When you're stuck at home and your house drives you crazy

Anyone else feeling the itch to throw everything in your house out the window? Just me? Normally I am not home all day every day. That’s my husband, he is the stay at home parent, he spends the majority of the time in the house. I am at work, 40 to 50 hours out of the week. Being home for the last, god how many months is it now? It seems like 3 years. Anyway being home all day every day for so long, man I want to get rid of everything, there is too much shit in my house.

Unfortunately with good will being sporadically closed due to the pandemic and when they are open being at capacity from everyone else purging their houses, I wind up with a pile of bags and boxes in the corner of my bedroom called “the get the fuck out pile”.

Marie Kondo is a genius, firstly let me be up front in saying I did not finish her book, you will not find it on my list of books this year at the end of the month because that is the only thing I’m a stickler about. I will eventually finish the book however my turn at the library was up and someone else I’m sure needs her wisdom.

While I don’t agree with all of her methods, especially if she’s not here enforcing it haha, I do very much appreciate her overall goal. We spend our lives accumulating so much stuff and for whatever reason think we need to keep it.

Those boxes of clothes that no longer fit you, why do you have them? If you manage to lose the weight you’ll want to celebrate by buying a new wardrobe, just get rid of it. Don’t throw it out, fast fashion is killing our planet, but thrift stores and charities love taking your unwanted crap.

My point is Marie has a lot of good advice. My favorite of which being to accumulate all of one kind of object at once, no matter where in the house it is normally stored, find the place you want to store it and organize. I did this with my canned goods, while I didn’t hold each one and ask myself if it brought me joy (we’re in a pandemic….having food in the house that will be useful in the case of I can no longer buy food is joy in itself), I did sort through, remove expired products and then organize it in a way that I can now instantly find what I’m looking for, instead of buying another can of corn because I can’t find it in one of the 3 places I stored them so I must not have it.

I did apply her method to my books. *GASP* yes I did go through my books. Her method is amazing. I got rid of 21 books. 20 right off the bat, I picked them up, felt nothing and removed them. There were a few I was iffy on and I actually pulled another off the shelf after again organizing my shelf, sending my sister a picture and asking if she wanted to read it since it’s her favorite author.

I love books, and even some I removed had fond memories, however looking at them didn’t spark a fire in my heart or make me want to read them again, and what good is a book that never gets picked up and caressed? A book that will most likely never again feel it’s pages turned. That book is a sad book and a waste. If you’re cleaning out books my recommendation is to hold onto them in a corner if possible until your local library is open for donations again. Yes goodwill and thrift stores are also viable options, but to me books are meant to be loved and shared and as I have spent a good many hours of my life tucked behind a library book I think it’s important to make sure libraries have books to be loved or have books for their library sales to keep funds up for their staff and bringing in new books.

The one point Marie Kondo had that I didn’t agree with was doing everything in one day. I simply cannot do that, I mean I could, I have a lot of free time now. But I know myself, I did this through my entire childhood. My mom would tell me to clean my room, I’d pull everything out of my closet and all my drawers and start there and burn out halfway and my room would be an even bigger mess than before. It drove her nuts. To me a place doesn’t feel truly clean and organized unless I know everything is. I know which cupboard is a mess, and it eats at me and I don’t feel at peace or like the place is clean. It drives me nuts. If I tried to purge my entire house all at once, going through everything I own I would go crazy and quit and everything would be a mess.

I am therefore applying a hybrid of her philosophy. I do one category at a time. I did all my books, then I did canned foods, I did all my dishes, one category of items at a time, accumulated from their various hiding spots, purged and replaced in one central location neatly and in a way I can find everything.

“The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying up” by Marie Kondo https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Life_changing_Magic_of_Tidying_Up/xP6LDQAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0