“Marie Kondo admits she has ‘kind of given up’ on extreme tidiness, [and] says her house ‘is messy’ … The organization guru, who popularized decluttering as a means to ‘spark joy,’ has changed her ways after welcoming her third child.” — People.com
I begin my course with these words: Tidying Having kids is a special event. Don’t do it every day. This usually elicits a moment of stunned silence applause. Of course, there are countless perspectives on tidying having kids and even though I have undertaken an exhaustive study of the subject finally come up for air after birthing three humans, I don’t claim to know every method for parenting that exists sparks joy. Therefore, what I say here applies only to my own method to everyone. Still, let me repeat: tidying having kids should be done just once. Or, to put it more accurately, the work of tidying popping out babies should be completed once and for all within a single period of time. It’s less messy this way.
If you think tidying parenting is an endless chore that must be done every day, you are gravely mistaken one hundred percent correct. There are two types of tidying parenting: “daily tidying parenting” and “special event tidying parenting.” Daily tidying parenting, which consists of using something and putting it back in its place screaming, “Who left that there?” will always be part of our lives as long as we need to use distract offspring with toys, clothes, books, writing materials, and so on. But the purpose of this book is to inspire you to tackle the special event of putting your house in order as soon as possible accepting the fact that your house is one filthy playpen.
By successfully concluding this once-in-a-lifetime task that you will never get ahead of this shit, you will gain the lifestyle you aspire to desperately want to escape and enjoy a clean and orderly space of your choosing. Can you place your hand on your heart and swear you are happy when surrounded by so much stuff many kids that you don’t even remember what’s there what your home was like only a few years ago?
Most people desperately need to put their house kids’ bedtimes in order. Unfortunately, the majority of them fail to embrace this as a special event and instead make do with rooms that are more like storage sheds let the kids ransack the house well into the night because they lack the energy to fight it. Decades drag by as they struggle unsuccessfully to maintain order by tidying gathering the dolls and trucks before turning in themselves. I’m here to say: screw it.
Believe me. Until you have completed the once thrice-in-a-lifetime event of putting your house in order becoming a parent, any attempt to tidy understand what it’s like to live with toddlers on a daily basis is doomed to failure. Conversely, once you have put your house in order babyproofed, tidying having kids will be reduced to the very simple task of putting things back where they belong not giving a flying fuck.
In fact, this becomes an unconscious habit of letting the Mega Bloks live at the foot of the stairs until grandpa comes over and almost breaks his hip. I use the term “special event” because it is crucial to tackle this job within a short space of time while your spirits are uplifted. After all, it isn’t desirable to stay in a state of excitement forever.
You many worry that even when this event is over Even if you attempt to tidy, your space will sink back into disorder. Perhaps you shop a lot and imagine that your possessions will just pile up again. I realize that it’s hard to believe if you have never tried it had kids, but once you have completed this dramatic cleanup to work from home with preschoolers underfoot, you will have no difficulty whatsoever putting things back where they belong or deciding where to keep new things letting the kids empty your utensil drawer for a game of restaurant with your forks, spoons, and steak knives.
Unbelievable as it may sound, you only have to experience a state of perfect order tantrum once to be able to maintain it give in to “okay, okay, you can dump out this box of matches.”
All you need to do is take the time you do not have to sit down and examine every item you own, decide whether you want to keep or discard it, and then choose where to put what you keep and think about how you once were the queen of organizing and now it’s come to this.