WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF

 

"Not what we have but what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.” Epicurus

Following an excess of holiday giving and receiving, many of us make New Year’s resolutions to tidy up the house and to discard what we no longer need. We also make solemn promises to organize all of our stuff.

Sensing our January emotional needs, every brick-and-mortar retail store is suddenly piled high with plastic storage containers. Unfortunately, like going to the gym, rarely are these efforts carried through past Valentines Day.

My spouse and I are not hoarders. However, our basement and attic are full of objects that never became part of our living space. While I am not as bad as the teenage son in the Zits comic strip, where clothing and dirty dishes are piled up in every corner, my sock drawer is an unmanageable twilight zone.

For both of us, finding stashed away household and personal items when we need them is often a maddening adventure. Our brain cells do not fully charge like they used to, and the house is large and uncooperative. Short of attaching Apple air-tags to these elusive objects, what is to be done?

Apparently, we are not alone. According to a survey by Pixie Technology, which measures modern trends, the average American spends a total of two and a half days every year looking for misplaced household items. More than $2.7 billion a year is spent replacing misplaced possessions. Disorganization is rampant in American lives.

 

A recent article in the New Yorker Magazine, What Professional Organizers Know About Our Lives introduced me to a thriving industry that is now in vogue. Its sole purpose is to attack clutter and to organize personal belongings. It turns out that Professional Organizers are not simply a legitimate vocation, their trade has turned into a broadening phenomenon. The author, Jennifer Wilson, proclaims that “Decluttering – with the advent of how-to books, Netflix series and even Hallmark movies based on the subject – has become central to American culture.”

Wilson agrees with the Washington Post that the pandemic accelerated our national focus on home organization. She explains in some detail the accepted rules to defeat clutter: “Americans who hated math suddenly could not stop talking about the four-box method (four boxes per room, labelled ‘Keep’, ‘Give Away’, ‘Throw Away’ and ‘Storage’; the 20/20 rule (toss anything you could replace in twenty minutes for twenty dollars); and the one-in-one-out rule (throw out one item for every new one you acquire).”

Before the Pandemic, the Japanese author Marie Kondo was credited with sparking both the do-it-yourself movement and professional organizer line of work. In 2014, this decluttering celebrity published “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The book became a best seller with fourteen million copies sold. It also spawned the 2019 Netflix hit series “Tidying Up with Marie Kondo.” According to Wikipedia, “the show had a notable cultural impact in the U.S. and the UK, where it was reported to have increased donations to charity shops.”

Kondo argues that most organization methods advocate a room-by-room approach, which is not effective. She encourages tidying by category. Her system begins with clothes, then moves on to books, papers, miscellaneous objects and finally sentimental items. Her Japanese Zen training urges us to keep only those things “that speak to the heart” and to discard items “that no longer spark joy.”

Kondo has now authored three additional books. While the first was an introduction into her methods, the second, An illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing goes deep into the details. The third, Organizing Your Professional Life, offers strategies to help eliminate clutter at work.

It is Kondo’s fourth, most recent book, Marie Kondo’s Kurashi at Home that I find most interesting. Published at the end of 2022, Kondo was now married with three children. She was struggling like many young mothers to keep her life in order.

The Japanese concept of “Kurashi” means “way of life”. Her advice is no longer singularly focused on organizing. Instead, she tells her readers: “I was a professional tidier, so I kept my home tidy at all times. I have given up on that in a good way. Now I realize what is important to me is enjoying spending time with my children at home.”

Funny what a husband and three young children will do to an award-winning theory of organization. For Kondo, taking advantage of every moment has replaced perfection in tidying up.

In November 2024, the definitive book on Professional Organizers was published. The author, Carrie Lane spent years studying the topic before releasing More than Pretty Boxes. The book does a deep dive into how these experts alleviate the demands society places on our limited time and energy.

Lane tells us that professional organizers are usually women seeking self-directed work. The book explores the strategies organizers use to help people part with their belongings. It raises social questions of overconsumption and the nature of unpaid home organization that places unfair demands on women. The book also discusses the psychological implications of emotional connections to stuff we own but never use.

Lane concludes that professional organizers are best thought of as “therapists of capitalism.” They form a relationship “suited to people trying to manage their copious belongings while also working through their feelings around their stuff and the labor it demands of them.”