Picture this: while winding down for the day last June, my job-hunting husband receives a phone call from an international number. "You better answer it!" I encouraged. That call led to a couple more calls, which led to a few video interviews, which led to an August trip to Auckland, New Zealand. Which led to a job offer! What, what, WHATTTT!!!!

Has COVID brought out your inner Marie Kondo? Several of my clients are finding this time to be perfect to start downsizing their homes. One client continues to be VERY happy about the number of things leaving her home now, so that her son won’t have to deal with them later.

This idea of decluttering before she dies seems to be a newly popular phenomenon but has actually been around for ages.   

The Swedes call it Swedish Death Cleaning and entire books have been written about it. Marie Kondo inspires it with her “Tidying Marathons” and realtors become responsible for it when homes go up for sale.

Ann Patchett recently wrote an amazing article in The New Yorker about the downsizing she went through, inspired by the death of her best friend’s beloved dad. Having to weed through his possessions inspired her to do the same in her own home of 16 years.   

At one point the 56-year-old author is taking down a dozen champagne flutes from the top shelf in her kitchen (reached by getting on the top rung of a ladder) that she never used. She started acquiring the flutes very early in her life in anticipation of happily using them as an adult.

“I had miscalculated the kind of adult I would be… I had missed the mark on who I would become, but in doing so I had created a record of who I was at the time…,” Patchett says. This statement brought me to tears and made me reflect upon my own “kitchen history.”

I recall collecting in the same way when I started requesting housewares while still in high school. I knew one day I’d move out and I absolutely couldn’t do that without the Le Creuset double broiler pan my mother bought me for my 17th birthday. As high school progressed, my “adulthood” was quietly stashed away in my teenage closet. While dressing I would proudly look upon the items in anticipation of using them in my own place. (Is this very different than the champagne flutes quietly living on the top shelf of Mrs. Patchett’s cupboard? No, not really.)

So many of my clients go through this mental exercise of imaging what their adulthood will be like, and make anticipatory purchases to sustain that imagined “life.”   

My husband and I LOVE to entertain and had all the accoutrements to do that. Settings for 12 including the glassware needed for a variety of drinking opportunities. (Doesn’t everyone need an aperitif before dinner?) When we moved into a big house in the foothills of Tucson, Arizona, we had an open house and invited our friends and all the new neighbors. We hosted about 100 people throughout the 4 hour party and enjoyed meeting most of our neighbors.   

We had grand visions of hosting many dinner parties in the year we lived there, but alas, no one reciprocated and asked us to their home. So that dream slowly fizzled, while our brandy snifters gathered dust in the cupboard.

Then, last July we had the opportunity to move to Florida, while my boys stayed in Tucson with their dad. That dramatically reduced the amount of “things” we needed to move. So the culling process began. And COVID inspired even more culling. We knew we likely wouldn’t be entertaining at our new place in Tampa, and that helped us let go of even more items. Brandy snifters were passed along to others who WOULD use them and enjoy them.

This is how I encourage my clients to reach the point to say, “Thank you, and goodbye” to items they’re ambivalent about. It doesn’t REALLY have to do with length of time (“How long has it been since you last wore/used that?”) which is a common way to move through decluttering.

More successful is rather, to address if the item moves you toward your GOAL. What do you envision your future looking like, and does that item(s) move you toward that? Do you really need twin sheets “just in case” when you don’t even have a twin bed in the house anymore?

Still vacillating? How about, “Can you imagine someone else using that item now?” Sometimes the idea of helping others is the tipping point for my clients, to be able to let things go for good.   

If you still can’t decide, dig a little deeper, and ask, “Would you want someone else to have to deal with that later?”

The most common thing my clients say after finishing a session with me is, “I feel so much lighter,” and the author echoes this sentiment as well.

“This was the practice: I was starting to get rid of my possessions, at least the useless ones, because possessions stood between me and death. They didn’t protect me from death, but they created a barrier in my understanding, like layers of bubble wrap, so that instead of thinking about what was coming and the beauty that was here now I was thinking about the piles of shiny trinkets I’d accumulated. I had begun the journey of digging out,” said Patchett.

The thing to remember about this “practice,” the tidying process, is that it’s going to get worse before it gets better. (But it WILL get better!) If you follow the 5 categories in the KonMari Method™, you’ll start by removing all your clothes from your closet and in your drawers and put them all on your bed.

Anyone else having an issue trying to decide what they want to be when they "grow up" in this new pandemic-oriented world? I thought I had it all figured out: "I'm Shanley Ten Eyck, The World's Only KonMari Consultant, Personal Fashion Stylist, Declutter Coach, Reiki Master, LGBTQ-friendly-Professional Organizer!" 

Ya'll, that's a lot of commas. 

My husband and I moved to Tampa, Florida last July and I'm struggling right now to decide how to move forward with my business while not being able to help people in-person (which I LOVE). All of my business has been virtual since October. And while I'm really good at virtually helping my clients, it doesn't have the same satisfaction of touching things, moving things around, and lining up books and clothes in ROY-G-BIV order for a client, etc. I can watch while a client does it, and applaud loudly when I see the smile on their face, but it's not as tactilely satisfying for ME.

But is this about ME? Or is it about my client? What is THIS?

These are the things I'm moving through right now. I just became a Reiki Master two weekends ago, and part of that process is letting go and healing the things holding you back and not aligned with the highest version of yourself. I thought I was pretty zen before, but I'm finding I've got a few more areas to touch on in my journey toward enlightenment. I guess we all do really, but alas, I'm about me (aren't we all, lol). Plus, I can only change me. 

Part of how I'm trying to better myself is through meditation. The last few days I've been a bit out of sorts because I've just taken up running again and am really enjoying it. Monday I did a quick run without warming up, and you guessed it, injured myself. I've been gimping around since then, which has halted my workouts, which hasn't helped my cortisol levels, and has left me with more "free" time than normal. That, combined with my introspective turn because of the Reiki courses, and the recent realization I may not get to see my boys (still in Tucson) any time soon, has me in a bit of a downward spiral. 

We are SUPER fortunate to live near Tampa Bay, so I walked (slowly) down to Bayshore Boulevard to commune with the water. As I walked, I queried the Universe about how to move forward with my career and asked to be sent some guidance.