Imagine a life where everything you own brought you joy. Impossible? According to Marie Kondo, that lifestyle is more within all our grasp than we realize.
I spent this month self-consciously thinking of ways to tidy my apartment. For me, it was helpful because I just moved into a new place. Second, I’ve never been a self-declared tidy person. In fact, I’m probably their worst enemy. I didn’t do dishes in time; I can go weeks without seeing the floor of my room; I had piles of possessions that I had no intention of ever using again but would hoard them “just because I might use it again.”
And then I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and something has been slowly changing in me. My apartment is not clutter-free, but I’m personally making differences which change the way I view cleaning. I no longer feel obligated to store things that I know I will never use again; I’m much pickier with the space I use and what I keep; there’s about five trash bags full of stuff that I’m perfectly okay with tossing now.
There’s a saying that a cluttered mind produces a cluttered desk; sometimes we treat our mess as if it’s a sign of genius, and we’re not willing to just face the facts: it’s a mess we don’t want to clean up. Look at God Himself: read Genesis 1-2:3 or Psalm 104 and you’d see the overabundance of God’s emphasis on order both in creation and governing the world.
If we are looking deeply at the KonMari method, there is one nuance that Christian ought to realize. Marie calls us to appreciate what we own, but she calls us to treat our possessions as something with life: enter your house and thank it for sheltering you; thank your clothes for keeping you warm; she mentions her own story of texting her old phone before it broke, thanking it for everything.
This may seem innocent enough, but I think we’re missing a key element here: we should be thanking God Himself because He is the one where every good and perfect gift comes from. Scripture itself comes close to describing this view, but it always in a negative light. In your free time, read all of Isaiah 44:12-20, but here is just a sample, speaking of a blacksmith making an idol:
Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!” They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand.
There is a lot of great benefits that we can draw from Marie; there is probably more clutter in your house than you want; you own more than you really need; you don’t consider what actually brings you joy in life. We should take care of what we own, and we should realize when we own too much. But we don’t do this because of the life we see within them; we appreciate and take care of what we own because ultimately, they are gifts from God Himself.