming (“I can’t find the remote . . . and I can’t get near the TV to turn it off manually”). I realized I was heading down a dangerous road.
So when I spotted Marie Kondo’s book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up,” I saw hope and committed to digging out.
With an alternately sweet and stern tone, Kondo advocates an all-at-once, “aim for perfection” kind of decluttering. Following Kondo’s “organize by category” advice, I dragged my pots and pans from every nook and cranny; they covered my dining room table and a good deal of floor space. Then my collection sat out for several weeks while I painstakingly figured out which of the four six-quart pots brought me joy.
