KonMari progress

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My KonMari mission continues.

I made a list of categories to work through, and next on the list was board games and puzzles. ‘Toys’ felt like too big a category to do in one go with visitors due (I have discovered doing the KonMari method properly means you have a huge mess until it’s all sorted). I didn’t have time to deal with any major messes but I wanted to keep making progress so I thought I’d tidy up a few games and puzzles as a small gesture of faith in myself to keep my KonMari project ticking over.

When I gathered up all the board games and puzzles from around the house I was surprised to find we had a small mountain of them. No kidding – it was taller than my children.

I had no idea we had so many. I really wish I’d taken a before photo. Here’s a during photo, which shows maybe 5% of the mess of stuff I started with.

Games During

And here’s the after…

Games After

I got the kids to help me, and it went surprisingly well. Usually their instinct is to desperately hold on to anything I try to chuck out, suddenly claiming random objects are the most precious things in the world, but I think the KonMari method of gathering everything together first into one monstrous pile really helped. None of the puzzles or games felt as precious when you could see them in the context of the (truly insane) number of other games and puzzles. It made it much easier for the kids to let go of things they’d outgrown or never played with.

I was happy to see another 2 black sacks of clutter leave the house and the kids are very happy to have a new cupboard just for puzzles (with all the pieces) and games (which they actually play).

 

KonMari reboot

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In May last year I decided I was going to KonMari my home and life completely.

I was going to start and not stop until I’d worked through every category in my home.

I wasn’t going to get distracted. I was going to keep at it until the work was done. I was going to have a place for everything. I was going to ditch a staggering amount of crap. The KonMari method was going to work its magic and I was going to be free and liberated from the clutter in my life once and for all. It was going to be amazing.

It’s January. I haven’t got any further since I went through my linens and bathroom stuff back in May.

On the plus side, my bathroom cupboard still looks like this:

After

 

 

 

 

 

 

I know the KonMari method works. Just like Marie Kondo promises, you tidy once and it stays tidy. I don’t understand the crazy magic that makes this happen, I don’t know how it is even possible that this cupboard has stayed tidy for all this time with no effort on my part, but if this bathroom cupboard can survive the comings and goings of my family for 7 months I take it as proof the KonMari method can work for anybody.

I am beginning again with fresh resolve. I know the KonMari method works. I just need to remember this long enough to do the rest of the house.

My KonMari Blitz

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I love Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing. The KonMari method is the only decluttering method that has ever worked for me long term. I tried it, it worked for me, and then I kind of forgot about it. This is like a lot of other good things I’ve discovered in my life.

This week I decided to do something radical. I decided to KonMari my entire house and life and not stop until I was done. I had a vision: I was going to systematically work through the house and do nothing else until I was finished.

I figured it might take a week, maybe a week and a half, but it would be so worth it. For the first time ever, we would only have things around us that we loved and needed. There would be a place for everything. There would be nothing unnecessary. We would only have the things we really cared about for our life together as we are living it now, having jettisoned the baggage of the past and discarding everything no longer meaningful to us. The endless to do list in my head would still be there, but it would be short a bunch of tasks that had become permanent residents on the list. I would be able to open any cupboard in my house without shame or threat of injury.

So, it’s Friday. I’ve done one cupboard. Actually that’s not quite accurate. I have almost done one cupboard. However I really don’t care that life has got in the way and I haven’t got as far as I wanted. Who cares? I am going to brag about it anyway.

BEFORE

Before
DURING

During

AFTER

After

Homemaking as a Social Art: Creating a Home for Body, Soul & SpiritI

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I picked up Homemaking As a Social Art: Creating a Home for Body, Soul & Spirit from the library a few years ago.

The author approaches homemaking from a spiritual perspective inspired by Rudolf Steiner. To be honest, a lot of the book didn’t make sense to me, maybe because I’m not familiar with Steiner principles, but I still found myself drawn back to this little book after I’d returned it, and I ended up ordering it on Amazon so I could have a copy to keep.

