The summer of 2015, I bought and read Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, along with everyone else on the internet.

I have lost count of the number of garbage bags of stuff that went out the door as a result of reading it, but I would guess not less than twenty. I have never thought of myself as too sentimental about stuff.  Yet I was storing craft supplies that I “might need” someday, excessive amounts of hand-me-downs for the kids, and a number of items in my own closet I was holding on to for the wrong reasons.

I hate feeling tied down. I thought about what would happen if we ever moved. I wouldn’t have time to deal with all our stuff. I’d end up throwing it in boxes and bringing it along even though it wasn’t worth keeping. Keeping the toys picked up had become onerous. My kids’ drawers were overflowing. My kids weren’t capable of keeping up with their own stuff themselves, and I couldn’t live with the disorder.

Kondo claimed that her method was permanent. I was doubtful. But she says once you order your space and become purposeful about only bringing things into your home that bring you joy, you will never go back. She says, “If you put your house in order properly, you’ll be able to keep your room tidy, even if you are lazy and sloppy by nature. ”

And so I have. The image above is my t-shirt drawer. I drank the Koolaid, folks, watched the Youtube videos, learned how to fold the Kon Marie way, and all of my drawers look like that. My husband admitted sometimes he opens one just to admire the order.

Reading the book simplified things for me. I got rid of my prom dress, both of my wedding dresses (Tobago and New York), fabric I no longer liked (freecycle), and almost all my college textbooks from both of my degrees. I sorted all the kids’ hand-me-downs by age and gender, and got rid of the stuff we didn’t need or want. I got rid of toys, clothes, books, and detritus, and overall, our house is more orderly as a result.

But I am not the only person in our house. And to be honest, I can’t blame all our problems on my family. More than a few times I have come home from Target or away from my web browser with something that may or may not bring me joy later.

I have to accept that for me, while Marie Kondo definitely improved the level of tidiness in our home, this phase in our lives in incompatible with a full shakedown.

There are two things holding us up:

1. The things that bring me joy are not the same as what brings joy to my spouse or any one of our kids. And I can only demand they fall in line with me to a certain extent. I’m not going to impose my feelings of joy (or lack thereof) on other people’s stuff.
2. There is a lot of noise in our house. That means that my brain is rarely afforded quiet moments for reflection. When I am making decisions with continuous background noise, sometimes it’s hard to think clearly about what needs to happen. So I make bad decisions about what is going to bring me joy and buy things I don’t need or get rid of something I regret later.

That said, I have only felt a pang about a few of the items I’ve gotten rid of. For the rest, it’s an overwhelming sense of relief.

With the changing face of our home with kids at different ages, I hope to re-read the book in another year or so, and then again a few years after that – kind of re-set button to help us stay on track. And while my overstimulated brain and our family’s lifestyle is incompatible with a permanent tidying, I achieved a baseline tidy that is much better than where we started.