The Festival of Tidying - Ritual to Cleanse Unhappiness from Your Life

For the last few years, Marie Kondo's famous "sparking joy" requirement has been almost standard in housekeeping techniques. Everyone knows it by word of mouth -- you go through your home and throw out anything that doesn't spark joy. Naturally this leads to jokes about throwing out your bills and exercise equipment, and complaints from offended people about "So I'm just supposed to throw out my car keys?!'

Now, the fact is, if you think the idea of discarding something sounds like a bad idea, then odds are it's an item that is sparking joy. 

Last spring I decided to buy Marie Kondo's two books The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy. At the time, I was trying to clean out my closet and it seemed like the famous system might have some good pointers for going about it.

I got a bit more than I bargained for. The first thing I was surprised to find was that this was not a mere cleaning system but an actual ritual based on Shinto animist practices. Like with all rituals, you must follow certain steps and not deviate too far from the instructions. The gist of the practice is: all your items are somewhat alive/conscious, and if you have allowed your items to become disused or neglected, it not only makes you a poor custodian of the items, but moreover it makes the items sad and frustrated, thus filling your house with sadness and frustration.

Kondo insists the basis of her discarding system (a necessary step in removing the problematic surplus) is to keep only items that "spark joy" and thereby make more room for these joy-sparkers in your life. In her book Spark Joy she addresses the common complaints about the system and elaborates on what she means by sparking joy. As an example, she tells of an early attempt by herself, when perfecting the system, to throw away her screwdrivers because she didn't think they looked nice. The next time she needed to screw something down, she attempted to multitask other items to fill the need and was not successful. This reminded her that items can spark joy not by being pretty, or fun to use, but by simply being useful. 

Indeed, it seems Kondo herself misses that usefulness really is the key to her keep-discard system. If you don't use an item it is usually because you don't like it for some reason; for example, if you have three sets of shoes and only wear the same one all the time, there's a good chance you don't like something about the others (they're uncomfortable to wear or too dressy, for instance.) Apart from seasonal or special-occasion items, most items you really like will be used with some regularity. In this example, the two pairs of shoes you don't wear, unless they sparked joy another reason, you would discard. 

How an item is "used" is important to consider -- a fire extinguisher isn't put to extinguish fires often, but it's there to provide comfort and, if necessary, give help should there ever be an accidental fire. Its purpose is to stand by for a fire, not extinguish fires daily. It is "used" by being kept handy where it can stand watch. Often when people mock the KonMari system, a practical item such as a fire extinguisher is named as an obviously ludicrous example of a thing to discard -- yet these items can spark joy by being useful and practical. Nevertheless, it is also part of the system to rethink how necessary some items really are to your life and how you live. If you truly find no joy at all in the fire extinguisher and you don't see how you'd ever make use of it, you might indeed wish to discard it so that you no longer have to be responsible for it.

There are additional steps to the system, including an order by which you have to sort your possessions (clothes first, then books, etc.) The process is called a Festival of Tidying, since it is supposed to be done, as much as possible, all at once just like any ritual. Once you have completed the ritual of discarding, you can begin finding new places to arrange the items you will keep. 

If you really follow the KonMari system exactly, it really is as life changing as the book title promises. To be surrounded by closets and shelves that genuinely only hold items you like truly alters your world. It can also alter your outlook and lead you to identify and "discard" other unsatisfying elements of your life -- thereby making more room for the things you do wish for. The books tell of real KonMari clients who had amazing results from the ritual such as finding their dream job or improving their health after undertaking the system. 

Speaking for myself, I am probably a rare person who actually found 2020 to be a great year, and all of it came to me after performing the Festival of Tidying. Living in a cluttered little room overbrimming with items being kept "just in case" and "because I couldn't afford the one I really wanted" puts you in a rather depressing world. Having trouble finding items you want because you have to dig through boxes of other superfluous items adds that much more frustration to your life. Kondo believes that houses are connected through some kind of spiritual network, and it often happens that people who perform the ritual move soon after; I was one of those, and found myself in a much nicer house that has exactly the right amount of space for all the things I kept; and unlike my old place where the landlord wouldn't let me decorate or even hang artwork, I am able to paint and decorate the new place to my taste. I also discarded a lot of "friends" I realized I hardly ever spoke to (the pandemic helped with this, when I perceived that being forbidden to see them didn't change how much I saw them...) which afterwards let me focus more on the ones I do like. I started using my beauty products more lavishly instead of trying to get the jar of Nivea to last for the next 20 years, and whaddaya know, the products actually work better if you don't use miserly amounts like grandma taught me (this is, incidentally, a place where a "generational curse" seems to be broken, as I have come to perceive how many of my grandmother's practices of down-home Depression-era frugality, passed down to her children and grandchildren with pride, are actually a tad harmful to wellbeing.)  

This is a rare grimoire that's made the New York Times Bestseller list, and I'm kind of surprised that the religious aspect isn't talked about more since Kondo herself makes no secret of it. 

A compact version of the ritual can be found at the KonMari website here. There is also a television series and an online course for those who prefer to learn the method this way.