It’s definitely a love it or hate it kind of book. You’d know from the first page if you were going to be able to take something from it or not. My twenty year old self would have thought it was a load of woo woo nonsense. Even today as I glance through there are passages which don’t quite make sense to me, but now I feel this is more me than the book. There’s something in here to get – even if I’m not quite able to get it yet.

There were a couple of reviews on Amazon complaining the book lacks practical guidance, which is true, but I think misses the point. This isn’t a step-by-step guide of how to keep house, but a book about the spiritual dimension of making a home. Veronika Van Duin is exploring ideas, feelings, and sensations which are difficult to put into words.

I need to spend more time with this book.

Sisyphus had it easy

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One rock, one hill, getting some exercise outside: Sisyphus had it easy.

Managing a household can feel like rolling a bunch of boulders uphill. Just like Sisyphus, you have to get up every morning and start all over again, but unlike Sisyphus, you don’t ever reach the top. You might get one boulder almost there, but before you get to see the view there’ll be a bunch of other boulders bouncing off and hitting you on the head.

Sisyphus only had one task to focus on, and he had the luxury of being completely uninterrupted. He could focus. He could meditate. He could think about other things. He didn’t have to drop his rock at random intervals to take care of someone who had just thrown up, or needed to be fed, or was threatening to kick his baby sister in the head.

One boulder, one hill? Easy. If they really wanted to challenge Sisyphus he should have been given the task or rolling a huge boulder up a hill while caring for a toddler and a new born.

Taking care of a house and family is not easy. It’s complicated. It’s difficult. It’s a challenge. You can’t be casual about it and do it well. You can’t beat yourself up because you don’t find it easy. You don’t find it easy because it’s not easy. Rolling a huge boulder up a hill all day is easy. Caring for a home and family is not.

 

If you’re living in Groundhog Day you may as well make the most of it

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Groundhog Day is a 1993 Bill Murray movie, where a grumpy weatherman gets stuck repeating the same day over and over again. He wakes up every morning to the same Sonny and Cher song, the same people, the same events.

Housework can feel a lot like Groundhog Day. The dishes, dirt, laundry, errands, and meals just keep coming. Nothing stays done. If you have small children at home, the effect is compounded and it’s easy to feel like you’re trapped in a loop of nappies and feeding and cleaning up mess, that every day is just a repeat of the day before.

It’s not true, you’re not in Groundhog Day, but the feeling that you are can build up it’s own momentum and make you feel trapped and miserable. This happened to me. I would feel bored and frustrated and then very guilty for feeling like that. I thought I should be unreservedly and effortlessly loving my life at home with small kids. Trying hard not to think of my life as Groundhog Day only made it worse. Paradoxically, the best way to dissipate the Groundhog Day feeling might be to embrace it.

If you’re in Groundhog Day make the most of it. Go all Bill Murray on your life and take the opportunity to make your Groundhog Day excellent – the most perfect day for you. You have to do laundry or tidy up or make school lunches every single morning day after day after day – great! Pay attention, tweak and change what you do, use every repetition to do your tasks just a little better, or faster, or with more presence or fun or energy or grace or whatever.

Housework never ends – so why start?

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There are lots of ways to think about housework. One way is to view it as unending drudgery to be avoided at all costs. I thought of it this way most of my adult life, and let’s face it, there’s a lot of evidence to back this up.

You tidy up – people (often you) mess things up again. You do the dishes – more dirty dishes appear. You put through a load of laundry – it doesn’t seem to put a dent in the pile. You feed people then turn around and they’re ready to be fed again.

Housework can be a grind. I used to think about my never-ending task list and feel crushed and exhausted before I’d even done anything. I don’t recommend this. It doesn’t get you anywhere and it’s a miserable way to live.

If you’re feeling resentful and crushed by the never-ending nature of housework you have two choices:

  1. Give up on it. Truly – just do as little as possible as you need to get by. Get some help. Do other things. Consciously decide that you want to avoid housework and do everything you can to get out of it. Remember your early 20s? How much housework did you actually do? You survived. Go back to that. Just stop thinking about it in that crushing way – that’s the miserable part. Give up on housework and be happy.
  2. Change your mind and use the never-ending nature of housework for you instead of against you.

