The Life-changing Magic of having a Less F-ed Up Habitat

As with so many other things, I’m reviewing a thing long after it got popular, and yet this time, at least, I’m managing to be at least a little bit on-trend, so go me?

I am not a New Year’s Resolution person — never have been, never will be. But I am a person who watches reality shows, apparently (obviously: Great British Bake Off, anyone?). And also I have friends who both use the KonMari method and who bounced off it and I have to say — I’m somewhere in the middle. Which is also unusual for me; I tend to be a love it or hate it person with organizing methods and self-help techniques. But I had a credit on my Amazon account, and the Tidying Up book was on the list of books I could use it on, so I figured what the hell, I’ll pick it up.

…don’t focus on reducing, or on efficient storage methods, for that matter. Focus instead on choosing the things that inspire joy and on enjoying life according to your own standards. –Tidying, p 125 (also, put away your pitchforks, fellow book lovers. She never says anything about getting down to 30 books)

I also, at the same time, picked up the UfYH book, because the sample had been sitting in my Kindle “to buy” folder since it came out, basically. And unlike the KonMari method, I actually have used the UfYH methods with varying levels of success, both before and after I developed one of those pesky invisible disabilities that make physical tasks a lot harder. And when I start up again, it’s usually UfYH I go with first: specifically the list of things to “unf*ck your morning” that Hoffman also posts on her blog, almost all of which are small, manageable things for before bed.

Unf[*]ck Your Habitat…is all about…lighting a gentle fire under our asses and reminding ourselves that we deserve a home we can be comfortable in and proud of. – UfYH p 7 (and no, f*ck is not censored anywhere in the book)

Both books are written in an easy to understand style, with clear (and honestly) straightforward instructions for following each method. Each agrees about “a place for everything, and everything in its place”. And that’s about the extent of the agreements, honestly. But in the end, there are a couple of reasons for that.

Kondō’s purpose is to get rid of all the stuff in your life that doesn’t bring you joy (and I didn’t apparently highlight it but one of my favorite things in the entire book is when she notes that one of her clients KonMari’d her husband…), and only then to worry about organizing what’s left. She has a specific order of working your way through your possessions that, I have to admit, made sense to me — clothing, the infamous books, papers, “miscellaneous” (basically the rest of the house), and then mementos (and photos, etc.). The thing is, the KonMari method requires going through ALL of what you own — for example, your clothing should be taken from everywhere in the house and piled (usually on the bed, as seen in the show) and then each piece addressed individually with the “brings you joy” question, and either thrown out/donated or folded/hung up and put away properly.

From my experience with private individual lessons, “quickly” means about half a year. […] [T]he secret of success is to tidy in one shot, as quickly and completely as possible, and to start by discarding. -Tidying p 35

And I’ll say two things about this:

1. I will be god-damned if her folding method for clothes doesn’t work.
2. The idea of putting ALL my clothes out like that is just exhausting. I don’t have those kinds of spoons, and the clothes would end up all over the bedroom floor.

Or, as Hoffman calls it, the dreaded “floordrobe.”

Hoffman is less concerned with doing everything in one shot (or even quickly), and more concerned with tidying and cleaning in manageable chunks so you feel better in your house: what she calls the 20/10 method. You pick an area, clean for 20 minutes, and then do something else for 10 minutes that isn’t cleaning but will recharge you, essentially, even if that’s just sitting on your couch with your feet up and a glass in your hand. (Of water. What did you think I meant?)

By only working in twenty-minute increments, you train yourself to stop looking at the big picture and to break down what you have to do into small, manageable tasks. – UfYH p 23

I’m fairly certain it would be possible to meld the two methods, mind you, but for some of us that would be a long time for clothes to be piled up on the floor.

The KonMari method doesn’t require getting rid of all of anything; it just asks you to question why you have it, and if it’s something you want to bring with you into the future; to ask yourself what you want to keep, not what you’re willing to throw/give away. But the KonMari method is also deeply colored by Kondō’s Shintoism, as she notes in her book, and there are elements of spiritual practice to it as well as the practical issues. I don’t know enough about Shinto to speak more clearly to that, however, except to have the feeling I’m missing elements based on what I don’t know that I don’t know.

The destiny that led us to each one of our possessions is just as precious and sacred as the destiny that connected us with the people in our lives. – Tidying p 192

The UfYH method is less cerebral, frankly, and more about the nitty-gritty of getting sh*t done, and I appreciate it even more now than I did when I was reading the blog. Hoffman is focused on doing what you can and not about doing whatever-it-is to our beliefs about someone else’s standards of perfect. UfYH is for those of us with physical or mental limitations, the ones with trauma around cleaning or who never learned to clean at all, for those who have little kids running around underfoot who’d find a pile of clothes in the middle of their parent(s)’s bed to be as irresistible as a pile of leaves on the forest floor. Sort of like ‘Festivus’, UfYH is for the rest of us, the ones who don’t want a showroom home but also don’t want to be working their way around their floordrobe every day or paralyzed by their clutter.

Remember, we’re trying to work with reasonable goals here and not set ourselves up for failure. […] It doesn’t matter what it is or how insignificant it seems. – UfYH p 35

In the end, I think I’d recommend both books to anyone who’s looking to have a better relationship with their living space, with the caveat that the way things are presented in Tidying Up tends to be stricter than Ms. Kondō appears to be in person based on her show. I even recommend reading both at the same time — the loftier ideals of doing everything, as in Tidying Up, to be grounded by the acceptance that sometimes the reasons we have for not “Tidying Up” are valid, but don’t mean we can’t still “Unf*ck [our] Habitats.”

And, seriously. If you take nothing else away from this, look into the KonMari method of folding, and the UfYH “Unf*ck your morning” checklist.

A side note: There is a chapter in UfYH about speed cleaning (e.g., the landlord/your mother/the pope is coming over oh sh*t) that was intense enough that it triggered a panic attack in me. That doesn’t make it any less valuable, just be warned if you have trauma around cleaning or being judged.