Do Not Go Cluttered Into That Good Night?
Reflections on Hoarding, Marie Kondo and the Future Magic We May Be Throwing Out
She struggled to contend with everything her parents had kept in their apartment after their deaths — the jar lids, the ancient, unopened box of sanitary napkins, and much-patched potholders. He finally faced down his own near-hoarding habits when his girlfriend caught a glimpse — through the door he wouldn’t open to her — of his apartment, teeming with shopping bags, hotel stationery and restaurant coasters from around the world.
She is Roz Chast, a beloved New Yorker cartoonist, and he’s Barry Yourgrau, a writer of surrealist short fiction. And dealing with their respective detritus not only taught them an illuminating lot about themselves, their families and the human condition, it inspired two worthwhile books.
Chast’s’ graphic memoir Can’t We Talk About Something more PLEASANT? powerfully draws a story of a daughter at the end of of her parents’ lives — and, often, her wits. An only child of insular and eccentric Brooklyn parents, Chast details their last illnesses, transitions to nursing homes, and all the attendant stresses, strains and ambivalence. A huge theme, inventoried, cartooned and photographed, is the apartment full of baffling stuff Chast finally has to tackle and, if not make sense of, at least dispose of.
In Mess: One Man’s Struggle to Clean Up His House and His Act, Yourgrau compellingly explores what condition his condition is in: is he a collector or a hoarder? What’s the difference? What do the great sages and scholars say about these so-human traits? Telling tales of notorious hoarders of yore, Yourgrau also pursues experts from psychologists to disaster masters, and attends 12-step hoarders’ meetings. It’s productive procrastination that ultimately enables him to unravel the family traumas and secrets at the heart of his holding-onto ways and dig out.
A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of hearing Chast and Yourgrau talk about their books and the life-changing clutter surprisingly common to both. And yes, there was no avoiding the immaculate Marie Kondo of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and last month’s Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up. Chast and Yourgrau’s event took place at the Manhattan outpost of Japanese bookstore chain, Kinokuniya. And, before they were even introduced, the manager apologized to those gathered waiting for their promised Kondo-signed bookplates; the shipment had failed to arrive.
In the course of the reading and discussion, Chast and Yourgrau addressed Kondo mania, graciously if skeptically. I could relate.
Because, as beautifully photogenic and rewarding as Kondo’s mandate may be, it seems a little too neat, even theatrical; like a passion play, I would venture, of misplaced passion.
Certainly ‘Life-Changing’ is filled with sanctifying, if secular, ritual. In a time when our only reliable ritual is the second-by-second glancing at our phones, this appeals. And Kondo’s tactile, spiritual processes —the holding up and thanking of possessions, the careful folding and stowing routines, like yoga for your tees and mindfulness for your closet pole — seems to salve a global yearning among those with plenty. But the antidote she offers is one that is, I believe, beatified by youth and not without risk for the young, in the long term, when they become not so young.
We all start out less encumbered by material and psychic tchotchkes and pick up heavier baggage along the way. But Kondo and her cohorts seem convinced that if they are vigilant in their clean house/clean mind ways, they can nip it all in the bud and avert the inevitable indignities of age, from outdated garments to wrinkled brows and accretions of worry. Maybe — and good luck!
I don’t deny the increasing hazard, as we age, of overstocking and under throwing-out. As Chast and Yourgrau both acknowledged, the average age of a clinically diagnosed hoarder is 50. (Hoarding Disorder entered the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition [DSM-5] in 2014.) At that point, undertaking KonMarie (Kondo’s name for her technique) might require forklifts, therapists, or both.
Nevertheless, many of us, without a clinical level of disorder, but older and with stuff, may not be able to apply Kondo’s simplistic binary lens. Kondo asserts that everything we own can be assessed in terms of joy. If it gives us joy, keep it; if it doesn’t, throw it out. But what about things that strike what, oh yeah, ooh and huh? or a gamut of other feelings from awe to zip.
Kondo tells us to decide on an item’s yay or nay status and dispatching it immediately (but only after her now famously polite practice of saying ‘Thanks for everything!’) She states, with great authority, that the mission of a letter or greeting card is fulfilled immediately upon receiving and reading it. Once its utility is over, off it goes. If that sounds a familiar ageist tone, well, yeah. Kondo doesn’t seem to allow for the fact that our perceptions about things can change, day to day, year to year, decade to decade. Or consider that those perceptions can become compoundedly rich. “Cherish who you are now,” is Kondo’s thinking. But doing so wholesale this way, may actually make it harder for you to cherish who you are now — later.
Here’s a concrete example from my very own joy-free garage. In a recent spurt of method-less fall cleaning, I found a box of personal memorabilia. I thought I’d brought all such boxes inside, but here, with only slight warping and bites taken by creatures I shuddered to imagine, were all sorts of stunning ephemera — at least stunning to me.
There were handcrafted valentines from elementary school classmates in Miami, notes from friends in Cleveland when I moved to Ireland as a teen, and birthday cards from grandparents. I pulled out a postcard a college and post-college boyfriend sent me after I’d broken up with him. Reading his barbed words, cramped to fit rather than elaborated in the more open-hearted, foldable letters he’d written before, I could see the hurt beneath his cynical, defensive anger — something I’m sure I wouldn’t have detected then.
Then there were several utterly baffling letters, all from the same sender, postmarked The Netherlands. I read down to the signature. No bells rang. Then I read through their thoughtful, if not intimate, chatter about books and movies. Still nothing. I remembered a visit I’d made to the Netherlands in my 30s and a vague image of an older man I’d met came to mind. Could this be him? I hadn’t a clue.
Being dumbfounded by such a gap in my remembered past made me feel old and dotty. Flashing back, I marveled about how it was when we all poured our hearts — or trivial musings — into letters. I tried to fathom how I could remember so little — nothing! — about someone who sat and wrote and sent these reflections across the sea. But here they were, from someone as good as anonymous now, to someone I know better, but not as well, still, as perhaps I could: me, then.
This made me think about just how many other storylines we live that don’t make the cut of recollection. I might be able to find traces in the journals I also found in the box. But what is just as interesting to me — if not more so — than the actual stories I might reclaim is the notion that, by a certain age, we all must have a kind of Potters Field of lost and buried memories within.
I started to appreciate the box as a shipwreck treasure, testifying to the great distances and epochs we travel, filled with the gold bullion and rubies of who and what touched us that we considered valuable cargo to carry through life.
In my case, I know these relics are more valuable than they otherwise might be. I moved around a lot growing up and still have a tendency to sometimes feel adrift and as though I might possibly have left something behind.
If Marie Kondo had held sway back in my day, I might have bid a brisk, appreciative farewell to this boxful before chucking it. And, in doing so, I would have lost these archeological finds, valuable only because they were unearthed years later, with the earned insight of age.
Which is not to say that I’ll keep everything in the box. I’ve disposed of some of the contents, already — resigned to jettisoning any future messages they may hold. Some of the rest may end up with those who come after. That’s my mother’s plan. She announced recently that she’s done going through and getting rid of stuff. That will be for someone else to do. Fortunately, I’m not worried I’ll be left with anything like the task Roz Chast’s parents left her. My mother is far neater and more organized than me. In fact, I resolve to take a page from her book, for my own survivors’ sake. But I’ll do it my own way, careful to keep things that might yet acquire a special patina only I can appreciate.
