In the summer of 2015 I quit my job at a major publishing house, a career that had been fifteen years in the making, to start my own business as a freelance editor and writer. The day I walked out of my high-rise office building—sliding down that corporate ladder faster than a stripper down the last pole of the night—I eliminated a whole category of fucks I had previously given to supervisors, coworkers, my commute, my wardrobe, my alarm clock, and more.
I stopped giving a fuck about Sales Conference. I stopped giving a fuck about “business-casual” and “town-hall meetings.” I stopped keeping track of my vacation days like a prisoner tallying her sentence in hash marks on the cell-block wall.
Once I was released from the yoke of corporate ennui, I naturally had a bit of time on my hands and the freedom to spend it as I wished. I slept until I was damn well ready to get up, ate lunch with my husband, worked on a freelance gig or two (or maybe went to the beach), and avoided the New York City subway as much as humanly possible.
I also read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. As a generally tidy person, I didn’t think I was in dire need of Ms. Kondo’s advice, but I’m always looking for ways to make my apartment look more like Real Simple magazine—and, hey, my time was my own to work, nap, or declutter as I saw fit.
Well, let me tell you, this little book works as advertised. It was almost… dare I say… magic?
Within hours, I had KonMari’d my husband’s sock drawer, which involves getting rid of socks you don’t like and never wear (or, in this case, socks I knew he didn’t like and never wore), then refolding the rest to look like little soldiers standing at attention, so when you next open the drawer, you can see all of them in one glance. After viewing the results, my husband—who’d initially thought I was batshit crazy to spend my time organizing his sock drawer—was a convert. He did the rest of his drawers and his closet all by himself the very next day.
If you haven’t read Marie Kondo’s book, allow me to explain why we were so motivated to do this work.
Beyond discarding items of clothing we no longer need or enjoy (and therefore being excited about all of our remaining options), we’ve decreased the time spent figuring out what to wear (because we can see everything in a single drawer with one look), nothing gets “lost” in a drawer anymore (because we follow Ms. Kondo’s method of stand-up folding), and we do a lot less laundry (because we haven’t tricked ourselves into thinking we’re “out” of clothes when in fact the good stuff was just crumpled up in the back of the bureau under the pants that don’t fit).
In other words: Life is significantly better now that we can see all of our socks. And I ran around for weeks evangelizing to anybody who would listen (and many who would not).
Suddenly, with all the job-quitting and sock-tidying, I found myself in a life-changing kind of mood!
As I contemplated my exceptionally tidy home, I felt more peaceful, sure. I like a clear surface and a well-organized kitchen cabinet. But it was the freedom I felt from leaving a job I wasn’t happy in—and being able to add people and things and events and hobbies that made me happy back into my life—that truly sparked joy. These were things that had been displaced not by twenty-two pairs of balled-up socks, but by too many obligations and too much mental clutter.
That’s when I realized… it’s not really about the socks, is it?
Don’t get me wrong, I admire Marie Kondo for starting a revolution of decluttering physical spaces to bring more joy to one’s life. It worked on me, and it’s clearly working on millions of people around the world. But as she says in her book, “Life truly begins after you have put your house in order.”
Well, I put my house in order. The real magic happened when I focused on my fucks.
Let’s back up a little bit.
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