After reading Marie Kondo’s bestseller The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing, I was inspired to declutter the hell out of my life. The dozens of beautiful dresses, shoes, and bags in my closet I hardly ever wore? Donated. The hundreds of greeting cards hoarded over 30-some-odd years stashed in random bags and drawers? Chucked.

Tidying up, sprawl phase, 📸 January 2019

The most useful aspect of the KonMari Method™ for me was the opportunity to document before discarding. While I kept a couple dozen or so greeting cards that sparked joy, I photographed many of the ones I threw out. It was this knowing that my cards would be accessible if needed one day that made releasing them possible. Six years later, I haven’t once looked back at any of the photos I took.

After purging my clothes, shoes, bags, and cards, I felt empowered (compelled) to do more, and made the truly idiotic decision to Kondo away my flute. If only there had been a “Caution” or “Preparation” section at the start of the damn book advising readers to ask themselves a few simple questions before picking up objects one at a time to see if they sparked joy:

Am I OK?
Am I depressed?
Am I on my period?
Is there anything going on in my life right now that might compromise my decision-making?

It’s one thing to peacefully part ways with sentimental clutter one has grown attached to over the years. But a beloved instrument one received at the age of 10, played through her first year of college, and continued to play at family gatherings (cute, right?) is an entirely different matter; it’s not clutter. My flute was fundamental, much bigger and more complicated than a single emotion or reductive true-false joy-no-joy binary.

So out of control was my purge that I didn’t even remember putting my fucking flute out on the sidewalk in front of my building until about a year later, when I ransacked my apartment trying to find it. As memory and reality slowly dawned on me, I was overcome with nausea, anger, and deep regret. I hadn’t even stopped to take a photo of it before letting it go.

In no way do I blame Marie or her Method™ for my transgression. Had I been wise enough to ask myself “Am I OK?” before tidying up, wise enough to see my flute as my childhood pièce de résistance instead of clutter, I would still be in possession of it.

On the flipside, the thing about things (most of them, anyway) is they’re replaceable. A couple years back, I bought myself a new flute—a fun, pretty purple one. Certainly not as nice as the one I Kondoed, but it feels good to have another shot at honoring and holding onto the belongings I love.

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