Spring Cleaning

After throwing a hissy fit--late one Sunday afternoon--about the level of clutter in our home, I decided I needed some help. As I’m trained to do in academics, I turned to the research of an expert and decided to replicate the methods accordingly.

I purchased The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. The author dubs her process of decluttering “KonMari” (a mash up of her names). She takes everything you’ve ever learned about organizing your home and tells you it’s all bullshit. (You’ve been lied to!) She explains that no expensive storage solutions, or organizational tricks, will help you in any way. (You fool!) In fact, the big secret is this: if you struggle to keep your stuff organized, you’ve got too much damn stuff.

Once I came to terms with the hard truth that we had too much stuff, I wondered what exactly to get rid of. The KonMari method follows one rule: keep only what brings you joy.

Gaping hole left in skull.

This is silly to imagine, of course. Not everything can be categorized by joy. Useful, practical, necessary, functional, beautiful, sure. But sparking joy? If that’s the standard, I’ve been living my life wrong. (Yes! KonMari says. You have!)

Everything I own has value or purpose or sentiment. Our home isn’t littered with rusty nails and empty egg cartons. Our house is filled with toys for our children, clothes to cover our bodies and owner’s manuals for electronics long obsolete. What did joy have to do with anything?

Apparently, everything.

In actuality, many of the things we possessed were causing me angst. Especially on a Sunday afternoon, when I realize none of us have clean clothes for Monday morning. Well, except all those clothes hanging in our closets, but we don’t seem to want to wear any of those.

Reading about the KonMari method, coupled with my weekend hissy-fit ritual, led us to take a day off work to try out this method.

As suggested by the book, we took every piece of clothing Jim and I, the girls, and the bowels of our laundry room had, and piled it all up in our bedroom. It was frightening, and humbling, to see the entirety. Apparently, I own seven black cardigans. And our children have more than 50 socks combined. But not a pair among them.

For hours we sorted clothes. First, by what didn’t fit or hasn’t been worn recently. Then, by what brings us joy. Since the KonMari method allows you only a minute or so to decide about each article, we had to go with our gut. When we finished sorting, we took six bags of clothes to Goodwill and tossed two bags of trash in the dumpster.

Yes, we found items not even worthy of donation.

And, as KonMari demands, we folded and stored all our clothes vertically (you’ll never see me stack again!), rolled our socks, and found a better place to keep our shoes. (Her most useful tip is: store things according to how easy they are to put up, not how easy they are to get out). I was surprised that our reward for all this work was extra square footage in every bedroom. And the realization that every closet is a walk-in closet if it’s clean enough.

This month has been an emotional one. My youngest daughter turned one, I graduated a bright and admirable group of students, and I officially completed my book. Don’t make me rank these. Let’s just call it a three-way tie.

On May Day, my youngest—and last—child, London, turned one year old and I spent a remarkable amount of the day ugly-crying. It is my firm belief that there is no feeling more complex than those of a mother on her child’s first birthday.

While it’s easy to tack on clichés about how fast time went or how much I miss her infancy—and those are certainly true—there were other nuances for which I hadn’t prepared. For starters, when I tried to look at pictures of London on her first day of life, I was more distraught by how much her sister has changed and grown over the year. London is still a babbling bald baby whose ass I wipe. But Lowery has blossomed into a helpful, selfless, empathetic child with hair nearly a foot longer than it was a year ago when she first met her baby sister in the hospital. I can’t quite come to terms with the fact that while London was getting older this past year, so was Lowery.

How did I miss that?

I’m fully aware that what’s to come is a fun phase. London is starting to walk and talk and grow her own little curls, and I am beyond excited to watch her life unfold.

But here’s the deal:

With my first-born, I was so overwhelmed, and shell-shocked, and depressed, it was easy to let beautiful moments slip by unnoticed. Or to feel as if the truly precious time wasn’t fully appreciated. It was no wonder my first born’s first birthday was difficult: I clawed tooth and nail to get there. And resented all the time I had wasted struggling.

But with London, I seemingly did everything right. I bonded quickly, avoided depression, and was never sleep deprived. I soaked up every precious moment. I was present. I was aware. I can’t look back on this year and say I took any beautiful second for granted. Or even wished I would have had more time with her. Nope. I was glued to that child. I followed the rules this time.

And it still hurts.

A few days after London turned one, and I was fully rehydrated, I had to graduate eight of my students. Now, it may seem silly to get emotional for a group of adults I saw in a professional capacity.

But I did anyway.

In my role, as both their professor and their advisor, I learn a lot about these individuals. I had each student in about four courses, which means I've graded roughly 20 papers per student. And in those papers, even though they are academic and research-based, I learn a tremendous amount about them. How they think. What they value. Things they stand for. How they postulate, articulate, and punctuate.

And when I sit down to advise them on their careers, they share their lives with me. They express their hopes and fears and ambitions. And while those may not seem like difficult concepts to express, they often are. People don’t like saying what they want out of their life for fear it may not happen.

So at graduation, when each student’s name was called, and they crossed the stage to meet me, I couldn’t help but get emotional. Even knowing my weepy face was on the Jumbotron for all to see.

Because here’s the deal:

The greatest, and most precious, part of my job is that I see people in the middle of a journey to better themselves. Whether they are getting the degree to move up in their current organization, or to change careers, or are simply delaying the next decision, I’m catching these people on the brink of a substantial life change.

But I could feel my purpose in their life shift when I shook their hands on stage. Never again would there be a set time each week to see them. Or an obvious reason for consciously talking about their life goals. I’d never again get that unique and special glimpse into their psyche through a term paper. I know I will continue to hear from them, sure. But when they walked across the stage, my time with them, as I had always known it, was over.

And, finally, the book I’ve been working on is complete. I spent months deciding which pieces I wanted to include. Created new ones. Revised old ones. Rearranged the order dozens of times. Reviewed draft upon draft of the cover. Debated on to whom to dedicate the book. And agonized over whether or not to center the page numbers.

I’ve written for years without all the hand wringing. But a book and a blog are very different because one is permanent and forever, and the other is a link that can be changed whenever I feel like it.

I’ve had to let go of my control over the book in many ways. Mostly by deciding when I was done. I go to bed every night thinking, “Wait, should I include more about body image?” Or, “Wait, that time I gave the commencement speech in college…Is there something there?” And every time I sit down to write, I wonder if I should contribute more to the book, or move on to other projects.

Because here’s the deal:

The book has been one of the most fun projects I’ve ever done. It was particularly enjoyable because Jim was my editor. And for the past few months, after dinner was eaten and the girls were put to bed, we've sat at the kitchen table combing over each of the 57,030 words. We’ve argued over the tiniest of choices (“really” versus “very”) for twenty minutes before dramatically shoving all the papers off the table and making out on it.

I realize this book is not the only statement I get in this life. It isn’t my final word. It can’t carry that burden. Nor can I. This book is simply the best of what I had to offer at the time. I’m proud of it, I’m excited by it, and I’m hopeful for it. But watching Jim collect all the stacks and stacks of edited versions and declare we were done was as complex a feeling as graduating my students and singing happy birthday to my one year old.

Or, trying to decide which one of the seven black cardigans to keep.

The KonMari method was somewhat life changing, though not in the same way as, say, finding God or watching Birdman. But it did create a chance to evaluate what I tend to hold on to. And why. And when I started thinking about things in my closet as either bringing me joy or not, it was easy to use that framework in other areas of my life. Focus on those things, projects and people that bring me joy. And discard the rest.

But here’s the deal:

The things that bring me the most joy are not mine to keep.