Sean has been largely amused by my efforts to "Kondo" the house during my down time this month. I read her book a couple of years ago, and did find it helpful to conceptualize "sparking joy" as a reason to keep or discard something. I have little patience for the animist side of her approach, though (I will never thank my purse at the end of a day) and at the time had no interest in folding all of my clothes according to her system.
This new effort started not with Kondo's book, but rather with the basement clean-out that was underway when I arrived home. Over the years, our side of the basement, together with the "back basement," has functioned as an unfortunate dumping ground for Sean's brother, cousin, and aunt. It's always irritated me, but while his aunt lived on the other side there was very little I could do about it. Now, with his aunt moved out to a house with her own damn basement to store things in, the side next door is about to be converted into a rental, complete with -- finally! -- a locking door separating the two basements. It was a perfect opportunity. Linda and I emptied the back basement as much as we could, with the help of a Dumpster and repeated trips to Goodwill. Then I pushed everything that belonged to Sean's aunt and cousin that had been on our side into the "back basement" for them to pick up or discard at their leisure. Sean's cousin appears to never have gotten rid of any clothing since, like, high school. I packed up two trashbags just of shoes - one bag for sneakers and one bag for monster stilettos. She had more shoes chilling in our basement than Sean and I collectively own!
We might not be minimalists, but we strive not to be over-consumers either. The presence of unused, unwanted crap in the house sets my teeth on edge. I admit to getting pleasure from the act of donating or discarding things we don't need. As Sean was recounting his dad last night, occasionally this leads me into a certain...over-exuberance of discarding, as when I allegedly got rid of the reusable plastic straws that fit with the caps for his shake container. In general, though, I follow Kondo's point that you can't discard other people's belongings. Well, not unless they've been abandoned in your basement for five years, anyway.
I discovered only after my repeated trips to Goodwill that the Vietnam Veterans Association would have actually picked everything up at the house after Jordy pointed out that Goodwill isn't exactly the best place to donate to. After that big purge, though, the most I usually have at one time is just a box or a bag that's not worth calling someone for. Said box, for example, is currently occupied by a decorative glass jar thing that had been on top of our fridge since Linda lived here, and a Scrabble dictionary Sean would never let me use. I admit it: Goodwill is what's most convenient when I want something gone now.
After the basement had been cleared, I was able to move a big bookcase that used to be in the boiler room on the other side into Daniel's old room. One of our big problems has always been a lack of storage for two significantly-sized book collections, and roughly half of our books had been sitting in either plastic bins or cardboard boxes from my Philadelphia move in 2012. One of my goals, which we accomplished in stages, was going through all of our books, removing them from the shelves and deciding which ones to keep and which ones to donate or, in the case of fancy scholarly books, bring to the Book Trader. Sean was able to discard plenty of books from grad school, and I cleaned out the nest of art history survey tomes under my bed. In the end, three boxes went to Goodwill and two to the Book Trader. The freed shelf space combined with the new bookcase means we now only have two clear plastic bins in storage, with a single layer of books in each; everything else has a home on a shelf! [edit: it turns out I didn't need to do so much sleuthing to find that Dinosaur Story book I mentioned in the previous post, because I had saved the actual book! It, along with a bunch of others, like the Snoopy book my grandparents had sent me one Valentine's Day, went to Jen for future nibling use]
The Kondo-ing of the clothes really only took the form of the folding, which I did in one huge go at the start of the month while Sean was on his ND retreat. It's long been annoying to us that our larger dresser gives the clothes stored in it - well, anything cotton, anyway - a musty smell that reminds me of my grandfather. I emptied it out, let the drawers sit overnight with baking soda, then wiped them with vinegar and water (this is why it was good for Sean to be away) and rewashed all the clothes that had been in them. Then I Kondo-folded them so that everything is folded on its side and you can see everything at a glance when you open each drawer. I was inspired to try this in part by Anna, who had mentioned a few months ago that she does the Kondo fold method. If a working woman with two kids can keep that system rolling, I have no excuse, right? As I discovered, the folding itself is quite meditative. It also requires you to handle each piece of clothing, which helps you notice things - socks with threadbare heels, yellowed undershirts - that you might more easily overlook if you were just hastily tossing things in a drawer. And, if you were looking to downsize things you don't wear, it sort of forces you to confront the materiality of your clothes as you fold them, giving you more time to think about whether you really need that umpteenth soft shirt for sleeping in. It's quite clever, that way! Now, according to Kondo, pretty much everything that's not a dress would be happier folded, but I have neither time nor space for that; nor am I going to purchase separators or boxes to keep things even more orderly within the drawers. Overall, though, it's space-saving and very easy to spot what you want to grab.
One of our last Kondos was the cabinet with our DVDs, CDs, and games. I found the two CD holders I had shoved in there: a faux-leather one purchased at an FYE-type store on Cottage Grove Road before my trip to Europe sophomore year of high school, one sleeve of which had the label from my dad's garage-door opener with the code on it in my mom's pretty handwriting, and a fabric one purchased sometime in college, one sleeve of which had a pressed edible violet from a meal Meredith, Carla, Anna and I shared in Ravenna when we studied abroad. The CDs themselves were a mishmash, dating all the way back to middle school. I own not one, but two Creed CDs, thank you 8th grade! Some of them I threw out (Nickelback, Dave Matthews Band) and then whittled the nostalgia-factor ones (Britney Spears, Staind) down into the smaller CD holder, which I brought along in the car yesterday when I drove to visit my sister. And wow, had I forgotten how hard it is to jam a disc back into those little sleeves while you're on the highway! Some of the CDs really brought me back in time, like my horribly-scratched-up Perfect Circle, while others (Eve 6) were pretty meh and are getting trashed. I will save the holder, though, for the continued embarrassing reminder of the crap I spent actually money on in times past!