CityView Magazine

8 March 2023 Claire Mullen can be reached at clairejlmullen @gmail.com. FAMILY MATTERS Bless this mess BY CL AIRE MULLEN dumpster and parked it in her driveway for the duration of her whole-house purge. I also specifically recall thinking to myself, "Y'all go on ahead. is ain't for me." You see, I am not a person whose joy is sparked by closets full of clothes organized by the colors of the rainbow, alphabetized spice racks, or snacks in the pantry taken from their original (perfectly good, in my opinion) containers and placed neatly into symmetrical bins labeled by category. I don't "cinnamon roll" my T-shirts to maximize space in drawers, nor do I invest in custom- printed, labeled clothing dividers that hang around closet rods for easy location identification. Apparently, these are a thing on Etsy that actual people buy. Heck, if I'm being honest, I don't even separate my laundry into darks and lights. I've never stepped foot in Ikea or e Container Store. I purposely avert my eyes when I walk by the home organization sections at Target and Bed Bath & Beyond. Terms like "color-coded," "shape-sorted," "alphabetized," and "compartmentalized" just about make me break out in hives. I've always been this way. It's just how I am. I function just fine in chaos. My spaces are not tidy. I am fairly unbothered by clutter and disorganization. e concept of organized systems stresses me out more than the mess does. And for many years, I have wondered if something is terribly wrong with me. I've marveled at people like Marie Kondo and daydreamed about their hyper- organized and spotless homes as I open our guest bathroom closet door and step over a wobbly stack of board games and dodge a pile of power tools mixed in with a few dozen cans of Play-Doh and one electric guitar to get to the random assortment of rolls of multi-occasion wrapping paper leaning in the corner. I've worried that I am instilling bad habits in my children. I've fretted over the idea that although he would never say it, my more structured husband might secretly wish that I were a better M ost of us have heard of Marie Kondo, the "Queen of Clean." Ms. Kondo became quite famous aer the publication of her four books on the subject of organizing and her two subsequent award-winning Netflix series, "Tidying Up With Marie Kondo" and "Sparking Joy With Marie Kondo." e premise of Marie Kondo's world- renowned method of tidying is basically this: One should gather up all their belongings, one category at a time, and purge each item one-by-one that does not immediately "spark joy" for the owner of that item. And then, the organizer should choose an appropriate designation in the home for each item where the item should remain forevermore when not in use. So, for example, if I were following Marie Kondo's method of tidying my shoe collection, I would look in my closet, in my husband's closet, under our bed, under every armchair in the house, under my desk in the office, under the couch in the living room and the one in the playroom, by the inside of the front door, the outside of the back door, on the passenger floorboard of my car, and on top of the dryer in the laundry room to gather all my shoes. I would then pluck shoes, two by two, from my mountain of footwear and decide without hesitation which pairs "spark joy" deep down in my soul. I'd end up purging approximately 30 pairs of long-ago scorned high heels and return exactly eight shoes to the shelves of my closet: my trusty brown Crocs, fuzzy bedroom slippers, Old Navy clearance-rack rubber flip-flops that I've had since college, and one pair of hi-top Vans that I wear occasionally in an effort to convince my kids that I'm still a little bit hip. And then, aer I was done tackling my shoes, I'd take on the rest of the house, label- maker in hand. I remember my friends Marie Kondo- ing their homes like it was their job at the height of the tidying-up craze. One extra- motivated girlfriend even rented a large steward of our home. And, although I can recognize the concept of "different strokes for different folks," I have nevertheless lived with a lot of guilt and doubt over my general disorderliness. Until recently. Several weeks ago, a headline caught my eye that made me take pause. It was a caption for an article in e Washington Post that read, "Marie Kondo's life is messier now — and she's fine with it." "Ha!" thought I. "I knew it. I just knew this would happen." I went on to read with unadulterated glee about how aer having her own family, Kondo has essentially come to the conclusion that extreme tidiness is just not a sustainable way of daily life in a home with three young children. (I could have told her that years ago, and I have one fewer kid than she does. Heck, I could have even written books and starred in Netflix specials about this way of life — my way of life, and become rich and famous like she did.) Marie has spoken out to say that she has given up on professional-level organization and embraced her "messy" house. (I'd like to see her version of messy.) She says that she is no longer devoting much effort to tidying and is opting instead to spend that valuable time with her family. Maybe this was all intentional for her, or maybe three little kids actually broke Marie Kondo. Nevertheless, there it was. What I'd needed for an awful long time. An endorsement in actual print from a world-famous, certified expert. Permission from the "Queen of Clean" herself to say, "Bless this mess," save the alphabetizing for, well, never, and go outside and kick a soccer ball with your kids. at will, most definitely, spark joy.

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