Life Changing Magic (Not)

Q: You’ve just read Marie Kondo’s book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,”  and you’re getting ready to clean up your writing space/office. What things “spark joy” and what would you get rid of? Do you keep old drafts of stories/novels, e-versions, paper? Copies of your books, others’ books? Knickknacks? Etc.

-from Susan

You’re kidding, right? 

I don’t keep all paper drafts but I keep the last one I have just as proof of authorship. I do cull some crime fiction books by giving them away because, see above. I would never throw a book in the trash unless my cat had vomited on it.

My exception, and I do need a decluttering angel for it, is the kind of paper that sneaks in through the mail or in the Sunday NYT. I don’t even let catalogs, coupon envelopes, or fundraising appeals darken the door, but crime fiction magazines, the ACLU and SPLC magazines, and the Times Magazine with the cool beehive puzzle stay too long. 

The museum magazines and the occasional Cote Sud or Cote Paris pile up downstairs (because see above) until one day every four or five months when I am my own avenging angel and clear everything out, trying not to think too much about what I’m doing. Most of my house qualifies as mid century modern so there’s not quite so much stuff there. But if something does land, it takes on extra gravity and almost never gets moved. 

Upstairs in my office, the problem is only partly too much, it’s also that my alphabetizing system is screwed up now and I can’t always find the book I am looking for. Some are too tall for the shelf they belong in. Some are autographed by friends and I try – try – to keep them together. Then there are the To Be Read books, a shocking number of them, and I can’t integrate them or I’ll forget I haven’t read them.  Just thinking about this makes me tired and in need of chocolate, which I do not keep in my office.