 

 

 

Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House

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Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House is a wonderful book. I love it not for it’s encyclopaedic information about every aspect of housekeeping, (a hefty 800 plus pages of up-to-date information about how to care for every kind of fabric, surface, and material in modern homes), but for the first 12 pages.

Cheryl Mendelson opens her book with a chapter titled ‘My Secret Life’. It begins: “I am a working woman with a secret life: I keep house.” She writes about her experience of housekeeping, how it has shaped her at different times in her life, and how housekeeping and the perception of housekeeping has changed.

It’s the best piece of writing about the meaning of housework I’ve read. She writes about how housekeeping is often overlooked and devalued, but “the sense of being at home is important to everyone’s well-being. If you do not get enough of it, your happiness, resilience, energy, humor, and courage will decrease… Being at home feels safe; you have a sense of relief whenever you come home and close the door behind you, reduced fear of social and emotional dangers as well as of physical ones. When you are home, you can let down your guard and take off your mask… Coming home is your major restorative in life.”

She argues the way to get these “formidably good things” is not by “finding true love or getting married or having children or landing the best job in the world – or even by moving into the house of your dreams…. What really does work to increase the feeling of having a home and its comforts is housekeeping.”

From the outside this book looks like a staid and conservative textbook, but I think of it more as a radical manifesto, cleverly disguised in a lemon yellow dustcover.

 

I am living in the ‘before’ photo

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Here’s how things currently stand:

  • There’s a growing mountain of ironing in the spare/junk room which hasn’t been touched in weeks
  • There’s clutter bursting from every drawer/cupboard/container we own (so much for my good intentions with the KonMari project)
  • The garden is an overgrown mess and paint is peeling off the house.

I’m living in the ‘before’ photo.

When you’re living in the ‘before’ photo the vision of the ‘after’ can either inspire or frustrate you.

Usually I’m motivated and inspired by the ‘after’ vision and my small steady steps towards it, but today the distance between before and after is getting me down. I’ve learnt that when this happens it’s time to step away. No – not even step away – run away as fast as I can. These days, I’m hardly ever bothered by the before/after discrepancy, but when I am I don’t underestimate the corrosive power of this kind of thinking. It’s time to blow this joint.

I’m going into town with my lovely nine year old. We’ll get a coffee and talk about Minecraft and wander around the library. I’ll get some mooching time in and come back refreshed and happy to be back in the always imperfect, slightly askew, before photo which is my life at home.

Is the way you do housework working for you?

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There are lots of ways to do housework and some of them really suck. Some people get obsessive and can never relax in their homes. Some people try to ignore it and live in a constant state of chaos.

The way I used to do it, where I would feel swamped by housework while only actually doing a little in a haphazard fashion (so I never got to enjoy the benefits of doing it), sucked most of all.

I often felt overwhelmed and resentful. I always felt inadequate. I was miserable.

Things started to turn around for me when I started thinking about housework differently. I realised it was a skill, and like any skill, it was possible to get better at it. I started paying attention. I stopped resenting my daily tasks and let myself enjoy them more. Things got easier. I was spending the same amount of time looking after my home and family, but I was getting more done, and I was happier and more relaxed as I was doing it.

A lot of the difficulties and frustrations I experienced in the beginning were self-imposed. I wanted to be home looking after my family, but I also wanted to be somewhere more glamorous (not a lot more glamorous – just somewhere I could go to the toilet without being interrupted). I wanted the endless round of chores to get done without me having to do them.

I wanted my life to be different. When I accepted the reality of my life at home with small children – a life in which dishes and laundry were important and mattered – everything changed. I started working on my house and my house started working for me.

Here’s how you can tell if your housework is working for you: does it make you happy? Keep on tweaking things until it does. It’s important, and it matters, and it’s worth it.