It’s Resolution Time
Great.
The dawn of 2024 and here I am without a decent New Year’s resolution.
Oh, I have the usual eat-less-exercise-more vow. The drink-more-water-get-more-sleep promise. The never-miss-more-than-one-day-at-the-gym pledge. The write prompt thank-you notes resolutions. The be-more-patient resolution.
Same thing every year. Annual failures. All of them.
What I want is a real, change-what’s-left-of-your-life-for-the-better resolution.
Don’t we all?
Almost had one.
Several years ago, before boarding a flight, I impulsively bought a copy of Marie Kondo’s “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up.” It’s the 2014 bestseller by the bossy Japanese decluttering guru that helps us sloppy folks solve the most vexing First World problem ever: How to discard the junk in our houses that keeps us from being happy.
I felt guilty buying it, wondering what poor people in Haiti would make of an American blowing $16.99 plus tax on a book to tell them how to get rid of stuff.
Most of us in prosperous nations DO have too much. Too many clothes. Too many books. Too many spare buttons, keychains, combs, dog leashes, junk mail.
So much rubbish that we can’t find what we need.
I gleefully ripped through the little hardback, highlighting my favorite sections. Suddenly there was hope that I could dig my way out of 20-year-old canceled checks and 30-year-old sweaters and guiltlessly dispose of boxes full of photos of people I don’t even know.
If you’re Irish American and you’ve inherited the contents of your parents’ attics, you too may have cartons filled with black and white photos of jug-eared ancestors staring warily at the camera as if even a hint of happiness might launch another potato famine.
My plan was to spend the first six months of 2023 decluttering. Kondo insists a thorough cleanse may take half a year throwing things away.
Or rather, keeping only items that “spark joy.” There’s a difference.
During those first few weeks of January 2023 I got to know the folks at Goodwill by name as I dropped off load after load of old clothes and never-used household items.
But then I violated one of Kondo’s rules by dabbling in “ declutteration.“
The worst thing you can do, according to the author, is a little bit of daily purging. You have to set aside entire days or weeks for the task, although I’m not sure how you do that and keep your job.
I began tidying my desk and its stacks of paper. But before I threw away all the old Virginian-Pilot hate mail, the stack of AARP solicitations, the scraps of return addresses ripped from envelopes, I started reading old newspaper clippings, old birthday cards, Christmas cards, letters from my late aunt.
Next thing I knew, I was lost in memories. The papers went back on the desk. Except the AARP notices – those went into the burn pile.
The secret is not to get hung up on what you’re throwing or giving away, she says.
By June, I threw away the idea of ever decluttering.
I reread the book this week so I could declutter the right way in 2024.
Then I hit that troubling sock chapter.
Ms. Kondo hates the way most of us sort our athletic socks.
“The socks and stockings stored in your drawer are essentially on holiday,” she writes. “They take a brutal beating in their daily work, trapped between your foot and your shoe, enduring pressure and friction to protect your precious feet. The time they spend in your drawer is their only chance to rest. But if they are folded over, balled up, or tied they are always in a state of tension. … What treatment could be worse than this?”
Really, lady. This is the cause of migraines and moodiness? Socks in neat little balls?
If I’m honest, chances are my socks will stay in knots. Stacks of photos of my heinous ancestors will remain in boxes. The spare buttons will remain in the little pottery cup – made by my daughter at summer camp – on my dresser.
I won’t get enough sleep and I’ll still forget to write thank-you notes.
But for the first few weeks of 2024 I have hope - that this year will be different - I’ll part with college papers and my old maternity clothes.
