The beauty of greeting your home

remember to steal back the small moments before we lose them all

There’s nothing quite as boring as another piece of writing on the internet, about spending less time on the internet (I mean, are you, really?) but hello and hi again, here we are.

Today I don’t want to focus so much on how your mental health will benefit with less scroll time (but it’s like, so much) or how much better you’ll sleep (passionflower tea isn’t shit compared to this) or how much more peace, ease and calm you’ll feel (every second not spent online is practically a meditation, right?) but instead — how much better your home will feel, and maybe even - how much less stuff you’ll need.

an IDEAL balcony set up

Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up came out in 2014 and found its way to my sweaty palms sometime during the next year. Whenever people ask me for my favourite books on meditation, yoga and spiritual practices, this is one of the first I suggest (along with the book of tea, and in praise of shadows, if you were curious) which is, for most people, extremely unsatisfying, especially when craving a book on meditation or asana. I get it, but these are my honest recommendations. In my experience, no book on yoga has ever come close to teaching me even a fraction of what practicing with a teacher does. These books, on the other hand, focus steadily on the home, the beauty in the small moments, presence, and the everyday. To me, they offer a kind of spiritual balm I personally need to apply, all the time.

I know not everyone enjoys this book, but until I sat down to write this letter, I had no idea how much hate it incites. On the first page of google results you’ll find this: “There is no rating low enough to compensate for the way this book has ruined my life. Whatever you do, don't read it as it will haunt you.” This review is the most liked on Goodreads, with 6000 and counting. As you scroll further down, you’ll find Diane is not the only one who has felt personally victimised by KonMarie.

I find it interesting how deeply offended people can be by the almost anything at all, in this case, folding socks and greeting your home as you walk through the door. But the anger toward a book about tidiness and joy points to two things, one: (this is incredibly niche) Kondo is a projector and sometimes the sharp insights of projectors feel like a sting to those who aren’t ripe for hearing it, but mostly, two: it seems apparent that many people carry an enormous amount of shame about their number of possessions and/or the state of the home.

The latter is exactly why I’m interested in leaning toward it.