Tidying is the act of confronting yourself; cleaning is the act of confronting nature.

–Marie Kondo, Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up

This year I am doing my very first spring cleaning. Having confronted my posessions (mostly) last year by (mostly) completing my own tidying festival, I actually feel far more compelled to keep things clean and it also feels much easier to do so. Besides having far less clutter in the way, I have far less shame about having possessions that I no longer use.

I had always felt a deep shame when I saw that things I own became dusty, splattered, plain old dirty over time. Seeing that, I feel, “how could I let this happen, I must not have cared for it enough.” Growing up I remember promising my mother that I’d cherish and take care of the things I was asking her to buy for me. I saw the process of things gathering dust over time, accumulating grime over time as something I could negate through sheer willpower, not to mention that I had never had a habit of regularly cleaning. When I did clean, I felt such strong disgust. I would think, “I’ll never let this happen again.” I never adopted the idea that dust happens, dirt happens, it’s part of life. And we remove it. And it happens, and we remove it.

The first time that I see something new accumulate some dirt, I think “Well, that’s it. It’ll never be perfectly clean ever again.” What I’m learning is that–well I’m learning several things but I digress; I’m learning that some things are actually not too hard to get clean as new again. Second, things don’t have to get clean all the way like new, they can just get clean and I can always restore to that level of cleanliness at any point in time. Third, cleaning is about defining my desired level of cleanliness and executing it. Until I own that, I will always be feeling like my home is not clean “enough” because I’m measuring by an ideal standard, an external one instead of an internal one.

I always feel amazed by the act of restoring something to a perfectly clean state. I never think it’s possible and certainly not as easy as it sometimes really is. I often think, “well, when I move to my next home, that’ll at least start clean. I’ll just have to live with this until I leave this home.” While there may always be a next home, a next day, a next life, by choosing that I’m missing this home, this day, and this life. Often I don’t really choose to do nothing, I’m compelled to do nothing because I think that doing anything is impossible.

I felt really impacted by the second part of this quotation even though the KonMari Method is focused on the first. I simply did not accept that it’s natural for things to become dirty through regular use. I always thought, “you have to use things in such a way that they never become dirty,” like the kind of people who leave the protective film on everything. The thing is though, you never get to enjoy the actual thing itself without that layer of protection. You live your life prioritizing the avoidance of getting anything dirty over actually enjoying your space and belongings.

Spring cleaning has been an act of confronting every part of my home, caring for it, and coming to peace with it.