A Re-evaluation of Tidying

When I first read Marie Kondo in 2015, I felt something click. This was what I had been looking for. Here was the thing that spoke to the desire for a clean aesthetic with my increasing dread of consumerism. And what the effort was pinned on was Joy, or if you prefer, Happiness. I had been given permission to be Happy, and instead of needing to buy something, I needed to look at what I already had and decide what I needed to keep, not disavow. I also loved that she *wasn't* talking about minimalism, and in fact made room for people who genuinely enjoyed certain things to keep them. I harbored a fantasy about a relative of mine being able to have a home that spotlighted their love of tea, peacocks, and red. 

But maybe the better question is why I was looking for it.

I've felt bullied in my life for and by a lot of things, and the state of my home was a big one. My homes were too messy when I was younger; I was messy, I was dirty. It was a failure of my parents, but of course it was my mother's responsibility because that's how people look at everything. And when I got married and had a family of my own, no one gave me an excuse if I had to work as well as take care of a family, or if I didn't have money for the things that made a home more inviting. I was expected to keep a certain kind of home. Because I failed, I decided it was easier not to have certain people over -- certain family members as well as, er, friends -- than to have to defend myself. I did not want those people back in my home once I made it "presentable" or "acceptable"; in fact, maybe it's even fair that I didn't want to be accepted. But I did want to proclaim to people that it was exactly as I wanted it, and that while I had decided I could not use my home or other possessions to achieve approval, I could at least use it to exercise control.

Healthy? Hell no. But, I daresay, completely normal, with a legacy stretching back centuries.

The first thing that forced me to admit that maybe tidying really was more aspirational than I had wanted to be true was Catherine McCormack's fantastic Women in the Picture. McCormack addresses four dominant female archetypes and what they mean for the civilizations that produce and consume them: Venus, the Mother, Damsels and Dead Maidens, and the Monstrous Woman. If you guessed that the home falls into the Mother's sphere of influence, you are correct. 

Aren't we so productive?

I've patted myself on the back for years for how much tidying leans into anti-consumerism, even if it isn't minimalism. But as Slavery and the Culture of Taste drove home to me recently, objects aren't the only things we consume in our modern civilization. We perform -- produce -- sell -- emotions and ideals just as much as we consume them. And let's not pretend that can't be equally damaging as the overproduction of..."goods".

McCormack pointed her readers to Dutch paintings of scenes of domestic bliss: the wives and mothers who were the focus of the paintings were in control of their tidy environment and obedient children. As befitted a proud Protestant household, the subject's prosperity wasn't advertised with an abundance of objects but with the openness and cleanliness of space. For the vast majority of homes, these paintings aren't a reflection of reality; no matter how prosperous, it is difficult to imagine that one woman, caring for multiple children, is able to maintain a home as tidy and organized as the one idealized here.

I squirmed as McCormack pointed out the similarities between these paintings and their visual descendants on Pinterest and Instagram. There, again, is the Mother in scenes of domestic bliss that we can only aspire to: she is forever young, surrounded by obedient children who are the picture of health -- themselves an advertisement for how productive she is -- efficiently going about the business of making the home (usually the kitchen) work. You only think what the picture is selling is the high-tech eco-chic appliance that is tastefully displayed, or the premium food that is being consumed and sure to provide magical healing properties; that picture is really selling an idealized aspect of femininity, and we keep buying. Most of us can't have the gadgets, but we can have a tidier space, and with that, we can enter the marketplace of ideals as producers of our own and start selling. (Why get upset with the economy of attention that runs so many internet sites? It's only making obvious what has always been true.) And isn't being purchased from even better than being in control?

The above insight was uncomfortable, but welcome to adulthood in the 21st century. It wasn't until Slavery and the Culture of Taste that I started stepping back in horror. No, don't worry -- you haven't imagined that the aesthetic ideal of modernity has generally been cluttered with objects, and in many ways is the opposite of the perfectly tidied space. But one special category of the person of culture, the person of taste, always understood that everything has its place and everything must be put in it in order to achieve maximum productivity. Yes, that person was the slave master, and yes, it does imply all of the ugliness of human beings as objects in a greater machine that you think it does.

So why is it that Marie Kondo sounds so similar? Because she -- and many like her -- have as a principle that everything should have a place and the key to order is to put everything in it. Should you fail to do this, she promises that the first out of place item will invite disorder. Why does it make us feel better when she says it but make us cringe when someone who controlled other human beings says it?

Our personal spaces do say something about us, whether we want them to or not. So what is it that we are hoping they will tell everyone about us? What is it we are hoping we can transform about ourselves by transforming our space? Do we want our spaces to embody some kind of domestic ideal that is a safe haven for those who don't spend that much time in their homes, as it was most probably for the real patrons of those Dutch paintings? Or do we want them to be as efficient as a plantation worked by people who needed to be orderly under threat of constant violence? Maybe the bullying I mentioned at the beginning isn't unique to me, and maybe that has something to do with the answer to these questions.

I'm growing more ashamed of the way I've kept my home, and not because it was a mess. I'm not proud that I've made other family members feel as bad about how they kept their space as I was made to feel. I thought I'd kept out the people who made me feel inadequate in my own home, but really I'm not sure they ever left. Maybe I can't do much about them, but at least I've kept some of their friends out by not being on Pinterest or Instagram for the last few years. If I can stop consuming some of those ideals, maybe -- hopefully -- that eventually will be something.

Deb in the City