This year I’ve committed to being a minimalist by firstly decluttering my home.
I’ve lived in London for over 7 years now and in that 7 years I moved 9 times (not always voluntarily). The only blessing that accompanied this peripatetic existence was that I was forced to downsize the amount of stuff I owned with each move. It also made me acutely aware of not wanting to accumulate more stuff when I wasn’t moving. And so, my reasons for wanting to be a minimalist when I was on the trot were pragmatic.
But now that M and I have finally settled in a place we can seriously call “home", my reasons for going minimal are based on restoring and maintaining my sanity and wellbeing. London, as is widely known, is fast, unforgiving and full of shiny things that create lots of desires that often undermine one's sense of self. Losing your head in it all is par for the course unless there is a deliberate attempt to ignore it. Not more so than when you’re super busy.
Which, like most ordinary Londoners, M and I are. And so I feel that few things are more important than to come home to a space that is clean and uncluttered. If we already have enough trouble prodding the plumbing of our minds then we’re just kicking the ladder away whenever we fill our homes with countless material distractions (including lots of little buddha statues and incense holders mind).
My appreciation for decluttering the home redoubled after I read Marie Kondo’s insanely popular “The Life Changing Magic of Tidying”. Once I'd skimmed the pages regarding her congenital obsessiveness with tidying (it started at age 5) and overlooked the fact that the book is aimed primarily at Japanese housewives, I was left with a good clutch of profound thoughts on what “home is where the heart is” actually means.
For Kondo, a person’s external environment is a reflection of what’s really going on inside. A messy and disorganised home probably equates to not having one’s life together. But for Kondo, the antidote isn’t simply to throw things away willy nilly. Hers is a systematic method that will not only cleanse you of your belongings (by type!), but will make you think about the kind of person you want to be. It’s that profound.
The majority of us, even if we’re not the kind of hoarder that requires psychiatric treatment, keep stuff that we don’t really love or what Kondo calls “spark joy” (is that expression trademarked?). We keep old t-shirts for sleeping in rather than because they still make our hearts flutter. We continue to stow away distasteful trinkets from loved ones because we feel too guilty to offload them to charity. And, crikey, what about all the back-of-the-cupboard stuff we didn't even know we have? Why, Kondo asks, would you want to degrade yourself like this? By surrounding yourself with stuff your life doesn’t need or want? And so the question of “does it spark joy?” forms the basis of Marie’s KonMari method of decluttering. Surrounding yourself only with stuff you love is in essence a kind of self-care. Not only that, the stuff itself, even if you no longer love it, also deserves some respect. Stuff that no longer serves you may serve someone else. So giving that old lamp to charity is an opportunity for that lamp to have a new life and for you to move on.
Along these lines, Kondo directs us to consider the meditative interactions we should be having with our stuff. For instance, she’s a big advocate of folding rather than hanging clothes. Not only does hanging waste more space than folding, folding gives us the opportunity to be mindfully engaged with things that are as close to our hearts as the clothes we wear. Folding forces us to handle and really feel each item so that we can evaluate whether it still “sparks joy”. Looking at it this way, a chore like folding can be turned into a small but important ceremony of self-renewal and self-worth.
And so, now that we’re in 2016, I will do my best to keep my belongings pared back to only those that I love, to fold my clothes rather than hang them, and to reign in any impulse to shop impulsively, especially online. But if there is one thing I will make an exception for, it will be to buy more house plants. I can do with more nature in my life. Namaste.
