feldman

I watched the whole season of Marie Kondo yesterday. Today I culled, folded, and put away clothes for the first time this year. That's partly shaking off the winter depression, and partly testing out the ideas.

I've done major culling of the whole household a few times over the years, paring down from a three-bedroom-house+basement+garage to a townhouse we share with my folks. I cleared out my grandma's pack rat home after she passed. I cleared out my mom's hoarding home when they sold the house to come live with us, which is a streamlining that's ongoing. It's never about the jenk, it's always about what the jenk represents.

I've read more analysis of the Kondo backlash than I've encountered actual backlash (it helps that I deleted FB last year), and others have addressed the threads of racism and xenophobia better than I could. I think it bears mentioning, though, that some of the cultural discomfort is surely caused by the families themselves. They are Everyday Americans in every sense, including their diversity of religion, race, age, orientation, life stage, and probably a lot of other intersections I didn't notice because it was so deftly presented. They have family histories woven into the fabric of American history, if not as traumatic or terrible or surprising as those uncovered in, say, Finding Your Roots. They're re-organizing because they have ambitions and plans for the future, starting families and lives and new chapters, and none of them were the typical HG Channel Straight White Bores.

These were the kind of people I know and work with and live next door to. It was so fucking refreshing. I also really loved how the whole point was to get your shit together to facilitate enjoying your life.

There was a dignity in how even the weird collections and mountains of whatnot were presented; the complete rejection of shame as a motivator was startling. Kondo's methods were less about the organization itself than the recognition that objects in our personal space also take up space in our head, and dealing with the meaning of an object is a precursor for making a decision about it. The emotional nuance given to each person's relationship to their things really set it apart from the reality show rubbernecking of Hoarders (which I can't watch anymore after dealing with these issues with my own relatives), or the home and garden photo shoot porn of HGTV (I hate when this is on in the break room at work).

The fact that conflict is not elided, but is kept off-camera, and presented only after the resolution? Again with the dignity and the emotional caring.

I'm sure Kondo's house greeting is rooted in Japanese cultural notions of home and ritual, stuff that Americans like to think we're too objective for (watch a week's worth of The People's Court and get back to me on Americans not being territorial and emotional as fuck). But it does set a tone of respect for the psychological weight of one's home. She's not here to impose with a roll of trash bags, a system, and shame. She's demonstrating at the start that she will listen and meet you at your irrational place, and keep reminding you that the emotional import of your stuff actually is important, and that there's value in being deliberate and selective and intentional about it.