Send Me More Stories About Chronic Illness
It was another one of those days: a Netflix-and-chill day, in bed, because of a flare-up. My social had been abuzz about Tidying Up With Marie Kondo, and my love for reality-TV home makeover shows made me interested. So I decided to binge the first season while I lay in bed.
If you’ve never seen Tidying Up, it’s a show in which Marie Kondo, founder of the KonMari Method, enters people’s home and teaches them to declutter and clean their spaces, using the main criteria that one should only keep objects in their life if they inspire joy.
It’s a nice theory, but as I watched Kondo and the families she was working with energetically clean their spaces, I found myself growing frustrated. None of these people had health conditions. None of these people were disabled.
I looked around my room at the heating pads on the floor and clothes stacked on my dresser, and wondered how I’d ever find the energy to clean in that manner. The KonMari method seemed like yet another system that worked well for able-bodied individuals, but overlooked the unique realities and needs of disabled individuals.
I decided to try the KonMari method myself for two weeks to see what it was like for a disabled person. Here is what I learned.
Lesson One: Don’t Mess With My Bed
The process started off simple enough. Marie Kondo says to start your tidying up process with clothing, and in the show, the first step many of the families take is to take all of their clothes and throw them on the bed to sort. So I pushed open my closet and started tossing everything onto my bed.
Throw all your clothes on your bed to sort. It sounds easy, disability agnostic. But as a person with chronic health issues, I found that as the pile got bigger and bigger, I became increasingly anxious.
The families Kondo worked with on her show seemed to have no issues covering their beds with piles of clothes, but as a disabled person, this is the main place I go to when having a bad day. Like many sick and disabled people, my bed is my sanctuary, a safe space, and a place of refuge. And here I was, burying it.
Like many sick and disabled people, my bed is my sanctuary, a safe space, and a place of refuge. And here I was, burying it.
Nearly in tears, I realized that not only did I have to sort through all of this, but I had to do so before I could get to my bed again, which would require a level of energy I wasn’t sure I had.
Marie Kondo suggests starting by finding something you’re certain you want to keep, that sparks such joy that it makes you go ching! when you hold it. That’s your baseline, the feeling you want everything you decide to keep to make you feel. I dug through the pile and grabbed out a pink sweater with a penguin on it, a velvet jumpsuit, and a red and yellow plaid dress – all things that definitely spark joy in me. Soon my ‘yes’ pile was growing with all those pieces of clothing I revert to over and over again, as I tossed into another pile the things I wasn’t so thrilled about.
It was then that I hit a wall, both physically and emotionally. I’d not been at this very long, but I’d reached my body’s max, and without many other options, I curled up amongst my piles of clothes. I realized there was no way I was going to have the energy to do all of the sorting, along with the folding and putting away, on the same day, which is what KonMari suggests.
I needed to come up with a different plan.
KonMari asks you to only keep items in your life if they spark joy, but is it compatible with disability?
Lesson Two: It’s Okay To Shift The Rules
For a lot of critics, KonMari comes across as inflexible in its philosophy of austerity. It feels, frankly, like a lot of the pop philosophy du jour: both too strict and too whimsical, somehow, to survive a brush with the reality that life is messy and conflicted.
But as I lay there, I remembered the tender way Kondo worked in Episode 4 with a recent widow, Margie. In the episode, Margie expresses a need for dealing with her deceased husband’s belongings in a different way. Instead of trying to convince her to go against her instincts, Kondo says: “I understand. Let’s shift the rules for you.”
I imagined Kondo seeing me curled on my bed, and decided that she would understand if I shifted the rules. With that I put my clothes that sparked joy in the closet, shoved all the rest of the mountain back haphazardly into my drawers, and decided to come back to my tidying tomorrow, after a much-needed nap.
The KonMari method, like many things that I come across in my daily life, requires modifications and adaptations because of the limits of my body.
The KonMari method, like many things that I come across in my daily life, requires modifications and adaptations because of the limits of my body. For the rest of my time tidying clothes, I worked on one drawer of clothes at a time. I found that was the most my body could handle in a day, and it helped me to not get so overwhelmed by the process as well. I’d dump out a drawer and sort through, discarding some items and keeping all those that sparked joy.
And it paid off.
I did not anticipate how much pleasure I’d find in folding my clothes into tiny rectangles. I was so excited with the first shirt I folded that I giggled out loud! The process of folding my laundry, which I’ve never much liked before, now brings me great satisfaction and has become a new meditative process for me. By sitting at my kitchen table to fold, I can use Kondo’s method without the pain of bending.
I was skeptical at first, but Marie Kondo’s emphasis on clothes-folding really did make me happy.
Lesson 3: Your Things Aren’t Who You Are
KonMari’s emphasis on mindfully going through your possessions, object by object, really makes you think not only about what you want to keep, but why. As I worked through the process, I realized I had kept many things around for reasons besides usefulness or joy, even if I’d convinced myself otherwise.
For example, nostalgia, as if that pair of shoes could transport me back to a different time before my spine had begun fusing itself together. I’d also kept many things from a scarcity mentality, fearing that if I got rid of them, I might not have them at some unexpected time in the future when I needed them, but wouldn’t be able to afford to replace them. And some objects I held onto, not because they sparked joy, but because I felt they were somehow connected to an identity I feared I had left behind in my illness, such as the books I’d used to write my thesis. If I let them go, was I also letting go of my identity as an able-bodied person?
Marie Kondo is right: things are not what make us who we are.
But Marie Kondo is right: things are not what make us who we are. I can appreciate the time I was in school and know the hard work and effort I put into my academics without having the books taking up my physical space. I can recall the joy and confidence of walking in the heels my body no longer can handle wearing without them housing dust bunnies in my closet. I can remember my past without living in it.
Conclusion
During the two weeks I followed the KonMari method, I was able to tidy my clothes and my books. However, I was only able to do this with pretty significant modifications that allowed me to break the tasks into much smaller pieces.
Is KonMari out of touch with the needs of the chronically ill and disabled? Yes and no. I was skeptical at first, but the philosophy of KonMari is one anyone can practice, even if they have to change the rules to accommodate their unique challenges. At the same time, I think Marie Kondo might underestimate the size of the mountain that people with chronic illness have to climb when following her method.
For me, the process of putting everything in one central location and physically touching each item before deciding if I keep it or not just didn’t turn out to be feasible. It’s a lot to ask even an able-bodied person to go through literally everything they own to appraise its value in their life, but for someone with a chronic illness, the energy required multiples tenfold.
Is KonMari even worth it to me, as a person with a health condition? I’m not sure it is.
And that brings up another question. Is KonMari even worth it to me, as a person with a health condition? I’m not sure it is. While I was able to sustain Marie Kondo’s methods for a few weeks, long-term, I think I’ll revert to my organizational ways, because while they might not be as aesthetically pretty, they prioritize energy conservation and pain management… things that are infinitely more important to me as a disabled person.
Several days ago the KonMari.Co Instagram posted a photo with the caption: “The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.” Instead of my space being crammed with reminders of my past life, it’s important to fill it instead with things that reflect the person I am now and want to become. And maybe the method I use to get there doesn’t really matter.
