Swedish Death Cleaning and Musings on Marie Kondo

WARNING THIS IS LONG POST, GRAB A BEVERAGE OF YOUR CHOICE AND HAVE A SEAT.As you all know, I am a stylist. I edit objects for the camera, so I am great at making sure everything looks perfect and edited at all times. I am not bragging when I say that people look to me for answers about how to style and organize their spaces. I have a big prop collection that I regularly cull and edit. I go through my closet every 6 months, I used to do it every 3 months, but spending 6 months in Italy has really changed my point of view about clothing. Since I am in Italy in the summer, my summer wardrobe in the US  has shrunk considerably. I am cleaning up, throwing out, scanning and donating all of the time. It is part of my weekly routine, sometimes 4 or 5 times a week. I am always editing, asking myself, "Do I need this? Have I used this? Have I worn this?"I like to think I am a minimalist, but I am not really a minimalist. The truth is that, like everyone, I do have hidden corners in my house, and some things I don't want to let go of emotionally. I am a prop stylist after all, the collector of beautiful interesting objects that all have a story. So here's my true story...Recently our daughter temporarily moved back in with us, and she seriously lives like a monk. No stuff, very, very pared down. She is here with us for a few months while she settles into a new job and looks for a house to buy with her husband. She looked at me about 2 months ago and said, "Mom you have too much stuff." I thought she was kidding! After all, we had just done a huge purge in the past year thanks to her. But according to her, it was not enough...Last year, our daughter had talked to her dad and I about Swedish Death Cleaning . I know, horrifying concept right? Dying. But it's actually a great concept. You can read about it here. Here's the concept in a nutshell: as you age you should simply your life. When you're young and have kids, it's natural to have clutter. But as you age, you should work on getting rid of possessions. This is the ultimate kindness to your children and family.With my daughter living at home and pushing for another purge, I decided we needed to revisit the entertaining pantry (I have 2 of them)--lots of platters, plates, coffee makers and cups and saucers and bowls and decorative trays, baskets and bowls and bowls and bowls. She and I tackled the pantries. It took us 2 days to excavate the items and rearrange everything. Believe me, it was not smooth sailing. She was merciless and ruthless in her editing. Yes it's true, even I have to have some things pried out of my hands.I love organizing, and I think everyone needs to do more of it, everyday and every week of the year. That's why I was very excited to see that Marie Kondo was getting her own organizing show on Netflix.Marie Kondo is a Japanese organizational guru. Her show "Tidying Up" started streaming January 1st on Netflix - perfect timing for organizing and cleaning right?A little about Marie... Marie Kondo achieved worldwide fame in 2014 when her first book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, was translated into English and published in the United States, where it became a New York Times best seller and sold more than 1.5 MILLION COPIES!!!My take on her show...anything that brings awareness to cleaning up your stuff brings me great joy! Anything that makes YOU think about purging and cleaning is a good thing in my book.On to the show...Marie shows up with her translator and briefly speaks to her clients through a forced smile. First things first, she "introduces herself to the house" by doing some kooky made up woo woo ritual which involves her meditating when kneeling on the floor.I am an organizing freak and wanted to love the show! But honestly, I found the show very boring. Her offerings are superficial fixes. She never addresses the real issues--like what to do with paperwork? She never talks about technological fixes like a scanning paper and becoming paperless. Instead she has people put things in paper boxes? Huh? She's very simplistic, and of course, very Japanese in her approach. No one ever reminds her that Americans do not live like the Japanese, we have larger spaces and as a result, MUCH MORE JUNK. Her show features clueless band-aids on the epic problems of the obsessive, non-stop-buying culture of America. Though entire show, I wondered what she really thought of our culture of hoarding and buying beyond our means compared to the pared-down lifestyle in Japan. I am sure she thinks it is horrible! But her face cracking smile never lets you know what she is thinking. Mostly it just got on my nerves. Basically, Marie offers small boxes to people that have BIG box problems. The best thing about this show is that purging and cleaning is now the part of a larger discussion in America. And people are indeed looking at their stuff and assessing and tossing and donating it. For us, the Swedish Death Cleaning lifestyle is a better fit, but if Marie's method is your style, go for it. The truth is: We all need a complete paradigm shift in how we shop, how we consume, and how we teach our children to live. *to read more about the mental effects of clutter click here