“You did a good job of keeping me warm today, jacket.”
“Thank you for keeping me dry, umbrella.”
“You were comfortable last night, bed.”
Talking to objects as if they are human is a focus of the book, The Life-changing Magic of Tidying: A Simple, Effective Way to Banish Clutter Forever
I read several positive reviews 0f the book, so I decided to check it out myself. After all, who couldn’t use more advice about decluttering?
Kondo, a Japanese cleaning consultant, writes about her KonMari Method for simplifying, organizing and storing. The method is based on sorting items by category. This doesn’t sound like a terrible idea, until you read about Kondo’s insistence that her clients bring every item in a category into a room, put it all on the floor and sort it. This might be easy for say, books, but can you imagine putting every shirt you own in the floor and sorting through them all? It just doesn’t seem too practical to me.
Despite questioning her methods, I could learn to trust Kondo’s idea, if it weren’t for what comes next. To truly enjoy and love the items you keep in your space, Kondo says you should treat them with human qualities. This approach means talking to items and praising them for the job they do. I’m just not up for that, no matter how organized it makes my life.
