confessions of a former clutter queen

Because...this was what my closet used to look like MOST of the time. I'll give you a minute.

I know what you're thinking, because I thought it every time I walked in there to get dressed. "This is a mess." I could never find anything (spoiler alert: it was usually in that pile on the floor.)

Every weekend, I would have the best of intentions to clean it up, but after a long challenging work week, I wouldn't have the energy or the passion to care enough to do it. Not helping the cause--I kept accumulating more STUFF on top of the stuff that was already there. I didn't take care of the things I had, plus I kept buying more things to try to make myself happier (spoiler alert 2: that didn't work either.) 

After a restructuring of my job at a Fortune 500 company, after almost two decades in various stressful jobs, I found myself in a position where I was fortunate to get some time away from corporate America to think about what I truly wanted to be when I grew up (am I sugarcoating one of the worst times of my life? PERHAPS. But don’t worry—it has a happy ending!) But I also knew I wanted to use this unexpected gift of time to get my house in order. I was tired of living chaos-adjacent and constantly being unable to keep up with the STUFF of our family.  (Little did I know the personal and professional would overlap soon enough.)

In 2015, during the first round of acclaim for Marie Kondo's NYT best-seller "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" I read the book and half-heartedly implemented about 4% of the book for approximately a week. I wasn't ready for it at that time. But the 2017 Melissa was ready for it. I re-read it and made the commitment to start organizing my house using her principles, which were quite different and more sensible to me than the techniques advocated by other organizing experts.

In the KonMari® Method, you work in categories rather than going room by room--you start with Clothing, then move to Books, then Papers, then Miscellany (komono in Japanese) and finally Sentimental items. The main principle on keeping an item is whether it "sparks joy"--while at first this may seem awkward or feel odd, very soon you realize that the shirt you kept in your closet "just in case" but haven't worn in three years is not an item that you want to keep filling up space in your closet, and you make room for the items that you truly love. Before long, you can easily say "NOPE NO JOY HERE" and feel natural saying it--it truly becomes a great yardstick for items to keep vs. send on their way.  

Tidying is the sensible and sweet word that Marie Kondo uses to describe the process, but in my case, that word doesn't quite adequately describe the volume of work I took on that winter. Remember the closet? Well, this is what it looks like when you start tidying the clothes that don't spark joy for you. It's a workout to do hardcore tidying (schlepping these bags of items down to the car to take to Goodwill counted as weightlifting.) 

After doing just the first category, Clothing, with my own closet and then my husband's, I had experienced multiple lightning bolt moments. The amount of STUFF I had was embarrassing and unnecessary. The "just in case" or "when I lose 10 lbs" or "I loved wearing this in college" (reminding self that was 2 decades ago) items were overwhelming. When I let them go, sending them on to someone else who could use them more than I could, I felt a physical lightening that I wish could have been measurable on an actual scale. It's hard to explain, but I felt like I had lost the burden of the STUFF. My husband told me that tidying our bedroom space (Me: "Hey, now I know that clothes don't live on the floor!" Husband: rolls eyes) made him feel much more calm and peaceful and less anxious at the end of the day when he came upstairs to a chaotic mess. 

In short: I was hooked.

I continued KonMari'ing (yes, it's a verb, I use it all the time) my home and the more I did, the happier I became, despite having plenty of stressful things on my plate (finding a new job, keeping my family alive, life in general, you know, little things like that.)  As I took loads upon loads of things to Goodwill, and we estimate we said goodbye to about 60% of the things we owned, and LOVED ITTTTT--I realized I was changing my relationship with clutter, with acquisition, and with what I might want to do professionally.

I discovered that Marie Kondo was training consultants in her method in New York City in April--and on a leap of faith, I clicked the button to register. I was lucky enough to spend three days of training with 80 women (and 1 brave man) from 17 different countries, learning from Marie Kondo herself along with her team from Japan and the U.S., spending time training in how to help clients change their home life like she has helped thousands of her own clients over the years. I was the 179th person certified in the Method, and 2 years later, I became the 35th person globally to achieve the status of Master in the KonMari® Method.

After spending thousands of hours in client homes, I know that organizing isn’t one sized fits all—so I work with clients in whatever organizing style works for you. Some people want to get the full Marie Kondo treatment, but others want a different approach. I’m ready to work with you the way that works best…for you.

I am extraordinarily passionate about the way this has changed me, and changed our family's relationship with our home. My daughter, whose room used to be a safety hazard of epic proportions, started showing visitors how to KonMari® fold clothes in her new tidy room for fun (we do other fun things as a family, don't be concerned that we just sit around folding laundry.) 

I am making it my career to help clients learn what I have discovered. I look forward to working with you--contact me to get started!