Marie Kondo

For me, Marie Kondo's methods have found  me at the right time.  The past 20 years have been turbulent, and my basement and workspace clutter reflected how out of control my life had become. My decisions or non-decisions to hang on to possessions and pile them rather than dispose of them with gratitude, reflected my anxiety of desperately just hanging on financially as a husband, father, career-switcher. For the first summer as a teacher, I did not work a summer program to "maintain my skills", but I have, instead, focused on getting my house in order.

Having the audiobook alliowed me to listen on the long drive home from the beach. When I returned home, per Marie Kondo, the first area I addressed were my clothes,. I found it surprising how comforting ir was to ask, does it bring me joy? or separate my drawers using shoeboxes, folding clothes and placing them edgewise,

Meanwhile, as live-Tweeting the Mueller Testimony brought another chapter in my life to a close, cleaning my own house the Marie Kondo way has connected me spiritually to the decluttering that needs to occur on a national level. Just as I have had to make urgent decisions of what to dispose of and what to store, Mueller's testimpny about his prosecutory decisions also reflected the investigation's decisions of what to dispose of and what to store.

Since the Marie Kondo way emphasizes cleaning house all at once, in deciding what to dispose of and what to store, I've been forced to reckon with what I find most important. America faces a similar set of existential decisions.